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By Tom Boggs

Last night I was gazing at an old piece of driftwood at the house, with some of my daddy’s fishing lures stuck in it, including his all time favorite, a simple red worm, rigged Texas style.  

Missing from the collection was my favorite lure, a Hawaiian Wiggler.  Daddy trusted me with that because it was not as apt to get hung up on a log or something as we walked down the Bogue casting up close to debris or a stump.  Of course, Daddy spent a fair amount of time untangling a backlash I was apt to create in my reel, but he knew just where to pull and tug to free it up.

I’ll always remember the day the State Lake at Octagon opened up at daybreak back in the early fifties, with the sounding of the police siren by Police Chief Howard Honeycutt. My uncle Jim Elliott was  down with his sons, and he was telling all of us that we’d better stand behind a tree to bait our hook on account of all those hungry fish just waiting to jump on somebody’s line.

There were some monster bass and shellcrackers caught in those waters over the years. Daddy used to fish with Salty Ol’ retired Navy Chief, Toby Pritchett. Now, Dad had the knack of catching bass when nobody else could. Folks could be fishing on the same side of the boat using the same lure, and might catch one bass for every six Daddy snagged. That happened to Toby one afternoon, and he got so mad he commenced to knocking off Daddy’s bass with his paddle.  Daddy got to laughing, and Toby got to cussing, but both of ‘em were having a time. 

Now, there were also some big ol’ Cottonmouth moccasins making their homes around the edges and inlets of those waters, and a Cottonmouth will make you do strange things. I still remember a nightmare I had one night about moccasins dropping in my boat from the trees all around me. Still makes me shutter. 

I have to chuckle just a bit to tell the story about when Daddy was fishing with one of my all time outdoors heroes, the late Walter Beshears. A man’s man if ever there was one. Well, a “no shoulders” dropped off a limb into the boat with them, but Walter immediately shot the snake.  Only trouble was he shot a hole in the bottom of the boat. End of the fishing trip. 

As I sometimes sit and gaze at those old lures, I conjure up all kinds of memories of BassMaster Tom Boggs, Sr hauling in big lunkers not only from the State Lake, but from Owensby’s Pond, Cicero Alson’s Pond, the two rivers, Barton’s Creek, and of course the meek little Chickasaw Bogue.

One could do worse than spending a while looking at a Daddy’s fishing lures stuck on a piece of driftwood, and recollecting fishing tales gone bye. 

Tom Boggs is a columnist for the Demopolis Times and a native of Marengo County. His column, “Days Gone Bye,” appears weekly.