BIGGEST FISH I EVER CAUGHT

We all packed our bags and went camping for the weekend. It was an icy wintery time of year during the month of January in 1989. I had just turned 18 in the recent month of December. It was me, my dad, my brother Ron, and our friends Nate, Johnny, and Carl. Carl's dad, Dave, went with us. My dad's brother, Uncle Lee, had a pontoon boat that we always used whenever we went camping. We gathered up everything we needed and headed of to the docks where the pontoon was setting awaiting our arrival. We had 2 coolers. One was full of drinks and the other was full of sandwich foods like boloney,ham,cheese,mustard,mayonnaise and other foods that were easy to make. Also, there were plenty of junk food like potato chips, a couple of boxes of snack cakes, and cheese dips.   We had to stop on the way to get a few last minute items. We were all particularly fond of night fishing using lanterns so we had to get some Coleman fuel and also some kerosene because at that time, we used a little kerosene heater to supplement our heating supply. Dad also had to stop at the grocery store again for some liver because he liked to hook those big catfish using live as bait.

ACQUISITION OF THE PONTOON
           We made it to the docks and untied the boat at about 5 in the evening. Uncle Lee's boat didn't have much of what you may call high technology. Actually, he had won it playing a game of poker from a guy who swore up and down it was a new pontoon boat because my uncle had just won 10,000 dollars from the lotto. He raised the bet to two thousand dollars. The man didn't have the money to call it but he offered to put up his brand new pontoon boat and that was to good for my uncle to pass on so he allowed him to put up his boat for collateral. They played their hand and my uncle won with a royal straight flush over his full house with aces high. He handed the title to the pontoon over to my uncle. I remember the next day I went with him to collect his brand new pontoon boat.  To our surprise, the brand new pontoon boat turned out to be a fixer-upper at best. It had holes in the hull and the wiring was shot. The worst thing about it was it had a big empty space where the motor was supposed to be. However, it did have a trolling motor laying in the cab but the propeller was broken off from it. To make a long story short, Uncle Lee spent the remainder of his lotto winnings trying to get the pontoon in working condition. Unfortunately for me, it required a lot of do it yourself work for me and my friends and cousins. Uncle Lee paid to have a used Johnson outboard installed and had the vocational school fix that and the wiring charging him for the parts only. Me my dad, and my friends worked on the hull for a month using rough cut lumber and do it yourself methods we had learned from books to fix it up to the point of looking like a new pontoon boat. After it was all fixed up and ready to go, Uncle Lee had several offers for it that far exceeded what he had in it. Finally somebody made an offer he couldn't refuse. We all agreed that he should sell it for that offer but that we wanted to take it out for this weekend. He said ok and that he would give us a part of the money for helping him fix it up.

FIRST FISH OF THE TRIP
          Off toward the sunset we sped to find the cove that looked most favorable. I had 2 poles that I would be tending to. I started off with some basic night crawlers hooked in and floaters about 6 feet from the hooks. Dad was on the other side of the boat with 2 poles of his own. One had 2 sinkers and a three pronged treble hook covered with livers. Dad had some spray on stuff that stunk to high heaven. It was his own concoction that he had come up with from years of fishing and trying different methods. He would tell nobody the recipe. Why, I don't really know. Maybe he was embarrassed  to tell what he had to do to come up with that fowl substance or he didn't want the secret to get out. He had been trying to sell it to bait shops and anglers all over America. He had a top water plug on the other pole and was casting and reeling in at will trying to hook something before we ran out of daylight.  Dave had been driving the boat. He went and threw the anchors in. By this time, he was reading one of his favorite fishing magazines.
         My brother, Ron, had just one pole and he was casting it out with a spinner bait. After a few cast, he decided to help the rest of the boys get their poles baited and cast. Nate, Johnny, and Carl each had 2 poles to tend to. Ron helped them get night crawlers hooked and cast. The sun was dropping fast. Nate started to get the lanterns filled with Coleman fuel. I still hadn't even got a nibble on either one of my poles yet. Johnny caught the first fish on this trip when he reeled in a crappie weighing 1.6 pounds not even ten minutes after he made his first cast. Ron caught another crappie weighing almost a pound. Carl grabbed a five gallon bucket and filled up the fish well so that Ron and Johnny could put their fish in it and cast their lines again.
           Darkness was coming fast so I decided to reel in my lines and get those floaters off. I got the first one reeled in and the night crawler had been sucked right off the hook with fragments of it still there. I took the floater off, put a couple of sinkers on it, baited it again with a night crawler, and this time I let it sink into the water right beside the hull of the pontoon. I rigged it with the old aluminum can trick because it was almost dark. If I got a bite, it would knock the can over which would alert me by the sound. While I was reeling the other line in, a three pound large mouth bass slammed down on my hook and broke out of the water flopping like crazy. The fight was on! Fearing that the line might break, I reached to the back of my reel and loosened the drag.  I thought it would have been a lot bigger than that from the way it felt. A large mouth usually don't fight as much as a small mouth. I let him run till he slowed down and then reeled him in a bit. My pole was doubling so I let him run some more. When he slowed down again, I reeled him in some more. Finally, after 20 minutes of fighting, he gave up and I slowly reeled him in and Dave grabbed him up with the net. He was a beauty weighing 3.2 pounds.

EATING FRESH FISH FILLETS
       We were off to a great start to our weekend. So far, we had a large mouth bass and 2 crappie of pretty good size. By this time, it was dark and we had the lanterns tied along the side of the pontoon's hull about 6 inches above the surface of the water. We all had our poles rigged with the aluminum can trick and the water was still. We decided to go ahead and eat the fish we had so far. We had stocked the pontoon with corn meal, flower, some eggs, and cooking grease along with other cooking supplies. During the restoration of the boat, we had to add a full propane tank to the cooking stove that was already there. Using five gallon buckets, Johnny and Nate cleaned the fish saving all the spare parts in one bucket. We had a few gallons of clean drinking water. They used some of that to make sure our fillets were clean enough to eat and then put into a big bowl for Dave and Carl to do the actual cooking. After they washed their hands thoroughly, Carl would apply the breading using eggs and corn meal. Dave would apply some cooking oil to the grill and then lay the fillets down on the grill covering it neatly with beautifully breaded fish fillets. He applied seasoning making the smell incredibly wonderful. During that time, me, Ron, and daddy were tending to the poles. Dad finally caught his first fish when he reeled in an 8 pound catfish that horned him while he was De-hooking it .
       Dad screamed out "ouch!" and the catfish fell on the floor. I ran and got it and put it on the stringer and gave it to Nate to be cleaned. Ron got the first aid kit and tended to dad's wound. It wasn't that bad but it was fairly deep in his forearm. Ron helped him to clean it with alcohol and peroxide and then some ointment followed by gauges and wrapped it with a bandage. It was no big deal. Sometimes things like that happened on a fishing trip. Daddy didn't care, he turned on the radio to his favorite country channel and grabbed a beer out of the cooler. Soon after that, we were all washing our hands and eating the best grilled fresh fish in the world. By daybreak the next morning, we had 9 more catfish ranging from 2 pounds to 10 pounds. By 7 am, all the poles were put up neatly and the lanterns were also put up. Everybody was sleeping. I woke up at 2 o'clock to the sound of the engine running. Nate and Carl were still sleeping while Ron and Daddy was eating sandwiches. Dave was driving and we were headed toward the famous rock fish cliffs. There were plenty of tales about people catching fish weighing 80 pounds or more.

THE END OF A GREAT TRIP
Dave drove for at least half an hour before we came upon cliffs that were over 100 feet tall. Just last year they had found a dead body from where people would jump from the cliffs to commit suicide. Also it was part of an initiation to get into a gang. Dave pulled us up beside of the rock wall which was rumored to be the deepest part of the lake. He shut the engine off and proceeded to drop the anchors but they never reached the bottom so he pulled them back up and we were adrift. We all just layed there at this time. We marveled at the beauty of the lake and enjoyed the peace and quiet and each others company.  Two hours passed as we just lounged around being lazy. Finally, daddy got up and started fooling around with the poles. All the liver was gone now but we were not in catfish territory anyways. The water was so deep. I had heard some of the most fascinating tales about this area. Tales about how there were fish the size of a pinto lurking in the dept of this area. Rock fish big enough to swallow a grown man whole.
        When dad got up, so did I. I followed his lead of changing the string on each pole to 100 pound test and getting the chairs ready with the seat belts required to keep a man from getting jerked into the water by monster rock fish. The bucket with the left over fish parts from last nights feast was ready for use as bait. We all used only one pole each for the job at hand. Finally, cast were being made. All the poles were baited and in the water. There were only four safety seats available and I was seated at the one on the stern. Once again, I loosened my drag in hopes of the big fight that was to come. Sure enough, I got a bite. Then I got another and then another. Then, something bit and didn't let go. It took my line and away it went. My drag was spinning and smoking and making a racket. It finally slowed down and that's when I gave it a hard yank. I made it do a 180 and reeled it hard. My pole was bent completely in half and I feared that it would break but I continued to reel it in. It wasn't much of a fight except for the over all weight of the lunker. When it got close to the boat, Ron and Nate came over to help me get it in. It was huge! We lifted it onto the spring weight and it weighed 76 and a half pounds! That's the biggest fish I ever caught.
          We fished in that area until dark. By that time, we were wore out. All of us caught one of those big huge rock fish ranging from 29 pounds to 76 pounds. Mine was the biggest one caught. We caught a lot more than that but threw most of them back keeping the biggest ones. Come dark time, we were tiing the pontoon back up to the dock. There was still lots of work to be done. Those huge fish still had to be cleaned . When we got back home, me and Ron commenced to cleaning all the catfish and rock fish but not before we took pictures of each one of us holding a fish up beside us for bragging rights. Everybody in our neighborhood who wanted some fresh fish got it because we had so much that we had to give some away. Us guys who went on the fishing trip each took home a butt-load of fish ready for the frying pan