Dave and Tippy Fish the Pond

We sat there on the sloping bank of the pond watching the orange bobber in the water. Boy and dog were enjoying the warmth of the sun on their backs as we fished Grandpa’s pond in the pasture back of his house. I had a grasshopper on the hook and I was watching it as it floated toward a fallen willow that lay half submerged across the north end of the pond. I already had two big bluegill on my stringer and wanted a couple more.

This pond was full of the chunky panfish about the size of your hand and not even crappie can compare to the succulent sweetness of a big bluegill in the skillet. Sometimes a black bass would take that hopper and when he did, it was a heck of a fight on the light rod and reel I was using.

The .22 rifle lying beside me was a constant when I was traipsing the woods on my grandparent’s farm, though today I was carrying it for snakes. We weren’t allowed to shoot turtles on the pond because it was at an angle that would cause too many ricochets and Grandpa didn’t tolerate any unsafe acts with a gun. He taught me there is no bringing that bullet back once the trigger is pulled and to make sure you knew that gun was pointed in a safe direction or at what you wanted to shoot.

Not that I didn’t turtle hunt the pond, but when I did I used a shotgun because the small pellets lost their velocity quickly and ricochets were not a long distance danger like the .22 would be. The shotgun was deadly enough for close range work, even on a turtle. The green headed turtles will take over a pond if you let them, but during the summer Tippy and I did our best to work them over at least once a week with a surprise ambush and my 20 gauge shotgun.

I saw the bobber start to arc toward the willow and knew a big bluegill had that grasshopper in its mouth. As the bobber started down, I jerked, setting the hook and got the immediate heavy fight of a big bluegill who had no intention of leaving the cool water in the pond. The old 33 reel had no problems bringing him in and I added him to the stringer as Tippy watched, more or less bored with fishing. She got up and circled the pond, looking for a snake.

We were big time snake fighters. Tippy was what grandpa called a fice, a mixed breed tan dog with one floppy ear that would give her a comical expression when she would cock her head to one side. She would do this when she was trying to figure out what she was looking at or if I was about to do something stupid, like jump the creek in full flood stage. I knew the look. It didn’t always help me from getting my butt wet at first, but I started following her advice as I got older. I was sixteen years old and my dog's wisdom probably helped me reach that age relatively intact.

The original spelling of fice was feist for the small mixed breed hunting dogs that held an indeterminate lineage and a heart for the hunt. They were known for hunting anything that had four legs and as you might expect she was a deadly hunter. We kept the squirrel and rabbit populations to a manageable level around grandpa’s woods through my junior high and high school years.

I watched her nose around the pond, ready to grab my rifle to go into battle if she started the jumping, head jerking dance I knew so well when she found a snake and was trying to keep it in place until I could get there to kill it. The bad thing was sometimes she would want to try to kill it herself and I was always worried she would get her little fool self bit. Tippy was fast and I mean so fast no snake really even got close to biting her.

This was the third time she had went around the pond and just like the other two times she came back and lay down at my side with a sigh. I rubbed her head and she rolled to her back for the obligatory belly scratching.

Rolling back to her belly, she made a little sound that sounded like “Aarrpp” and meant she had about enough of this fishing crap. Fish is one thing she did not care anything about eating and she allowed the cats to have everything. This is a dog that will guard half a hard biscuit all day just to keep the barn cats away from it.

I pulled my bait in and put a small broke-back lure on the line and tossed it toward the willow and just wiggled it. I would take up the slack and wiggle it. The small ripples emanating from the lure should be waking up any nearby fish that had been ignoring my grasshopper.

The water rolled and the lure disappeared and I set the treble hooks and brought in another bluegill. The problem with fishing this way was the most I had ever caught at one time was three and then they would not take it again. There was too much disturbance fishing this way was the only thing I could see that caused them to quit biting. I managed to catch one more and a 14-inch bass that I added to the stringer before the action ended.

I know some bass fishermen just rolled over with heart pains then, but catch and release was a fable that rich men did off in some far away land. In southeastern Oklahoma around 1979 we practiced catch and eat on a regular basis -- in fact, my grandma insists on it most of the time even today.

Picking up my stringer of six fish, I wrapped it around my right hand, a move that would prove to be a mistake. I took my rifle in my left hand and we dropped off the back of the pond and headed for the house. We had just hit the high grass between the pond and the little creek at the back of the pond when I seen the white flashing mouth of a cottonmouth coming back to strike. The high pitched girlish scream was purely to disorient the snake, but the high jump straight up in the air was Olympic class. The snake barely missed me and then Tippy was all over it as I tried to get that damn stringer off my hand!! It seemed like it was taking forever and I know I was saying things I shouldn’t have been saying as I struggled to get that stringer off my hand!!

It was in the heat of battle!!!

The snake had opted to make a run for it and Tippy grabbed it and jerked her head before jumping straight back as the snake came around in a deadly S-like arc to strike the attacking dog. Bout that time is when the stringer cleared my hand and the Nylon 66 .22 hit my shoulder, the thumb safety clicking off as the gun fell in place. It held 14 rounds in the tube, but I would load one in the chamber and refill the tube so there was 15 shots in the gun.

I gave that big cottonmouth ten rounds through the head and body to make sure he was dead and then the other five just in case he thought about coming back to life. The snake’s body would move in writhing motions as it died and I hated the way it took snakes forever to quit moving after you killed one. Finding a long stick, I picked up the snake and tossed him in the pond for the turtles to eat. I loaded my rifle and stood there looking at the scene of the battle as my breathing returned to normal.

Tippy was quite perky, her ears are up in attention and she is standing there speaking volumes with her body language. Right then my dog was saying, “Yeah!!! That beat the heck out of fishing boy!!” (Tippy did say heck because she never cussed unless I missed a shot after a long crawl to get in a shooting position. Then it was only her body language, but it was clear as English!)

I got my fish and we headed home, only this time she went right in front of me until we hit the road back to the house.

“Go check the garden,” I said as she threw her head up and headed for the rows of corn and squash. She made a quick circle with her sniffer telling her everything she needed to know as I walked past the garden. Ol’ Tippy was my best friend and right then the only fault I could find with her is she didn’t clean fish.