Foot Tub or hang it over...

Daddy always came home from a day at the Jetties with a boat full of fish.  He was kown as a Fisherman in our little Town. He constructed himself a fish cleaning table down by my basketball goal on our property line.  My Daddy wasn’t necessarily a carpenter so the table was a piece meal type thing. I would drag the ladder out of the shed and he would let me sit on top to catch fish scales that flew my way.  If you could have seen the size of those Spot Tail Red Bass, you would understand the scales having a likeness to quarters and half dollars. I knew someday I would get to go fishing.  I would be ready because I knew how to clean fish.  I probably asked him a million times it seemed by the time I was eight years old if I could go fishing.  The answer was always NO BABY, you are not big enough.  Finally, the day came when I was nine years old but there were stipulations.  “You can go fishing with me when you can ‘go’ in the foot tub or hang it over,” he said.  This did not seem like a problem at all except I had no idea what it really meant nor did I care.  I danced a glorious jig round and round the fish cleaning table because I was going fishing at the Jetties.

My big day came with the 3am alarm.  We had to drive Brunswick, GA., to get bait (live shrimp), then back to Crooked River Boat Ramp to put the boat in the water (one hour each way).  By this time, I had eaten a can of Vienna sausages, a Moon Pie and a Honey Bun. We had to be anchored at the end of the North Jetties ready to fish at daylight! 

I’m sure you could guess the Boat was named, Miss Lynn. What other name in the world would work for my Daddy?  Daddy let me get my shrimp out of the bait well and showed me how to put it on the hook. There was just so much such excitement! I was not big enough to cast my line so he did it for me.  I don’t really remember how it all went from that moment but there was a fish on my hook.  It was surely the biggest fish the at the Jetties since Daddy was holding on to me and the fishing pole helping me reel the fish up to the boat. It was one of the most magical moments I shared with my Daddy.  I was proud, he was proud and I had to go to the bathroom!  Then it hit me, foot tub or hang it over!  I chose the foot tub because I knew I had become a BIG GIRL as I looked at that fish!  We caught a mess of fish on my first fishing trip that day.  There were many more days in my childhood of fishing that I enjoyed with him but none were ever like the first!  

He always led me to believe I could do or be anything I wanted which was a profound idea in 1970.  It was settled that day, I would become a fisherman!  

   Many years passed before the time came when I would fish again as an 

   adult. Suprisingly, his teachings came back to me about his names for 

   fishing holes, where they were, what tides to fish etc.  

   The love and teachings of a Daddy last a life time!