If
I were ever asked to list the ten things I have enjoyed the most in my life in
the outdoors, not too far down the line I would list, “watching a bobber”. It was one of life’ greatest pleasures
in my youth. You too have likely done that if you grew up in the country. If you have been there and done that,
you know what I mean.
When
I was five or six, Grandma McNew and I watched bobbers on my Uncle Roy’s pond,
which he allowed no one else to fish except my cousins and me and Grandma and
Grandpa.
It
only took a jerk on the cane pole to know what you had. But no matter, it would be dinner the
following day; not filets in a skillet but whole fried bass or bluegill with
the fins left on, just scaled and gutted with the heads cut off.
Usually
that disappearing bobber meant only a hand-sized bluegill, but sometimes a bass
12 or 14 inches long would pull it under.
Once or twice in every few hours of fishing, it would be a catfish, and
if you weren’t careful you might break the end off the old cane pole by jerking
too hard. You landed a bigger fish by walking backwards and dragging it up the
bank.
As
I grew a little bit older, I had another reason for using a bobber. Dad and Grandpa Dablemont loved to set
trotlines on the Big Piney River for whopper-sized flathead catfish that would
weigh from 20 to 40 pounds. While
other species of catfish can be caught on stink-bait or small minnows or any
kind of dead bait, a flathead doesn’t get caught often on anything but large,
live bait. Green sunfish, which we
always called ‘black perch’ were pretty high on a flatheads menu.
Across
the fence behind our house was a neighbor’s pond, an old one, built to water an
old milk cow or two. It wasn’t
pretty, muddy most of the time.
But that pond was filled with black perch from 3 to 5 inches in length
and I could catch enough in 30 minutes to bait a trotline. By that time I had and old fiberglass
rod and a Shakespeare casting reel and a red and white bobber. I would sit there on that orange clay
bank sweltering in the heat, with a bucket and a can of worms. I’d fling the baited
hook out 6 or 8 feet from the bank and watch that bobber like a cat watches the
pendulum on a clock. It was almost
always dancing around, and when it did I would give it a jerk, so the little
sunfish wouldn’t swallow the hook.
I have pictures of big flathead catfish Dad and Grandpa and I would
bring home just because of my ability with a hook and bobber in the pond across
the fence.
It
was only 8 or 10 years later, the first summer I worked as the Outdoor Editor
for the Arkansas Democrat, that I met a fellow by the name of Yarbrough, who
was a guide on Dardanelle lake, about 40 miles west of Little Rock. There was a
small arm on the north side of that lake known as Spadra Creek, and Mr. Yarbrough
showed me where there was a hump coming up in the middle of that long deep
tributary, where I could catch crappie on minnows early in the summer.
To
make a long story short and happy, I took some minnows and a bobber, and caught
my limit there in just a few hours of the evening, on several occasions. I got to watching that bobber with such
concentration, I scarcely noticed the metal fishing boats that would pass,
staring at that old wooden boat I had brought from back home on the Piney, and
had paddled out there to watch a bobber and fill my stringer with crappie.
It
is a different time. Modern day
outdoor writers who thrive in suburbs do not write about bobbers; maybe they
never use them to catch panfish.
But
there is one writer who still leans back and watches a bobber every now and
then, just to bring back a taste of the good old days… and I am him!
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