One of the places that we would go Water Weenie-ing was
a local lake name Scofield reservoir. It is very high in the
mountain and extremely cold in the water. My dad and I would wake up
early and go fishing and then when it got warm and the fishing
dropped off we would head back and pick up the rest of the kids and
start knee boarding and try to get Weenie-lashed. One day when we
were picking up the family we saw a Vietnamese couple with a trap that
looked like an upside-down umbrella catching thousands of these
little lobster looking things. I went and looked at what they were
doing and found out that the little guys were called crawdads and
that the lake was overrun with them. The state was actually planning
on poisoning the whole lake in the coming year because the crawdads
were burrowing into the damn at the end of the lake and critically
weakening it. They also killed Rainbow Trout witch is a sin against
sportsmen everywhere. I told my dad and family to go on ahead because
this was much better then getting whiplash and then being ejected
into ice cold water. I went to the camper and got some chicken and a
net and set up shop. Most sportsmen can tell you that once you are
catching anything the people who are no good at it will crowd your spot as closely as is possible without starting a fight and try to get your seconds. That, of course, meant that I was going to pull up
close to the Vietnamese family and to thank them for their generosity
in sharing with me how to catch crawdads I would get so close as to
hinder their operation. I put my chicken on the rope down and it was
immediately swarmed by crawdads, I pulled it up slowly and netted off
three of them and then it occurred to me that I had no where to put
them. Excitement has trumped common sense and basic planning more
than once in my life but in this case it lead to some serious pain. I
had been taught how to safely pick up the crawdads by grasping their
backs but I had three and even though I had only taken me 30 seconds
to catch them they were precious to me and I was unwilling to let one
go. I picked one up in my left hand and then tried to pick up both of
the others with my right; this was not a wise plan. The one I had
tried to pinch between by middle and index finger was not held so
securely as to prevent him turning right around and pinching a small
and tender bit of my flesh in his claw. The pain was intense and I
took it stoically, wait a minute that's not right, what is the
opposite of stoically? Oh, yeah screaming and flailing like I was
about to die, that is closer to the truth. Enough flailing and
screaming and crying and the crawdad was thrown off. The Vietnamese
peanut gallery was laughing so hard they could barely keep from
falling into the lake themselves. The grandpa, who spoke no English,
called me over and was trying to pull it together when he picked up a
crawdad and let it pinch his hand and demonstrated that if you place
your hand back in the water the crawdad with almost instantly release
and swim away. Good to know, even if it was a touch late. Lesson
learned and a bucket acquired I went on to catch hundreds of the
little dudes and when my family got back they all joined in until our
five gallon bucket was almost full. We went back to camp and my dad
cooked them for us and my mom melted some butter for dipping. They
taste a little like spicy shrimp and they tasted extra good to me
because there was a little bit of pride and a little revenge in the
seasoning.
