One time years and years and years ago my friend Ray and I decided to go catfishing. We wanted to go to Caddo Lake. Ray was a retired butcher and I was just tired. It's tough to be at the age when you go all out you end up "all in."

When we got to Caddo we set out our trot lines and settled in for a long night's fishing. We baited our trot lines with weenies. In the past we had caught a five gallon bucket full of catfish anytime we fished with weenies. So we knew by morning we would have more fish then we wanted to clean. Speaking of cleaning fish, I told you Ray was a retired butcher. He had made a special knife from an old boning knife just for fish cleaning. But that's a whole 'nother story for a different time.

The first time we ran our lines was about midnight. To our surprise we didn't have a fish but all the bait was gone.

"What's going on?" Ray asked. "We just lost a whole package of weenies and we don't have a fish to show for it."

I said, "Maybe it's because it's the full moon. You know how crazy things happen under a full moon. Or maybe it is because of that voo doo curse that old black woman put on you for running over her chicken. On the drive down."

"I don't believe in voo doo," Ray grunted.

"Maybe not, but if you would have just paid her that $10 she wanted for her prize rooster, she wouldn't have put that curse on us" I told him.

Ray said, "You're crazy."

"I know," I said, "It's a full moon."

"Come on, let's bait up again. We've got enough weenies to bait up one more time," Ray suggested.

I asked Ray if he didn't think we should save those last weenies for tomorrow night. The full moon would be gone then. This time he just picked up the paddle and started down the line I was holding onto and said, "Bait!"

He hurt my feelings the way he said it, but I didn't say anything. We were in his car and it was sixteen miles back to the highway. I didn't think he would make me walk home, but after all, it was a full moon. I figured it was better to be safe than sorry. We baited

When we got back I started throwing more wood on the fire to stay warm and keep the mosquitoes off.

Ray said, "Don't do that. The light keeps me awake and I want to get a little sleep before I have to drive home in the morning."

He rolled up in his blanket and was asleep by the time I could sit down.

Now as I said we had come in his car and he always carried a blanket on the back seat, so when we went quail hunting, his bird dog could ride in the car with us without getting the back seat dirty. You noticed I said "a blanket." He thought more of that dog than he did me. He never let me ride in the back seat, and he always made me take off my dirty boots before he would let me in the car. "What a grouch."

Well, I could see that it was going to be a cold and miserable night. Here it was in April and the temperature had been in the 80's when we left home, so I hadn't brought a coat. For that matter I didn't even wear a long sleeve shirt. Oh well, it was the full moon.

Come daylight just as the sun was coming up and as I was starting to thaw out, the big light in the sky woke up Ray.

He was fresh and rested and anxious to run the lines. I could barely move because I was so cold and stiff from sitting on the ground all night. We got in the boat, and I still couldn't move enough to help paddle. This made Ray mad and he has a few things to say about my ancestry and ends by saying this is the last time he is ever going fishing with me.

Well, that's just fine with me because it's going to be a cold day you know where before I go with him again. About that time we got to our first trot line. Like the night before, no bait and only one lonely bream about four inches long. We don't even bother to take him off the line. We go on to the second line and again no fish and no bait. By the time we run the last line we know what to expect. Yep, no fish, no bait.

You never saw two more disappointed, angry, and miserable fishermen in your life. We started taking up our lines and getting ready to go home. We had taken up two lines and had just untied the third line to roll it up, when it started moving. I was holding the line real tight and whatever was on that line was pulling our little boat down the lake.

I said, "That's the strongest bream I ever saw!"

"You idiot!" Ray shouted. "No bream can pull a boat like that! We got ourselves a mucho grande of a catfish!." He stood up and shouted, "Let me have that line you fool. You don't know anything about landing a big catfish! Sit down you idiot! What in the blue blazes do you think you're doing?"

I shouted back! "I've caught just as many big catfish as you have."

Well, wouldn't you know it. We fought over who was going to land the "big one" until we turned the boat over.

"Now look what you've done." Ray cried.

"You're the idiot who was standing up in a little 12 foot jon boat, not me," I told him.

We had to swim back to shore, when we got there we were soaking wet, but we got in Ray's car and started home. It looked like it was going to be a long, cold, and silent ride home. Ray's old car wouldn't run over thirty miles an hour and the heater didn't work. . One window wouldn't roll up and in wet clothes and at thirty miles-per-hour the wind chill factor was going to be way down there. I didn't figure either one of us would be doing much talking.

After we got back to the highway we stopped at the truck stop that was our land mark to turn onto the bumpy gravel road that took us to our secret spot on the lake where we always caught fish. Well, maybe not when you have a voo doo curse on you. Anyway, we went into the coffee shop to get a cup of coffee. Ray went in first, and I was right behind him. I stopped to let the waitress go by, and wouldn't you know it! She looked down and saw my muddy boots and she wouldn't let me go in until I took them off. I followed her to the booth where Ray was sitting, telling her she was just as bad as Ray.

I kept telling her it wasn't my fault my boots were muddy because there had been a full moon last night and besides that I had a voo doo curse on me.

When we got to the booth where Ray was sitting she asked him why he had brought this crazy man in there. Ray told her he was just doing his good deed for the day - that he had found me on the banks of Caddo Lake all wet and muddy. He had stopped here to get me a cup of coffee to warm me up before sending me on my way.

She must have felt sorry for me because she gave us a cup of coffee without charging us for it, or maybe she gave it to us because Ray was doing his good deed. Regardless of why, we sat there enjoying our coffee even though we still weren't speaking to each other. All I could think about were my boots sitting just outside the door. I was hoping they would still be there when we left.

After we drank our coffee, we went out the door to look for my boots. The sun must have been shining on me because they were actually still there. I sat down right there and put them on. As I was tying them, up drives this young guy in a new pickup with a brand new bass boat behind it. He jumped out and started yelling for everyone to come see the big catfish he caught. Ray and I couldn't resist. We had to go look! There in the bottom of this $25,000 bass boat lay an "ol" flathead catfish that must have weighed eighty pounds. One of the men asked him where he got it. He knew the young man to only bass fish.

The bass fisherman said, "You know that is a funny thing. When I was casting this morning my lure hung this trot line. When I pulled it up I saw that it wasn't tied to anything. So I was pulling it in to get it out of the lake. When I got down close to the end this big catfish came floating up to the surface. He just lay there like he was all tuckered out. So I reach down and took hold of him and dragged him in the boat easy as pie."

The guy told all his buddies that were looking at the big flathead he was going to have a big fish fry that night and they were all invited to come help him eat that catfish. They could bring the beer.

Ray and I looked at each other and Ray said, "Full moon!"

I said, "Voo doo curse!"

Copyright © 1998 Loren Moore
All rights reserved

Born in a oil company camp near Gladewater, Texas, in 1932, Loren Moore married his high school sweetheart, Johnnie Pritchett, in the year he graduated. From there, he moved to Arlington, Texas, where he worked as an assembler at the General Motors plant and stayed until he retired as manager of the paint shop.

Loren writes: "I'm 70 years old and have been married to my wife Johnnie for 51 years. My hobbies have always been hunting and fishing. I'm an uneducated redneck from the piney woods of East Texas. Now that I'm in my old age and do most of my hunting and fishing in my memory, I decided to write about some of my experiences. These stories are about 90% true and 10% fiction. My wife, Johnnie, says they are 10% true and 90% fiction. Maybe they are somewhere in between."

Mr. Moore has recently assembled some of his stories into soft-bound books published by TwinOaks Publishing (pictured here). To purchase one of his books, you can write him at this address.

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