Fishing the Creek

In my youth I learned to fish in creeks. My great granny Tish was a master at finding the darkest holes on the creek. This usually meant the most overgrown too. Her old collie dog had been bitten by water moccasins so many times he was virtually immune to the venom. She wore dark colored clothing and a sun bonnet on these fishing expeditions, and if you had on anything light colored you couldn't go. She said the fish could see you and it would scare them off. She carried a short cane pole and a syrup bucket with earth worms in it. As I grew older, I too learned to look for those places where the water was deeper and provided cover for the fish. The short pole was easier to maneuver in those tight places where the tree limbs grew out over the water. Bream, Goggleye, White Perch, and Catfish were the main fish one might expect to catch. I decided to write a poem to try and capture the feel of fishing on the creek.


The Catch

I used to take a short cane pole
and head out for the creek
where tannin colored water ran
like iced tea over white soft sand.
It pooled in bends or near felled
trees in deep black holes where
fishes hid.
With weight and hook and wiggling worm
I’d drop my line and watch the
slender bobber move along in
current like a silent periscope
until it disappeared as some finned denizen
took flight with bait in mouth
before he felt the hook and my swift tug
to bring him upward from the depths.

The future is much like the present, only longer. - Dan Quisenberry

Summer Time Fun

Ever since I was a boy, I loved the water. Having grown up in south Mississippi, I was a frequent visitor to the creeks there. When I was small, and not every one had an indoor bathroom, we would sometimes take a bar of soap to the creek to bathe in the evening before it got dark. The photo above is a picture of Black Creek. In south Mississippi, the creeks are the color of iced tea due to the tannins formed when leaf material falls into the water. Many are spring fed with cold clear spring water and are very cool even in the summer time. As a teen we waded up Little Black Creek until we found a bend where the water formed a deep hole and the creek was wide. We dove until we were certain no logs were on the bottom or other impediments to diving, then we fashioned a diving board with two, 2 x 12's we packed in with us. It was secluded and unknown to the public. We took our girlfriends there to swim and have picnics (always in a group) to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. We cooled watermelons in citrus bags steaked out in the cool waters.

This painting depicts a grist mill on a creek somewhere other than Mississippi, I suspect, but it is representative of another favorite swimming hole near my grandparents home. It was called the mill tail. An old grist mill once stood on the location, but it was long gone and only the cement base remained to form a dam. The water flowed over the top and deepened the creek below. It was the perfect place to spend a hot summer afternoon. I enjoyed that first dive into the reddish waters that momentarily took my breath away and eventually made my lips turn blue.
These creeks probably didn't meet the minimum safety requirements for a government approved swimming hole, but somehow we survived the experience. I hope kids today are having the same experience in a creek somewhere.

James Dent. A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken.