A Florida Fish Camp is a place nestled near a waterway or lake, connected to the water by docks and boat slips, and containing at least one fish cleaning station which is the communication center of the entire camp. The cleaning station is like the narrow neck of an hourglass. Everything of importance from the river and the land passes through the station. Action flows one way or the other, depending on the time of day and the weather. Fisherpeople (my how language changes) lug their catches from boats to dock and then flay or gut them on the well-worn counter boards. They wash the gore away in to an old recycled kitchen sink with a drainpipe that flushes back into the river. They cast unwanted fish parts back upon the water, as if they were sanctified offerings.
Humans gather to note other’s catches and hear fish stories. Non-humans, birds above the water and catfish and other scavengers below, also gather at this important place. On a high limb in an overlooking tree an Osprey perches waiting for a morsel to be thrown. The Osprey will catch a thrown fish mid-air and by circuitous route take it to her hatchlings in her high nest overhanging the river. At dusk, a large Horned Owl perches atop a dock post waiting to grab a fish from the hands of an unlucky cleaner. At first one is taken with the beauty of the owl. Too soon, as the owl darts in, talons forward, beak clicking, the owl becomes a thing to fear.
Recorded in the weathered and greasy wood of the cleaning station is every fishing story and lie ever told. The tales are embedded and lie dormant, waiting to be resurrected and told again. Amid the purifying puffs of blue smoke from cranked-up boat motors, current history is made and recorded. Today I heard about an 11lb bass with a mouth big enough to swallow a man’s full-balled fist. “Released him right here at the dock, they did,” a Georgia visitor raised his left hand and testified.
Yesterday I heard yet another tale about a boat rescue on Lake George, and another alligator-eats-dog story, which of course was followed by a story about a small child ripped from the hyacinth along the shore by an evil gator. Young and easily influenced boys hanging out near the station learn strange things about the world. Mostly, they learn how the truth is really a lie in the telling.
While flaying knives flash and people harvest the edibles from fish carcasses, the chattering is in constant counterpoint to the river’s sounds and sights. Abruptly, this morning, the station becomes quiet. Mouths are left open, dangling partially formed lies as all eyes are focused upon the head and back of a giant alligator swimming up river past the station. “Looks like a barge,” someone volunteers. If an Egyptian Funeral Barge had appeared, I don’t think the sight would have had as much impact as that leviathan of an alligator.
“Eighteen feet! No less’n that,” said a flaying aesthete. He held his long, thin bladed knife by its gory handle, pointing it at the river visitor.
“Goll gee, Joe Bob, that Gator’s bigger’n a big oak ‘round,” an old Florida Cracker with fish-scale skin and sun damaged ears commented. He held his greasy baseball hat with FLA logo up to shield his eyes from the sky light. He spit a gob of tobacco juice in the direction of the gator, and glared.
The Gator’s back looked to be 24″ across. His head had to be three feet of gnarled toothy jaw and bony ridges. His black eye caught a glint of light, which reflected, stabbed us. He tail-powered by silently, ignoring our glares and comments; knowing that he could tell stories that would best us all. It was some time before the chatter resumed around the gurgling sink. People were forming-up their versions of the event for future telling. This was the kind of event that great lies are made of.
John Paul Jessie Dobbins, “‘Ol JPJ” to his friends, grabbed at his plug with a red-brown stained eyetooth and what was left of a bottom molar. The plug ripped apart with a thready tangle of tobacco leaves. He gummed what he could and wiped the excess from his lips and out of the three day whiskers he hadn’t cared to shave from around his mouth. The back of his hand was then wiped off against his faded blue “overhauls,” as he referred to them. Still the tobacco leaves, soaked in some kind of molasses or sticky-sweet goop, stuck to his pants leg. There was plenty of sign that he had tried to wipe other “chew remainders,” as he called them, off on his leg. There was ample evidence that he wiped fish scales and slime, egg yoke and some kind of marine grease there also. He chewed steady now until he could raise enough spit. Then he let go and hit the cadaver of croppie floating out into the St John’s River.
“Goin’ out JPJ?” Jack Bob asked, hoping he could hitch a ride and fish with the notorious Bassmaster.
“Got me goin’, seein all these,” he said, pointing his gnarled thumb in hitchhiker fashion at the pile of croppies laying ready to be cleaned on the weathered boards. “Goin’ out. Wanna come as well?”
JPJ’s bass boat was one of the older models. It sat low to the water like a small version of a garbage skow, only just a tad cleaner. JPJ had “affixed,” as he called it, about six pole holders made of twisted metal to the sides of the boat. He could manage seven poles “hisself,” as he put it. There wasn’t really room for Jack Bob, but on this day he would sacrifice two poles, leaving a hole along the side for Jack Bob to fish through.
Johnson had made his boat motor sometime in the fifties. It had “Thirty-five” stenciled on each side, and “Sea Horse” could be read in weathered paint across its front. Ashless marine oil was added to the gas in copious quantities, because, as JPJ put it, “Man’s gotta make up fer ’em takin’ the lead outta go-juice.” As a result, a cloud of blue smoke followed the boat everywhere. When started cold, the boat disappeared in the cloud and people at the nearby cleaning station coughed a lot.
Bass were JPJ’s main interest. But this time of year croppies were spawning and easy to catch. JPJ and Jack Bob each had folks who would eat either, so the men went out across the river to find a hyacinth bed that the boat could be eased into. Best, was a floating bed in and around the trunks of trees. The Johnson coughed as it was cut, suggesting that the plug was downing in oil. That didn’t bother JPJ, he could “Off the cover” and clean the plug faster than Jack Bob or anyone could bait a croppie rod.
With JPJ’s five rods and Jack Bob’s two, the bassboat was a floating fish snag. Dangling there beneath the boat were plastic worms with squiggly tails and golden hooks. Why a fish would find them attractive is a mystery to most, but not to JPJ. “Tobacci juice is what’s does it,” he announced as he spit thick spittle onto his thumb and forefinger and fondled each jig. “It’s what attracts ’em to bite.”
Jack Bob’s glasses had slipped down his nose as they always did when he sweat a lot. He couldn’t free a hand to push them back into place so he tried to hunch his shoulder up and push the frames with it. No luck, so he glared over the rims and focused upon the hook he was baiting with a live minnow. That the minnow was an innocent not deserving of its fate never entered Jack Bob’s mind. He decided to hook the delicate thing through the mouth, catching just enough bone or gristle to keep the hook from pulling out. In the past he had always driven the hook through the tiny fish’s body near the tail, just below the anus. A guy from Missouri had explained to him that “minners lived a lot longer if’n you hooked ’em through the mouth.”
Jack Bob had it in mind to catch a bass and show up JPJ. Of course JPJ was watching Jack Bob out of the corner of his eye. He knew the tricky devil was up to “showing him bad,” as he said, but had faith that no self-respecting bass would ever go for Jack Bob’s hook.
Croppies came aboard from time to time as the morning passed. “Takes more’n a dozen or so to make a meal,” JPJ commented as he unhooked his sixth. Jack Bob jigged his plastic worm-baited hook, and tested the minnow’s strength on his other line. He was catching croppies enough, but sure wanted to hook something to jazz JPJ about. JPJ moved the boat far in under a swagging tree limb.
Jack Bob’s eyes got behind his glasses so he could see if that was really a snake overhead or, hopefully, a branch. Trying to act calm, he “ummed” at JPJ and caught the other man’s attention. He pointed with his nose at the four or five foot cottonmouth resting overhead. JPJ’s eyes got big, and his mind jogged a memory of another time when a large water moccasin had dropped into his boat. He grimaced, put a finger in front of his lips for quiet, and turned on his seat to get at the old Johnson, not knowing that the plug had enough oil and goo between its electrode to lubricate a whetstone.
Just as Jack Bob thought they could get out of trouble, wham! His “minner” looked coquettishly at a giant bass and the bass struck. His pole bend over and then whipped back up as the bass backtracked. The end of the pole danced in the air and, as if versed to goose, it poked into the side of the snake. The snake, trained since childhood to drop back into the water when trouble threatened, let go and was falling straight down.
JPJ already had the cover off the Johnson and was “out-screwing,” as he called it, the sparkplug when he felt something wet, meaty and heavy hit his back. He let out a whoop that attracted the attention of the whole crew out across the river at the fish cleaning station. All eyes watched as JPJ stood up in his boat, screaming.
Jack Bob knew the snake was in the boat. He saw JPJ jump up, and heard his screams. He wasn’t about to tell JPJ that what had hit his back was the big bass, yanked out of the water like a shot. He kept his wits and yelled at JPJ not to jump into the water. “Remember that big alligator we jist saw?” he hollered at JPJ. “Snake or what, you don’t want to tangle with that alligator!”
The men at the fish cleaning station knew something bad was happening to their friends across the river. JPJ was a controlled sort, not given to screaming. Jack Bob was a responsible member of the Old Guard, and it seemed out of sorts for him to be standing in the boat swinging a rope around his head. Every time the rope passed over JPJ he ducked and screamed. Jack Bob was heard to yell, “I cain’t let go.” The boat was rocking so hard it was making waves. JPJ’s feet were tangled in fishing line attached to the largest bass he’d ever seen. As the bass jumped around in the bottom of the boat, it drew the fishing line tighter around JPJ’s feet. He knew he was about to fall.
Jack Bob didn’t know if he had grabbed the cottonmouth by the tongue or tail. All his panicked mind could tell him was to keep it moving and not let go. Centripetal force was his only known hope. JPJ finally realized that Jack Bob had the snake. “Let go!” he yelled, “Let the damned thing go! NOW!”
It seemed the right thing to do. Jack Bob slung it around one more time, hard as he could, then let it go. It looped into the air, like a giant S, hissing through the air.
It didn’t take three seconds for the entire force at the fish cleaning station to vacate the spot and run. How twelve men, mostly old and some lame, managed to run back off the dock while keeping their eyes focused upon that flying snake, is a mystery. None tripped, but several took to the shallow water to get to shore.
The cottonmouth landed in front of the sink, coiled, caught its breath, and fainted. Warmed by the sun, it awoke in a minute or so and slithered off the boards and into the St. John’s, no wiser, and seemingly none the worse for wear. With its passing the men made their way back to the dock and out to the cleaning station. They weren’t there long when JPJ’s boat touched the dock and Jack Bob departed carrying a bass that could have “swallerd the whole damned snake,” as was said. JPJ huffed, wouldn’t answer questions, shifted the old Johnson into gear and disappeared in his own smoke.