Stumpknocker: The Gatortail Fishin' Contest

Stumpknocker: The Gatortail Fishin' Contest(Phil Penne) I just got back from a trip to Stumpknocker, Florida, my favorite place in the whole wide world.

I was driving past the Crickley’s house and there was Gatortail - that’d be the twins Gayle and Taylor in case you don’t remember - and they were on their front porch, hollering at one another and shoving. Alma, their mama, came out there, shooed them off the porch and onto the front yard and told ‘em to break it up, but they were so busy squabbling they didn’t even pay her no mind. She’d got her hand bit a while back when she tried to break up the fight between the neighbor’s dog and their mutt dog, Gumball, so she knew better than to get in the middle of them. Their mama did just like she did to break up the fighting dogs - she just walked out to the front of the house, picked up the garden hose, turned it on and let ‘em have it. They stopped hollering and slapping at each other real quick and scattered.

Well, that at least got Gatortail outta’ their mama’s hair, but once they got outta’ earshot of the house they took right back to squabbling again. Now mind you, they didn’t even remember what it was they were arguing about, they just knew each one of ‘em was right and wasn’t no way they gonna’ back down. So what it finally came down to is that they needed some way to settle things. Even though it had absolutely nothing to do with deciding who was right, they decided that a fishing contest was the way to figure out who was going to be the winner. They went to the shed and grabbed up their poles and put some good black dirt from their mama’s garden in a plastic Cool Whip tub, then dug around and found a bunch of earthworms to put in it to use as bait. Once they had everything they needed they headed off for their favorite fishing spot on Scrubjay Crik.

Now Scrubjay Crik is fed by a little spring that seems like it’d make a good swimmin’ hole but let me tell you, the water coming out of that spring comes from who-knows-how-far underground and is cold as all get out. Shoot, even in the middle of July, down there in south Florida where Sumpknocker is, that water is so cotton-pickin’ cold if you try to run and jump in you’ll bounce across that water just like an skipping a stone you chuck into a lake. It’s just about like doing a cannonball on to a iced over pond up north. So anyways, Gatortail they go over to Scrubjay Crik, quite a ways downstream from the spring where the creek starts getting kind of weedy, and they get their cane poles all ready and they’re just about ready to toss their lines in the water when Gayle said she wanted to know how they’d knew who won - who caught the most fish, or who caught the biggest fish. After arguing back and forth they finally decided that it wasn’t going to matter who caught however many fish; whoever caught the biggest fish was going to be the winner. They also agreed that they’d fish until noontime, then it’d be time to get home for lunch.

So once that was decided they each went to their favorite good luck fishing spot, baited up their hooks and dropped their lines into the water. Well not much happened at first. They just sat there with their lines in the water without so much as a nibble. That was understandable, what with all the ruckus they’d been raising it probably scared the fish away. After things were quiet for a while though, things started to happen. Taylor’s bobber jiggled a few times then went under the water. He snatched upwards on his pole and pulled out this little bass. Wasn’t much of a fish as bass go, but it was plenty enough to start Taylor bragging. He was jumping up and down and dancing around, poking his finger at Gayle’s face, whooping and hollering about how so far he had the first fish, the biggest fish, the only fish, the prettiest fish and what have you. Gayle she just sat there with this kind of “I’m gonna’ spit in your corn flakes when you ain’t watchin’” look on her face. After a while Taylor settled back down and pulled the tape measure that their mama used for sewing out of his pocket and measured the bass before he tossed it back in and it came out to not quite eleven inches. You know, it’s funny: Gatortail’s mama always wonders why her tape measure always seemed to smell funny. She’ll ask Gatortail to come over and sniff it; well, naturally both of them say that, nope, it smells just fine to them. Wonder if she’ll ever figure out what’s going on. So anyway, Taylor chucked the critter back in the water and they went back to fishing. Soon as the fish came back after all of Taylor’s whooping and hollering he had another bite and this time pulled up a fair sized stumpknocker. So by now Taylor’s grinnin’ like a possum and Gayle she’s really starting to fume.

So this kept going on and on - Taylor, he’s pulling in one fish after another after another and Gayle, she’s sitting there and hasn’t got so much as a nibble. They even went so far as to change spots - well, they did after Gayle threatened to punch her brother in the nose is he didn’t switch places with her. They switched, Gayle put a fresh worm on her hook, they dropped their lines in the water and not thirty seconds later Taylor gets another hit and before you know it he’s got a bucketmouth flopping on the bank. One that happened poor Gayle, she just plain gave up. She said that she quit and just wanted to go home and that Taylor won but, no sir, he didn’t want no part of it. Taylor decided that he was gonna’ do it up right and catch an even bigger fish just so he could rub it in Gayle’s face.

So Taylor he tossed his line back in the water and Gayle she just started passing the time doing whatever. She’d wander around for a while, then she’d look for funny looking bugs and try to catch lizards, then she finally got bored with all that and just sat down on a big old hunk of limerock on the bank. She had a weed her mouth she was chewing on and was coolin’ off her feet in the water. Taylor was still hauling in fish after fish and was snortin’ and laughin’ each time he hauled on in. By this time Gayle was pretty much ignoring him and was just staring off into the woods on the far side of Scrubjay Crik.

All of a sudden Gayle lets out this yelp and starts thrashing around, looking like she’s about ready to go sliding off that rock into the creek. She’s grabbing on to bushes and whatnot trying to get herself pulled further up on the land, and the whole time she’s screaming like a banshee. Taylor’s bobber has gone under again and the end of his pole is twitching but he’s not paying it any mind. He’s looking at her and sometimes he’s pointing and laughing and other time he’s staring at her like she’s lost her marbles.
Gayle finally managed to get herself stood up on her good leg, while the other one was still thrashing around in the water. About that time she lost her balance and fell backwards and her right leg came flying up out of the water with the biggest catfish you’ve ever seen latched onto her big toe. Even after falling back onto dry land that thing was still chomping onto her toe. She was hopping backwards and jumping up and down, still whooping and hollering, while that big cat was getting dragged around and beat up and down on the ground. After a time she finally wore out that fish with all her dancing around and he let go of her toe.

Now, let me tell you, compared to that big old catfish that Gayle just pulled up, anything that Taylor had caught looked kind of like a mosquito fish next to a bull shark. Taylor he started whining and complaining about how that wasn’t fair because she didn’t catch it with her pole, but Gayle said tough luck, because that was never in the rules. All the fish that Taylor caught had been thrown back, but Gayle decided she was keeping this one. She carried that big old cat all the way home. Time she got back to the house her back was sore and her arms were hurting, but she was happy as all get out, walking down Main Street toting that fish, with everybody making over her and saying that was the biggest fish of any kind they had ever seen taken out of Scrubjay Creek.

Mama cleaned up Gayle’s toe and dabbed it with iodine, which Gayle wasn’t wild about because it kind of stung, but then mama wrapped up her toe with a big wad of gauze just like Gayle asked. She wanted that so she could wear flip-flops to school and so anybody who didn’t know about the fish she’d caught would ask her about the big bandage on her toe, then she could tell them the whole story. Their daddy cooked up that catfish in the smoker and they had it for dinner that night. After Taylor had poked fun at Gayle the whole day long, now he had to sit there while she rubbed her belly and make yummy sounds and their mama and daddy said that this was the best tastin’ fish they ever ate.

So that’s how it happened with the Great Gatortail Fishin’ Contest in Stumpknocker, Florida, a place where you can still see the stars at night.