Watch Your Bobber

[Warren]

Kinda long sorry

“Watch Your Bobber”

Who ever created the bobber/cork was a genius. The bobber has several different uses. It allows you to suspend bait at different depths in the water column. Also, the bobber lets you know when you have a bite by being pulled under the water’s surface by that big cat or fiery pan fish. Under certain circumstances that have caused me to look back at reasons why I want to move back home so much, I have realized another use that the little orange, round ball floating on the water’s surface has. It is more of a lesson, one that up until now I have not had to face on such a scale. This is a painful lesson for some as it has been for me. This is the lesson of patience.

My father is someone that I would describe as a simple man. He comes from a background of hard working, simple people. His father and mother saved and bought a farm in the Monroe county hills of Mississippi. In today’s standards of a farm, it would not be much, just around 180 acres. It is on this farm that they built a house, raised cotton and corn, and had a dairy operation. In some people’s standards they may have been poor, but they never did with out. They had fresh milk from the cows, meat from their hogs, eggs from their chickens, and they put up vegetables from the garden. It is from this lifestyle that my father and his two brothers and sister, learned what hard work really was. Their where cows to milk, hogs and chickens to feed, a garden to be tended, cotton to be hoed and eventually hand picked. With all of this going on plus school, there was not much time to do a lot else but work.

Deer in my dad's days where rare and mostly unseen. However, there where plenty of bobwhites to shoot, squirrels to chase, and the creeks where full of fish. Now my father loves to wing shoot and he likes to chase squirrel, but if you want to get him going, all you have to do is start talking about how the fish are biting. It is in the creeks of his childhood (bull mountain was his favorite) that he learned how to catch a “mess” of fish. Their tackle was (as the man) simple. A cane pole, line, hook, weight, and the bobber. They mostly caught an assortment of pan fish, perch, and some catfish. But my father and his grandfather loved to go after the infamous grinnel (better known as a bowfin). They loved this fish not because of the taste (you would eat more bones than meat), but because when the “ole grinnel” hits it hits like a ton of bricks and fights like a great white shark. So it is in these creeks like the Bull Mountain that my father honed his skills into enticing a “mess” of fish to bite.

My mother’s father was a Free Will Baptist preacher. He came to pastor the church where my father grew up. Eventually his middle daughter and my father fell in love and married. My father graduated from Mississippi State University as an Agronomist. He then went on to take a string of different jobs in his field. He lived in North Carolina, Tennessee, and then ending up in South Carolina. By the time I was born my older brother and sister where eleven and eight (they still say I was a mistake). When I was four, he took a job in Lubbock Texas. Throughout this period in my father and mother’s life, they longed to move back closer to home more than anything. And every time we would go to visit my grandmother, it would only deepen their longing to move back home. As a little kid, I can remember thinking, well if you want to be here why are we living way out in Texas.

Well let me get back to fishing. The job my father took in Texas required him to travel quite a bit. He also had to travel all over the globe. The place we lived at in Texas had less than desirable fisheries. We lived in Lubbock from the time I was four until I was ten and the only real fishing I got to do was with dad on business trips. The simple man with a cane pole from Monroe county Mississippi was fly-fishing for trout, catching pike and muskee in Minnesota, landing redfish in the bay, hauling out peacock bass in South Africa, and catching all kinds of saltwater species on trips in the ocean. But if you asked him to talk about fishing he would mention these trips a little, but he would always talk more about the fights he had with grinnel on the Bull Mountain Creek.

The middle of my fifth grade year we moved yet again to Hollandale, Mississippi. I can remember how happy my parents where about moving back to Mississippi. Now they where only three hours away from their “home”. Little did they know that they where now living in the most different place they had ever been, the Mississippi Delta. I think a man who enjoys the outdoors can begin to enjoy the delta faster than a woman. It took my mom a while to get accustomed to the ways of the delta. My father didn’t take as long to start enjoying what the delta had to offer. It was a late April or early May morning when my father woke me up one Saturday before sunrise. He told me that we where going fishing at Lake Washington and to “get my carcass up if I was going fishing with him”. Now when my dad was in South Carolina he had bought a little 14ft. johnboat with trailer. My mom had tried to get him to sell it when we lived in Texas because for six years it never touched any water except from what fell from the sky. This was going to be my first day to be in the boat fishing.

I remember getting to Roy’s store on the lake to buy our crickets. We left out of there with our crickets, snacks, and two long wooden sticks. He told me these where cane poles and they where the only way to fish. I was mad because I wanted to use my new zebco rod and reel that someone had given me a long time before. Once we where out on the water and back up in some cypress knees, he told me I could use whichever pole I wanted to, but he bet me that by the end of the day I would be begging to use one of his wooden sticks. After about 20 minutes of being hung up and watching my dad bring in his fourth big (pissing) bream, I decided that I would try one of those wooden sticks. This turned out to be a day that my dad and I would repeat often the next eight years. We hit about five different bream beds that day, and I started my education in all things fishing. I learned how to find bream beds, tie on hooks, rig up my pole, figure out what depth the fish where at, take a catfish off without getting finned, how to drive a boat, how to get my hook un hung, and most importantly how to watch my bobber. It was the watching my bobber part that took the longest for me to learn. I would get distracted or want to move my cricket to better looking set of cypress knees. Always there was my dad telling me wait you got to wait or hey Warren where is your bobber. And I learned, listened, and caught a lot of fish with my father (some times even caught more).

You might think what does all of this fishing stuff have to do with me wanting to move back home to the delta. I have spent a lot of my life listening to my mother and father wish so bad that they where back home. Even after we only lived three hours away that feeling only intensified. I have always felt that when I got done with college I would move back home and go to work. I married a woman that has lived on Hollandale her entire life. She comes from a big family all of whom stayed in the delta. I have friends there that I consider as much a part of my family as my own brother and sister. Everything near and dear to my heart lies with in the riverbanks of that flat, beautiful land. My situation now is one that I don’t necessarily have to move or take just any job right now. And last night as a lay there in the bed not being able to sleep, I saw cypress knees and a little orange bobber floating on the top of muddy water. And I could here my dad’s voice behind me saying “Warren… watch your bobber”.

[peewee]

Excellent post!

[duckkiller]

excellent read and great post. Now days I fish 3-4 days a week and go to school 4days a week, and it never gets old. Since Ive moved to FL I have fished by myself and there isnt a trip out that I dont wish my dad was i nthe front of the boat telling me what I was doing wrong or laughing when I miss the bite. In 2 weeks I will be home in Gods Country for 10 days on spring break. I dont wish or want for much as I to am a simple man who can be happy and play for hours with a bucket of rocks, but there is one thing I want to do durring those 10 days. I want to fish both my dad and granddad so that I can re live all my child hood memories as well. Nothing says I love you or tells how much you care as a bucket of minnows and a day on the water

[missed mallards]

awesome post Warren. When we going fishing

[Faithful Retrievers]

Nice read.

[MSDawg870]

Nice.

I'd read that to your Dad, if you haven't already.

[Wingman]

That post is book-worthy!

Excellent read!

As an old friend once said to me, "You can take the boy out of the Delta, but can you ever take the Delta out of the boy?"

[K-DUB]

Thanks man, brought back memories of my own childhood and fishing with my dad.


Thanks Dad!

[wing shot]

enjoyed it !!

[vicksburg]

That's good stuff right there! Makes me wanna soak a cricket with my old man.

[Buckwabit]

That's a pretty cool read

[curlytail]

Great post. Reminds me alot of the way I grew up in Monroe County.

[Boogerden Boy]

I watch my bobber all the time

Sorry I had to say it Dub

[cwink]

Nice read.

[Warren]

I watch my bobber all the time

Sorry I had to say it Dub

Knew it was coming just didn't know if it would be you or Kevin

Kevin me and dad are going squirrel hunting this weekend. As always my favorite part of the hunt will be the end when me and dad sit under one of those big red oaks and I get some advice. I am sure we will have a lot to talk about this weekend