Lets get back to Hunters Hole! I consider myself fortunate to have met Mr. Hunter when I was a boy, dad and I stopped at the house more than once. From a trivia perspective, I really scored one year up at the Yuma Rod and Gun Club Fish Fry held at Fishers Landing. Those weekends were HUGE and drew tremendous crowds, I had so much fun there with the DeLaughters who always included me and on more than one occasion my dad made the trip too. On those weekends the crew would rent cabins or the apartments for sleeping instead of camping on the river. Anyway, on one of these wild weekends, I was with Kenneth McKay waiting for the food line to go down and sitting on the bench outside the original restaurant/store were Mr. Hunter and Mr. Fisher, both very elderly gents then, deep in conversation of the old times. Kenneth pointed out to me that we were seeing history as both the hunter and fisher were together and had places named after them. I recall we just stood close listening to them talk about stuff, something Id buy a ticket to do today were it possible! My dad was even impressed when I told him about it, history gone forever I suppose. Now my dad had known Mr. Hunter since he was a young man. Theyd of course been to the Hole for fishing many times, but they worked in the fields and farms around the area. One memorable encounter with Mr. Hunter came when my dad was a teen. The boys would sometimes swim the river back in those days when it was always running strong. By the time they would put in and swim across, theyd be nearly two miles down. So one particular day, dad and at least one other buddy decided to do it and handed their clothes over to a third gent, who was to drive down to a designated spot way down river to pick them up. Well, being a prankster, he didnt show, leaving dad and his other swimming partner stranded with no clothes, near Gadsden and the sun going down, not good! The closest place was the Hunters homestead and they got there, but they were naked. Eventually dad got up the nerve and knocked on the door, Mr. Hunter came out, understood the dilemma they were in, but all he could offer was gunny sacks to wear. They took them and eventually hooked a ride back to Somerton wrapped in gunny sacks, hilarious! I dont remember who the other guys were, especially the one who stranded them, but he wasnt laughing nearly as much once my dad got hold of him….Im guessing it would have taken more than a gunny sack to make things better. Fishing though, thats what Hunters was all about and everyone knew it. Talk about popular, there were times when vehicles were parked all around up on the high levee bank and still have three trucks down by the water, some with boat trailers. It seemed we fished mostly for bass and perch, but there were also channel catfish on the bottom and back in the day, mullet. Now that the river water has been gone for so long, Id guess mullet are forever gone even with pulse releases from the dams up north. Mullets were harder to catch; theyd ignore worms, shrimp, crawdads, the normal bait, but would sometimes eat corn or one time I saw my dad catch one with balled up bread. Most of the time though theyd cruise right by the bank and some of them were huge, but you might as well have been trying to fish through glass as theyd go right by your bait. Depending on the river flow and shifts in the channel, dark back water would pool north of Hunters and wed sometimes hike back in, the mullet in there were simply monsters, but again wouldnt hit any bait, more vegetarian in nature and apparently feeding well with what was in the water. Over the years they just seemed to be uncatchable and frankly most of us boys at least gave up thinking wed ever get one on a stringer, but I was to be shown to never say never in a big way! One weekend, I cant remember Saturday or Sunday, however Sunday seems right, Stanley and Janice Phillips, Bud McKay and others were going to be fishing at Hunters, but Buck had to take a call in the south valley, worked called. Not to be deterred, he packed me Faye and Linda on the old yellow APS truck and dropped us off at Hunters while Paco went to take care of matters, intending to join us later, which he did. Anyway Stanley had his aluminum boat out on the lake with Bud, Kenneth, Jerry and Rick when we got there, I immediately fished from the bank. I personally was happy to see Stan in the boat instead of his other fishing platform. Stanley Phillips was (is) a deep thinker and yes, another Somerton sailor. Short of an outbreak of the rabies, Soma boys joining the Navy was the next most feared and prevalent disease, hitting the area hard (I myself have scars to prove it!). This was decades before internet shopping, so how Stan came up with his latest fishing idea/outfit/tactic keeps me guessing today as to how the whole experience came about, but Ill not forget how it turned out! Okay, it was a canvas outfit that enclosed a tire inner tube allowing a person to sit inside canvas pajamas, which were sort of like waders, but not completely sealed up. The idea being you could cast, fish, harvest many thousands of fish, all the while standing, wading or flipping your feet and legs to navigate to even more lucrative fishing spots, at least thats what I imagine the advertisement offered. Janice told me and dad many years later that when they first got it, she and Stan went to a drainage ditch southwest of town that was producing some good bass; the idea being hed drop in, fish and shed follow along the bank in the truck. Well, she followed all right, but the current was much faster than anticipated due to heavy run-off and Stanley was floating rapidly down-stream bobbing like a beer bottle headed over Niagra Falls! She drove almost a mile until they could coordinate on the bank and get him out of his contraption; fast moving water was a big NO, however, Hunters Hole wasnt fast moving water. I happened to be there for his trial run and it was just the opposite, too much calm water. Floating 6 foot away from us boys on the bank and not being able to flip your feet effectively to move anywhere except in a circle was frankly disappointing, especially as we were now having to cast over his spinning, cursing craft. As luck would have it, someone we knew had a boat and was heading out of the lake to the river and agreed to slowly tug Stanley over to the other side of the hole near the bamboo and toolies where the bass must be hiding. We watched with great excitement as The USS Stanley was towed away from us, already dreaming of a huge fish fry, but that fervor was soon dampened. It seems that the bass had apparently decided to swim off to Cabo for the weekend, leaving poor Stanley with nothing to do but flap his legs in order to get himself back to shore and we waited….and waited some more. Observing Stans forward progress against the size of Hunters Hole at the time, I quickly calculated by way of the lunar cycle that when he got to the shore, Id be greeting him with a beer bought from my first Social Security check, but thankfully the same boat came back and towed him to safety….I never saw or heard of the canvas-tube-pajama fish catcher again. So back to Hunters with a boat, Buck shows up and joins Stanley in the boat (I think Bud and his bunch had left), but they arent catching anything and neither were we on the shore. However the men were stubborn, staying out to the last minute, the sun going down when they headed in. By the time they came to the shore we had flashlights out to guide them and observed the strangest thing; wherever we flashed light out over the lake, mullet would jump in huge numbers chasing the light…WTH? We repeated the experiment many times and always the same thing, jumping fish! Immediately we all came to the same idea, push the boat back out, wed shoot light over the water and fish would simply jump in the boat, no canvas-inner-tube-PJs, nothing, just free fish! We did and it worked, but it worked too well, the fish were knocking the crap out of our fishermen! They came right back to shore, unloaded fish, Buck grabbed his hard hat from the APS truck and went back for more, this time with me and Linda directing the work trucks spotlight out over the water and helping fill the boat with more fish; Ricky and Jerry doing the same holding handheld lights. When we got home that night I ran over and told my mom and dad, they initially didnt believe me until my dad walked over to Bucks and immediately started to help clean a load of fish! Im not finished with this fun-filled place yet, just need to take a break. Tomorrow is Sunday, maybe Ill have fish for dinner, but I cant remember the last time I saw mullet at the market, I guess Ill have to settle for something else. No matter, fish all tastes the same when I wear my canvas waders and inner-tube at the table! :)
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 01:14:55 +0000