When I was young boy growing up in Chicago I rarely saw my father, with the exception of the time spent at breakfast and dinner. He was working two or three jobs and had little time for little league baseball and hockey games, let alone fishing. At the time, I didn’t understand why he couldn’t attend the games, but I kept myself busy after school by playing sports with my friends and occasionally taking a fishing excursion to the “Queen of Heaven” cemetery with my brother, to catch some magnum carp. By the time my father had retired, I had moved to Dallas, Texas, and after several years I bought a house in Rockwall (semi-East Texas) right on Lake Ray Hubbard. The huge reservoir (nearly 30,000 acres) offered outstanding fishing for white bass, hybrid stripers, largemouth bass, catfish, and crappie, and when a “Bass Pro Shop” was built on the lake I was in seventh heaven. Once I had moved into my home I was determined to take the old man on the fishing trip that he never had.
My buddy Bill who worked at the post office also doubled as a fishing guide on Cedar Creek Lake and when he informed me that the hybrid striper and sand bass had began to spawn in the small tributaries leading to the lake I became fired up. “We’re going to have to walk through some brush to get down to the creek,” he told me, “but when we get there we’re going to slaughter them.” That little tid-bit of information was enough for me. I immediately called my brother in Chicago and told him the fish were beginning to spawn. “I’ll call Southwest Airlines as soon as I get of the phone,” he informed me, “and make reservations.”
“Before you do that, call dad, and see if he wants to come; we can fish Cedar Creek, Ray Hubbard, Fork, and Tawakoni.”
“That sounds awesome; I’ll get right on it.”
The following weekend I picked them up at Love Field and gave them the fishing itinerary. “First stop is creek fishing with Billy at Cedar Creek,” I told them. “There may be a little hike involved but when we get there, we’re going to find some ‘lunker candy.’ ”
“Well I hope it’s not too far, “my father said, “My arthritis has really been bothering me.”
At the age of seventy-five, I noticed that my father’s arthritis was considerably worse than the last time I saw him. “Don’t worry: it will be a piece of cake,” I told him.
We met Billy the following morning at a truck stop in Kaufman County. After piling into his truck, Billy sped down Interstate 75 and then began a circuitous route down several farm-to-market roads. Pulling up on a gravel path in a farmer’s cotton field, Bill announced that we were at the happy hunting grounds.
“I don’t see any water Bill,” I said.
“We have to take a short hike through the field to get to the creek,” he said, “but don’t worry; It will be well worth it.”
We gathered our gear and followed Billy through the field in single file. After about a half of mile, my father was gasping for air. “Hey Bill, my father has bad arthritis; where in the hell is this place?” I asked.
“Keep going─we’re almost there.”
We trudged another half mile and approached a dense thicket. “We are going to go through this brush and the creek will be at the bottom,” Bill said. I glanced at my father and he looked like he was about to pass out. “Bill, the brush is pretty thick─you think George Bush might be around?─I hear he is real good at clearing brush.”
“Just follow me, and quit with the wisecracks; I’ll cut a path.”
Billy pulled out a mini-machete and disappeared into the thicket while we followed closely behind him like a troop pursuing the scout leader. The brush was so dense that it blocked out the morning sunlight and I began to feel like I was marching through a jungle somewhere in Southeast Asia. A branch of thorns swung and slashed my face and I could hear my father cussing behind me. We finally emerged from the thicket and Billy announced that we had arrived. I looked into the gulley and saw a small creek that was no more than four feet across at its widest juncture. “You have got to be friggin’ kidding me,” my brother said, “You couldn’t catch a stinkin’ crawdad out of that thing.”
“Believe me; they’re in there,” Billy affirmed. “Drop your jigs in the pockets of the creek and you will find out.”
We couldn’t believe what we were about to do, but we followed Billy’s directions. Splitting up in different positions, up and down the creek, we began fishing the pockets of the winding arroyo. Somewhere in the distant foliage I could hear my brother screaming, “Got one!” Looking up to see what direction he was screaming from, I felt a sudden tug on my line. I set the hook, my pole doubled over, and I proceeded to yank in a five pound hybrid from a small pool no larger than a bird bath. “Well I’ll be dogged,” I said to myself. Putting back in I immediately felt another power-jerk on my line and pulled out another football-sized hybrid. Pulling him to the side of the shoreline, I estimated the fish had to be in the seven pound range. This routine continued until I caught up with my brother, who was fishing around the bend and had about eight nice hybrids lying on the muddy shore of the creek.
“This place is friggin’ unbelievable,” My brother said, “Who would expect fish to be in this poor excuse for a creek?”
“Where is dad at?”
“Don’t know. He probably went looking for a McDonalds.”
“We better go find him just to make sure everything is all right.”
My brother and I hiked to the next bend in the creek and looked down into the gulley. There we found my father knee deep in mud with seaweed wrapped around his body, looking like some type of human spinach wrap. “What in the hell are you doing down there?” I asked.
“I had a big one, but I slipped in the mud and fell in; son of a bitch got away.”
“We had better get down there and get Moses out of the water before that seaweed pulls a Little House of Horrors on him,” I told my brother. Sliding down the embankment, we grabbed my father by the arm and jerked him from the muck.
“Where’s my shoe?” he asked.
“It’s probably three feet under that muck,” I told him.
We have to go in there and get it─those things are brand new; I just bought them at Payless”
“ Screw your shoe; we’re not going in to get your Payless shoe. Gather your gear Geppetto: We're out of here.”
Making our way up the hill, we rendezvoused with Billy and then headed home. We were covered with thorns and our bodies had been ravaged by mosquitoes, but we also had our limit of hybrid stripers. My father sat silently in the back seat of the truck pulling strands of seaweed from his hair while the rest of us bragged about who caught the biggest fish. He finally broke his silence, “Wouldn’t it just be easier to go to McDonalds next time.”
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