Memorial Day 2006

The fishing trip was a great success. I managed to catch some nice fish, and like the Texas Penal System, I operate of the theory of Catch and Release most of the time. The camp had plenty of fish, and none of these were the “Big One”. There is a song by Robert Earl Keen, on his Album No.2 LIVE Diner called “Five Pound Bass”. While I was fishing the chorus of the song went though my head. On another note, it is a pretty good album; there are some good songs and hilarious narratives between several songs. The usual crowd was there fishing, and not fishing depending on who you were. Of course the same stories were told, passed on from one generation to the other. One of my favorites is the Big Cat Fish. (Partly because I was involved in the story.)

The Big Catfish
By Jeremy Patman
We awoke that morning after a late night of dominos in the “Moon Palace” to a cold and foggy campsite. Getting out of the sack was hard that morning; I had stay up till the wee hours of the night, which can be tough on an old fellow. That is especially when he is only 11, and sleeping in a tent. I got up and dressed in pants, and a purple coat that my dad let me borrow from time to time. Then I slowly sauntered out to the camp fire, where the men were razzing each other about cooking, and if you complain then you will become the next cook. I did not want to cook, so I said the toast was great, even though one side was burned. E said, “Come on lets go get the jugs.” Into the boat we climbed. E, Monty, Daze, and myself. The boat was an aluminum 14 footer, which looked like it was made around WWII. E always compared the controls on the boat to that of the WWII B-29 bomber. He gave us a colorful narrative of taking off as we shoved out to sea. The jugs that we were off to check had been set the night before, by the same set of individuals in the boat. They were of simple construction, an empty quart Clorox bottle, with a railroad spike tide to the end of the line. There were two sets of hooks, on about 1 foot off the spike, and the other about 3 feet higher than the spike. The hooks were baited with perch that we caught in the pond. The last one that we found had drifted about 100 feet from where it had been placed, and as we pulled up to it sank below the water. A kin to the movie Jaws when the shark takes the 3 barrels under the ocean, and the captain said that he had never seen that before. None of us in the boat had seen it before. About 5 minutes later it surfaced 20 feet from the boat. E cranked the motor up and we sped over. It took both Monty and Daze pulling on the jug to get it up and the fish in the boat. We had an old #2 galvanize wash tube in the boat to put the fish in, this fish would not fit in there. With its tail hanging out of on side of the boat, and his head off the other side, we headed for shore. As we approached someone at camp said, “Did you catch anything?” Our response was, “Yeah, we caught one,” all grinning like the Cheshire Cat.

That is the story of the big fish, I recon that it weighted around 30 lbs. I believe that it occurred on Memorial Day in 1986, which was my first time on the trip. We were camped at the South end of Cone’s Lake, which we found out later is really named Baker’s Lake.

I did do some writing while I was on the excursion without a computer, I will type them up tomorrow, they are not time sensitive. Today, we went to the park and Cap hit the slide and looked at the birds. The picture below is of the sunset tonight.