By Marty Dixon/Staff Correspondent
His past week has been rehabbing and fishing when I could.
To start with, let’s give credit where credit is due. Tuesday night’s tournament results were Kenny and Matt in first place with 11.69 pounds, second place went to Pockets and Greg with 9.43l pounds with a Big Fish of 5.60 pounds and third place went to Walter with 9.03 pounds. Three fish were weighed in at over 5.5. pounds. It was a rainy and stormy tournament with 23 boats participation.
Wednesday night’s tournament saw 17 boats try and beat the rain. The weights dropped somewhat with Dallas and Hunter taking home the gold at 8.87 pounds, the silver medal went to Jamie with 8.81 pounds and the bronze went to Dustin and Tracy at 8.28 pounds. The Big Fish went to Lynn and Sticks with 4.66 pounds. Five fish over four pounds weighed in.
Brother Butch and I scuffled around but had little to no luck. We just could not get on a solid bite all evening. Consequently, the boat captain and his peg-legged first mate took to the house to avoid driving back in the rain.
I fished on Monday morning during all the cloud cover with some success, managing to trick 10 or 12 fish onto the boat. I caught them on a variety of baits, including frog, swim jig and a chatterbait. The frog did the bulk of the work in getting the bigger bites. I should have put three or four more in the boat, but I had one come unbuttoned near the boat, in addition to missing two or three more due to my braced-up leg. I also completely missed two pretty good fish due to an unsuccessful attempt to get this peg leg planted on the trolling motor. The fish seemed to bite while I was shuffling my feet so in an attempt fish comfortably. That’s just how frog hops sometimes, I suppose.
This past Saturday, Butch and I fished a club tournament with the Poor Folks Fishing Club. It was a struggle all day while trying to fish with other 5,000 boats on the water. It was akin to fishing in a washing machine. It was no-holds barred out there, kind of like an old school taped knuckles “rasslin” match at the old Omni in Atlanta with Gordon Solie on the mic. We managed to weigh in a few, but 10 or 12 pounds of fish jumped off right next to the boat.
The Save of the Day went to Butch, henceforth to be refered to as The Surgeon. While we were fishing, a boat flagged us down to see if we knew how to remove a hook from a finger. Butch told them he had done it before, and the man crawled in our boat to have the hook removed.
The injured angler turned out to be Chris Pointer, whom Butch knew. We came to find out that I work with Chris’ niece Macy at Silver Lakes. With all the boats out on the water what are the odds of that happening?
I cut some braided line from one of my rods for The Surgeon to go to work. Butch hooked it up and popped the treble hook from Chris’s finger. Keep in mind that the hook was buried up to the bend deep in Chris’ finger, and he never flinched. Accordingly, Chris will now be referred to in this column on as The Macho Man. I would take Chris on as a tag partner in a barbed wire match anytime. At any rate, The Macho Man taped up the finger and fished on the rest of the day.
Kudos to Butch for being on point with hook removal and kudos to Chris for being tough as nails. My role was providing moral support while trying not watch the bloody procedure.
Hope to see you on the water. Tight lines and hook free to all!
Marty Dixon is a 1982 Sardis High School graduate and retired high school educator and coach. He was head coach of the Gadsden State women’s basketball team from 2015 to 2019. He and his wife Texann live in Gadsden. He can be contacted at fishn4funin02@yahoo.com and the Neely Henry Bass Fishing page on Facebook.