A fishing outing worth remembering
By By Otha Barham / outdoors editor
Feb. 21, 2003
I have a pleasant memory that surfaces several times a year and it occurred to me just today that it had been hanging around for 50 years. I can't stake my life on it, but if I set 1953 as the time of the event I can't be off more than a year.
There is not much else I recall about that year, if in fact it was 153, except that by the Lord's grace and charitable teachers I graduated high school. But I do remember a good bit about that white perch trip I made with my friend to Lake Washington in the Mississippi Delta.
More people referred to crappie as white perch back then than is true today but everyone then and now know that the fish is one of delicate and tasty flesh; delicious whether fried, broiled or baked. And in the days before Okatibbee Reservoir was built, there wasn't much big water around Meridian that held limitless crappie schools.
Anglers talked about the Delta oxbow lakes where one could pull out the big slabs to the point of exhaustion, and those who had been there had the prints from their Kodaks to prove it. These stories stirred the spirit of adventure in my friend Ivan Chisolm and me. Such stirrings in teenage boys usually led to actions occasionally harmless ones. Our late winter journey to Lake Washington was one of those harmless though impressionable endeavors on which I can report, among a sea of ones that I shall never put in print.
Simply put, we drove to the little town of Glen Allan, we camped, we caught lots of fish and we came home. For those who are not moved by nature or deep friendships or experiences that shape who we are, that is the story of our white perch trip. For the rest of us here is some more to that story.
Trip report
The happenings on that excursion are less clear after all this time than the sensory memories, but they include spending the night curled up in Chiz's 1947 Ford, boating limits of the big speckled fish and perfect fishing weather. A personal highlight was a huge crappie I caught on a deep running Arbogast Hawaiian Wiggler while sneaking in a few casts for bass.
Chiz recalls the cottonmouths that gathered at the dock to gorge on remnants from our fish-cleaning. His recollection that the snakes advanced too close for comfort is a clue as to why that is his most vivid memory of the trip.
Prominent in my mind are the sights and sounds and smells of that fisherman's paradise that are clear to me to this day. Funny how the thud of a wooden paddle against the waterlogged boards of an old wooden boat can remain in one's mind for half a century. The rented boat moved through the water at a snail's pace, easily becoming stationary once the sculling stopped because its soaked hull probably weighed 300 pounds. The old boat stayed quietly in place while we worked each crappie bed in the shallows.
Along the banks water moccasins watched us from their perches in the forks of low branches that were the same color as the snakes. I can close my eyes and see the brownish water lapping gently against countless cypress knees that jutted up from every space between the huge water-loving trees.
Focused angler
I can still see a lanky black man, looking too large for his tiny wooden boat only his feet hidden below the gunnel planks stretching out his arm to extend a long cane pole to a crappie bed. His work shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. His long arm and long pole seemed to stretch for 15 feet where he slipped a minnow into the water with nary a sound or splash. It was late February, too early for the smells of honeysuckle and bluegill beds. But the cool air was suffused with the aroma of plant life in warming water, decaying wood and the fishy smell of the old boat.
Prominent among my memories is the enduring calm demeanor of my friend, Chiz. He was always calm and collected, something I was not, and I have always admired him for that trait. Perhaps a good measure of admiration is one's wish that he or she could be like the person. I have long wished I could keep some of my feelings under wraps like Chiz does. I would gladly exchange some of my exuberance and overdramatizations for some of his reserve.
Memories sometimes seem to linger as welcome evidence not only of inspiring natural surroundings, or measurable success, but of subtle influences that motivate us to be better persons. You never know when you go on a fishing trip just what lies in store. If we keep going back for more, meaningful experiences like the Lake Washington crappie trip will come along to enrich our lives.
