Bear Grease - Ep. 203: This Country Life - Net Fishing, Here We Go Again!

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

It's always a treat for the blind hog when he finds an acorn. Brent and his brother Tim paddled into a file of them, except the nuts were in the boat and the fish were in the net. The Reaves brothers are back on the river and lucky to still have both of their left arms. Hear that story and more on this episode of MeatEater's This Country Life podcast.  Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

First Lights fieldwear collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new fieldwear gear at firstlight.

Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves. From Coon Hunting to Trotlining and just general country living, I want you to stay a while as I share my stories and country skills that will help you beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast the Airways have to offer. All right, friends, pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I think I got a thing or two to teach you.

Net fishing. Here we go again. Just when you thought it was safe enough to get back in the water, here come the Reeves brothers with another round of net fishing. This one isn't a sequel how-to episode. This one is going to be more of a wake-up grandpa and go get the neighbors because y'all ain't going to believe what we did episode. I promise you, we were more surprised than the fish we caught.

I'm going to tell you all about it. But first, I'm going to tell you a story. Like a lot of my stories, you're not going to be surprised that this one is about my brother Tim and me. It's a short one, but relevant just the same. Now, I've been kind of sitting on it since the beginning of the This Country Life podcast. It doesn't really fit a narrative or go along with any podcast subject matter other than maybe if I did an episode dedicated completely to dumb things we have done. Anyway, this happened over 30 years ago, and at the time I lived a mile and a half from where my brother still lives.

We did everything together. All the time, he was either at my house, or I was at his house, or we were together at the country store, listening to the old folks talk, or down at Dad's house, or over at his in-law's house, who looked at me as if I was just an extra family member. We were all close. None of that has anything to do with this story other than me ill and, illustrating the fact that we lived close together. And by lived close together, I mean in totality.

If we weren't physically together, we passed each other's house, or we ran into each other at the country store, or met each other on the road. Now, meeting each other on the road one afternoon would most times have us playing an impromptu game of chicken by dodging at the other's vehicle like we were going to run them off the road. I do not recommend this, nor do either of us. still participate in this tomfoolery.

Now, I know a lot of you right now are fast forwarding to the punchline of the thing and to yourself, those idiots did that at the same time and wrecked their trucks. Well, you'd be wrong. We did something dumb. Not stupid. Not really. Well, maybe. But it wasn't our finest hour to be sure, and this incident did involve both of our

trucks, but no damage to either vehicle was done. None whatsoever, and we both maintained complete control of everything except our senses. Late one afternoon, I pulled onto the highway from a gravel county road headed east to the store. Tim is three-quarters of a mile further away, and he pulled on to the highway from his in-laws drive headed west. It was like synchronized swimming. I feel quite sure that he thought to himself as he saw me coming, something similar to what I was thinking. Ah, there comes my brother. We need to do something cool.

Well, the evening sun was lighting up the interior of his truck as we got closer, and I saw him when he flipped down the sun's visor so he could see me getting closer. My sister-in-law, Barberjane, smiling like the jewel she is sitting right beside him. She would play a supporting role as the unwitting witness while her husband and I starred as the dim-witted brothers. Tim's truck slowly crept toward the center line. I did the same. My memory is the who did it first is a little foggy, but almost simultaneously,

we each stuck our hands out the window to give the other the coolest high-five in recorded history. I looked at my speedometer and I was going 35 miles an hour. Tim appeared to be doing a similar rate. Ever so slightly, we'd be doing it. inch closer to the center line. I can see them both playing as day. Tim, arms stretched out as far as it would go, grinning like a mule eating sawbriars,

and barber-chine's smiling face, fading quickly into an expression of, I married an idiot, and I got his idiot brother, too. Now, this was going to be epic. In my mind, I quickly calculated that neither of us could get our trucks any closer to the center line without trading a little paint, and this would have to do. and in the time it has taken me to tell this story, the actual incident had already taken place. Had I had this much time to really think about it, I feel quite sure that we wouldn't have done it. At the time, it seemed like such a good idea.

Nothing short of divine intervention saved both our arms that day. As we passed each other at the combined speed of at least 70 miles an hour, only the very tiniest bit of the tips of our middle fingers on each of our left hands touched. It wouldn't have been enough contact to light a kitchen match had you used the same contact across sandpaper. It's a good thing it wasn't any more than that because it felt like I had touched the surface of the sun and been struck by lightning all at the same time. I look back in the side mirror as I shook my hand trying to put the front. flames out that had ignited upon contact and Tim was doing the same.

We talked on the phone later that night about how thankful we were for failing that stunt. We've talked about it ever since, especially when we see something we judge as being egregiously dumb. Then we say, ah, yes. But is that as dumb as attempting a high-five at 70 miles an hour? Come to find out, few things ever are. and that's just how that happened. Five episodes ago around podcast number 193,

I talked about fishing with nets and how my brother Tim and I were going to fish his wire ones in the Arkansas River. I talked about my friend Jerry Bozier down in Louisiana that told us how to fish the hoop nets that I have. I'm going to give you an update on the hoop nets in a minute, but right now I want to talk about those wire nets some more. We'd fished him for a few days last year on the same section in the river. One of them we fished in the same spot as last year. A year ago, we had maybe a

dozen fish total out of all three nets. The river came on a big rise and we postponed setting the nets, and this was before I had retired for my regular job, and we wound up not going back at all until a couple weeks ago. Work had gotten in the way again. Man, I hated when that happened. It's happened often in my life, and I'll never be able to forget. give work for how it has treated me all these years. So I quit last October. I retired. And all my other pursuits put net fishing on the back burner until recently. But we talked about it all through the winter, me and Tim. I was watching YouTube videos and sending them to him and he was doing the same. The videos were filmed by another fellow down in Louisiana, but this one,

it turns out, was a whole lot closer to Arkansas than my old pay. Algerie. Bradley Smith lives not far south of the Arkansas-Lusiana line and fishes a lot on the Washataw River. I used to be partners in a camp down there on the Washington. It was located in Union County in the small community of Felsenthal. Some of my co-workers at the Sheriff's Office and I had it and we had a lot of fun hunting and fishing down there. But Bradley Smith was the first I'd ever seen fishing into wire nets. Their fiddler nets named for the smaller catfish that they target, and the only difference between them and a hoop net is the net webbin is held in place

by a four-foot section of concrete reinforcement wire rolled into a tube with a diameter of 18 inches and can literally be dropped in the water and fish without any type of anchor or having to tie it off on the other end. otherwise it would be held open by four evenly spaced fiberglass hoops with a tail rope and a head rope that would each have to be weighted and stretched tight to keep the hoops upright so the fish could swim inside now you wouldn't want to just drop a wire net over the side of the boat without securing it to an anchor or tying it off to something in current there's no tilling where it would end up but back in your boat would probably be the last place now bradley produces some good use

YouTube content on his channel, God's Country Hunting and Fishing. He goes into a lot of detail on how he catches fish, where he likes to set his nets, and what type of nets he fishes, how to repair damaged nets, and the thing I like most is how to make one from scratch. I find it so fascinating that you can take a roll of twine, a net needle, and what Bradley calls a netting board, which is a thin piece of wood about the size of a playing card. It's used as a measuring guide for the spacing of the knots in the mesh that formed the net. Different size mesh is used for different size fish.

Now add a few hoops to the mix, some weights, rope, or a roll of wire, and you've got a fish-catching machine that runs 24-7 and can catch more fish than you'll want to clean if you're not careful. Now making one like Bradley does from start to finish is next on my net fishing to-do list. Well, that and actually putting the two. hoop nets I have now in the water. The only reason they're not soaking in the tepid flow of the Arkansas River right now is the upcoming turkey season.

It has me traveling in and out of surrounding the nearby states for the next few weeks. I know that's a good problem to have. I ain't complaining. But I can't wait to get to fishing them nets. Because once turkey season is done, I'm a commercial fisherman. I bought my license this week and have the tags for both of my hoop net. and some for the three wire nets I'm fixing to buy. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls

in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. if you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right?

That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers

who just want to start making good. turkey noises and getting action. Before anyone thinks that I've done something illegal that saw the videos of me and my brother Tim fishing before I bought this license, you need to understand how this works. You can purchase a helper's license when you purchase your commercial fishing license and this allows any resident of Arkansas with a valid fishing license to assist the commercial fishing license holder when running the nets. That's what I and Tim were doing. He has the commercial license and I was his helper, as evidenced in the Instagram video.

Someone commented that Bren is pulling the nets and working while Tim sits comfortably in the back of the boat. Well, I may be an experience to Mississippi River Expedition Boat Captain and Cub Pilot Instructor, but I'm still the little brother. Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, the wire nets Tim and I set out. On the day a couple weeks ago that we set them out, we had only one spot in mind before we got to the river that day. That was the place where we caught the most fish last year, all nine of them.

We had a total of 12 to 15 fish that day, counting a 10-pound gruntle we had in one of our nets. It's also called a bow fin, and I read an article on Arkansaswild.com that described it as, and I quote the author, A prehistoric bone-headed, air-breathing, ely fiend, monster-fangged, fossil fish dating back to the Jurassic period that fishermen love to hate. That was eloquently put, Mark Spitzer. But water conditions were similar to last year, so we were hoping to at least equal last year's catch of a dozen plus fish after a week's soaking in the nets.

All week when Tim and I would talk on the phone, the first question after. Hello would be, what are you doing? The response from the other would be, I'm catching fish. What are you doing? The response was always me too. Now, little did we know, but that's exactly what we were doing. On the day we said on we ran into a friend of ours that is a real commercial fisherman. Now, he fishes every day, and I don't mean five days a week, every day, as in seven days a week.

When you're fishing to pay your light bill, the incentive is real. and far beyond the romanticism of scooping up a mess of fish from the river to fill your freezer and feed your friends and family. It gets to be a whole lot like work. Tim and I had sat one net when we ran into him. He pulled up beside us and we talked about the water conditions and everything else while our friend sat in his boat. Fish piled up around him like sandbags and he was in a foxhole on guard duty.

He gave me a buffalo fish before he left like a casino game. Hamler flips a chip to the dealer at the blackjack table. I thanked him and jokingly told him since he'd been so nice and giving me that fish that any time he wasn't around, I'd run his nets for him and keep all the fish. He didn't think it was nearly as funny as Tim did. Anyway, we went on about our business and set the other two of Tim's nets. We each picked out a spot, loaded them with bait, secured them with a rope and a weight, and I dropped him over the side.

In 1981, Tom Petty released a song about net fishing on the Arkansas River. Now, few people know that when Tom and the Heartbreakers weren't touring, that they were secretly commercial fishermen. How am I the only one to know this, and why did it take me 43 years to crack the case? Because I started net fishing, and I listened to the words of songs. I get what they're really trying to say. That song was playing on the radio the other day, coming back from the river.

Just listen to his song, The Waiting. If that ain't a song about fishing nets, I don't know what is. Anyway, me and Tim set our nets and waited. See what I'm talking about? The days drug by and it's a good thing we each live an hour away from the boat ramp or the temptation to check them early may have been too much to handle. Jerry said, y'all got to let them soak and have time to catch. Tim and I vowed not to check them for seven days.

We put them out on a Thursday, and we would check them the Thursday of the following week. On the next Tuesday, we were back in the boat down the ramp to check them. We were two days earlier than we'd planned. Even though it was a struggle, I was down for holding out the last two days. But Tim talked to Jerry the night before, and he said, man, if y'all are catching fish, you might need to check them tomorrow. You might be catching more than you want to skin. Now, going by last year's catch, I didn't have a little.

a lot of hope, but my faith was strong. Also, I didn't think there was such a thing as catching more fish than you want to skin. That's like baling more crawfish than you want to eat or tree or more coons than you want to look at. That's pure silliness. But we rolled into spot number one, hopeful but not overconfident. Tim had his hand on the tiller as we coasted up to the place where we'd caught the most fish last year and predicted out loud, 15 fish to God and everybody within earshot to be the count in the first net. It was the second or third pull with the net drag when I hung the net and pulled it up to the boat.

It didn't feel heavy. It didn't feel like anything. Then as I pulled the end of the net further out above the surface, the water began to swirl, and I knew we had at least one. No sooner had I come to that conclusion than I realized we had more, way more than one. 30 plus fish in the first net,

and Tim and I were floored. We had more than doubled all of last year's catch in the first net. It was the net that we had the most confidence in until I pulled it up and saw how loaded it was. I immediately thought about the one we placed near the main river channel and a big Eddie. I thought that one had a lot of promise just going by what Jerry had told us and what I'd learned from watching Bradd's videos on YouTube. A two-mile ride to the next net took forever, but we were. We passed the time seeing who could smile the biggest as we hooped and hollered all the way down the river to where it sat. This took several drags until I finally hooked the line and started pulling up the net,

and I didn't get it to the surface before I started feeling the net shake with fish. This catch was bigger than the first, and it took me several tries to get it in the boat. The third net may have been the biggest catch of all that day. It was all I could do to get it loaded and dumped in the floor of our vessel. almost 125 fish. We reset each net. Now, to think that I'd laugh the night before talking to Tim on the phone when he told me, Jerry said we may catch more fish than we want a skin.

Now, that wasn't the case, but for the next two hours, we stood at the end gate of Tim's truck and filleted fish until we'd put almost 60 pounds of catfish fillets on ice to take home. We looked at what we'd done and basting the glory of the, big pile of fish that we called and cleaned and I looked at him I said buddy that's a lot of fish he kept staring at the fruit of our labor and said some folks may be getting fish for Christmas this year or they very well might be I've given some away to my neighbors on both sides of me and I plan on sharing some with the others too and if you want to see a smile on someone's face

just surprise them with a mess of freshly clean fish if you want to see me and Tim smiling go over to our Instagram and watch the reel I put together if Tim and I running the nets that day. We baited them and reset them like I said and three days later we had to go back and check them not because we couldn't wait

but because I'm having to leave to go turkey hunt with some friends down in Mississippi. This time I brought a bigger ice chest, more ice and Tim had gotten a custom skin board made that would allow us both space to fillet and hook fish to be skinned whole. Long story short, the river came up four feet during those three days, and when that happens, the fish fall to rise and they move on to the newly flooded ground where the fresh food is uncovered. The prediction had been a rise of less than half a foot, which could have been equally as bad for where we'd set the nets as well, but not as likely.

But four feet, man, that's a fishing killer on the net. Out of the three nets, we call one fish, and we turned him loose after we made him promise. not to tell his buddies what we were doing. Time will tell if a catfish can be trusted to keep his mouth shut. By the time this episode is aired, I hope to have had my foot on the neck of a flopping Mississippi long beard. Time will tell on that. Mid-eater auction house of Audities is up until April the 9th,

so you've still got a few days to check that out. Lots of cool items, including an all-inclusive coon hunt for two with me, old Wayland, and my pals down here in Arkansas. That's right, two people. The folks in Bozeman were pretty stoked to hear about it, so you never know if somebody else in the meat eater crew may be crashing the party. And we're not through with the net fishing series just yet.

I still got to get my hoop nets prepped and into the water. I loved a turkey hunt, but that gum, this net fishing is fun, but the waiting, that's the hardest part. Check out the meat eat eat. or live events and get your tickets before they sell out. My riverboat pilot trainee Clay Newcomb, along with the usual suspects, will be at every show. I thank you for listening, and until next week,

this is Brent Reeves. Sign it on. Y'all be careful. First Lights Fieldwear collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use, hard wearing where they need to be, Versatile where it matters, no shortcuts, just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new fieldware gear at firstlight.com.