The Old Man trudged through the shallow pond, carefully keeping the wooden handle at his end of the net upright and the lines between us fairly tight, guiding the bottom through the mud and turning the seine in an arc. I stood with my toes in the water and held an identical handle on the net’s other end. With its base pressed into the soft ground at water’s edge, the four feet of hickory sapling I held ended just above the bill of my cap.
We were gathering small fish for bait. They would have been sunfish of some variety, but we called them all pool perch. They were good, free trotline bait for when the flatheads were biting.
Presently the Old Man completed his arc and stood 12 feet down the bank from me.
“Without picking it up, lean the top of your end back, then slide the bottom out onto the bank,” he said. “Keep the net tight, but not too tight. Just don’t pick up the bottom or let it go loose. Take your time, but don’t go too slowly. Go ahead.”
Even at a single-digit age, I realized this vague batch of instructions was not likely to yield a perfect result. I tried to pull the base of the net forward without lifting it, which did nothing good.
“You’re leaning it forward,” the Old Man said as I leaned my end forward. “Pick up on it.”
“But you said not to pick it up.”
“Pick it up a little but not much,” he said.
I picked my end up and started to pull it onto the bank.
“Not that high!” he said. I put my end back down.
“Pick it up just enough so you can barely scoot it out onto the bank,” he said.
I figured this was as clear as things were going to get, so I dragged my end of the net out of the water and onto the bank as he did the same.
“Now flip the top over to keep them from jumping out,” he said, neatly laying the bottom of his end flat on the bank and covering it with a nifty whip of the top of the net.
I tried to do the same and my part fell flat, tangling in the grass. My half of the perch sprang into the air like popcorn.
“Nope,” the Old Man said, laughing quietly to himself and scrambling to rake most of the departing bait into a bucket, “that’s wrong.”
“How am I supposed to learn how to do it?” I asked, frustrated. “I couldn’t tell what to do just from what you said.”
“You have to practice,” he said.
“How will I know when I’m doing it right?” I asked.
“When I don’t tell you it was wrong.”
I fumed, wondering if other kids had somebody telling them what they were doing wrong all the time. If they did, I know now, they were mighty lucky.
Kevin Tate is a freelance writer. Email [email protected].
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 35 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
