They are no good to eat but sure are fun to catch. 

That is what I thought growing up though I have since heard people say they are quite good eating if you clean them right. Their flesh is jelly-like and I was told very bony but supposedly you can cook them up as fish patties, fry them, throw them in a stew or smoke them. But for me it was always about catching them.

The mudfish (Amia Calva) is also known as the bowfin or dogfish. They are fresh water and range throughout the Mississippi, the Gulf Coast and along the Atlantic Coast rivers and streams as far north as New York.

They look like a throwback to an earlier era and they should, they have been around for 180 million years. They breathe air via their swim bladder and when oxygen content in the water is low they just gulp oxygen directly from the air.

They are easy to recognize, they don’t look like any other fish. They are broad across the head like a catfish but the rest of them is unique. They have a long wavy dorsal fin and a paddle-style tail. Their lower fins are much smaller than the dorsal and their heads are smooth. They range from 2 to 5 pounds on average but often go up to 6 or 8 pounds. Anything larger than that is unusual and described as a “lunker.” The state record is a whopping 19.0 pounds according to Florida Fish and Wildlife.

And while most people don’t fish for them, there is even a Bowfin Anglers Group on line today with fishing tips and recipes.

Mudfish bite lures or baitfish and I have even caught them on worms. Guess they were really hungry that day. One thing for sure, everybody agrees they put up a helluva fight and can be mistaken for big bass before they are landed.

When I was a kid and visiting my grandparents in Gulf Hammock I spent a lot of time fishing. Nobody thought anything about letting a young girl go off on her own in the woods with a pole, some bait and probably a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to stave off starvation before supper.

Most of what I caught were sunfish — bream, bluegills, warmouths, shellcrackers and stumpknockers. Hard to say if it was more fun catching them or calling their names. And if I was lucky I might find a small trout or more often a bass. The big gars that floated like half sunk logs in the crystal clear creeks headed for the Waccasassa River almost never bit anything, but the mudfish, sometimes they did and when they did it was fun.

I remember the first big one I caught. I had walked over across US 19 toward the old then-abandoned hotel back in the woods. A creek wandered by the dirt road leading to the hotel and sometimes the water stretched out into the low lying area into shallow black ponds with deep muck bottoms and cypress knees dotting the edges.

I had caught a pretty good mess of bream and saw something big working the water in one of those ponds. I crept over near the edge (didn’t want to lose my shoes to that sucking mud) and started tossing my worm over near where the water was being worked. I’d drag it slowly back toward me (this is a cane pole not a fancy rod and reel) and it requires a delicate touch to entice a fish in a tight area with overhanging limbs and Spanish moss.

On about my third pass something took hold of the worm. It didn’t run, it didn’t do anything. It was just holding it in its mouth. I knew If I tried to set the hook I would probably just pull it out of the mouth and that fish would be gone so I waited. In just a few seconds the fish turned and started to move away with the bait and I hit it hard as it turned, setting the hook in corner of the mouth.

That mudfish pitched a fit. It swam hard and changed direction and bent my pole nearly in half. I thought the line or pole would break and tried to follow it around the edge of the swampy area to tire it out. It flipped around and ran toward me an away and I started to back up every time it headed toward me. Finally it was close to the edge and I picked the tip of my pole up and prayed the line would hold. It did.

That was a big mudfish, though probably not as big as it seemed to me then. After a good long look I took my old slime covered fish rag out and held it down while I worked the hook out.

Some people kill mudfish, they think they eat too many of the fish we like to catch and eat but I just pushed him back toward the water with my toe until he gave a big flap of his tail and got back in. I saw his dorsal fin cutting the shallow water for a few feet and then he was gone, back into the black water and me gone back toward the sunlit creek with a still-pounding heart for a few more bream.

This piece first appeared on April 24, 2015 in Levy Living, the ezine of the Nature Coast. 

The creek, where I shot the moccasin and fished on long hot afternoons, had a few surprises. One was finding tiny flounders. They were anywhere from half an inch to an inch and a half long and really hard to catch. They changed color from pale yellow like the sand seen through the tannin-shaded water to dark brown over by the leaves in the edge. Or, they burrowed under the sand and just disappeared.

Recently I was doing some research trying to find out if being in freshwater is a phase of the saltwater flounder’s life cycle like salmon going up the rivers to spawn but it doesn’t seem to be. They are Trinectes maculates but commonly called hogchokers in the online chat rooms about freshwater fish and no one seems to know much about them. Apparently they are not really flounder but are in the sole family and live their lives in brackish water as far north as the Hudson River in New York. They can also be found many miles up the Mississippi and in most of the Florida rivers leading to the sea.

Back then I didn’t think too much about it, I just liked to catch all kinds of little fish with a dipper or a small scoop net. Sometimes I caught them with my hands. I caught minnows and I caught baby fish that would grow up to be catfish, trout or bass. And naturally I caught the little flounders too.

My grandmother let me take her big blue enameled turkey pan and make an aquarium that I kept on the back porch. I got creek sand and washed it until it was clean and then got a couple of water plants and some rocks from the railroad bed so the little fish would have places to hide. I hauled water from the creek and set it up. Then I caught the fish and put them in.

Now of course I did not have a fancy aerator so I had to add fresh water every day or they would have nothing to breathe. And the water went bad and got to growing algae and stinky things in a couple of days so twice a week I had to catch the fish and put them in a glass while I took everything out and washed it. That meant washing the sand, the rocks, the pan and even the plants. Then it all had to be put back in and the fish carefully added back.

They did hide in the little cave I made for them out of rocks and I could watch them for hours swimming around and coming to the surface where they made little gulping moves.

I don’t remember for sure what I fed them. Maybe crumbs or maybe I actually got some fish food at the store.

At any rate they lived and when summer vacation was over I took them back to the creek and turned them loose. Years later I may have caught them as grown fish and even eaten them, who knows.

Sometimes in the morning, before the sun is up, it’s nice to walk outside and see whose lights are on. Nobody’s music is playing. Those who are up are the early risers not the late go-to-bedders. Maybe a quietly playing TV sheds blue light across the bottom of a curtain but mostly what you see in windows is that warm incandescent yellow. It’s the color campfires throw on faces as you walk back up the darkened trail from the lake and approach it through the trees.

The air outside is blue until the sun steps out and a few clouds begin to shift from inky to pale gray and then are suddenly doused in an almost hot pink glow. Trees are silhouettes and slowly reveal their leaves as the light picks up.

One by one, in no particular order, the streetlights click off and each glows like an ember for about a minute before winking out for the day.

On my quiet side street not far from Sunrise Blvd. people are walking dogs. One guy has an old dog and a young dog. The old dog, a wiry haired golden tan mutt, trails behind and the young dog, a black pit bull mix, pulls ahead, ready for what’s around the next corner. The guy stumbles along in the middle caught between weariness and anticipation.

Another guy has a young dog with one of those fancy new leashes that runs around the dog’s nose. The man seems intent on keeping the dog in the proper dog walking position and he does. The dog would like to wander but he doesn’t.

Bridget, who lives across the street, has had over the years a continual supply of identical (to me) dachshunds and the occasional terrier. The doxies are generally mean natured and will nip you given the chance. They always bark. When she walks the current batch of dogs the terrier, a female Jack, tags along off leash and one of Bridget’s cats has decided to do the morning dog walk and follows about 15 feet behind.

Then there are the two girls with the three chihuahuas. They take turns walking the dogs that are always perky and bouncy and as happy to see this well-trod block as if it were a paradise just revealed for the first time.

Down the way is a woman with a big Doberman and a little lap dog. The woman lives in the new fancy townhouses. The dogs are well-behaved.

Sometimes I sit on the steps with coffee and watch the changing light and dog parade. Sometimes I go out to the street and lean on the car and look off toward the sunrise.

Everyday is a new beginning.

Behind Granny and Poppa’s house in Gulf Hammock was a path that ran between the garden and the edge of the swamp. At its end was a little creek, crystal clear with a sand bottom in the middle and deep muck by the edge. You might step in and feel fine white sand ease up between your toes or you might step in and sink slowly down up to your knees. It was hard to get out of and there was known to be quicksand around so there was always that scary part of wondering if you would stop sinking.

I remember reading comic books about people getting stuck in quicksand and slowly being pulled down until finally all that was left was one hand waving feebly over the surface. I read once that if you acted quickly you could throw yourself prone and very slowly “swim” across the quicksand to firmer ground. Probably not but I was prepared to try it.

Anyway, back to the creek.  Another one of my chores was to take one or two big enamel buckets down to the creek to get washing water. I had to walk to the end of the two-plank boardwalk out to mid creek and dip in the buckets to fill them then totter back to the house. They were heavy.

That was a good place to fish too.  Dig up some worms and rig up a cane pole with a bobber and a little hook. Stand on the end of the boardwalk and lightly swing the line upstream. Let it drift down and around the boardwalk. Try to maneuver it up close to some lily pads. Things waited under the lily pads. Hopefully a fish but could be a snake or even a gator.

One day I was getting water and when I got to the creek there was a huge cottonmouth moccasin. I put the buckets down and backed up a ways and then turned and tore ass for the house. I slammed open the back screen door coming in and started yelling, where’s the shotgun, where’s the shotgun? Granny said in the bedroom and asked why. I ran in there and she followed me wiping her hands on her apron. I grabbed the 410 and ran back out the door.

“There is a big cottonmouth,” I yelled over my shoulder.

When I got back to the creek I started to creep toe to heel just like the Indians did so as not to make a sound. I edged out to the boardwalk and he was still there, fat and dull black in the light dancing off the water. As I came closer he felt something and started to slither off. By then Granny had caught up with me and took the gun. Before he could swim away she threw the gun up to her shoulder and fired, cutting him nearly in half.

The current caught him and took him on down into the darkness of the swamp. Granny lowered the gun. I filled the buckets and we walked back to the house together.

For all of my life the way I have remembered this story is that I shot the moccasin before my grandmother caught up with me. I swear I have a clear physical memory of throwing the gun up to my shoulder and shooting before it was seated properly which caused it to give me quite a big recoil that hurt for days.

My mother said no, it was my grandmother who pulled the trigger but I thought she was wrong. Several months ago I was visiting with a younger cousin who out of the blue said, “Remember when we were visiting Granny and Poppa and you found that moccasin and Granny shot it?”

Just like that, a vivid lifetime memory declared untrue. It sure makes me wonder about the veracity of other things I remember but it does not make me question the emotional truth they have in my heart.

Dorothy Allison who wrote Bastard Out of Carolina once said in an interview with Ellise Fuchs for PopMatters, “People want biography. People want memoir. They want you to tell them that the story you’re telling them is true. The thing I’m telling you is true but it did not always happen to me. It is absolutely true to my experience.”

 

I was up early this morning and got to see the ibis doing their silent dawn takeoff from their rookery across the way. But just because they were silent doesn’t mean this morning was. No, the air was full of bird sounds, a cacophony of high and low notes, of trills and chirps, and all of it was coming from a handful of mockingbirds.

A friend recently told me she heard a cardinal in the yard and was looking around for it. But when she found it, it was a mockingbird. It had completely fooled her with a complicated cardinal song that was spot on and she is a serious birder.

Myself, I came out the other day to run to the store and hit my car’s alarm off button. It sounded the appropriate rapid dweep-dweep sound and that was followed immediately by a series of dweep-dweeps from the top of the telephone pole at the end of the driveway. Yep, a mockingbird.

I have heard them mimic almost anything. In town here, not far from US1 there are plenty of fire trucks and ambulances and our mockingbirds have taken note of that and frequently make siren sounds. Sometimes they give a little bark like the neighborhood dogs or start imitating the noisy parrots and that live around here.

Birdjam.com describes the song as a “long-continued stream of loud phrases, many being imitations of other birds’ songs and calls along with squeaky gates, machinery, barking dogs and humans whistling.” The males sing in the spring and more loudly than the females. Both sexes sing in the fall. Mockingbirds often sing at night.

All my life I have watched and listened to mockingbirds but never really gave them a lot of thought until this morning. Sure, they are the Florida state bird but so what? And sure there was an old song from my mother’s days but I can’t seem to find who did it though I can hear it in my mind.

Turns out that song was much older than I thought — it was written by Septimus Winner under the pseudonym of Alice Hawthorne in 1855. It was a sad song about a sweetheart who had died and the mockingbird that sang over her grave. Supposedly Abraham Lincoln liked the song (it was widely used as marching music during the Civil War) and he is quoted as saying, “It is as sincere as the laughter of a little girl at play.” Perhaps it reminded him of the laughter of his own lost-too-young sons, Eddie, Willie and Tad, forever sleeping in a valley somewhere with a mockingbird’s song for company.

The Three Stooges used it as a theme song for a while and it was recorded by a variety of swing and jazz groups and has more recently been revived as a traditional folk song.

Here’s a modern version of the original folk version of Listen to the Mockingbird by Tom Roush if you want to give a listen. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gvr3lbxi1a0

But I guess when I think of mockingbirds the first thing I think of is the line in Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” saying it’s a sin to kill one. (In that strange way that the world brings disparate things together, I just read that 87 year-old Harper Lee just sued her agent on May 3, 2013 to regain her copyright that he allegedly wrongfully took from her.)

“Atticus said to Jem one day, ‘I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the backyard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.’ That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. ‘Your father’s right,’ she said. ‘Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.’”

― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Seems like that’s the truth. I know that just after dawn today they were singing their hearts out and filling up the morning air with a wild bunch of sound that didn’t have one mean bone in it.

It’s 6:30 a.m. and the sky has pinkened up nicely. Toward the horizon over the Atlantic slate blue clouds are piling up and will begin their march toward land where they will dissipate or maybe coalesce and dump some rain. I’m waiting for the ibis.

Every morning, near sunrise, the huge flock of ibis that roost in the trees lining the short waterway across the street give a collective shake and then take off, silently, as a group. Usually they come straight up out of the trees like a covey of quail flushed from the brush by a good bird dog and then all fly off in the same direction. It’s as if they are commuters headed to work and in a way they are. Somewhere, and they seem to know where that is, there are plenty of delicious grubs and bugs just waiting to be beaked up. My guess is golf courses though during the day you are likely to see them almost anywhere around Fort Lauderdale — parking lots, quiet streets with small lawns, mega houses with equally impressive boats in the canals behind them.

Once in a while the ibis seem to get their magnetic compasses out of whack and then they swirl and re-roost and re-take off abortively a few times before settling into their purpose and winging away. Still, it’s a silent thing.

The parrots on the other hand are noisy from the get go. Their flight seems as intoxicating to them as teenagers on a roller coaster and like the teenagers they scream and screech as they wheel around the sky.

Before the parrots do their first morning takeoff they sometimes gather in the tops of the trees and murmur to each other in parrot talk. Occasionally it’s just one parrot, a lone sentinel turning this way and that before giving some signal to the others that it’s time to fly and scream.

The young ibis tend to stick closer to the roosting area and it’s common to see their brown and white bodies bobbing down the streets nearby.

The parrots definitely break into smaller groups and swoop around chattering and looking for bird feeders and other easy targets.

At night, everyone comes home. The parrots come in dribs and drabs, the ibis have joined up as they return and arrive in a big bunch to throw their wings up over their heads to make a graceful drop into the trees below.

When you spend time in one place you get to notice these things and know them in the same way that you know how to park your car or tie your shoes. It just becomes part of what you carry around without thinking about it. You might be drinking coffee and suddenly think, it’s time for the ibis and wander over to the window, cup in hand, just in time to see their silent arrowing across the sky.