In the Summer of Butch's 13 year his brothers and he were given a rare Saturday off from farm work. So they talked it over and decided to go fishing. Living in Southwest Indiana offered an interesting opportunity for them. At the time a child under 18 years of age wasn't required to have a fishing license in either Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky or Missouri. So they all decided it would be cool to fish in 4 diffesrent states in one day. They grabbed their fishing gear, loaded it all into his oldest brothers car and fist head to the Wabash River. They each caught dozens of green sunfish and just threw them back. Butch's Grandma had given him a cottage cheese cotainer of chicken livers and a big zebco reeled stout fishing rod of his Grandpa's to try and catch catfish with and Buth used it on the Wabash and caught a 20 pound flathead that went into the fish cooler. He caught the biggest fish of them all on the Wabash. After an hour and a half they left and headed south to the Ohio River and they stopped at a store on the way and all of Butch's brother bought a pound of chicken livers. Once again Butch caught the biggest fish, a 10 pound channel cat that went into the cooler. After an hour and a half or so they went over the river to Kentucky to a distsance cousin's property and a small lake that was supposed to be full of crappie and hybrid sunfish. Butch caught several redears and a warmouth and threw them back and then tied on a roadrunner and started hauling in the crappie, both black and white. he put an even dozen in the cooler knowing his Grandpa's favorite fish to eat was crappie.After about two hours they headed to Missouri once there they fished with crankbaits and caught a few bass in a small lake at a State park then they headed for home through Illinois and stopped at a fishing hole Butch's second oldest brother knew about. This was also a swimming hole for some of the local teenagers and there were a lot of girl in bikinis that upon seeingf them made Butch blush, This caused his older brothers to tease him mercilessly. Butch went off by hisself and cyhucked out a big chicken on a treble hook and sat down on a moss cover rock. No Sooner had his bottom made contact with the rock that he felt a tug on his line. It was a tremendous tug and his reeled down and set the hook like his father had taught him. and suddenly the pull on his line increased to the point where the fishing rod was almost pulled from his hands. He fought what he thought was a huge fish for over an hour when his brothers found him and started shouting incouragement and advice. He fought it and fought it until finally he was making some headway. Slowly, ever so slowly whatever this fish was on the end of his line was coming in. Then suddenly there was a rush right toward he had to real furiously to keep up with whatever this was then it slowly surged away again and he tried to turn it but couldn't. Again he started making headway ever so slowly bringing the monster fish in now the sun was starting to go down and in the long shadows of the sun's last light it broke the surface near the water's edge. Suddenly there was the head of the biggest snapping turtle Butch had ever seen. Slowly he got it to the shore none of his brothers wanted to you near it. Then his oldest brother pulled out his pocket knife and walked up to the snapper and just cut Butch's line within a few inches of the snappers mouth and turned to them all and said, "Let's get going home I told dad we'd be home by now." Butch just stood there sputtering. He couldn't believe his brother had just let the turtle go like that. Almost three hours of battle for NOTHING!!!!! Butch didn't talk to his older brother for almost a week.
Topic: The Story of Butch(2 new Installments p.4) (Read 14812 times)
