This is My World

Deer Season really isn’t open yet, but I really wish it was.  nothing like shivering in a deer stand waiting on a deer to come along. 

Anyway, I got this in an email today and thought I would share it.  Hope you found it as humorous as I did.

Well, here’s another fish story.  This one is about the fish with a bite on its tail.

One summer my dad and I were running a trop line to catch fish.  What’s a trop line?  Well, a trop line is a line that has hooks every couple of feet on it.  To use it, you first tie a lead (rope with no hooks) long enough to get a good ways into your body of water (in this case the Ohio River) to a tree on the bank. Then, you tie your trop line to your lead and, using a boat, you put bait on every hook as you’re run your line out straight as far as it will go.  If your body of water has a swift current, you’ll probably have to use a combination of anchors and jugs to keep it in place.

The next day you check it.  You start at the shallow end of the line, pulling it out of the water. Then, you keep following it, pulling off the fish you caught and replacing the bait as you go.

Well, one day my dad and I were about in the middle of the Ohio River in a tiny green john boat doing just that, checking our line.  I was pulling and he was driving.  About the middle of the Ohio River we got to a place where I couldn’t pull up anymore.  I’d pull and pull, it wouldn’t get very far and all the sudden it would jerk back.  Well, Dad saw a couple of these swift jerks and he wanted to try.  He pulled real hard, and it jerked him back. 

Since we were in the deepest part of the river (the channel) and right close to a bend that’s difficult to see around, we had to look for traffic bigger than us.  Well, I looked up and there was a barge rounding the bend.  Dad saw it too.  He had a few extra jugs in the boat just for such an occasion.  He tied three or four of them to the line, and he headed closer to shore to wait on the barge to pass.  This also served as a good opportunity to think about how to get that fish up.  We thought it might be stuck under a rock.

The barge passed directly, and we resumed our attempt to get this fish up.  I’ve mentioned in a previous post that this little john boat also had the option to be a row boat.  There was little things protruding from the side of the boat to accept the proper attachment of your oars, aka eyes.  Well, Dad wrapped the trop line around that eye.  Then, he ran the boat up and down river a little ways until we were certain that fish decided to move.  We got back to where we were, and proceeded to pull on that trop line.  After a few pulls, up rolled this catfish about as big as the boat.  We got it in, and finished checking the line. Then, headed back to dad’s house start cleaning.

We started on that troublesome fish first.  We weighed it as 22lbs and got a couple pictures.  Then, before cleaning it, Dad noticed the end of its tail.  In the picture it looks like it got scratched up by the rock it was under.  In person, however, it looked like another fish had a hold of it by the tail, trying to keep us from getting it.

Did I ever tell you about the first squirrel I ever killed?  Of course not, or it would be on my blog. 

My brother had just come home from Iraq.  This was the first Desert Storm.  It was squirrel season, and my dad and brother suggested going squirrel hunting.  Of course, I wanted to go as well.  So, my brother took off up in the woods one way, and my dad and I went the other way. 

Dad was trying to teach me how to track a deer in the meantime.  He explained to me that the main purpose for squirrel season is so you can find out where the deer are before deer season starts.  He said that if you see a squirrel, by all means shoot it, but the deer you get later in deer season will have more meat on it and last longer. 

After a while we came up on a tree full of squirrels.  Dad had a .12 gauge shotgun and knocked two of them out of the tree.  One was dead, but the other was still trying to crawl away.  I had a little bitty single shot rifle.  Dad told me that since we were so close to the squirrel, I needed to be the one to shoot it because my bullets were smaller.  So I shot it.  Later, Dad shot two more squirrels.  We put sticks through their feet to carry them easier and continued on our way. 

We found a couple deer beds and a few places where turkeys were scratching.  However, we didn’t find anymore squirrels that day.  So, we headed back to Granny’s to have our picture taken.  Then, we cleaned them.

For every PETA member that reads this blog, those squirrels were real tasty fried up in the skillet.  They were also full of protein, which is an essential part of the human diet.

Oh gosh! I think I was maybe 12 in that picture.  Well, I stumbled across it today and I thought I would tell you a little about it.  Keep in mind I was 5′1″ then and I’m still the same height.

See that green boat behind me? Yes it really was that small.  That was my dad’s little green john boat.  We hand-painted the registration number on the side there.  It also had the option to be a row boat, but we used the “big” motor on the back.  My mom used to go NUTS knowing that me and my dad were fishing in that little green boat just as close to the dam in Cannelton, Indiana as you were allowed to get.  The water was usually a little choppy and the boat would rock.  It was enough to almost get you to sleep.

One day we were sitting in the river down at the dam in Cannelton, Indiana.  Of course we were in the little green boat.  There were signs on the walls of the dam that said stay back so many feet.  Well, we were back exactly that many feet from both dam walls. We had minnows that we caught out of Millstone Creek on hooks and had our lines weighted down.  So, we dropped the lines all the way down until they hit bottom, then brought them up a little bit.  And we sat there rocking with the waves about half asleep on a hot summer afternoon.

After a while I stretched a little bit and said, “Dad, I think I oughta check my line to make sure that minnow’s still there.”

He nodded.  So, I went to reeling.  Or trying to reel anyway.  I pulled and it pulled back.  So I said, “Dad, I think I got something.”

He pulled up on the line a little bit and there it pulled back again.  He said, “Just keep pulling and reeling.”

So, I did.  After about a half an hour of pulling and reeling down by the dam in Cannelton, Indiana, it rolled on the surface of the water.  It looked to me like it was about as big as I was.  I held on to the pole real tight and Dad grabbed the net.  He kept trying to get its head in that net but just wouldn’t go.  He finally got its tail and half its body in the net and convinced it that it needed to come in the boat with us.

There is sat, the biggest catfish I had ever seen.   It was about as long as the boat was wide.  We both got excited and had to leave the dam at Cannelton, Indiana right then.  We got it back to dad’s and got some pictures of it.  I called Mom and told her she had to come see it. 

That flat-head catfish weighed about 19 lbs.  Later that summer we cause a 22 lb blue catfish.  Both of them made some really good catfish steak. 

So there you have it, the story of my first big catfish.  I caught it just below the dam in Cannelton, Indiana on the Ohio River.  Of course, it would be pretty pointless to fish there right now.  They’re doing some work trying to make it into a hydro power plant.

I’ll post the recipe for catfish steak at a later date.

Well, my small town is still quiet.  There’s something going on at Saddle Lake with a search party, but no one really knows what’s going on.  So, in an effort to gain more readers I’ve decided to tell ya’ll about the deer I shot back in November. 

See my cousin and my step-dad had been out deer hunting multiple times with no results.  Finally, one day I get a wake up call.  They’re so excited it took two of them to kill this tiny little buck.  Between the two of them they fired about 7 shots and they weren’t really sure whose slug actually hit the deer.  I inadvertently started shaking my head.  See my dad taught me how to hunt.  So, every time my step-dad and whoever he’s hunting with come back from the woods with some wild story, I laugh so hard.  Especially, if someone’s shooting at a deer while taking a dump.  Basically, I already knew I could do better.

You see, one thing I know for sure is squirrel season is for finding where the deer are moving so you can get a deer when deer season starts.  So, I had been squirrel hunting behind my house almost everyday since the start of squirrel season.  It took me five shots from my .22 rifle to bring in five squirrels.  I got four one day and one another day.  They tasted really good in squirrel dumplings.

Anyway, I let my step-dad and my cousin be so proud of this deer that took 7 shots and 2 people.  But I asked my step-dad if he would clean a deer if I shot one.  He said he would.  I don’t think he thought I would actually get one. 

At that time I was working third shift at Jasper Rubber.  I managed to get home before the sun came up one day.  The temperature was like 12 or 13 degrees, so I put on my camouflage cover-alls with a pair of sneakers and an orange sock cap.  I headed down to my tree stand behind the pond, just inside the wood-line.  It was still dark so I waited.  The wind was blowing so I was rocking a little bit.  Directly, the sun started peeking over the trees.  I knew there had been a deer walking along the treeline for a while but he hadn’t shown up yet that morning. 

I sat there a while longer and was getting a little tired.  So, I decide to try and sneak down the tree stand find another place to sit.  I got turned around so I could head down the ladder and I heard it.  There was a big ole spike buck eating foliage as he walked along.  He didn’t hear me yet and I didn’t have a clear shot so I waited. 

My tree stand sits right where that deer trail turns and goes into the woods, so I knew he was going to turn and come closer.  I did a little studying to see where the best possible place would be for me to get a shot.  Soon after he turned, he stopped in that spot to take another bite.  I remembered my dad telling me to line up my sights.  So, I did.  Then, I took a breath a squeezed the trigger.  He dropped right where he was, one shot one kill.  The slug entered near his right shoulder, went through the heart, and lodged in the other side of his ribs. 

This particular deer made a lot of breakfast sausage and summer sausage.  We also kept a lot of chops and steaks.  That’s good eating.  I reckon the meat from this deer would fill my little freezer up about 5 times for the cost of one slug and one deer tag.  To buy that much meat in the store would cost approximately $400 if you purchased discounted meat.