Ep. 111: THIS COUNTRY LIFE - Catching Catfish with Trotlines

Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host Brent Reeves. From Cone hunting to trot lining and just general country living, I want you to stay a while as I share my stories and country skills that will help you beat the system. This country life is proudly presented as part of Mediators Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcasts the airways have to offer. Alright friends, pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I think I got a thing or two to teach you. Catch and Catfish with Trot lines. You're in for a treat today. We're talking about catching catfish with trot lines. We're going to talk about what a trot line is, how to make one, what to use for bait, and where to fish them. Now if you'll just tie a knot and hang on with me till the end, I'll share the Reeves family recipe for frying up a mess of fillets that'll knock you out so hard you'll be hollering who flung the chunk. But first, I'm going to tell you a story. I graduated high school in 1984. Graduation night, about 20 of us were packed and ready to roll with Florida for a week of doing what youngins did back then went away from adult supervision. Which probably pales in comparison to what some do now, but as the time of our departure grew nearer, my interest in leaving for the week grew weaker and weaker. Especially after I overheard a couple of acquaintances discussing the drugs they'd acquired and were taken with them. Now I had no interest in that or being around it, which was the same view my friends had. They were just folks that were kind of hitching around and going along. It was also kind of ironic that a few short years later, I'd be up to my eyeballs in the drug culture and making a living pretending to love it. But I wasn't there yet. And at the last minute, I decided not to go. I surprised my family by showing back up at the house explaining my decision and calling my older brother Tim and asking him if he'd like to go camping for a few days down on the Selene River. You know, that's Selene River. The one at the Reece family owns. Anyway, he said of course. So we grabbed up all the camping and the fishing gear we could lay our hands on, loaded them and his old flat bottom boat in the back of my truck and took off for the river the next morning daylight. We put in the river at the boat ramp that would eventually be named in honor of my daddy. We set off for the adventure of living off the land, vowed not to return to the truck until we'd spent our week in the bottoms getting fat and slick off all the fish we were going to catch to go along with all the side items we'd bring with us. It was going to be a week long fish fry. We were prepared Jack. This is the kind of stuff we do and others only wish they could. I hadn't regretted my decision. There was nothing in Florida that I didn't have right here. I had sand, water, sun, plus my brother. Two tubes of crickets and an ice chest full of eggs and bacon, a grub box full of necessities and an advanced degree in snatch and brim out of the river for my suffer. The river was low and just right for fishing. We had a little 9.9 Johnson outboard motors that would push Tim's 14 foot long, 36 inch wide aluminum deer craft boat downstream slightly faster than a sugared up toddler on a tricep. Coming back upstream was a different story, but it beat paddling like a rented mule. We'd already made up where we was going to camp. It was going to be just below the swimming hole at the head of the stretch, just about our favorite place to fish. The stretch was a section of the river that was deeper than most and had a gradual turn back to the west before sharply turning back east at a spot we call Bug Island. From there it continued on down its crooked path towards the confluence with the Wash Tal River some 50 miles further south as the crow flies. At the stretch you could easily float down either side of the river, fishing the shade, trading back and forth as you went to the best spots because we knew where every tree top and structure that was under that muddy water that always held the most fish. Bug Island had a gravel show and a good cool shady spot to clean fish. I'd be scared to guess how many meals we'd ate there over the years, much less how many fish we'd cleaned. In hindsight it would have been a whole lot better place to camp and while we didn't think about that before setting our tent up below the swimming hole, I'd do not know. It also wouldn't be the only thing we failed to think about that week. After emptying the boat supplies and getting the camp made that morning, we hit the river fishing for our dinner. Now once again for everybody keeping score at home, dinner where I grew up is at it noon and supper comes after that. Breakfast, dinner, supper. Don't make me pull this boat over. We'd had a good breakfast that morning before leaving Tim's house. So when we started fishing the noon meal was our target. It didn't take long to get a good mess to eat for dinner and a big head start on supper. The fish were biting and we weren't culling nothing. If it was big enough to bite, it was big enough to eat. Some folks might think we'd get tired eating fish all week, but they'd be wrong. We eat a lot of fish all year long. Back then in the summer time it wasn't unusual to eat it several times a week. Whether we was camped or not, brim fresh caught was our favorite, still is and then everything else after that. When we decided we had plenty to eat and headed back up to the stretch to our campin's pot. We done got hungry and the only thing standing between us and the best groceries on the planet was getting some taters peeled, the fish cleaned and a pot full of grease hot. Tim said he'd start cleaning fish as soon as we got there. I'd get the fire started in the cold bucket, put some oil in the dutch oven and start peeling the taters. So as soon as we hit the bank by the tent, we both bailed out of that boat and went to work. I started to fire and opened up the grub box for the dutch oven, oil, cornmeal, taters, onion, salt and pepper. The basics for any fish fry in a civilized country. Staring back at me from that old wooden box was a box of salt, a can of pepper, a gallon of cooking oil and a loaf of light bread. Oh Lord. We didn't bring a tater one and it wouldn't have mattered if we'd had a wagon full. We didn't have nothing to cook them in. We had a problem, especially with the oathful we took about not going back home for anything we didn't have with us. I walked down to help Tim and give him the bad news about not bringing the dutch oven. We cleaned the fish and walked up to where I had the fire going in the cold bucket and that's when I saw our savior poking up out of the sand. A five pound metal coffee can. My joker was covered in rust but not rusted through and Tim took it down to the river and scrubbed it out with sand and river water to clean it up. We boiled around the water in it, poured it out by grabbing the top lip with a pair of pliers, refilled it with oil and started prepping the fish to fry. We felt confident that when the grease got around 350 degrees, anything that was still living in that coffee can that the hot grease didn't kill was probably going to get us anyway. Then I told Tim we forgot the taters and onions too. He didn't say a word. He didn't look up. He didn't make a sound. He just sat there looking sad. His shoulders seemed to wilt a few inches downward like I just let the air out of him. I thought he might cry. Back then, men didn't cry, especially in front of another one. Not in love and tell about it. So while he sadly stared at that rust colored oil that was starting to bubble in our Maxwell House fish fryer, I looked back way towards the river to let him have his moment. And so he wouldn't see me if I started squalling. And that's when I saw Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones wasn't a local, a fact that would come into play very soon. He lived in our soil way, but he was retired and had a nice camp back up river and had had it for years. So we all knew who he was. He come down by himself and stay for a few weeks at a time at his camp and I knew immediately where our taters was fixing to come from. Cause everyone where I'm from looks out for one another. I hollered at him as he fished by our boat that was pulled up on the bank. Mr. Jones, I'm buddy Reeves's boy. Me and my brother Tim's down here camping for a few days and we forgot our taters. Recking you got something back after your camp, you could let us bar or let us buy. Who are you? He said, I told him again, we're buddy Reeves boys. Oh, yeah. How's buddy? I say he's good. He'd be better off knowing we had some taters deep with all these fish we caught today and the ones we're going to catch the rest of the week. He started laughing and so did Tim. Tim was back from that dark taterless place he'd gone to only a few moments ago. I think he like me could see that Mr. Jones was fixing to hook us up. You boys got some onions? Now when he said that I knew we were home free. He's fixing to give us some taters and onions. Good night nurse. We fixing to hit a lick with Mr. Jones. And that's when we were betrayed by our raising. We were raised to be thankful for what we had and not be a burden to others. If you didn't have something you just had to work harder to get it or do without it. But you never asked anybody for it. So when Mr. Jones asked if we had any onions, Tim's brain went on autopilot. I've not want him to be troublesome. And he said, oh, yes, sir. We got plenty of onions. I thought to myself you need to shut up. He's offering onions too. We'll take them. Huh? Mr. Jones didn't hear Tim. So I repeated the lie. Yes, sir. We got onions. Well, if you boys got onions, that'll be plenty. Y'all don't need any taters. And Mr. Jones floated on by like we weren't even there. And like that conversation had never take place. We stared at him in silence as he floated and fished plumb out of sight. We talked about him a lot that week. Mostly about how we'd like to drive by him sitting on the side of the highway with a flat while we did donuts in front of him on the highway eating fried taters and chunking onions at him. I learned a lot on that trip besides double checking the grub box for all your supplies. You can survive quite efficiently. I might add on nothing but light bread and fried fish. Also, a balled up slice of light bread dropped in hot grease is no substitute for hush but then that's just how that happens. Let's get to work with a question. Why would you go to the trouble of making a trot line to catch some catfish when you could just go to a restaurant and eat them or go to a store and buy them? Well, I'll tell you why because this is America and we ought to be doing American things. And one of the most American things you can do is gathering up your own grocery from nature's grocery store to feed your family. So you ready to beat the system? The system that tries to dictate what the quality of our food is and how we feed ourselves? A lot of you listening are probably already doing this but most folks get all the groceries from the store and we ain't about that life so I'm going to tell you one way to do it yourself. Bating up a trot line and teaching an ice chest full of fish how to ride in a boat is about as red, white and blue as you can get. Also it's fun. Bailey Suzanne tell your momma to get the grease hot. We fixing to catch a miss a fish. Alright, you ain't got nobody to show you how to do it? Yes you do. Me lots of good online articles and videos will give you all kinds of methods and techniques to try. You can get trot lines pre-made with hooks and everything at just about any bait and tackle shop or the supplies to make your own which is what I like to do. Don't be scared. This ain't hard. There's literally no way to mess this up. If you can get one end of a line tied to a stob or a tree and the other end with a hook on it and bait and in the water you win. But just like anything else the more you do it the better you're going to get at it. Better yet to practice you got to go fishing. So what is a trot line? It's a length of line suspended horizontal in near the bottom of a body of water with hooks attached by individual lengths of a line that are measured intervals from one end of the other. I can't believe I did that. Makes sense? No of course it don't. But do this for me. Picture a section of power line between two poles in your head. Now if every 10 feet along that power line you had a smaller line hanging down 5 feet from it with a hook on it that's a trot line. And for the record there's no such thing as a trout line. You can call it that I guess but that ain't what it is. You can say a rooster dip snuff but that don't make it so until you see him spit and I ain't never seen one do that. Another thing, you can rig a trot line and make it as fancy as you want but it's not necessary. One ball of string and a few hooks will get it done just as well. Them fillets are going to taste the same regardless of how you turn them loose in the grease. Last summer I was digging around on the interwebs and found a spot across the river called the Memphis, Net and Twine. These folks have been serving commercial fishermen and anyone looking to fish with lines or nets since 1962. They got more stuff on there than Carter's got liver pills and will fix you up and help you out with what you need. You can look them up yourself at Memphis, Net, Dot, Net. That's how you get them. Anyway, here's a recipe for a simple but effective trot line. These are your ingredients. One roll of number 36 twisted tarred line. One roll of number 18 twisted tarred line. One bag of trot line clips. One bag of six alt circle hooks and some weights around three to five pounds each. Depending on how long the line is will determine how many weights you use. On a 100 foot line I put a weight in the middle and then one about halfway to each end for a total of three. This is one of a million ways to make a trot line. Notice I didn't say the way to make a trot line. We're just talking basics here and this is how I make a basic trot line. The twisted line has been dipped in tar and makes them easier to hold when they're wet. They're not as slick as regular nylon line and it helps protect it too. The number 36 is our main line. The drops where our hooks go are made from the smaller number 18 size line. I just like the number suggest the number 18 is half the diameter of the main line. You ain't got to use two sizes of line and if you don't want to but the smaller line is easier to thread through the hooks and the clips when we go to put them on the main line. Now, stretch out about a hundred feet to that rascal out in your yard and tie each end. Here's where you need to check your local regulations so you don't get jammed up by Mr. Green G. First, make sure trot lines are legal for the water you want to fish and what the minimum spacing is for the drop hooks. If they're too close together, it could be considered a snag line and that's a whole different animal when it comes to fishing regulations. I like to space mine about four or five feet between each drop. That gives you plenty of room for my caught fish to ramble around without filing himself on the next hook making it easier for me to get off the hook when I run the line. So it keeps that hook fishing instead of jobbed in the fish I've already caught. So take one of those clips and clip it on the line and repeat that every four or five feet. Give yourself plenty of slack on each end of tie your line off before you start adding the clips. Now, doing some quick math in my head thanks to Ms. Brenda McDougal, my most favorite is math teacher who not only worked on my brain but also the seat of my britches when my focus went from math to anything else I'd rather be doing at that time, you're going to wind up anywhere between 20 and 25 clips hooks and drops. Before we start adding the hooks, make sure you know where the youngins are and you've got your pet squared away. The last thing we want to do is wreck our trout line with a non-targeted species, especially one that can tell mama on you. So how do we make a drop? This is easy. We want that hook to hang about two feet below the main line. So take four foot of that smaller line and cut it off the row. Match those two ends together, tie an overhand knot and take a lighter and burn the cut in so they don't start fraying and come unwound. Which reminds me of a horse I was setting a straddle of one time to come unwound. Before it all ended, I'd done travel from one end of that rascal to the other before we picked out some soft rocks for me to land on when me and him parted ways. But something unexpected that comes unwound, it's never good. So tie a good knot and burn the ends. Now you've got a two foot drop of number 18 line and you're about to rock your first drop on your first trout line. Take a hook and feed the doubled line through that eye and pull the hook through the loop it formed on the other side securing the hook in one end of the drop. Now repeat that process by looping it onto the clip you've already attached to the line and bingo. You got it. Now do that for the rest of your line and you're ready to fish. But Brie, what am I going to do now? How do I get my trout line from the backyard to the river? I hope y'all really don't sound like that. Remember Memphis net and twine, they make an item called a plastic winder you can buy or you can make one out of a scrap piece of pallet. Or you can just use a five gallon bucket and hang the hooks from the inside and have all the line contained inside the bucket. Personally, I like the winder because it takes up less bait in my boat but using the bucket is usually faster to each his own. To me, the best tasting catfish is the belly meat off a flathead but we're not going to worry about targeting specific species of catfish right now. Outside of the mudcats, we'll take a blue cat, a chow cat or a flathead. Sometimes the mudcats are fine. It just depends on the water you're fishing and since we're headed to the river where the water's moving, we're going to be good with any of them. There's really no way to wrongly fish a trout line. More just better than others. Right now we're talking about fishing a river and the example I can give you is the mighty Celine River in Cleveland County. We're currently, as my niece continues her research, the count is up to eight generations of reefs that ran around that part of Arkansas breaking hearts, killing animals and catching fish. That's where the Lloyd Wilton buddy reef Celine River access is located. I have so many wonderful memories of this place and a lot more stories from down there that I'll share with y'all in the future. But now we've got to get some bait and you can catch some flatheads with live bait but you can catch them all with bait that leaves sin in the water. So on the way of the river, we'd stop and we used to get some beef liver, chicken hearts or livers at the grocery store and some folks would just buy some pre-made stink bait to use. Lots of folks make their own bait and we might talk about how they do that sometime but right now we're going to go with this. The river wasn't real wide and we could stretch the line across it pretty easy in most places. We just had to make sure that we waited it down enough where the boats wouldn't hit it and that shouldn't be a problem if you have it said right because fishing on the bottom is where you catch catfish so don't forget your weights. Get one end tied off to a stave or something solid on the bank near the water and run that line out at about 45 degree angle to the opposite bank. Now catfish feed upstream on the bottom and having your bait close to the bottom and at an angle gives the fish more opportunities to find it as he makes his way upstream. Once you've tied off each end, go back and get on the downstream side of your line. Catch a hold of it and pull yourself across the river, bait as you go. Remember to put enough slack on each end so your weights will pull it down near the bottom. We'd usually bait up an hour or so before dark and then either go back to the camp or build a fire on the bank and just sit there or we'd just go back home. We didn't live far from there so it really didn't matter but we'd run the line after dark a couple of times at night if we were camp close or if the fish were biting good. When we got all we wanted to clean or we didn't want to keep checking it throughout the next day we'd just take it up and get skin and fish. Y'all please remember to wear your life jackets and it's a lot safer when you're messing with a trout line to have some help. You're fishing in more water than you could drink if you fall in so watch yourself. Alright here comes the best part. All the struggle up to now is about to pay off when that peanut oil is 350 degree. It's the time to sleep that catfish fly into that golden cauldron of bubbling goodness. For the love of humanity here's how you do it. Now what I'm about to reveal has been a closely guarded secret for years. If Colonel Sanders would have had this mixture and cooked fish instead of chicken a dude would have been a general. This mixture has evolved over time but at my father's passing this was the recipe for his fish bread. We use the same one for all fish, croppy, brim, bass, it didn't matter this was it. It's our favorite. I'm happy to share it with y'all but y'all fix it how you like it. I was made by using three cups of yellow cornmeal and a big mixing bowl. Put a third cup of lemon pepper and an eighth cup of granulated goodness that takes your fish to the next level and that is Cajun land brand crawfish bowl. It doesn't take a lot because the flavors are pretty intense and concentrated but at that ratio at least for us the flavor is great and the kick ain't enough to knock the baby out of the high chair but you regulate it for what's best for you and yours. It's a lot easier to add than it is to take out. Also it's going to depend on how many folks you're trying to feed and definitely how much fish you have as to how much bread you make. A good rule of thumb is cooking about a half a pound of fish per person. If you're a little light on fish use little plates and make sure the taters and the hush puffers are out at the front of the serving line. There's a pro tip for you. I like soaking my fillets in sweet milk before I bread them but you ain't got to. You can just pat them dry and chunk them in the milk and bread them that way. I've had them both ways and I like them both ways. Makes no difference to me just be sure and holler when it's done. This is something the whole family can do from start to finish. You ought to be involved in them anyway. Mama's dad is young and his neighbor's old folks who don't like a good fishing trip or at least the community and bonding them a fish fry man it's good stuff. I hope you all have enjoyed this as much as I have. I hope you'll come back next week. We're going to talk about some more country stuff and have a good time while we're doing it. This is Brent Reeve signing off. Y'all be careful. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. ♪♪♪