Looking across the Tenn-Tom Waterway from the West Bank, we saw young men playing basketball. Farther down a small boy twirled a smaller girl on a swing. Sam and I reminisced about when we’d twirl ourselves dizzy and tumble to the ground while everyone fell out laughing.
Sam noted a cormorant flying overhead. He expressed his disdain for cormorants. He says they are no good whatsoever. They eat up his fish. A lone duck landed in the river. A gaggle of geese foraged on the bank.
Sam pointed high in the sky, “I think that’s a bald eagle. Do you see a white head?”
Sam fumbled for the camera while I kept my eye on the eagle. It’s easy to lose a lone bird in the sky.
I watched the eagle get farther and farther away until Sam was ready. I gave directions, “In line with that skinny tree, over the top of the light pole, he’s moving to the right almost out of sight.”
It’s near about impossible to focus on a speck in a wide open sky, but Sam managed. He brought up the photo magnified a million times and said, “It’s a ‘bald-headed eagle,'” as we like to say.
There were no boat trailers at the launch, but a number of fishermen sat on buckets or rocks; some stood at the small spillway behind Plymouth Bluff. We pulled up to watch.
“Looks like the white bass are running,” Sam said.
We watched a couple walk to the rocks. She carried most the gear while he toted his fishing rod. She stopped and took a long drag on her cigarette.
“I wonder if they know snakes hang out in those rocks,” I said.
We never saw them catch anything. They’d have no fish to fry that night.
Another guy had a fisherman’s shirt on, the one with the big flaps; he kept putting his line in his mouth and I asked Sam why.
“He’s either cutting his line or warming his bait,” Sam said.
A father or grandfather sat on his bucket while two boys fished beside him. Every now and then one of them would pull in a fish. The fish twisted like silver in the sunlight. The boy pulled up the stringer and added a fish to the half-dozen or so. Fishing is a good thing for young boys and fathers and grandfathers.
The folks fishing were all spread out a proper distance apart. Fishermen don’t like getting too close. We bought our brother-in-law a lime-green T-shirt that said in 6-inch letters, “If you can read this, you’re fishing too close.”
Sam said once he was in his fishing boat easing down the bank. He got to a place where an old coot was fishing on the opposite side of the creek. When Sam started catching fish the guy hollered out, “Hey! You’re fishing my hole.”
Sam turned his back and eased on down the bank. Some folks would rather give you the shirt off their back than share their fishing hole.
You can help your community
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 32 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.