The year was 1968 and
I had just turned 24. I was flipping through the paper one day when I
stopped on a picture of an old man with what looked to me like, at
the time, an unbelievable large string of catfish. The caption under
the picture was, "Dick Dyer Does It Again!" Seems Dick Dyer
was about the best cat fisherman around Fayetteville, Arkansas. I
wished I could do that, but it seemed out of my reach.
When I was a kid,
growing up in Wing, Arkansas I caught lots of catfish, and we needed
them. They sure tasted good, after a diet of salt pork. But they
weren't real big. In the early days of Fayetteville, I had access to
larger rivers, and I thought more and more about cat fishing.
Well, as it happened,
shortly after seeing that newspaper article, my wife Barbara and I
moved over to Anderson Place. Would you care to guess who my
neighbor, right across the street was? You guessed it. Dick Dyer. I
befriended him, I cultivated him, I quizzed him. After a while,
Dick's MO began to emerge. I studied his techniques. He even let me
go fishing with him, once. Well, he began to see that I could be a
competitor somewhere down the line, and Dick dearly relished being
the best river catfish catcher around. Maintaining that status
consumed his whole life. He pretty well cut me off from any more
information.
But I knew enough. I
began to catch more and more fish, emulating his methods. Dick was OK
with that, he was catching more, and bigger fish. We went along
there, him doing a bit better, for several years. Then I slowly began
to catch as many fish as he did, and probably about the same in total
weight. He still had the largest fish, 16 pounds. Every time he saw
me, he told me about that 16 pound catfish.. He never let me forget
about that 16 pound catfish..
Barb and I were
coming into our last months at Fayetteville. One really deep hole I
fished a time or two that spring, with my limb lines probably tied to
limbs I know now were too solid, with very little give, just kept
breaking. The lines were 120 pound test or so, and I couldn't
understand it at the time.
Barbara and I were
walking along the river bank, one day in June, on a picnic. I saw two
old watermelon rinds lying on the bank, and they were just covered
with hundreds of June bugs. I had never heard of anyone using June
bugs to catch catfish, but I knew that in the late summer, they often
fed by just skimming along the surface, picking up floating bugs and
whatever they could find. I had seen them doing that at night. After
Barbara had walked on toward the car, I went back, pitched the rinds
in the river, and the June bugs all floated up. I just scooped them
all up, put them in a paper bag, and stuck them in the car. When we
got home, I wrapped them up real tight in a freezer bag, and stuck
them way back in the back of the freezer, out of sight. Barbara put
no stock in mixing fish bait and food in the freezer. Late in the
summer, I was watching TV one day, and I heard Barbara scream. I ran
to the kitchen. There she was, the bag in one hand, a handful of June
bugs in the other. Seems she had been going through freezer bags to
find something to cook, stuck her hand in, and pulled out the June
bugs. I caught it pretty good over that. As Barbara settled down
some, a little later, I said, “ I've just got time for one more
fishin' trip before we move, and no telling when I'll get to fish
again. I'll get every one of those June bugs outta' here then.”
She agreed. Catch Barbara when she's not screaming with a handful of
June bugs, and she's a great gal.
Next week rolled
around. I asked John Philpott if he wanted to go with me. Said he
guess so, nothing better to do. We went back to that hole, where the
White River and the West fork of the White River join, where my lines
had been broken last spring. This time, I had a new idea. We were
fishing with cane poles, very limber, and we stuck them way, way back
in that mud bank. I floated each hook right on top of the water, with
a June bug on it. We ran the lines at midnight, and had a couple of
ten pounders and a whole passel of smaller catfish. But, right where
the two rivers join, that pole was going absolutely crazy! Ever tried
to get a lively 25 pound catfish into a small landing net? We finally
did. The next morning, we had a couple more ten pounders and another
bunch of smaller catfish.. Then, we approached that last pole, right
where the two rivers join. The pole was completely pulled out of the
bank, but it was still laying there, mostly out of the water. Lying
in the water, either just too worn out for one more flip of the tail,
or having learned from his struggles that was as far as he could go,
was the brother to the last big one. He was also 25 pounds. Well,
when I got home, the first thing I did was take them over to Dick
Dyer. Dick came out, I held them up as well as I could. Didn't say a
thing, I didn't have to. He never said a word to me. Just turned
sorta sick looking, turned around, dropped his head, and walked back
into the house. We moved to Hannibal, Missouri a couple of days
later. I never saw Dick again.
About two weeks after
we got to Hannibal, a letter chock-full of pictures arrived. A 40
pound catfish, and a whole bunch in the 20 pound range. The letter
just verified the weights, And in the picture an old man was
smiling. Smiling right straight out at me. Thats all. Not another
word. The return name on the envelope was Dick Dyer.
I knew Dick didn't
have my address. But he managed to find it. And I knew he had found
my Glory Hole. All I could figure out was, he must have ragged John
Philpott into telling him. I was pretty put out by this whole thing
for awhile, then after I settled down some, I began to think about it
a little differently. I had used Dick's methods, developed through
his many years of experience. He used me to locate the Glory hole.
Fair's fair.
I've never been back
to that Glory Hole, but someday I will. Over the years, I think I've
figured it out. There's a dam on the White River, a quarter mile
upstream. Catfish naturally swim upstream. Until they're stopped by a
dam. The small fish stay there, in that shallow hole at the dam. The
big fish must have deep water, and they go back downriver, only as
far as they need to, the first very deep hole. Right where the two
rivers join. In the Glory Hole. And there they still lie. Year after
year, just getting bigger and bigger. Just waiting for me to come
back and challenge them again. But Dick Dyer passed away many years
ago, and when he died, he was still the King of the Catfish Catchers
in Fayetteville---and it just wouldn't be the same. Who else in the
world could care as much about the size of the catfish I might catch
there as Dick Dyer did? Nobody, thats who.
For all you
fishermen out there, I know you can find my Glory hole from what I've
told you here. But where will you be able to find a whole bag full of
June Bugs?
No comments:
Post a Comment