The Great Mississippi River Fishing Caper, Road Trip 2004...part 5

move forward. That visual of the man stomping the snake is still too vivid. I am wearing sandals. If I were to see one, the people in Des Moines would hear my scream.
Plus I have heard too much. I was chatting with the man that had a beautiful chocolate lab riding on the prow of his fishing boat. He told me about the 4 species of Asian carp that were accidentally introduced to the river. The silver carp when aroused by a boat, fly into the air and have been responsible for breaking legs, and arms of boaters. Some unfortunate fisherman suffered from concussions. Damn! Then there was that other story about a down-river practice called noodling. You jam your bare hands under the bank of the river and catch fish with your hands. Ohmigod. Sounds horrible. Plus there are animals like mink and otters, and snakes that live under there. Way too risky.
At Cold Spring I picked up a discarded fishing pole. It is very old and short, about 3’ long, and instead of a reel it has two screws sunk into the cork handle for your line. Jeff called it a poor-man pole, and said I should leave it for the next desperate person, but I took it as an outstanding example of river RealLife.
I’m taking pictures (huge barges are bringing goods up river, the train is going by every 15 minutes or so), chatting up fishermen, most from the cities in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, not one local. And I spy my other souvenir, a beautiful dried lotus pod.
The water lilies in the shallow ponds next to the river are blooming now. Giant white flowers tinged with pink and those flat oval deep green leaves, right out of a Degas painting.
The fish have stopped biting. Jared is done and I tell Jeff 10 minutes and we are out of here. He casts and wowOwow he catches the biggest fish so far! It is 2 ½’ long, silvery with a bright red tail. Yippee!
He removes the hook and the fish goes deep. Bye bye. On the way back to the cabin my brother pulls over. I come up alongside. “Hey your boyfriend is here.” I smirk, “Which one would that be?” “Dubya. Well, he’s not here. He’s over in Waukesha. (The other side of the state, near Milwaukee.) But he is in the same state with you.”
“Brat.”
He races away roaring.
God I love my brother. He called me a “happy nutball” when I donned the camo mask while fishing, but he is the champion of illusion and tricksterness.
Our big catfish dinner is sizzling in the cast iron skillet…platters of catfish, dipped in milk, then breaded, big chunky fries, and rolling balls of hush puppy dough. It looks good. Smells good too. The fries…tasty; the hush puppies…southern and oniony, the catfish….um, well, let’s see…if you took a piece of fish and spread some mud on it and cooked it up all golden brown, well that’s what it would taste like, musty. Ack.
We all decided catfish sucks and the people who rave about it probably had it when they were children and since it was mother-love food, they like it. I recall father saying not to eat bottom dwellers and a catfish is a mudfish. But I was very happy to experience it because otherwise I wouldn’t know if I liked it or not. Jared’s cooking wasn’t wasted.
Mark Twain published Huckleberry Finn over 110 years ago. I imagine the River was a different animal then…cleaner, wilder, and far narrower, at least in the northern region, prelocks. When I received my fishing license I was given a fishing regulations booklet.*