It had been a year or so since I had spent a night on the water. We were bored. Working third shift had its advantages, but when everyone else is sleeping and you are wide awake its time to find something to do. It was a Sunday night which was always the worst. No place was open late and the “regular” working world had to be at work in a few hours. Seth and I decided it was time to go fishing. Seth hadn’t done much fishing and it showed when he arrived at the house. He had a bucket cap and beer…I apparently was responsible for the rest. I had the trailer hooked up to the truck and everything else loaded when he arrived. We jumped in the truck and took off for Taylorsville Lake.
I had grown up on that lake. I fished it from the time I was probably 2 years old and spent countless nights fishing it with Dad. His second shift job allowed us to fish often at night. As I got a little older, we hunted the lake and the surrounding areas. It was one of the hidden gems in Kentucky if you were willing to put in the work. I knew the lake well and had some great fishing nights on it. Tonight we were targeting catfish. This was the lazy fishing.
We got there just before midnight and launched the boat. I didn’t trust Seth to handle either the truck or the boat, so I launched it like I was alone. It took a few extra minutes, but beat having to ask someone for a ride out to the boat floating away. I parked the truck and we got into the boat. It fired up right away and I idled us out past the no wake zone. Once we arrived at the buoys, I turned the boat to the left and put it up on plane. We ran back a half mile into the shallows of Big Beach Creek. Tonight we would be doing some pole fishing, but I was going to show Seth about jug fishing. The basic idea is to tie a short string to a milk jug or something similar and put a baited hook on the end of the string and then throw the jug into the water. As the jugs float through the creek, the catfish will find it and pull it under with the jug setting the hook. I had 20 jugs with us that we baited and dumped into the water. We trolled out to the front of the creek and kicked back. I tossed a line into the water to kill some time and dug a Pepsi out of the cooler while Seth was content on watching and drinking a beer. It wasn’t long before we heard the popping noise of milk jug handle hitting the water. I pulled out the spotlight to see one of the jugs skimming across the surface. We immediately trolled over and I grabbed the jug. When you have a milk jug with three feet of rope and no telling what on the other end, you tend to pull with some authority just in case. This one was a smaller cat, maybe two pounds. I took him off the hook and put him in the second cooler…not the one with the drinks. We rebaited it and tossed it back into the water. The action began to heat up. It wasn’t long before we were chasing down our second jug of the night. This was going to be Seth’s first try. He missed grabbing it on the first pass so we circled back around and this time he snagged it. It was about the same size as the first cat and he got added to the cooler. We continued to catch fish over the next two hours. I was barely able to get my line back into the water before we were chasing another jug. Most of the cats were between one and five pounds although we had one pull of the hook as we lifted it into the boat that was pushing 10 pounds. After two am the action began to slow down. I pulled over to the bank and started to bass fish. That’s how I learned to fish and always enjoyed it. Seth was pushing the limits of his drinking abilities and decided to lay down in the bottom of the boat, while I continued to fish. After another hour, I had stopped catching fish and decided that I would go collect the jugs. I turned around to find us completely fogged in. Staring at the bank from 20 feet all night, I hadn’t even noticed. I tried to drift around the creek and find the jugs and I managed to find a dozen of them, but no more. Now I was going to try to find my way back. I fired up the engine and Seth didn’t even budge. He was completely knocked out. I slowly headed in the direction of the dock or so I thought. Moving just past idle speed, I was getting no where fast. Not really sure of the time, I knew that it would be difficult to find the dock before sunrise. I headed towards what I hoped was a bank. I eventually found it and decided to fish my way back towards the dock. I managed to catch a few more bass and find two more of the jugs. Feeling confident I was headed the right direction, I continued moving down the bank. With Seth asleep, I knew I was in no rush. I got to a bend in the bank just before first light and knew exactly where I was. The fog was still so thick that you couldn’t see more than about 25 yards, but I decided to head across to the dock. I got there right at sunrise. Tying up the boat, I went to get the truck. Seth finally woke up when the boat hit the trailer. He asked the time and I informed him it was time to go home. He climbed into the truck never the wiser to the fact we were borderline lost for most of the night. I ended up going home and cleaning catfish and he left and avoided fishing again. I think that he found fishing to difficult on his drinking, but I found that even in the fog and lost until sunrise, I could continue to put fish in the boat. This wasn’t the last time that I would find myself lost in the outdoors, but it never lasted for long and was always semi-intentional.
Dirt Road Dispatch 