Red Wigglers
By Glenda Barrett
“Now if you’ll bait your hook with one of these worms and spit on it, you might get a bite,” Mamaw advised as we sat side by side on the muddy creek bank in North Georgia, getting our lines ready to cast into the dark, green water.
When Mamaw’s arthritic hands became tired, she’d prop her crooked cane pole in front of her on a forked stick. Next, she’d open her cotton drawstring bag, take our her Dental Sweet Snuff, and put a pinch in her mouth. Then, with a look of pure contentment, she’d lean back and watch for a nibble. Once she offered me a taste, but it didn’t take me long to see that I could turn it down forever.
Usually we dug our own worms, but sometimes we’d go to the bait shop. Once, when I was about nine, we found a lot of worms while gardening, but we didn’t have a can to put them in. Mamaw asked me to carry them home in my hands. We had started along the road to her house, when they began crawling in my hands. Pretty soon, it got so unbearable that I threw them in the middle of the road, and they crawled off, probably as relieved as I was.
Once we arrived at our fishing spot, the next thing was baiting the hook. Mamaw hooked the worm in a way that left none of her hook showing. She said if the fish could see the hook, they wouldn’t bite it. I just stuck the hook through the worm and left both ends dangling. I’d get a lot of bites but not many fish.
Mamaw’s version of hook baiting was clearly superior. After she caught several fish, she’d ask me to break a forked limb out of a tree, put the fish on it, and stick them in the edge of the water to keep them fresh until we went home.
On a good fishing day, we’d run out of worms and she’d say, “Glenda, see if you can find some up in the woods behind us or under some rocks, but be careful for snakes.” Usually, I’d find two or three worms, and we divided them so we could fish longer. Sometimes, Mamaw would caution me to be quiet or I’d scare the fish, or to wear dark colors, because light-colored clothing would scare them, too. Or maybe it was the spit. She’d say, “If you’re not getting a bite Glenda, try spitting on your bait, sometimes that will give them an appetite!”
I believed everything she told me and even tried that, but I will say that was my least favorite piece of advice. Anyway, something worked, because she almost always had a string of fish to carry home, while I usually caught nothing but a good case of poison ivy.
There was never one fishing trip that I didn’t have the frustration of getting my line out of the top of a tree or hanging it on a root in the bottom of the lake. Each time, Mamaw laid down her pole and helped me get mine untangled. If it was tangled on a root, invariably she’d say, “Glenda, you might have a hold of a big mud turtle!” I know my big eyes widened considerably at that comment.
At the end of the day, I’d start getting tired and bored and begin to throw rocks in the water. Before long Mamaw would say, “Glenda, I guess we’d better start home.” Then, she’d fish a few minutes longer just in case another fish might swim by. Finally, we would pack up our chairs, poles, bait cans, and fish, and climb in the car. On the way home, we’d try to give the fish to each other, because neither of us liked to clean them. We usually ended up dividing them, but we always counted them to see who had caught the most.
One day, after Mamaw was in her nineties and in a nursing home, I decided to take her a couple of trout, pan-fried golden brown to stimulate her appetite. As she daintily picked bits of fish from the bones with her frail fingers, she shared stories of her fishing trips.
She didn’t include all the bits I recalled of worm finding and hook baiting, but I saw the twinkle of contentment in her eyes as if the two of us were starting out all over again, ready to “Bait a hook with one of those worms and spit on it,” knowing that at least one of us had the skill to bring home dinner.