Seed Planting

 

So far everything has been about three weeks early this year, season-wise. Spring came at the end of February this year, instead of at the end of March. We've been gathering tomatoes out here on Baker's Branch for two weeks already, instead of how we usually do about the Fourth of July as far back as I can remember. 

I have friends that claim to have already gathered okra. If true, they have not offered up any in way of gifts, or proof, but I will take them at their word. Okra in August is customary for us, but this is not an ordinary year. 

And so it goes. About the time you think you are old enough to be able to say that you have seen it all .... well, then you see something else. Catfishing has been that way this year. 

June is the month for channel cats to spawn; mid to late June. This year they started in late May, and the flatheads, that usually hit their spawning peak in the first week of July, have probably already peaked, or come close to it. There are still some channel cats in the rocks, and my grandson, Lane Webster, and I found a few out here on Baker's Branch the other day. 

The daylight hours this year in this country, are exactly what they should be at this time of year: hot, clear, and one hundred degrees. Oklahoma in the summertime, as far back as I can remember: I could say the word, "summer," but if I said, "iced tea", instead, would you understand the difference? 

When it gets this hot, I like to break out the float tubes, "belly boats" some people call them, and submerge myself to the waist and let a summer wind push me down a rocky shoreline with a stout rod and reel (sometimes the cats that take your bait are big ones) and a bag of frozen market shrimp. Lane, I think, just likes to get in the water, and sometimes I am still just kid enough to like the experience for the same reason, but nobody in this family ever looks down their noses at catfish fillets fried brown with hash browns and green onions on the side. 

Our portion of Baker's Branch has a nice section of rocky shoreline full of rocky cubby holes and tiny underwater caves that catfish love to take over as nesting sites during their early summer spawning season. Drift something smelly under a bobber by those places often enough, and as Lenville Woodruff used to tell me down yonder in Little Dixie, "You're apt to git your arm broke," and it is so, or I wouldn't still be telling Lane the same thing today, as I do. 

A boy's imagination doesn't need much grease, but it doesn't hurt to oil it up a little now and then, either. Right before you wade out into water known to hold man-eating catfish is as good a time as any to do it. The season is always on for that; never too early, never too late. 

"Lane," I said the other day as we eased down into our tubes, the water surprisingly cool in spite of the hot air, "stay close. There are catfish in Lake Keystone as big as Volkswagens." 

"Huh-uhh," he said without real conviction, and without the trace of a smile. You could tell he was looking at a catfish as big as a small car, in his brain, whether he wanted to admit it or not. Good. 

"Oh, yes there are," I continued, "The Corps sent divers down to check for cracks in the dam back in the Flood of '86, and they came back up out of that water so fast they couldn't stop them before they threw their gear in their cars and got out of there. They yelled out their windows they'd never go back down there, that there were catfish as big as Volkswagens living at the bottom of the dam. Everybody knows that. ' Course, you weren't born yet." 

"Is a Volkswagen the same as a slugbug?" Lane wanted to know. 

I didn't answer. When you plant seeds, it's best not to overwater. 

Already the summer breeze had us twenty yards down the bank, the bobbers, one red and white, the other chartreuse and red, were bobbing and dancing happy little pirouettes in the rippled water. I almost didn't care if we caught a fish or not, but the perch were eating our market shrimp like starved piranhas. 

Catching fish of any kind is fun when you're nine years old, and I try not to forget that when I take Lane fishing. Besides, there are plenty of days when I am incapable of acting my age. 

I don't have to catch a five-pound bass every time I go. There are plenty of days when I can call up "nine years old" practically by snapping my fingers. It's one of the many blessings God gave our brains, and a pity I don't use the ability more often. I'm making a mental note of it right now: Plan more days as a nine-year-old.

"Papa, do you want to keep any of these perch?" Lane was hooking a brightly colored green and orange sunfish on almost every cast. 

"No. If we were trot lining, and needed bait, these perch would be just the right size. But, no. We won't. Maybe next week we'll put out a trotline, and we'll keep ' em for bait." 

"We've got the perch traps for that," Lane reminded me, which was true, but as a boy catching them on rod and reel was my only way short of a seine (Uncle Bill owned one), and I always counted collecting perch as bait with a rod and reel as one of the most fun things to do, and still do. 

"Maybe we'll do it both ways," I said, and had no more than gotten the words out of my mouth when Lane's bobber went under with and audible "pop!" I knew what that meant. 

You forget from year to year how strong a two-pound channel cat can be. You never forget how good they taste with those hash browns and green onions. This fish, small though it was, easily spun Lane's float tube as it swam its powerful catfish circles. 

"Papa! Papa!" 

"You got ' im, you got ' im. Hang on. He's not gettin' away. Calm down." 

Which he did, sorta'. A two-pound anything on the end of your line is a big deal when you're nine, and it should be. After a surprisingly strong tussle (channel cats of any size are so strong for their size) he had the fish alongside his tube, and ready for capture. 

"Remember," I reminded him, "not to let those fins hit your tube, or it may pop and down you'll go. Do you remember how to grab a catfish so it can't stick you?" 

He did. 

"Now put him on your stringer, and let's try to catch another. You got enough bait?" 

Lane looked in the tube's tackle pocket, and into his zip-loc bag of market shrimp. "Yep," he said. 

"While we're at it, how come every time I turn around my tube bumps into your tube?" I asked. 

"I don't know," he said. 

"Well, back off a little, big boy." 

I had him right where I wanted him. For a little while, anyway.

© 2012 Conrad M. Vollertsen