"Back in the Day"

A great memory by Surfrat AKA John

Long, long ago in a land far, far away (all the way to the mouth of the San Bernard!) my dad and uncle decided to take me on a fishing trip before I went overseas with the Marines.

My uncle had one of those old Chris Crafts with the livewells under the middle bench and a 33hp Johnson.  We launched right on the ICW there at the river and went west down toward Cow Trap. We had two whole quarts of shrimp in the livewell which had cost us an outrageous $2.50/qt and I was having to listen to the old guys talk about how fishing was rapidly becoming a rich man's sport.

This was August so we didn't have really high hopes of catching a lot of trout and we all figured we had way too much bait, but those two old geezers only fished daylight till dark with no breaks so we carried more than we figured we'd need.

We fished hard during the cooler hours in those spots south of the ICW and couldn't buy a bite. Around two o'clock and what had to be 105 degrees, we pulled into the mouth of Cow Trap and anchored. For the next three hours there wasn't a moment that at least one of us didn't have a fish on. At one point all three of us had fish on that went over seven pounds!

Back then we used stringers instead of truck sized coolers. Within an hour all our stringers were full and we started putting fish in the one livewell that was now empty of shrimp. In the end, we were scrounging around in the floor of the boat for shrimp heads or whatever bits we could find. I joked with my uncle, who always insisted a trout would not touch a dead shrimp.

When we finally got back to the ramp we had over 300 pounds of specks and we had left with the fish still biting. My uncle had an old tarp in his truck which we laid out in the bed of the truck, filled with fish, and then iced it down and wrapped it up. They had a big fish fry fund raiser for the VFW with our catch.

This, of course, would be an embarrassment nowadays but back then there were lots of fish and not very many fishermen. If nothing went to waste we didn't feel bad about it.

I've been a mostly catch-and-release fisherman since way before it became the popular thing to do, but I sure would love to get into the trout like that at least once more in my life and get the pleasure of watching them all swim away.

No other fishing trip in my life has even come close.