Bobbers!

 

       If I were ever asked to list the ten things I have enjoyed the most in my life as a fisherman, not too far down the line I would list, “watching a bobber”.  It was one of life’s greatest pleasures in my youth. You too have likely done that if you grew up in the country.  If so, you know what I mean.

       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.  

       Back then, summer ponds weren’t all filled with the scum and algae you see today.  The water there in the shade of a big oak tree was dark and deep, full of bluegill and bass and a few small catfish.

       And in the summer, Grandma and I often sat there in the shade watching a bobber sit stone-still on a smooth surface.  The fascination I felt was something I still feel, watching that bobber knowing that any moment it might dance a little, throwing out little ringlets on the water, then dive out of sight in a flash, the braided line cutting through the depths.  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 fish with the head and fins cut off, just scaled and gutted.

       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 15-to 18-inch bass or maybe even 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.

       Just out of college at the age of 22, I took a job as the Outdoor Editor for the Arkansas Democrat, the state’s largest newspaper in Little Rock.  Believe it or not, we got a little home out in the country about 30 miles north of the city, and I brought down from the Big Piney a15-foot wooden johnboat Dad had built with a sealed marine plywood bottom, which meant it didn’t have to be kept in the water to be ‘soaked up’ as the older ones did.

       On Dardanelle Lake, about 40 miles west of Little Rock there was a small arm on the north side of the lake known as Spadra Creek, about 200 yards wide at the most. The owner of a local dock told me the crappie were spawning, big ones.  So I loaded that old wooden johnboat and went there.  

       One of the local guides by the name of Yarbrough, told me where there was a hump coming up in the middle of that long tributary, and if I could find it and anchor just off of it I could catch crappie beneath a bobber and a yellow jig.  The hump was only about 15 feet across and about 8-feet under the water and everything around it was 15- or 20-feet deep.  I could find it by lining up three trees on opposite banks as Mr. Yarbrough had showed me.

       To make a long story short and happy, I took some jigs and a bobber, and caught crappie with that bobber setting over that hump, letting the jig settle about halfway up from the bottom.  I got to watching that bobber with such concentration and enjoyment, I scarcely noticed the fishing boats that would pass, staring at the wooden boat I had paddled out there to the hot spot in the middle of the creek.  Every now and then I would reel in a huge crappie and in short order I had a limit.

       A day or so later Mr. Yarbrough took me fishing for bass out at the mouth of Spadra, in a fiberglass bass boat, just becoming popular at that time.  He showed me that crappie could be caught without bobbers, but it wasn’t any more   rewarding than the fishing I had a few days before in Spadra Creek.

       The Democrat had one of the best writers I ever knew working at a desk across from mine.  His name was Bob Lancaster.  Bob laughed at
the idea of doing a story for the Democrat about fishing from a wooden johnboat with a bobber.  “Here you are an outdoor reporter for a newspaper with a million readers,” he said, and you’re out there paddling around in a wooden boat with no motor, fishing with a bobber!”

       We both laughed about that, and in a month or so, the newspaper acquired a Mon-Ark fiberglass fishing boat with a 35-horse motor for me to use.  But I told Bob that day that if there were indeed a million fishermen out there reading the newspaper the majority of them started out watching a bobber.  We all had a common beginning as fishermen.

These are my daughters with crappie they caught using bobbers. The first two are my middle fisherwoman, Christy Lynn. The redhead is my youngest fisherwoman, Leah Noel. And the last is my oldest, Lori Jean. I can't really call her a fisherwoman though. She is the Dr. in the family and doesn't have time to fish anymore.