The Bigger Ones Will Eat You

 

In Hemingway's Old Man and The Sea, his fisherman/protagonist uses a handline to bring in the marlin he hopes will secure his life's fortune. It was the way I fished the first several years of my fishing life, buying my "tackle" at a general store, and finding my bait in the backyard in the ground, under logs, and under rocks.

It was the easiest method of fishing, short of dynamite and electricity, because it worked. No rod, no reel, just a length of small diameter, green cord wrapped around a red square of wood, and a size eight or ten hook attached. The ones I bought at Bailey's Store in Charlestown, Maryland, cost twenty-five cents. At seven I couldn't afford them, but my mother and father could, and, for no apparent reason, kept me supplied. 

I sometimes went through one a week. I was hard on them, but they were good to me. Lordy, lordy: the fish, the fish. Mom cooked them all. 

You wonder did it serve any purpose. Who knows. Here I am 62 years later writing about fishing, for no apparent reason. 

Jack Test, my old friend from Guymon, Oklahoma, way out yonder in "No Man's Land," was eleven years old and growing up in an "old school" orphanage in Missouri, when one day a man dressed in a suit came to the orphanage and asked if anyone there wanted to go fishing, and the rest, as they say, is history. I think it was about 1952. 

There is no water in Guymon, not unless you count that in Sunset "Lake" out by the city golf course. To fuel his passion over the years, Jack has had to do some serious traveling. 

Keystone Lake is a six-hour drive for Jack, one way; Lake Texoma, eight hours, one way. He knows the bottoms, coves, and creek crannies of both, and numerous lakes in between, like you know your own driveway. Ditto, the use of modern sonar, and Biblical throw nets, for Jack is a "handliner" who knows the value of live bait for monster blue catfish. 

Jack fishes Keystone with "juglines". A jugline is a handline with a gallon (typical size) bleach bottle (or other) tied to one end, and a heavy weight and large bait hook, to the other end. The hooks of several different jugs are baited with netted, live shad (perch will work in a pinch, or cut shad as well) and then set out in water ranging in depth from zero to dozens of feet, depending on where the angler thinks he will find his prey. 

You saw the movie "Jaws," maybe, and remember the juglines employed in the film.

The catfish will hook themselves by pulling against the opposing pull and resistance of the floating jug. The resistance of the jug also serves to "play" or wear out the fish. That's the idea, anyway. A really big catfish can wear out the jug, or sometimes even straighten the hook, and pull free. Or, sometimes just swim off into Never-Never Land with jug, line, hook and all, and never be seen or heard of again.

Yes. It absolutely happens. There are catfish that big in Lake Keystone.

Jack caught one the other day up on the Cimarron arm of the lake. It didn't straighten his hook, or swim off with all the tackle, or swamp the boat and eat all the men in it, but it tried. It took a three man effort: Jack, his friends Larry and Stanley Stumpf (brothers from Guymon and Buffalo), to literally "manhandle" the fish into Jack's boat on what was a cold and windy day. 

With the boat tossing and heaving in the wind and waves, Jack managed the handline; Larry grabbed the fish's lower jaw with two hands when it finally came alongside, and Stanley held Larry's belt while he leaned far out over the boat's side to do it. Done, finally: the fish, and the men. An epic angling battle if there ever was one.

Weighed two days later at his upholstery shop on Fourth Street in Guymon, on the same spring scales his sons, Bryon and Ben weigh their deer in season, the monster blue weighed seventy-five pounds. I said, "two days later." 

Are there bigger ones out there? Of course. And they will eat you. Lots of people have gone swimming in Lake Keystone, and never been seen or heard of again.

How do you think a catfish gets big enough to weigh seventy-five pounds, by eating little-bitty shad?

© 2013 Conrad M. Vollertsen