The Challenge of the Catch

One of the most memorable fishing trips I had as a kid fishing with my Dad was a short afternoon trip. I’m guessing I was only about 6 or 7 years old. We put in at a ramp close to our house at Point Cloxon. It was a perfectly warm and calm afternoon. Back then, my dad had brush piles all over the lake that he had built during the winter drawdown. Lake Martin usually dropped about 10 or 11 feet every year back then. Dad waded out as far as his rubber boots allowed, giving the piles another foot or two of depth when the water came back up. These piles hosted bass most times of the year, as long as the water was high enough on them. But on this day we were catching crappie. 

I remember the rewarding feeling I had as I figured out just the right retrieve speed with my fiberglass rod and Zebco reel. When I pulled that tiny smoke-colored grub over the pile at just the right speed, it seemed like I caught a crappie every time. We always kept crappie when we caught them because they were so good to eat. My Mom knew just how to fry them up, and there was hardly anything I enjoyed eating more than some fresh fried crappie fillets.