| Out on the lake water at night everything is black. The boys had flashlights which illuminated the area right in front of them but beyond the first fifteen or twenty feet everything turned to shadows or reflections of the flashlights on the water depending upon where they were aimed. All along the bank of the lake it is lined with trees that have branches which hang down over the water making the perfect places to tie off the trot lines. Further down from where the boys had their trot lines run was more trees with more branches hanging over the water. It was there the boys hung the remains of the fish they had cleaned. Just a little care you could tangle a catfish in the branches but most the time the boys still had some string tied to the big fish’s head so they would use that string to tie the head and the body along with the guts of the fish so it hung over the water in the shallows. Boats that would go by during the day would be treated to seeing what the big catches were of recent times. Usually the fish didn’t hang there for more than twenty-four hours before they were gone. The boys figured it was probably raccoons. The remains of the catfish were somewhat gruesome because of the way the boys filleted the fish. Catfish basically have just the spine that runs the length of their body. A good fillet person can just pull the skin off the fish and then slice the meat off the carcuss and they can take two fillets. One from each side of the fish. What is left is the head, the guts, the fins and the boney spine with the tail fin at the end of it. Coincidentally bears are known for eating the parts of the fish which were left hanging, up in Oregon and those areas. Just something that occurred to the boys when they started noticing their hangings were disappearing in a much different manner than before and in much larger numbers. next page |  |