Becca wrote:
> Kate Connally wrote:
>> But back when I was a kid I used to love to go fishing with my
>> grandfather. We'd go to a lake for summer vacation and he and
>> I and my sister would get up at 4am and go out in the rowboat
>> and fish. We caught sunfish, bluegills, and catfish.
>>
>> When we got back to the cabin we would clean them and the way
>> my grandfather did the catfish was to cut through the skin all
>> the way around the body just under the head. Then he would
>> nail the head to a tree and grab the skin on either side with
>> pliers and pull it down and off (like taking off knee socks ;-)).
>>
>> My grandmother would be up by then and we'd take all the fish
>> and fry them up for breakfast. She just "breaded" them with
>> cornmeal. Best breakfasts I ever had.
>
> This brings back a lot of fond memories. My grandfather would take me
> fishing, and I would complain because it was still dark when we left the
> house. I would swear it was still night time. lol Grandpa was a
> baseball player and he lost an eye to a baseball when he was 25. I
> thought he was the most handsomest man in the world, and I never noticed
> that he only had one eye.
>
>
> Becca
My Dad started taking me fishing when I was about 2 years old. If there
was a stream, bayou, pond, whatever, he could find fish in it. He taught
me the use of cane poles with a bobber and worm on a hook, rod and reel,
even fly fishing.

At age 5 he was taking me out in Galveston Bay in a rowboat and we
would, literally, catch a boat full of fish. Back to the camp on the
point and clean the fish, all the neighbors and friends and family would
come in and we would eat fish until they were gone. Used a big black
iron "boiling" pot, remember the ones the ladies used to boil their
clothes in in ancient times? Fill it with lard, cornmeal up the fish and
fry them until they floated and take them out to drain.

I remember going out to Dad's oyster reef, you rented them from the
state of Texas for, I believe, one dollar an acre, when I was about nine
years old. We would take a bottle of Tabasco with us, open the oysters
while we were raking them, eat them with a dash of Tabasco, fresh from
the Bay.

Thanks for bringing up some good memories of a good man who has been
gone now for 27 years, fishing somewhere nice I hop.

George