Fishing with Harry

Yesterday I went fishing with Harry. He had mentioned several weeks ago that I could join him fishing in the Goose Creek reservoir. First of all I was admonished for being late. I apparently had misheard his invitation the previous evening and did not arrive at his house until 7:30 in the morning. It was a cool and misty morning with gray clouds seemingly bursting with rain. But Harry said that it wasn't going to rain and that we would catch plenty of fish.
We launch the boat with Harry in the boat and I park the truck and trailer before joining him in the boat which is tied to the floating dock. We push off. There seems to be a bit of clutter in the 15 foot john boat as I seat myself in front. I notice a lot of duct tape on a lot of things.

Harry tells me, " Now this boat leaks a little bit. Some of the rivets have popped loose so it takes on a little water."

I have visions of Cameron's Titanic, and wonder is the duct tape will hold. The Johnson outboard motor does not start immediately and I hear Harry saying something.

"What're you saying, Harry? Can't hear you!"

"Oh, I'm just talking to the motor. Why don't you turn on the trollin' motor and take us out while I get this thing started. It ran fine yesterday."

The motor started and we move across the water. I'm clinching my hat to hold it on. After about twenty minutes, Harry cuts the outboard and we drift forward toward the shallows and a bunch of scrubs in the water.

"Now turn on the trolling motor and take us in right between those two big clumps of grass. That's where the fish are."

I follow his instructions and grab the PVC pipe attached to the trolling motor handle to put the boat in the exact location as Harry directed. I was cautioned to be stealthy as not to alert our quarry. It was quiet except for the birds and gators grunting. The gators were obviously singing some song in primeval grunts. Boy, were they noisy! Harry showed me how to rig my tackle, just a fiberglass rod with split shot and a hook. We were using crickets for bait. The idea was to toss the baited hook over the bream beds and let it drift down for them to grab it. But we were using no ordinary crickets.

"I'm gonna show how to catch fish!", he tells me.Then he says, "These are no ordinary crickets."

"They look ordinary to me. But they're hard to catch," I say.

Harry tips his baseball cap back a little as he selects a cricket from the cricket bucket and says, "I think what I feed them makes a difference. Most people laugh at me when I tell 'em and don't believe me but it's the truth."

"And what do you feed them?" I ask, thinking it must be some recipe he had learned while growing up on a farm in South Carolina's upcountry.

"I feed 'em bananas," he said. I must've looked surprised because he elaborated. "Yep, I feed 'em bananas. When I have some left over, I slice up a big ole ripe banana and put it in with 'em. The next morning it's all gone and the crickets are hopping around all frisky. I b'lieve the fish bite 'em better too. I don't know if it's 'cause they're friskier or maybe it's the way it makes the cricket smell. Who knows, maybe fish like bananas."

We continue to fish and land quite a few big bream. Harry shows me how the male fish are marked differently than the females and how the females are bulging with eggs. As I hook another cricket under his breastplate and get ready to cast I notice that one of the crickets with a greater will to live is swimming around in the water in the bottom of the boat. Maybe the duct tape is not holding up too well.
"I believe that's one of them old convicts gettin' your cricket," Harry observes as I rebait my hook. I rebait it three times in about ten minutes.

"What?"

"I call 'em convicts 'cause they're always stealing your bait. Shellcracker is the proper name. They'll steal that bait right off your hook. You gotta set that hook quick!"

I never did get a shellcracker, a.k.a. convict, but we caught our limit of bream. Harry caught a catfish too. The old catfish squaked a lot as Harry removed the hook. Just before we left the fishing spot, we heard lot of splashing going on and saw an osprey catch a big mullet. The fish was so big that he bird could hardly stay airborne.

And so it was, fishing with Harry. He did show me how to catch fish and I learned a lot about Harry too.

Next time I'll be on time. Harry said I'd jinxed our fishing luck.