L. E. Craig explained the differences in appearance of native versus stocked fish. “You can tell the difference between the native rainbow trout and the stocked rainbow by the color. The native will be kind of a brownish color with a pretty rainbow down his side. The stocked ones will be just as black as tar when they put them in the creek. They’ll have a white streak instead of rainbow colors. The stocked brown trout will be kind of black-looking. Their spots won’t show up.”
Buck Carver emphatically stated that stocked fish were not fun to catch. “When they went to stocking with them blamed pond-raised fish, that took out all the fun of fishing for me! That took all the sport out of it! They bring them out of the fish hatchery and throw them in the river, and you stand there with your pole and catch ’em out just as fast as they throw ’em in it. Anybody can catch a fish when you step up to the bank and put the hook in the water. They know something’s coming for them to eat. They seen it around them ‘raring pools’ so many times, they don’t think about getting hooked. They’re not wild, and they’re not skittish.”
I LLUSTRATION 16 Andy Cope
Andy Cope told us it would take an expert fisherman to catch a native fish. “There are not many native fish anymore. They’re very few and far between. There are a few speckled trout deep in the heads of the streams, but so far back it’s hard to get to them. To go out camping a night or two in the woods and to catch some of those speckled trout, now, you can’t beat that, but as far as having a mess of fish to take home, that’s a rare thing. That probably won’t happen unless you’re a very special trout fisherman. Just anybody can’t catch them like that.
“I don’t think that the native fish taste any better than a fish grown in a pond. The Game and Fish Department used to feed the hatchery fish liver, and that’s what made the stocked fish in the lake mushylike. They don’t feed them that anymore. They feed them pellet feed now, made from grains and fish meal.”
Lawton Brooks stated, “A wild game fish is harder to catch and will put up a big fight when you get ahold of a good one. He’s wild, and you’ll have something on your hands. He does everything he can to break loose.
“There’s a few wild trout but not too many because they have so many roads to nearly all the streams. They’ve got to putting them old stock trout in streams, and the wild trout are just about gone. You’ve got to get a way back to get you a mess of wild trout.
“I don’t like to catch them stock fish too good. It’s kinda interesting but not like it is to get one of those wild fish. A stock fish is one that game wardens dump in the water. Stock will bite anything you throw in to ’em.”
Florence Brooks won’t eat a stocked fish. “Native fish got a pretty color, and their meat is firm. Sometimes you’ll catch these stock fish, and they’ll turn white-spotted before you get ’em home. Their meat’s real soft. They keep ’em in these big vats, and they feed ’em chicken feed before they turn them loose in the lakes. The native fish don’t do that. They just eat what they can catch, and they are stronger, firmer, meat and all. The minute those stock fish that I’ve caught turn white-spotted, I throw ’em away. I don’t like them white spots.”
According to Parker Robinson, “Fishing is my favorite sport. I really love to trout fish, but it’s hard work. I’d rather catch them than the others, but it’s rough. This day and time you have to get off the road a little and out away where people don’t fish so much. I go down the creek kind of in the roughs, and I catch some pretty nice trout. Natives [trout] are smart fish, ’specially if they’ve been fished after. Rainbow is the best eating trout, I guess.”
Talmadge York explained to us, “German brown trout were brought here and stocked. Same way with rainbow, brook, bream, and bass. They were brought in and stocked in the lakes. They used to stock some brown trout here, raise ’em over at the hatchery and stock ’em, but they didn’t do well in these small streams.
“Brown trout are sharp fish. They can see you a long way off. They’ll put up a fight, and they’ll get off your hook after you’ve caught ’em. Brown trout have big red spots on them, from their tails to their heads, about the size of dimes when they get to be about twenty-three inches long. Just as red and pretty as you’ve ever seen.”
L. E. Craig said, “And a lot of people call a brown trout a speckled trout. Brown trout are, but they’re not the original speckled trout. I can tell one just as quick as I see it. The brown will be kind of black-looking. Their spots won’t show up. A brown trout is pretty, and if you ever see a big brown, it’ll have red spots on it.”
I LLUSTRATION 17 Willie Underwood
Willie Underwood reminisced, “The first rainbow trout in this section here was shipped here in a barrel when I was six or seven years old. Now there are rainbow in nearly all the streams.”
KINDS OF TROUT
“Mountain trout spawn in February and rainbow generally in the spring [February to April]. You ain’t supposed to be fishing then,” Parker Robinson said. “You take these mountain trout here. Now they’ll have a winter coat on them. They don’t have scales on them. It’s right along now, the beginning of February, when they begin to lay eggs, and they’re getting a thick coat on them. If you catch two when they’re like that, and let them be against one another and they dry a bit, it’s just like glue. You can hardly pull ’em apart, and you can hardly get that coat off of there when you’re trying to clean them. I never would eat ’em when they had that coat on them, that spawning coat that mountain trout have.”
Talmadge York told us, “We used to fish in these little ol’ trout streams for specks. Original specks [native speckled trout] won’t get but about six inches long. That’s all. They don’t have no scales on them at all. They’re just as slick as a catfish.”
Willie Underwood shared with us his feelings about why there aren’t many speckled trout left in Rabun County. “The speckled trout is a small species. They don’t have scales but do have little specks on them. There are only a few in the streams because they have to have more oxygen than anything else. It’s got to be pure, clear water. The speckled trout are a thing of the past. There has been so much pollution in this clear water, and the lakes have been fished so heavy, the speckled trout are just nonexistent now. Speckled trout cannot compete with the fish that eat one another.”
L. E. Craig agreed with Willie Underwood. “I don’t know where a creek in this country is that’s got any speckled trout. They can’t stand for one bit of mud, silt, or anything [to be in the water]. I’d like to see just one more speckled trout. They are the best eating fish. A lot of people call brown trout a speckled trout, but they’re not.”
Andy Cope, who owned a trout fishing resort, told us, “Brown trout is a stream trout. It’s not a good trout to grow in lakes and ponds. They bite slower than the other trout, and that’s why there are some large brown trout caught in our streams. The main Betty’s Creek stream is stocked with brown trout by the Game and Fish Department.”
Jake Waldroop explained, “The brown trout doesn’t have any scales, and he’s brown all over. I’ve fished for the brown trout. They grow big. I caught one out there in the creek by my house that weighs three and a half pounds. Got him in the freezer right now.”
FISHING EQUIPMENT
The fishing equipment of today is fancy but fairly easy to use. Yet it wasn’t always easy to get fishing equipment. Some people made their own fishing poles out of cane or bamboo, their lines out of horsehair or string, and their sinkers from a piece of lead beaten out thin and folded around their line. People back then had it hard just to go fishing.
Willie Underwood explained the basic equipment. “Our fishing poles would be made out of creek canes, alder bushes, sourwood, or whatever we had.
“Fly rods have been around for years, but they wasn’t used in this area until after the Depression. Fly rods was for people that had money. People didn’t have them much around here because they couldn’t afford them. I was forty years old when I got my first fly rod, and I bought i
t myself.”
Melvin Taylor told us, “My daddy used a cane pole, and that’s what I started fishing with. The people that had a lot of money had a reel and rod. The rest had cane poles, which you can find on creek banks.
ILLUSTRATION 18 “My daddy used a cane pole, and that’s what I started fishing with.”—Melvin Taylor
“Daddy caught bass that weighed eight and a half pounds with a cane pole. That’s the biggest fish I could remember. It came out of Burton Lake. Boy! They put it in a tub at that store on display. That one was a whopper on a cane pole! That’s the biggest I’ve ever heard of.”
Andy Cope said, “We would make our fishing poles out of birch saplings. We’d cut a birch sapling and peel the bark off it, then hang it up by the fire and let it dry. When it was dry, we would use it for a fishing pole. Sometimes folks who lived in an area where there was a river would get river cane poles. Where I grew up, there wasn’t any river cane.”
“Years ago, I used to fish with a cane pole—only thing we had to fish with,” L. E. Craig remembered. “There wasn’t much bamboo in this country, but you could buy ’em at almost any store for a dime—big, long-tipped ones. Boy! You could catch bass on that thing that weighed two or three pounds. You talk about sport! It was! Have your line just about as long as your pole.
“I used to go down to Seed Lake in a boat and catch eighteen or twenty bass in a couple of hours. Bream could make your line whistle if they got on your pole. A few people had level winding reels to cast for bass.”
Jake Waldroop said, “We would make our own fishing poles. Mostly, we would get out there and hunt us a little straight hickory. Hemlock, black gum, and hickory was hard to get. I would always prefer a cane if I could get it. Cane is almost like bamboo.
“I have made lots of cane poles. We would go to the Little Tennessee River and cut sometimes ten or fifteen of them, take them home, and hang them up by a string in the barn. We would cut them off the length we wanted them and tie a great big rock, three or four pounds, to them and let them hang there. Keep ’em from crooking up. Keeps ’em straight as a gun barrel and makes good fishing poles. If you didn’t hang ’em up and put a weight on them, they would be warped. The pole should be a little bit bigger than my thumb by the time it’s through hanging up. The tip will be as little as a knitting needle, but it will be strong. We could always get them from eight to ten feet long. A cane pole is hard to beat!”
Talmadge York reminisces, “Back when I was a boy, we made our line. We’d take a spool of thread and double it and beeswax ’em. And then we used to use what they called a silk line. You could buy lines made of silk before plastic came out.”
Willie Underwood told us, “We used to use sewing thread off a spool for fishing string. It would break easy, so you would have to double and twist it. Sometimes we’d twist it four times because the lines weren’t that long. We just had poles. We didn’t have any reels to put it on. We’d buy standard fishing hooks at the store, but we didn’t have fishing floats like we do now.”
I LLUSTRATION 19 Minyard Conner
Minyard Conner said, “I can remember when I used to fish with horsehair for a line. All you would have to do to it was twist some horsehairs together. You had to have a good smooth place to make ’em. Put them horsehairs on your leg and rub them. That’ll twist ’em together, and then when you want to set another one in there, just stick it in and keep a-rolling. They just roll on out there—make it as long as you want—and not have a knot in it. It’ll hold too, about three or four horsehairs twisted together. Some of them would put four or five horsehairs together to catch a big fish. A three-horsehair line will catch a twelve-inch rainbow. I’d say it’s six-pound test leader.
“Put a sinker on your horsehair line to fish underwater. A horsehair won’t tangle up like your other lines. If you throw it over a limb, it might wrap around it three or four times, but you give it a little pull, and it’ll unravel by itself, and it’s straight. You take a cotton string and throw it around a limb, and it ties right there.”
Jake Waldroop recalled, “Sometimes we would buy hooks and tie them to the line, and sometimes we’d get them already made with the leader tied to them. Sometimes it’s faster getting the hook out of the fish’s mouth, if you can fish with bait with a sinker. ’Cause if they’re bitin’ good, when he grabs the bait, he’ll just swallow hook and bait plumb down, and I have had to tear a fish’s whole mouth open to get the hook out.”
Leonard Jones told us about an alternative to using store-bought hooks. “I know one feller that said he wasn’t never able to buy him no hooks. He’d fish with a straight pin. He’d bend it, you know. It didn’t have that barb, and when he hooked one, he had to throw it out on the bank. If he didn’t, it’d come off, and he’d lose it.”
Leonard also explained how to make homemade sinkers. “Before they got to making sinkers, you’d just get you a piece of lead, cut it in strips, beat it out right thin, and then roll it around the line. You can buy any size sinkers now, great big ones or small ones. You want a sinker on it if you’re fishing with bait, but if you’re fishing with a fly, you don’t.”
Andy Cope recalls, “We used store-bought hooks, but we made our own sinkers out of shot from a shotgun shell. It was folded and put in a big spoon and melted on a fire. That run the lead together. Then we’d hammer the lead out flat and cut it into little pieces and roll it around fishing line for sinkers.”
Talmadge York told us how to fix up a trotline. “To make a trotline, first tie the hooks to two-foot lengths of string. Then tie these to a long piece of binder twice about six or eight feet apart to keep the hooks from getting tangled up. Then go to a good root or something on the edge of the lake and tie one end of the line to that. Take your boat across the lake, maybe a hundred yards, somewhere where the lake’s not too wide, and have the other end of your line tied to a big rock. If you don’t tie the string to a big rock, it’ll stay right on top. Put it down to where it’ll be four or five foot under the water.
“I have set ’em and gone back the next morning, and every bait was still on. You work two or three hours to fix one up and set it and then go back and don’t get nothing—that’s hard work. I just quit fooling with it.”
Leonard Jones explained what to do with the fish you catch. “I use a stringer instead of a chain to put the fish I catch on. All you do is run the line up through the gills and out their mouths. The first one that you put on, you’ve got to run it back through, make a ring. The rest is just strung through the gills and out the mouth without having to make the ring. You carry your stringer along with you, but most of the time you’re setting down somewhere. So just throw your fish out in the water and take the end that has the sharp metal cover and stick it down in the ground. That’ll hold ’em.”
BAIT
“Trout will eat crawfish,” L. E. Craig told us. “If you ever clean a trout of any size, and you don’t find one in him, there’s something wrong. Nearly any kind of fish will bite a crawfish. If he sees one, he wants to get him. Boy! It hurts to get bit by a crawfish.”
Minyard Conner informed us that “minnows are good bait, but they don’t live long.” Talmadge York added, “I used to fish in the lake with minnows, and I fished for crappie with them. I reckon minnows are the only thing crappies will bite.”
Lots of fishermen think red worms are the best bait. Jake Waldroop told us, “Red worms are good bait. Sometimes I have caught six fish with one red worm. I’ve tried them all, and red worms are the best.” Buck Carver believes that “trout will all bite red worms in the wintertime and the early spring, but not all year round. They’ll go for flies a lot of the year.” Melvin Taylor told us, “Bass bites red worms and night crawlers real well in the spring. They’re better than a lizard anytime.” And Lawton Brooks said, “Red worms are pretty good for wild trout. Just regular earthworms. Them little ol’ speckled trout—you can catch them with those worms. Just pitch a little ol’ worm over there where the water ain’t real deep. He’l
l come up and bite that worm, and you don’t know where he come from.”
Willie Underwood recalled, “We’d catch those ol’ black crickets that you see in the fields, but that was hard to do. They’re good for trout.”
ILLUSTRATION 20 Carl Dills
Carl Dills told us about flies used by fishermen. “These old mountain people calls ’em stick bait, but the regular name for them is caddis fly. They live among sticks and rocks in the edge of the creek, and you just pull them out.”
Lots of fishermen preferred night crawlers. Blanche Harkins told us how her sons caught them. “My sons uses night crawlers and red worms. Night crawlers come out at night, and fishermen catch ’em. They’re just like red worms but a whole lot larger. The later at night they wait to catch them, the more they come out. If you wait till real late, they’ll be out on top of the ground, and you can just pick them up. You use a flashlight, and if you don’t dim your light, they jump back in their holes.”
Parker Robinson explained how to create a “bed” for night crawlers. “You can make a place in your yard to raise night crawlers by putting your food peels in a pile. That dirt’s gonna be rich where you have all that stuff, and your worms will come to that.”
Willie Underwood told us to “burn a hornets’ nest or yellow jackets’ nest and get the young larvae. They make awful good bait, but they’re tender enough that if you don’t catch your fish when he first hits that bait, you’ll have to bait your hook again.”
Meats and Small Game: The Foxfire Americana Library (4) Page 4
