another funny fishing story...

...that involves my dad and both daughters. Many years ago, I loaded up daughters and went to south GA to visit the grandparents. There is a nice sized private pond across the highway from their house, that my dad was allowed to fish in. The granddaughters were jumping up-and-down, begging to go over and fish. So he went out in the back yard to his favorite place to dig earthworms and found them: ready to be sacrificed (though blissfully unaware as earthworms with practically no brain can be.)

We got poles and walked through the pasture and pecan orchard to the edge of the water. My dad was putting worms on hooks and everyone was having a great time. Little people can be neither still nor quiet as required for good fishing... but somehow they caught little hand-sized fishes anyway. I am so ill-informed, I don't know what type, but hardly big enough to be worth cleaning. Plus I doubt they would have eaten, so I suppose they eventually went back in the water.

As we were fishing, and my dad was steadily applying bait to one hook and then the other, while the fish were nibbling them off, they actually caught enough to put on the stringer my dad had brought along in his tackle box. Several small fishes threaded on the stringer, flopping around in the shallow water near the bank, where he had tied it to a little willow tree. We turned around when someone one noticed: a snake was trying to eat one of the fish. The fish was quite obviously too large.

I have been led to believe snakes can actually physically 'un-hinge' their jaws in order to swallow prey. So when they catch something that is too big to fit, they can still consume it. This snake had a fish stuck. Halfway in: and 'way to big too swallow. Sort of at the crossroads of: can't go forward and can't go back. Sadly I don't recall how this scenario played out.  But I do recall small children jumping up and down on the bank, making lots noise in a complete panic. Which, as you might guess, was the end of the Fishing Expedition.

Until one of them, swinging the cane pole around wildly: caught Papa. He got hooked in the upper arm. And told me I would have to take the hook out. It was, of course, still attached to the line and pole, so it had to be done. I thought I was just along for the ride. But after he demanded I remove the hook, I squeamishly pushed it back through his skin. End of fun. We went back to the house for first aid treatment. I assume he cleaned all the worm, fish, pond-water gunk out, as he survived. I don't know what happened to the stringer of fish or the snake. Sorry.