NINE POUND BASS

Today, my father, Roy Sr. hooked a nine pound bass. It was another perfect weekend day with a light breeze. It would be a warm day heading towards really warm and then turning really hot towards the middle of the afternoon. It was not unlike a couple of hundred other days I spent with my father as he watched over two or three poles or fishing rods on various lakes, reservoirs, and rivers in Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee. We fished at times when the temperature had been much cooler, early springs and late falls...times when the wind blew and the rains came. But most times, more so in the last two and half decades, the times that I had gone with him, my father had picked a day like this one. I said I had accompanied him a couple of hundred times. It’s was probably many more times than that. In my childhood, I fished with my father and my two brothers, and on many occasions, my mother went with us. My middle brother always seemed to have the most patience while my younger brother seemed to have the least interest. I think I was the most enthusiastic, as long as the fish were biting. My younger brother logged many more fishing trips with my father than I did once we left the family nest, as he seems to find many less excuses than I did as to why he couldn't get away to meet my father for a fish outing.
It was not unusual for my father to catch bass. Supposedly, each trip started out with the intention to catch crappie, or as we called them when we lived in Mississippi, white perch. But being equal opportunity anglers, my family, my mother included, had been willing to boat most anything that will bite a minnow or the occasional jig. That includes crappie, catfish, bream (if they have a big enough mouth), sauger, and bass. I remember once in our bank fishing days my mother landed an odd combination of aquatic critters. My mother’s bank fishing style was to give the pole a good stiff pull once she had determined that a fish had attacked her bait. This stiff pull would jerk the fish out of the water and have the fish fly over her head and land behind her where we would disengage said fish. This one particular time, a fish struck her bait and as she was performing her unusual retrieval method, a fair sized snake grabbed hold of the aforementioned aquatican. Both bait stealer and bait stealer ambusher flew out of the water and over my mother’s head and landed behind her, much to our amazement, as well as the other twenty or so bank fishermen flanked on either side of us. Memory fails me but I am pretty sure that neither fish nor snake survived the encounter and neither made it in to cooler with the rest of the fish for the ride home.
My father had a progression of boats that began in my early youth starting out with a small boat with a small motor. Over the years the boats changed and each progression usually had been a step forward in the evolution of my father’s fishing history. The one regression would be the nasty incident we had with a so-called “ski boat” we bought from one of the in laws. Over a fifty year span he refined the kind of craft that most suited his approach to angling. That some people have described it as looking like a large spider sitting on the water with so many poles sticking out from various angles never deterred his approach to fishing. Each spot in the boat had a certain and specific purpose as to what goes where. Batteries went here. The trolling motor laid here while in transit and then was fixed to this spot before launching. Minnow buckets, be there one, two or three of them depending on the number of occupants for the outing went just so. The cooler and the extra seat had certain places where they reside. My father was not fastidious in this approach, but over the years he placed them in certain areas, and we, his loyal followers, knew those spots. There are certain other items that were stored about the boat and no fishing trip would be complete without them. The obvious accompaniments included fish baskets, life vests, minnow and big fish dip nets, tackle boxes and such. Other accessories that a fishing connoisseur with fifty or so years of fishing under his belt packed with him were as follows. He stored in various compartments and side pockets in the boat ropes, several wipe rags to remove the fish slim from boating twenty or so fish (per person). Also you woud find suntan lotion as most outings lasted well into the afternoon, another lotion to remove the smell of the previous lotion, flyswatters, unsalted peanuts, peanut butter crackers, and several other things that escape me at this moment.
When my brothers and I fished with my father during our youth, we could pretty much hold our own. By that I mean we could catch enough fish to keep our interest and if our father was catching fish, we were catching our share also. I can’t say that has held true as my fishing trips have become less frequent and my father continues to keep his skills honed to a fine edge as he fishes whenever the opportunity presents itself. My parent’s yearly journeys to Arizona during the late fall and winter months greatly cut down on his winter fishing. The upside of that was he did not have to break up the ice with a boat paddle to launch the boat. I recall him telling me about the time he only had to bust up ice for about 30 minutes before he go to the area that an even more enthusiastic angler had opened up a channel with a chainsaw. Daddy had said with only a little touch of disgust that it was probably a duck hunter. I took it that a real fishing purist would have stuck with a boat paddle to bust the ice. There have been some times that my son and myself have been able to get and away and accompany him. My father seldom missed a chance to hook a fish and pass it to my son to land it and place it into the fish basket. It has been rare that I had a pole passed to me as unless my father was under attack on three or more poles or rods and he truly needed help in landing some of the fish. This day had been one of my slower days, as it had been several months since I had carved out the time to go fishing with him. Daddy was catching fish right along as my fishing poles stayed quiet. He was not only catching fish right along, but he was boating some pretty nice specimens. I was enjoying the day, the weather, and the company and was only slightly envious of the fish he was hooking. His black pole to the right took a promising dip and my father responded by quickly lifting it from its holder and pulling it briskly upwards. “Stump bass” he pronounced. “Hold this while I back up” and he handed me the pole. After fifty plus years of hooking his share of stump bass as well as most every kind of freshwater fish that lives below the Mason Dixon Line, I’m positive he knew it wasn’t a stump bass (a stump bass being a fixed object on the lake, reservoir or river bottom). His specialty over the last few years has been catching large numbers of sizable catfish, so I think he was thinking he had probably hooked a pretty nice catfish. These cats usually top out at around five or six pounds. Anything above the weight will usually straighten the hook or break the line. Upon taking possession of the pole, I felt the strong pull of a rapidly moving “stump bass”. The pole dipped sharply and the tip reached towards the water as the fish on the other end exerted it’s energy and moved in several different directions at once. What happened over the next five or so minutes was a slow reeling in of line and very gentle handling as the fish fought and seemed sure to escape. My father had reeled in his other lines and unencumbered his sizable dip net to land this large “stump bass”. I have caught a few large cats and although they can fight and pull, their movements are usually slow and deliberate. Even after a five-minute fight as this fish moved nearer the surface, it would still dive and dart and the line would zing through the water. At last the fish broke the surface of the water as I gently reeled in the line, my father slipped the dip net under it and we were both surprised to see a large bass slip into the green strings of the net.
We later weighed the bass and it topped out at just over nine pounds. I took the trophy fish home with all the intentions of having the fish stuffed and mounted on a wall near my desk at work. I was put off by the price tag of nearly $200.00 to have this done and no doubt will regret down the road that I didn’t shell out the money. But in reflection, I perhaps have this trophy mounted in a better place. As I pass through the rooms that house my most cherished memories and display what accomplishments I have achieved, one of the things I am most proud of, there in the my “trophy room” is where this nine pound bass is most prominently displayed. This “trophy room” can be found within the chambers of my heart.
Roy Mabry Jr.
June 16, 2002