Check out this childhood story that I call "Bait Boys".
Bait Boys
When we moved to Geronimo, it didn't take us long to discover that we had easy access to the nearby Geronimo creek where we could explore and fish to our heart's content. So, every chance we got, we would grab the cane poles and head down to the creek. We would scavenge fields and creek bottom for baits such as caterpillars, worms, grasshoppers, crickets, frogs and some other purely experimental baits which must remain unnamed. We would catch mostly small bass and perch, but every once in awhile one of us would catch a keeper. A keeper gave you bragging rights until the next keeper was caught which might be days or weeks. The creek was lots of fun but we knew that for serious fishing you needed to be fishing the Guadalupe river or one of the nearby lakes. It seemed to me that the best chance to catch a really big fish, was to go catfishing in the Guadalupe river. Problem with that is that dad couldn't ever take the time from work to take us catfishing because it was very time consuming. So fishing the Guadalupe remained just a dream which was rekindled each and every time I heard about another monster "Yellowcat" (Flathead Catfish) being caught.
To my brother,Timmie, and I our Little League baseball coach, Mr Etzel, had to be the best catfisherman in Seguin. Not only did we hear folks say that he was the best but evidently the proof had been pictured in the local Seguin Gazette on several occasions when he had caught near record-breaking size catfish. I have to say that for the first few baseball practices, I was scared of Coach Etzel. He had this rough terribly serious kind of manner, never smiled and he yelled a lot. But I admit that from day one I was fascinated with him. He was missing a hand and he acted like he didn't know it. He just went right on doing everything coaches need to do. Things like hitting infield drill where he would throw the ball up and swing the bat with the same hand. He also never needed a glove as he would catch and throw with his one bare hand. Coach Etzel never told us about how he lost his hand but dad told us that he lost it in an oil field accident.
The spring of 1961 found Timmie and I playing baseball for a second year under Coach Etzel. One memorable afternoon after practice, Coach pulled us aside and asked if we would like to go catfishing with him on the coming weekend. How could a kid say "no" to that offer? Why had he bestowed such an honor on us? Did he pick us because of our scrappy play on the baseball diamond or did he think that we were the only ones foolish enough not to question whatever he wanted us to do?
Saturday morning finally came and we were raring to go when coach arrived to pick us up. Dad wasn't completely sold on the idea of being without his workers for the weekend, but reluctantly agreed after coach promised he would bring us back with lots of catfish for the freezer. So, Tim and I jumped into the back of coach's pickup and off we went. There were visions of huge yellowcats dancing in our heads and I could already read the caption under the photo of us and the monster yellowcat that would immortalize us in the newspaper.
After a short ride, we were a little surprised when it became apparent that we were not headed toward the river. Coach turned onto a dirt road that ran along a wet weather creek that had intermittent pools of muddy water. The creek bottom was covered with hoof prints pitted deeply in the soft mud and littered with old tires, bottles, boards, tree limbs and cow bones. We stopped next to one of the larger waterholes and Coach yelled for us to grab the seine and unroll it. Right away I noticed that there was a large snake sunning itself on a bare tree branch that was protruding out of the water near the middle of the waterhole. Coach noticed that we had seen the snake and tried to calm us by saying "Don't worry about that snake. He is more scared of you than you are of him." Still weary, we kept our eyes glued to the snake and made no move to get in the water. So coach just started overwhelming us with orders, "Hurry up!","Go into the water over there on the other side and come out right here in front of me.","Make sure you stay away from that tree branch or you will tear the seine." Like he really had to tell us to stay away from the snake. As Timmie and I eased into the murky water to start seining, the snake dropped off the limb and disappeared. We were hesitating so coach reassured us with..."Don't worry boys, snakes can't bite underwater!" As if the snake wasn't enough to worry about, we also had to deal with mud that was sucking our tennies right off our feet. Also, there was the constant reminders of who was in charge - "Don't get to close together!", "Keep the poles pointed at an angle!", and "Keep the poles on the bottom!". Despite the obstacles, we kept moving methodically toward the bank where coach was standing, figuring the whole time that nothing except snakes could live in this muck. As we eased the seine up unto the bank, it became apparent that we had made a haul. We had hundreds of crawfish which we loaded into a big wooden box. We made another drag across this mud hole, followed by drags across the other near by mud holes. When we had the crawfish box about half full, coach yelled "That's enough boys! Load up and let's go fishing!" Now, those were the words we wanted to hear.
Soon we were on the Guadalupe river and headed upstream in a small flat bottom boat. We seined sloughs and gravel bars along the way and picked up a few perch, shad , carp and minnows. When coach would declare a spot to be a yellowcat hole, we would string out a trot line with heavy line and really big hooks. After the line was placed in just the right way, each hook was baited with one of the larger bait fish in a way that the fish would stay alive. Each bait was dropped over the side of the boat with words of encouragement like "Go get 'em, baby!". Most of the trot lines that we put in the water were not intended for catching big yellowcats. Instead, they were baited with crawfish or minnows on smaller hooks. This is how we would catch the eating size fish - two to five pounds. After all the lines were in the river and baited, we would go back to where we started and wait for dark. After dark, we would start running the lines which meant we would take off the catfish and rebait the hooks where the bait was missing. After we finished running the lines, we would seine the gravel bars for more bait and then go back and run the lines again and again for the rest of the night. Come sun up, we were exhausted but excited about all the catfish we had caught. On this trip, we didn't catch the big yellowcat that would immortalize us, but we learned a lot about trot lining and Dad got a #2 wash tub full of eating size catfish.
Timmie and I must have impressed Coach because he asked Dad to borrow us for several more weekends that summer. Sadly, we never were lucky enough to catch that really big catfish that would have got us in the newspaper.
You have the best stories from childhood!
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