When I was young, about ten or so,
Earvin "Tuck" Hull was one of my next door neighbors, as
the crow flies. But in Fourche Valley, next door could mean a mile
away, which was the case here. Earvin was a big time hunter and
fisherman; it seemed to be the main focus in his life. The Game
Warden, Bob Campbell, seemed to try to shadow Earvin a lot,
apparently pretty sure he would eventually catch Tuck in an illegal
situation. I have read in a book that he once did, when they were
both young, and he hauled him to the jail at Danville. Tuck's
brother, PC, went to Danville, and bailed him out, as that story
went. But both were old men now, during my youth. It was common
knowledge during my youth that Bob still chased Earvin, though I
don't know how successful he was. I never heard of Bob catching Tuck
in an illegal situation again.
Tuck was fun to be around. He was a very good friend of mine, and told me lots of tales of his exploits. He
often brought us a big batch of Buffalo, a rough fish with nice white
meat but very bony, taken on one of his night time gigging trips. We
ate them like candy. Since I was so young, my sisters just picked out
those fine, forked bones for me. When they got tired of that, they
just handed me small bites of wadded up cornbread, and I didn't know
the difference. One day when we were talking, He told me, "If
you will catch up a big jar of grasshoppers, and bring them over
tomorrow morning, we'll go catfishing." Well, catfishing with
Tuck was just about the most fun thing I could think of, so I got
right on it.We arrived at the river just after lunch.
There is a two or three mile
stretch of the river that is very shallow. Even when the river runs
normally, The water there appears to be only two feet deep or so. So,
it was not a place where people normally fished, to my knowledge.
That area was totally deserted, except during Deer season. And deer
hunting was not very productive in that valley in those days.They had
all been pretty well chased down and eaten up. A few would be ran out
of the mountains by deer dogs and killed each season, But when
someone legally killed one, it was big news. During my entire youth,
I saw only one deer in those bottoms, though I spent most all of my
spare time of my youth hunting, wandering and fishing there. Harold
did kill one, just before he left Wing. He hid his gun under a log
and carried it out. Harold went back to get his gun, and he couldn't
find it. Dad went back with him later, and they looked again. Dad
noticed a pile of leaves nearby, dug in it, and there it was. Harold
must have been pretty excited when he killed that deer. Charley Bill
Stout claimed his dogs were chasing it, and ran it over Harold, so it
was half his deer, he said. So, Harold carried him a big batch of the
meat.
But Tuck showed me that day that
there was more to that stretch of river, fishing wise, than met the
eye to one not familiar with it. At intervals, several deep holes
occurred. They were generally far apart, and the only practical way to
find them was to wade the river for miles. But Tuck knew them all.
And, he also knew that fishing there early or late in the day was not
the thing to do, as I had always thought, where catfish were
concerned. Early and late, the catfish ranged out in that shallow
water, even in dry times, feeding. In the heat of the summer day,
they came back to those few deep holes. And, since the river was low,
food more scarce, they were still very hungry. Drop a big juicy
grasshopper into the middle of one of those holes, and more often
than not, a big cat was waiting.
Earvin was using a fly rod. I used a
long cane pole. We caught all the catfish we could easily carry out
that day, some longer than my arm, something that I was just not used
to in my fishing experience. I normally caught sunfish, perch,
goggleyes, and mud cats. I memorized the hole locations, and after
that I fished them regularly, though I had to walk many miles to do
it.
During years when grasshoppers
were not readily available, my buddy and I discovered that if we rode
to Danville with Dad when he went to buy cattle feed, or whatever, we
could quietly sneak in the back door of the chicken processing plant,
and we could usually pick up a gallon or two of the unusable chicken
livers off the end of the conveyer belt before someone discovered us
and ran us out. That worked even better. Those bad livers were
destined for the garbage, anyway, so we never felt guilty about that.
Fifty Years Later -
The river bottom in that shallow stretch is just covered with big, slick rocks. So, I never get to fish
many of those holes now. Getting there and back is too shallow for a
boat, when the fishing there is good, in dry times. One has to get out and pull it most of the time. My knees
just won't hold up to it. But one good hole is easy to get to, and I
fish it regularly when the river runs low. Other people laugh at me
when I head out catfishing around lunch time. But they just don't
know, and where that hole is concerned, I just let them wallow in
their ignorance. Lord knows, I spend more than my share of the time
wallowing in that.
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