Factory Fishing


As kids the only thing besides work that my dad did with us with any regularity was going fishing. And during the summer we went fishing quite a bit. We are not of that deranged class of fisherman that will go out in the winter time and anytime we tried to join that class we met with disaster. We were, and mostly are, fair weather fishermen. For several years my dad became fixated with cat-fishing in the huge lake that is about five miles from our house. When he got interested in something it wasn't like he just liked to do it a lot, he had to over do it. We used to go out fishing all night long in our boat and set out trot lines. Trot lines are fixed bits of rope tied off to tree limbs over the lake that would have a really stout hook tied to them and be bated with something rotten. We would start out setting them all up and then make the circuit throughout the night cleaning off the fish and resetting the the lines. It was not fun, it was a job and my dad expected us to keep going and collecting an immense amount of fish all night long without complaining. If you complained he would get furious and say we could never come out with him again, which is a sacrifice we were not willing to make. We would take our fish home, sometimes as many as two to three hundred, at 1-4 pounds a piece, for what is known in southern as a 'messa fish.' We would get home and skin them and fillet them and then put the carcases in the garbage cans. Almost every time dogs and cats would tip over the garbage cans in the night, spread the rotten mess all over and my brother and I would have to clean the maggoty mess up. We would eat some of the fish that day usually breaded and deep fried and then we would take some to our neighbors and the rest would go into the freezer to sit for a few years until the guilt of wasting food was assuaged by the passage of time and then it was thrown out. To this day my mom is outraged at my brother and I when we throw fish back and is skeptical about our catch-and-release ethic, she feels that she raised us better then that. She still has an overwhelming desire to put them in her freezer to wait until they are ready to be thrown out in year or two.