The Best That Life Can Offer, At A Price We Can All Afford

Camp Catfish? Cheap? Well, go figure bait. Even the bait's free if you have time to catch it. Or do as I did and, using a shiny crankbait or two, negotiate a deal with the kids who hang around down by the river park in every little town upriver and down. "Deal," you say, climbing slowly from your pickup truck, dark glasses propped just so. "These crawlers (two dozen--hand them over) are free. Whatever you catch goes in here (hand over the 5-gallon buckets). You get these (flash the baits). I'm up at the coffee parlor drinking coffee and trying out a few blond jokes on Mary Lou. Be back in an hour." An hour later, collecting the bait--small carp and sheepshead, plus bullheads, sunfish, suckers, chubs, and more--be sure to announce "Here's a couple extra big ones--and the ice cream's paid for and waiting up at the coffee parlor."

Then, too, it's pretty much anything that'll float, if you want to float, to answer that question. We usually took Old Sorta Red, Toad's craft, a 25-year-old 14-foot Lund with a Toad-built livewell and a Toad-built front deck. A tribute to Lunds everywhere, you could still tell it was a Lund, even though the telltale red paint had been eroded by dents and dings, each and every one a story-worthy badge of catfishing courage--telltale accounts of rocks and rapids and logs and boat loadings on backwoods sandbars.

Toad ran Old Sorta Red with a 10 hp sorta Johnson with no skeg and a prop ground to midget dimensions by river gravel and sand, while I directed traffic from the center. Sort off. I'd point to one snag or another indicating my presumption of a hot spot, or wave "pass on by, pass on by," meaning kiss this spot goodbye. Toad would calmly nod and we'd stop and I'd slip in the anchor or we'd keep on truckin' downriver. Zacker, on the other hand, quit listening to folks and started doing what he pleased somewhere back in the 1920s or thereabouts. He was, as they still say, contrary. Contrary. Zacker used to say that when you're two steps ahead of everyone else you can't always be looking back and listening to those you're leading. I've always pretty much thought he was right about that. So there was no real directing Zacker, although sometimes he could be channeled in one direction or another with slight of mind. But that's one hellava 'nother story.

The deck was Zacker's domain. Sitting on a boat cushion up front, sometimes he'd fish, often he'd snooze, sometimes come September he'd whack away with a 22 at squirrels in the trees along the bank as Toad and I fished. Even with a touch of cataracts, he was a crack shot. Whack! Whack! Whack! And then his old Remington would jam. "Ding dang new fangled ammo," he'd cuss.

By then, though, given that three shots meant at least a squirrel, he'd always look at the two of us in the back of the boat, pause, letting the moment build, squint for a second or two, swirl his lips around once, twice to get the spit to the back of his mouth, and then cackle a squeaky, wheezing "Fetch boys!" And a "Hot diggity dang!"

Now if this was by perchance unlawful--shooting from the boat, that is--well, all I can offer in our defense is that (A) you didn't argue with Zacker when he was armed, and (B) shooting furry rodents from a boat didn't seem like anything too serious given some of the more serious parts of Zacker's past, which were rarely worth bringing up. And if any of you think you might want to turn him in, well, pretty soon I'll be glad to tell you where to look him up. No need these days to take with you a large contingency of the local constabulary.

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