[Granville-Hough] 9 Jan 2009 - Fishing

[Trustees and Executors for Granville W. Hough]

Fishing.

As I grew up on or near the ridgeline between Ocohay Creek and Okatomy
Creek drainage systems, I did not get to learn to fish. The best I can
say is that I had a few fishing experiences. However, fishing was a
family tradition in my father’s family. The foods most frequently
mentioned were fish, eels, and muscles (fresh water oysters). It seems
that the Hough and Miller families did not eat turtle, and I do not know
why.
The general indication is that my grandmother Nora (Miller) (Keyes)
Hough grew up on Cohay Creek and and Sullivan’s Hollow Creek and
considered them much like we would consider a refrigerator today. If you
ran out of meat from the smokehouse, you went down to the creek and
caught a mess of fish for supper. She retained this habit when she lived
later in her life on Little Cohay (or Acahay).
One thing you have to visualize is what the creeks and rivers were like
before the timber was cut and the uplands began to erode into the lower
land. The creeks were deep and clear and full of fish. The whole
ecological community centered on these creeks, and the old Indian
hunting and fishing trails followed them closely. The longleaf pines on
the hilly plains modified the rainfall, and the mat of pine needles held
down any soil erosion. Even after the hills were burned in late winter
to encourage brush growth for browsers, there was not much muddy water.
I never saw this condition, but it was the norm when my parents were
born, and their parents before them.
One of my father, Elisha Hough’s, stories is about his encounter with a
snapping turtle as large as a big dishpan or small washtub. Grandma Nora
Hough had sent him down to the creek to catch some fresh fish for
supper. He was 11 or 12 years old and only had one fishhook. He got to
his customary fishing place near a bridge crossing and cast in the
fishing line with his hook, and it was immediately grabbed; but he could
not pull it out, and it was too deep to see what had it. He had gotten
into this kind of predicament before, and he had always taken off his
clothes and dived down to retrieve his hook, generally snagged on some
kind of debris on the bottom of the fishing hole. Some men were working
on the nearby bridge and one saw him undressing and came over to see
what he was doing. He explained and the man said, “No, No, Sonny, you
should not do that. Just wait for me. I will help you.”
The man looked for and found a sapling which he cut and made into a long
probing pole. He then began to probe the bottom and dislodged an angry
snapping turtle, which came to the surface, biting the pole and
everything in sight. With the fishing line, they were able to drag the
turtle to the edge of the creek, cut off his head, and retrieve the
fishhook. My father fully believed that, had he dived to the bottom, the
snapping turtle would have grabbed and held him until he drowned. This
was the end of the story, but my father said he never again dived to the
bottom of the creek to retrieve a fishing hook. It would have been my
opportunity to ask: “Who got to eat the snapping turtle?” However, I did
not know then that you could eat turtles.
My father longed for an occasional fish dinner all his life, and he
would go back to fish on Cohay every few years. After I got lost with
our dog Sharp while he was gone on one such trip, he did not go as
often. If he were in Magee and saw a fresh red snapper just in from the
Gulf Coast, he would buy it; and that is how we all grew to love fish.
It was a rare treat.
My next older brother, Rudolph, learned to fish and followed Clear Creek
down two or three miles from where it headed in a spring on our
property. One time he caught a mud cat (bottom-dwelling catfish), and
another time he found some muscles (fresh water oysters). My second
oldest brother, Dueward, liked the idea of fishing, and I was able to go
on two such trips with him. On the first, we took a wagon and spent the
night on Cohay Creek, cooking our supper on a regular campfire. This was
a memorable trip because we stopped when we crossed Hatchitapaloo Creek
and fished the bar-pits along the road. (a barpit or borrow-pit is where
you got the earth for building up the roadbed, and you always found them
along the roads through the creek bottoms. When the creeks overflowed
after heavy rains, the barpits captured fish which were left stranded
when the waters went down.) It was in such a barpit that I caught my
first fish, indeed, it was the first fish caught on the trip. We went on
in high spirits to the big Creek of Cohay where we spent the night. We
did not catch much fish, but we did furnish lots of blood to the
mosquitoes.
The next fishing trip was to Okatomy Creek in Simpson County. We went
with our tenants, Wiley Hester, and his sons, Lamar and Marzene. We went
down to the railroad at Low, then walked west four miles to Okatomy
Creek. This was one Friday afternoon. We got to the creek, did some
fishing until dusk, then we set our lines for the night. We were not
alone. This was during the early Depression, and other parties were also
seriously fishing for food. It also began to rain, not just a little
rain, but a downpour. The adults checked our lines during the night
because we were afraid they would be robbed if we waited until morning.
People were that desperate. But it continued to rain, rain, and rain. We
kids had our backs up against a big gum tree, while we tried to keep a
fire going with wet wood. We could hear and see the creek nearly out of
its banks. We recovered what lines we could and headed out.
This was on Saturday when my father always went to town to get supplies.
When he got to Okatomy Bridge on Highway 28, he could see that the Creek
was out of its banks. In fact, the rushing water was threatening the
bridge foundations. He could only hope that we had sense enough to leave
the creek and head for higher ground. At daylight, we had done just that
and we were holding hands and waist deep in water when we finally got to
the higher ground of the railroad tracks. Then we had a cold and soggy
four mile walk home on the railroad.
I did not ask or suggest that we go fishing again on the old creeks in
Mississippi. My next fishing experience was nearly thirty years later at
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and it was with my son David. It is his story
to tell.
However, to this day, I love to eat fish of all kinds. I’m just willing
to let someone else go catch them.

(Note: I was later in high school with Lamar and Marzene Hester. They
joined the Marines and were in early WWII battles on Pacific islands.
During a Japanese counter-attack, Marzene was bayoneted by a Japanese
soldier who left him for dead. I have been told Marzene survived to get
back home where he died from his wounds a year or two later.) 

Fishing, 19 Jul 2005.

Category: Farm Experiences.