A Little Old Time Technology!

  Occasionally, you just have to throw modern technology out the window and enjoy some good old fashioned methods.   While I have nothing against moving forward, sometimes moving backwards is a step in the right direction.  It gives us a break from everything that is bombarding us from all angles.  This afternoon, my friend came to visit the Bayou again.   The first words out of her mouth were  "Lets go fishing!"   I am always up for this so we headed to the pier with two brand new rods and reels.  Mark was too sweet to think of us by purchasing the new poles and new scoop net.  Of course he had an ulterior motive as we promised to catch a few crabs for him.  I had an idea!  Before we headed to the pier, I grabbed a ball of new, nylon builders' twine, some huge hooks and a few sinkers.  Darlene looked at me a bit strangely but never said a word.  She knows by now that nothing remains the same here and always expects the unexpected.  


  Once on the pier, I rigged the new poles and caught a few little mullet to use as bait.  "Here catch some catfish." I told her.   Once again, she eyed me suspiciously.  "Why?"  I informed her that we needed bait for our hand lines.  She shook her head and took a pole while I set to work on our hand lines.  A couple of minutes later, she had a catfish and I had the lines ready.  I cut a slice from the catfish and hooked it onto one line.  It was tied to one of the posts and tossed over.  This was repeated with three other lines but on the fifth line, she wanted to hook an entire fish so the mangled fish was used as bait.   We continued fishing with the poles but now had five hand lines tied to the posts.  "Just watch the lines and if you see the string move, you will have a bite."

  Nothing happened for the longest time.  Then one line started going out at a rather fast speed for a crab.  She pulled on the line and the unthinkable happened.  Yep, there was a crab but a humongous fish came out of the water and grabbed the bait.  It happened so fast that the fish was gone before we could do anything.  Then about an hour later, it happened again.  Our "crab" hand lines were getting better bites than our poles!  

  Sometime later, we had the brilliant idea to head to the Little Bayou House for a snack.  Mark had gotten a watermelon and that thing was just calling to us!  Before leaving we baited each hand line and made sure they were tightly affixed to the posts.  We figured that if something did bite, it would hook itself and do the work for us.  Our watermelon break took less than twenty minutes but when we returned to the pier, one line was stretched but empty.  three were right where we left them but the fifth had no bait but no hook either!  Something huge had broken that line!  (For those who do not know, builders' twine is nigh on unbreakable!)  She was so disappointed.  We waited for about another ten minutes.  Darkness was settling in around us so up came the lines one by one.  We carefully removed the bait and coiled the lines.  These would be used again.  Darlene picked up the last line and squealed!  "I got him!!!"  I turned in time to see her battling a monster!

  Since the line was a mere fifteen feet long, it took only a few moments before the fish was on the pier.  Uh, oh.  It was a gigantic stingray!  That thing had a four inch barb on its tail!  This was not the fish that had been biting on the lines earlier but at least she got a good pull!  AND we did catch a crab...one crab...but still a crab.  If the fish would have left the bait alone, I am sure many more fat crabs would have been in our bucket but, hey, who cares?  We were having fun with a bit of "new-fangled OLD technology"!  Who needs fishing poles anyway?