Lost Cat
Posted on August 1, 2014 by bob in OffTheBeatenPath
“Hold it,” he said, the stern floating off the trailer, its lights an eerie scarlet beneath the water. He cranked the motor and backed off into the damp darkness in a cloud of two-stroke smoke.
“Got a light?” his voice echoed off the shoreline trees. “Meet ya at the dock. Watch out for ol’ red eyes,” he said.
Not a week before, he’d dispatched a fifteen foot gator at the base of the ramp. The warden had been called at the sound of shots, but self defense had been the plea. I swallowed hard, trying to convince myself we were safe as long as the gators stayed in the water, and we stayed in now small-looking 14-foot boat.
Idling cautiously through the stump-filled slough, our spotlights moved back and forth in search of deadhead logs, limb-lines hanging from the canopy 
overhead, and of course, pairs of red eyes. When we reached the main channel he turned the bow into the current of the open water, pushed the throttle lever down, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
We were after catfish, and Ted was the best “cat man” I knew, happy just to fish all night and drink cold Coca-Cola. From the photos he kept in a book on the dash of the truck, I had hopes of hooking into a behemoth.
As we rode upriver, a billion-candle moon illuminated our path better than any spotlight. I settled in for the ride, enjoying the night air whipping past, a brief, welcome respite from hundred degree days. Before taking my seat on the bow, I slipped on a pair of safety glasses.
Spend much time riding in a boat on a summer night, and you learn quickly the mosquito you swat on land and the mosquito that smacks you in the eye at forty miles an hour are two entirely different creatures.
I had barely gotten comfortable before the stern begin to drop, the bow rise, and our progress slow. We had reached our destination, a sharp, deep bend riddled with snags.
“Ease in the anchor when I tell you,” Ted said, staring at the sonar display. “Okay … now.”
The hook, ten feet of chain, then 60, 70, 80 feet of rode went down as we drifted back. The anchor drug the bottom, then stuck, and I made it fast to the bow cleat. Sweat began to bead again on my forehead and I turned back for further orders. Ted’s Zippo struck flame, showing his stub cigar along with a cockroach on the center console.
“No quarter,” he growled, flicking the roach over the port gunwale, then turning to me. “Hand me that old cooler.”
As I readied the rods, Ted readied the bait. I passed him the first rod, a broom-handle thick seven-foot Ugly Stik mated to a Penn 209, the kind with the level-wind and a bait clicker, as tough and simple a reel as was ever made. Ted’s hands emerged from the cooler with a fist-sized chunk of mullet he threaded on the 8-ought circle hook and tossed into a swirling eddy behind the boat. With rods readied and in their holders, we engaged the bait clickers, placed the reels in free spool so the fish could run, and leaned back in our chairs to wipe our brows.
“This been a good spot for you?” I asked.
“Sixty pounder three nights back,” he replied, “and they weren’t pulling near as much water as tonight.”
When you can fish as much as Ted you get good at it, timing trips around peak flow and consistently catch large fish.
“Tick,” went the reel in front of me. Ted looked at the reel, then at me.
“Could be the current,” he said. “Could be the boat rockin’, or squealers peckin’ at it.”
“Tick tick,” the reel replied, defiantly. Ted watched it in silence.
“Tick tick tick … tick … tick tick … tick tick tick … tickzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzttt.”
The bait clicker roared to life, line peeled off the reel steadily and the rod arched toward the water. I grabbed it and leaned back hard to drive the hook home, nearly falling out of the boat. Instead of a heavy pull at the end of the line, an endless tangle of monofilament had grown from the reel. In my excitement I’d forgotten you don’t ‘set’ a circle hook.
“Huh,” Ted said flatly. “Bite like that comes maybe once a night. Probably a reeeeal big blue.”
“What now?” I asked.
“Now,” he said, taking a long sip of his Coke and settling back in his chair, “now, we wait.”
Niko Corley spends his free time on the water or in the woods, and earned his charter boat license in 2012. He can be contacted at cootfootoutfitters@gmail.com.
