Cletus T.
Senior Member
Well this story took place a few years ago and it involved 3 key players and load of hybrid bass. Myself, my Dad and my Granddaddy were the 3 fishermen and the lake / pond we were heading to was a private pond that my Granddaddy got us on. It was a long time friend of his and the place that he had built was pretty amazing. Close to 400 acres that included 2 ponds. Good deer hunting, good turkey hunting…good dove shoots, basically just a little slice of Heaven if you’re an outdoorsman. One pond is a 15 acre piece of water that was the oldest pond and then the newest pond is 50 acres in size and was 27 feet deep at the dam. There are solar powered automatic feeders placed around the lake and the landscape is like something off of a fishing show you might see on TV. The lake had been stocked with Hybrid Bass and they were very aggressive in this small piece of water. There were also good largemouths, hybrid bream and catfish in there too. Now the bait of choice was hot-dog. That’s right……a cut up piece of hot-dog! Here’s the story of how my Granddaddy, my Father and myself wore out Hybrid Bass on Hot-Dogs…… in a pond.
So we get to the pond around 8:30 a.m., which is a little later than I wanted to get there but we HAD to go to Hardee’s and eat breakfast. My Granddaddy wouldn’t have it any other way. Plus, he’s not the kind of man that likes to eat his biscuit in the truck heading down the road. He likes to sit down and enjoy his meal. So after I take down my biscuit & gravy, my Granddaddy MAKES me go back up to the counter and order 3 buttered biscuits that we can put jelly on. Man, those things are good. Anyway we get there and Hal (the man who pretty much runs everything when it comes to hunting & fishing) shows us around the place and all I want to do is get to the pond, but I need to mind my manners. So we get there and at first we fish the smaller pond, which is loaded with fish too. I’m throwing a white fluke and these largemouths are wasting no time on trying to destroy it. Within the first 10 minutes I have caught half a dozen fish. My Dad catches a hybrid bream off of a 6-inch zoom lizard. Then my Granddaddy loads up on a monster cat and he is just a laughing and grunting as he fights this cat. He even had to stand up out of his chair to unzip his one piece body suit a little bit in order to fight this fish. He got it to the bank and immeditily asked me to take his picture with it, so I did. (Now, any of you who have read my story about my Granddaddy have already seen this pic, but I’m posting it again…..it goes with the story). We catch a lot of fish before Sparky suggest we get down to the “big pond”. Sparky by the way is a man who use to work for my Granddaddy when he had an appliance store in Sugar Hill. Sparky could and probably still can lift a washer & dryers up and carry them on his back. So Sparky leads us down to the “big pond” and I just knew it was about to get serious.
So we get down there and we start fishing right by this feeder and we catch a few small bass but nothing to write home about. Sparky tells us we need to go after those “silver fish”, those hybrids and we all agree. So he starts cutting up hot-dogs and laying them out on the back of his tailgate. He cuts them into little pieces, about the size of a quarter and he starts putting them on the end of our hooks. We walk up to the bank and me and my Dad cast out at about the same time. We look at each other with a half way grin and I know we are thinking the same thing. The thought was this, how in the world are we going to catch Hybrid Bass off of a hotdog? I mean, we are talking about a very aggressive fish that usually hits fast moving baits. You mean to tell me that this fish is going to hit a slow falling hunk of hotdog? Why…..Yes-Sir….it’s going to hit a hotdog. Our lines had hardly hit the water when both our lines started zinging. Our rods were almost jerked completely out of our hands. It took both of us a good solid 5 minutes to get these fish in. My forearm was on fire and my Dad couldn’t believe it. This went on for 2 hours straight. We had filled up two big coolers with meaty hybrids. They were all in the 4-7 pound range, “perfect frying size” according to my Granddaddy. These fish taste so good too and they actually fillet them up for you too. Its unreal the treatment you receive out there. Hal told us that these hybrids that live in the “big pond” will put on two pounds of weight every year no matter how much or how little they eat. He said that once they reach the 8 pound range they kind of level off.
The fishing was crazy and even though we had two coolers full of hybrids there were some “big ‘uns” that got away. There were many line snaps and one fish that I got a look at that was every bit of 8 pounds. Your fingers are raw by the end of the day and your back and arms feel like Jell-O. These hybrids though try and play possum when you lip them and bring them out of the water. They bend up and look all weird but as soon as you drop them back into the water they straighten right up and swim off. It really does feel like a lighting bolt hits then end of your line. You cast out your hunk of hotdog…….one one thousand….. two one thousand…..three one…..BAM…..a freight train has just smacked your line and you better hold on. It really is a place where you have to pinch yourself because at times you can’t believe it.
So at the end of the day these three anglers are whopped. My Granddaddy has already zipped his body suit down to his belly button. My Dad is rubbing Ben-gay on his fore arms and I have my shirt off and wrapped around my head to try and stop the sweating. They fillet up the fish and put them in freezer bags for us and send us on our way. So there we go down the dirt road on our way back to the main highway to start our trek back home. There was three generations of Buice men who looked terrible I imagine, smelt like fish guts and probably had bad breath too. It didn’t matter one bit though because as my Granddaddy says, “That’s something you ain’t never gonna forget”. He was right too, because as you can see…….I is still talking about it!
So we get to the pond around 8:30 a.m., which is a little later than I wanted to get there but we HAD to go to Hardee’s and eat breakfast. My Granddaddy wouldn’t have it any other way. Plus, he’s not the kind of man that likes to eat his biscuit in the truck heading down the road. He likes to sit down and enjoy his meal. So after I take down my biscuit & gravy, my Granddaddy MAKES me go back up to the counter and order 3 buttered biscuits that we can put jelly on. Man, those things are good. Anyway we get there and Hal (the man who pretty much runs everything when it comes to hunting & fishing) shows us around the place and all I want to do is get to the pond, but I need to mind my manners. So we get there and at first we fish the smaller pond, which is loaded with fish too. I’m throwing a white fluke and these largemouths are wasting no time on trying to destroy it. Within the first 10 minutes I have caught half a dozen fish. My Dad catches a hybrid bream off of a 6-inch zoom lizard. Then my Granddaddy loads up on a monster cat and he is just a laughing and grunting as he fights this cat. He even had to stand up out of his chair to unzip his one piece body suit a little bit in order to fight this fish. He got it to the bank and immeditily asked me to take his picture with it, so I did. (Now, any of you who have read my story about my Granddaddy have already seen this pic, but I’m posting it again…..it goes with the story). We catch a lot of fish before Sparky suggest we get down to the “big pond”. Sparky by the way is a man who use to work for my Granddaddy when he had an appliance store in Sugar Hill. Sparky could and probably still can lift a washer & dryers up and carry them on his back. So Sparky leads us down to the “big pond” and I just knew it was about to get serious.
So we get down there and we start fishing right by this feeder and we catch a few small bass but nothing to write home about. Sparky tells us we need to go after those “silver fish”, those hybrids and we all agree. So he starts cutting up hot-dogs and laying them out on the back of his tailgate. He cuts them into little pieces, about the size of a quarter and he starts putting them on the end of our hooks. We walk up to the bank and me and my Dad cast out at about the same time. We look at each other with a half way grin and I know we are thinking the same thing. The thought was this, how in the world are we going to catch Hybrid Bass off of a hotdog? I mean, we are talking about a very aggressive fish that usually hits fast moving baits. You mean to tell me that this fish is going to hit a slow falling hunk of hotdog? Why…..Yes-Sir….it’s going to hit a hotdog. Our lines had hardly hit the water when both our lines started zinging. Our rods were almost jerked completely out of our hands. It took both of us a good solid 5 minutes to get these fish in. My forearm was on fire and my Dad couldn’t believe it. This went on for 2 hours straight. We had filled up two big coolers with meaty hybrids. They were all in the 4-7 pound range, “perfect frying size” according to my Granddaddy. These fish taste so good too and they actually fillet them up for you too. Its unreal the treatment you receive out there. Hal told us that these hybrids that live in the “big pond” will put on two pounds of weight every year no matter how much or how little they eat. He said that once they reach the 8 pound range they kind of level off.
The fishing was crazy and even though we had two coolers full of hybrids there were some “big ‘uns” that got away. There were many line snaps and one fish that I got a look at that was every bit of 8 pounds. Your fingers are raw by the end of the day and your back and arms feel like Jell-O. These hybrids though try and play possum when you lip them and bring them out of the water. They bend up and look all weird but as soon as you drop them back into the water they straighten right up and swim off. It really does feel like a lighting bolt hits then end of your line. You cast out your hunk of hotdog…….one one thousand….. two one thousand…..three one…..BAM…..a freight train has just smacked your line and you better hold on. It really is a place where you have to pinch yourself because at times you can’t believe it.
So at the end of the day these three anglers are whopped. My Granddaddy has already zipped his body suit down to his belly button. My Dad is rubbing Ben-gay on his fore arms and I have my shirt off and wrapped around my head to try and stop the sweating. They fillet up the fish and put them in freezer bags for us and send us on our way. So there we go down the dirt road on our way back to the main highway to start our trek back home. There was three generations of Buice men who looked terrible I imagine, smelt like fish guts and probably had bad breath too. It didn’t matter one bit though because as my Granddaddy says, “That’s something you ain’t never gonna forget”. He was right too, because as you can see…….I is still talking about it!
