I spent one summer working at the Herald Office Distribution Center and did a lot of different jobs from week to week. I spent a few weeks as a delivery driver and started riding with Dwayne Martin, who showed me how to handle deliveries. It did not take long for me to find out that he was a fisherman and lucky for me, he was happy to share a few secrets.
Our main topic of discussion was cat fishing on the Little Pee Dee using bush hooks. Dwayne’s go-to rig is a railroad spike, with a desired length of line tied to a weight and a large hook. These rigs were easy to store and can be removed from a tree without untangling any knots.
I walked the railroad tracks that night and collected 25 railroad spikes and bought the string, hooks, and weights from Lanes Bait and Tackle. I also saw a trot line kit at the store so I bought that too.
I proceeded to plan my open weekends with trips to the Little Pee Dee in Marion County for our overnight fishing excursions. We usually arrived at the sand bar on Saturday at lunch time, and one group pitched tents while the other group rode out on the river to bait hooks.
When the hooks were set, we would enjoy relaxing at camp, seek shelter from a summer afternoon storm, make supper,and begin checking lines at 2 hour intervals throughout the night.
The first group that I made this trip with was Garrett Freel, Daniel Vance, Holden Freel, and Andrew Fitzgibbon. We realized late into the night that there must be some real tactics to be used for catching catfish rather than just throwing bait in the water because we were seeing no results. We slipped the John boats in the water and sped up and down river all night, having many collisions with stumps and logs along the way. I believe this trip only yielded one small channel cat.
Most of my fishing weekends were with Hugh Smith from Aynor, and his black lab, Buckwheet. Hugh had several of his own trot lines and had done this many times. He knew how to set the depth for currents and when it was good to fish still water vs in the current. He said that you can catch fish when the river is consistently high or low, but not after a dramatic change in depth. We used eels, live bream, cut bait, soap, stink bait, chicken livers, and whatever else you can imagine. We caught many fish and even an occasional giant flathead.
Hugh and I had 3 trot lines, each holding 50 hooks, along with our 25 bush hooks. It was enough to keep us busy and we spent our time cleaning fish between checking lines. Hugh tied chum blocks along the length of the trot line to stir the interest of the catfish.
Great caution should be considered as you approach a bush hook because you never know what could be waiting in the tree. We ran into wasp nests and snakes on several occasions. Most crews will hurriedly hand their boat over to an unknown snake that fell on them at night.
Snakes are plentiful on the Little Pee Dee River in the summertime. Most of our firewood was brought in on the boats since we stayed on an island and did not want to transport logs or trees across the water. I dropped a load of wood by the fire pit and went back for another load. By the time I had dropped the second load of wood, two Cottonmouths sprung from the pile. Andrew Fitzgibbon shot one snake twice. The other snake escaped.
One night, Hugh and I had our lines set and spent the whole night checking hooks. Nothing was biting and we had put too much work into the set up for us to go home empty handed. We sat by the fire discussing our options. The bait store was closed and there was no way we could buy a different kind of stink bait. What I was looking forward to at this point was breakfast. I bought some thick cut hickory smoked and peppered bacon. I usually go cheap on the food, but this time I decided to spoil myself. Hugh looked up and said, “I know what we need to do!” Next thing I knew, it was 3AM and I was slapping bacon on the hooks and dropping them back into the river. We continued to change bait until there was no bacon left and we returned to the island. The sun rose and we were in no hurry to get on the river. Buckwheet was swimming in the black water and a tree limb was dancing. Hugh paddled his kayak to the tree and raised a 20+ pound flathead! Our spirits were high after seeing that fish, and we had 11 catfish on the deck of my John boat by the time we finished collecting the lines.
I rarely packed a tent for these trips because we were always crawling out during the night and the tent fills with sand. We always packed a load of tarps and tied up a community shelter for the crew to cook and nap underneath. These shelters were easy to pitch and take down. The best part about the shelters was when it rained, and the whole group was inside with a fire burning.
Catfish make a great meal no matter how they are cooked. We usually deep fried catfish nuggets or made catfish stew. Sometimes, we would test our hand at fireside cooking, and we would season a filet to cook over the fire. One of the great things about fishing is that a catch is enjoyed twice; first at the time of catching the fish, and again when you eat it.