At Weeks End
At a convenience store on Ninth Street in Humboldt, a couple of blocks north of the only stoplight in town, cozy booths inside and out are where a gaggle of guys gather to grunt, groan and gab.
The other day Charlie Tilman and I talked about fishing when we were young.
In the 1950s, fiberglass poles and spinning reels were available, but you werent much of a river fisherman unless you had a Calcutta pole, nicely dressed with ruby-colored guides.
Mine mounted a Pflueger reel, spooled with 20-pound-test nylon line. Later I embraced an Ambassador 5000, which was pretty much immune to tangles after casts. I bought it secondhand from Buck Quincy 50 years ago and still have it.
Baits of choice, depending on fish sought, were worms, crawdads and minnows.
Occasionally, at the right time of year, Dad and I would seine hellgrammites below the dam at Iola. Id hold the seine and hed turn over rocks upstream, causing the little rascals, with strong pinchers at the lead edge, to float into the net. You had to be there at the right time; hellgrammites are the larva stage of dobsonflies.
Our conversation centered on worms and crawdads.
I dug many a slough worm on Owl Creek west of town, just northeast of the old iron bridge, about two miles from where wife Becky grew up although I had no idea she existed at the time. The area was something of a dump I once fell and cut a gash in my hand on broken glass close enough to the creek it stayed damp most of the time.
If you dont know what a slough worm is, let me tell you. Usually theyre a bit bigger than a lead pencil and about as hard. When you weave one on a 1/0 hook, what we used when fishing the river bottom, they were there to stay, immune to nibblers. If you strung on slimy garden worms, pansy carp and drum would bedevil you.
When we chose crawdads, the go-to place was the west end of Monarchs big quarry. Water gathered there and dried up only in the throes of a drought. The crawdads, probably because of lime in the water, were a grayish color. I dont remember finding one that didnt have a soft shell, which made them all the better.
Tilman and his buddies seined crawdads from the upper end of Monarchs spray pond, where a network of pipes once shot water into the air to cool it. They came away with them by the bucketful.
We also seined minnows, but more often bought them at one or several shops. At a quarter a dozen, why not?
In the spring we caught crappie at the Humboldt dam, big black ones that filleted nicely, although we never came home with more than 15 or 20. Not like todays lakes where you can fill a gunny sack.
Catfish I preferred the smaller flatheads we caught south of town were next on our list.
When we caught a carp of any size, wed drop it by Roy Lees place, a little box of a house displaced by the high schools south parking lot.
