mostly outnumbered by oversized carp. The carp thrived in those calm, shallow, sun-warmed backwaters. They thrived, that is, until Dad decided to teach us to fish in a rather unconventional fashion with the airboat as our launching pad.
It was simple fishing. No rod, no reel, no bait. Just Dad's homemade five-foot-long spear with five sharp prongs at the end. All we had to do was wait until one of those fat, lazy, backwater carp wiggled by, stand up quietly and throw the spear into the fish's back with one swift clean snap of the wrist.
During spawning season we'd see dozens of carp of all sizes wiggling around the shallow backwaters of the muddy Rock. We sure didn't need a fish finder back then!
In his attempt to increase our catches, Dad also bought a short, primitive fiberglass bow. The arrow had fishing line attached to it, so it wouldn't be lost in the mud if we missed our target. Trying to catch a fish with a bow and arrow was not only a challenge, it was a sport that definitely had its pitfalls. More than once the shooter lost her balance and fell into gooey waste-deep mud the consistency of face cream. But when you came up with a five-pound carp on the end of your arrow, the feeling of accomplishment made the mud bath worthwhile.
I remember taking my favorite bamboo pole along on the airboat a few times, but the dough balls I hastily created from the sandwiches Mother packed somehow didn't entice those carp critters enough to take advantage of my offer.
Actually, if you want to know the truth, we weren't really terribly serious when it came to fishing from the airboat. Dad said the carp that thrived in those backwaters were scavenger fish that had a muddy flavor and were too bony to eat anyway. So we were never too disappointed if our day on the river sent us home without a fish to our name.
But that doesn't mean we didn't constantly look for fish, because we did. The main sport, instead of catching them and frying them for supper, was to watch intently for the familiar V-shaped wake each fish created in the shallow waters. Then Dad would speed up the boat and cruise right over the top of those big shiny-backed beauties. It didn't hurt the fish, since the boat was flat on the bottom, but we'd laugh ourselves silly
knowing that if fish had ears they were probably wondering whether the world was coming to an end when our monster noise contraption slid over the tops of their backs.
The truth of the matter is that our hunting/fishing instincts were often abandoned at the dock and our natural resource/wildlife preservation instincts took over as soon as we hit the backwaters and shut off the Beast 's engine. Blue and white herons, dancing like ballerinas on their long skinny legs, paraded in front of us somewhat proudly as we whispered in the weeds. Wood ducks and mallards entertained us at sea level; red-wing blackbirds flitted from tree to tree on the backwater islands; and sometimes a skein of Canadian geese provided encore entertainment from the clouds.
Even the animals seemed to consider our silent contraption nonthreatening as we watched muskrats, beavers, woodchucks and water snakes slide around in the water and on the small islands near our primitive observation deck.
I remember one time in particular when it was neither fowl, fish, nor mammal that provided our most entertaining moment. It was my mother. Dad was showing off his boating skills to out-of-state relatives when he headed the airboat back to a lagoon and zoomed onto a low peninsula of grass and water lilies. The airboat started sashaying on a mud bank, and when Dad jerked the throttle back, to pick up speed and pulled a fast ninety-degree turn, my mother, who was perched on the starboard edge of the bus seats, was thrown clear out of the boat
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Cont. p.4
