Bear Grease - Ep. 466: This Country Life - Bait It's What's For Dinner

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

Join us for an eclectic group of facts and memories about fishing bait from Brent's storied upbringing. You'll hear how bait that was purposed for a fish's mouth ended up in his. He's also sharing an impromptu lesson he used to calm his oldest daughter's fear of insects. You may want to try it yourself, but we doubt it. All that and more on this week's episode of "This Country Life" podcast. Take the listener survey: themeateater.com/grease Thank you to our sponsors, Case Knives and Stor-Mor. Shop This Country Life Merch Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips Subscribe to the MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop This Country Life MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Take a spin, hit the tables, or join the action live. With Bet Victor, tons of casino games await, plus the excitement of the live casino, all-in-one convenient app for when you choose to play. For timeless classics, the newest releases, and instant withdrawals, download the Bet Victor app. Bet Victor since 1946. 19 plus Ontario only, please play responsibly. Betvictor operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario.

If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, visit connectsontera.com. If you do off-season work, you know it beats up gear, scouting, land work, crawling through briar patches, brush, weather, long days. First Light fieldwear is built for all that. No shortcuts. Purpose built, durable. Hard wearing where it needs to be versatile where it matters. It supports the work that earns the season. Check out First Light's new fieldwear collection at firstlight.com. Welcome to this country life. I'm your host, Brent Reeve. From Coon Hunting to Trotlining and Just General Country Living, I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences and life lessons. This country life is presented by Case Knives from the Store More Studio on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcasts that Airways have to offer.

All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stories to share. Fish bait. It's what's for dinner. It's kind of an overlooked part of fishing, not in the physical sense because you've got to have it before you go, whether it's the first thing you get or the last thing. But bait is interesting to me. I'm going to tell you a few stories about experiences that I've had with bait and maybe teach you something along the way. Y'all join me at the fire, and let's get started. Fishing means bait, and bait comes in three main categories.

There's live bait. cut bait and artificial bait. Being a fly fisherman, I tend to lean toward making my own when I'm trying to coax the worst tasting fish I pursue into my net. I don't remember the last trout I ate. I love to catch them with the bait, we call them flies, that I've tied myself, and then turn them loose to maybe catch again. I will eat them if the situation is right.

If I'm camping where I'm fishing, I'll grill some up for supper. and I don't care if you do or not. I'm not one of those elites who think they should all be released back in the water with nothing more than a sore lip. I turn on loose because I don't really care for how they taste. If he's prepared right, he'll taste more like butter, garlic salt, and lemon pepper than trout. They say the lemon in Arkansas is like two or three trout of any species. I don't know, or even care to look it up because I ain't taking none of them home.

I will stand in an Arkansas tailwater from sunrise to sunset and catch more than you'd ever want to clean. But the only creel I own is a decoration that sets in my office that has never been fishing. If trout tasted like bluegill brim, that fool wouldn't stand a chance, and I'd be in prison because stopping at two or three would only make me mad. Especially when the taste of a deep-fried brim makes me feel like I'm five years old, and my grandma was hugging me with every bite. Mmm, that gum it's good.

But my fly-tying stories are not the focus of today's episode, and neither is cut bait, which if you don't know what that is, it's a bait that used to be alive and is now literally cut into pieces and stuck on a hook. When I'm fishing for catfish, I'm usually targeting flatheads. They taste the best out of all the catfish,

according to popular opinion, of which everyone in my family would agree. Flatheads are more predatory than bluer channel cats, meaning they like live food more than scavenging something off the bottom. But they ain't vaccinated against it. Here's a case in point. My dad and I were staying down in Uncle Dobbs camp on the Saline River. That raised cabin that sits on poles to keep the river from getting in the camp when it floods,

sits 72 yards northwest of the boat ramp that now bears my... father's name. And like the Game of Fish Commissioner told me at the meeting, when they voted unanimously to name it in his honor, he was shaking my hand while his offhand patted my shoulder, look at me in the eyes, and he said, congratulations, Brent, to you and your family. This is a big deal, because it will be named this forever. If you're interested in seeing where it is, plug 33.850.000.000.000.5 501, comma, dash

92. 015988 in your own X map and bingo. There it is. But this was decades before that ramp would be named after him and a little over one since I came to be. We'd brim fish that morning

and caught some pretty good ones. We had plenty to eat for our dinner that we cooked around 10 that morning and then fished again for our supper that we fixed and finished about an hour before dark. We saved a few brim alive in a basket that we had tied out in the river. And on our way back to the camp that afternoon to clean fish and fix our supper, we stopped and tied out a trot line that we were going to come back and bait before dark.

We jumped in the boat and we drove down and we raised our basket. We put them in a five-gallon bucket with some river water and tooled on down to where we had our line tie. Dad moved up to the front of the beach. boat and he grabbed the trot line that was anchored to a big cypress knee on the bank and began pulling us along the weighted line that hadn't been baited. We used it a week before with some cut bait and some stink bait, and the whole thing could have run a buzzard off of a gut wagon when dad pulled the lid off of that old styrofoam ice chest

he used to keep it in. There was a couple of almost empty packages of bait that had sat in that ice chest in the boat unshaded. The sun had done a number on the contents by permeating that whole ball of line with the smell of the bait. Stink bait is just as it's described and smells to yonder and back, and the aroma is quite off-putting unless you're a bottom feeding channel or blue cat whose 100,000 taste sensors are targeting anything biologically organic that might offer an easy meal. Catfish have nostrils called nairs.

They work just like ours except they're not breathing with theirs. They're smelling for vittles, and they can do so up to 100 yards away. If it stinks, they can smell it. While dad is baiting the first hook with the brim we caught earlier, he's talking about how he can still smell that trot line even after. it had been soaking in the river for the last three hours. Then all of a sudden, the lion started jerking in his hand. Brent, there's a fish on here.

I looked at him with the same expression I'm sure I looked at my college algebra professor ten years later when she told me she looked forward to seeing me next semester. And since duck season would be over about then, I might pass her class this time. Well, I didn't, but who cares? Still have yet to be in a spot where I thought, dang, if I'd only gone to algebra that day instead of duck hunting, I wouldn't be in this mess. It ain't happened yet.

Anyway, Dad was sitting in the front of the boat with his left leg crossed under his right, facing me as his left arm jerked around like it was tied to a paint shaker at Sharon Williams. First of all, I wasn't 100% sure he was jerking me as hard as that line. appeared to be jerking him. If it weren't for the crazy look he was giving me, I would have bet anything that he was. But then I looked past him, down that line that he'd raised from the water,

and six feet down the line, and saw it making little circles as it bobbed up and down with whatever was pulling on it, being further down the line deep enough that only large bowls of water surfaced where all the violence was taken place beneath the surface. he wasn't kidding

but I couldn't have imagined while we were fixing to pull in the boat for all I knew it was a gator but my anticipation along with my imagination grew dramatically with every pull dad made that drifted that boat along the line and closer

to whatever it was and what it was was a flathead catfish that was about as long as I was and weighed every bit of 30 pounds or so he looked to a 10-year-old boy. More accurately, he was probably closer to half that size,

but he'd gotten himself in that predicament by biting a bare hook just as if he was biting one loaded with bait. What he was biting was the scent of where that bait had been. Either way, it tasted the same when we cut him loose in the peanut hole the next day. What I'm about to tell you now is about a fishing bait that is almost as prized as what we were fishing for when I was a kid, and it would catch everything to swim. I don't hear a lot about them anymore, but back in the day,

it was at the top of everyone's list for all types of fishing, and that's catapa worms. Catawpa worms are unique to catapia trees and are caterpillars that morph into the aptly named katoppa sphinx moth. But back then, I didn't even. know any of that, nor did I care. I just knew if you knew anyone that had one come June and July, you had better have your coffee cans ready. It seemed to be the universal repository for what we called kataba worms. I would be in my first semester of forestry school when I learned that

catapal caterpillars and katabal worms were the same thing. Regardless, the yellow and black-striped worms can get as long as three inches and have a thick, tough hide that can withstand more than one bite from a bluegill. It wasn't like a brim mangling a cricket to smithereens after one bite. A catawber worm could put multiple in the brim basket before having to tag in by a fellow compatriot from the nearby coffee can. And catfish love them too. All three models, flathead, channel, and blue. The worms have a bad taste that protects them from birds. But the very thing that keeps birds from bombing what's left of them on your car after they eat one is the very thing that makes catfish hunt them up when they're hanging on your hook. Get enough of them in a can or some worm juice on your hands when you're baiting the hook and you can smell what is bringing the catfish to the party.

You can also freeze them and always have them on hand to use instead of having to wait for them to start crawling next summer. The easy way to preserve them is to blanch them for about 10 to 15 seconds in boiling water. Dry them on a paper towel and then seal them up in a Ziplog bag with cornmeal to cover them up and chunk them in the freezer. They'll be ready when you are. Crickets and worms were always our go-to bait for brim. Crickets being the choice 10 to 1. They're easier to get on your hook and the faster you can get that hook back in the water,

the more fish you can end today with. It was a numbers game with my dad every time you went fishing with it. Not just a total number of fish, but how many each of you caught, especially if he caught the most. The numbers would be repeated and retold that anyone was in earshot

until the next trip. It was always a competition. Unless I happened to win. Anyway, we'd buy crickets and declare warm on brim wherever the best chance of catching a mess presented itself. Crane's Lake, Saline River, or if the spring rains it flooded the bottoms, a little known and hard to get to a place called Little Lake. Little Lake had only a trail leading into it, and not much of that,

and I only fished it a handful of times growing up. The conditions really needed to be right to make getting in there worth the effort. And when we went, we camp and stay a couple of days. days. We never raised crickets, but we'd probably have been money ahead to do so. We did have a wormbed one time, but they were pretty easy to come by around the barn just about any time you wanted to go fishing, but didn't have any crickets or want to take the time to go get them. One thing I learned early on is black crickets that you could catch by the double handfuls for free won't catch nearly as many fish as the brown crickets you have to buy. The black ones have

a tougher, more rigid exoskeleton that the brown ones and apparently brim prefer the soft texture of the brown ones. Did you know that major U.S. cricket producers ship in excess of 5 million crickets weekly? Now, on the retail level, the average cricket costs the consumer 10 to 13 cents each. The use of crickets for bait shares a significant portion of its infrastructure with the pet food and edible insect industries. That's right. I said edible insect industries, as in folks eating them.

The global cricket market, which includes crickets used for feed, bait, and human consumption, is valued between $1.6 billion and $3.8 billion, and is expected to grow rapidly at a compound annual growth. rate of over 26%. Now, you folks that look at me like I'm crazy for liking to eat squirrels and coons, it don't sound so bad now, does it? I must admit that I have had a live cricket in my mouth on purpose twice. The first time I was just a young and fishing with my dad, and I broke my line after getting hung up. I was retied my hook on the leader of my line when crawling up the bill of my overalls was an escaped cricket that had been eluding capture for a prolonged period of time. I grabbed it with my right hand and I attempted to continue to tying my hook,

but I couldn't manipulate the line the way I wanted to for fear of losing the cricket again. In the meantime, my father was catching one fish after another and laughing at me for not having my hook tied on by now. I was feeling the pressure, and I was in a hurry. I quickly looked for my cricket bucket but didn't see it immediately. I didn't have time to look any longer, so I stuck in between my lips like I was going to smoke him like a camel cigarette. Concentrated on getting that hook time. For those that may be wondering, crickets have what's referred to as mandibulate mouthparts. Mandipulate means having mandibles or jaw-like mouthparts that are specifically made for biting, chewing, and grinding food.

you may have known that. I did not, but I was about to find out. Everything was going according to plan. I was a couple of raps away from sentching up that six-pound test into my number eight long shank wire brim hook when whammo! Old Jiminy Cricket exercised his mandibulated ability to chew by biting a hole in my lower lip. an action he committed with malice and extreme prejudice. I took great pleasure in running that hook in behind his collar

and out his exhaust pipe and dropping him into the depths of Cranes Lake where he was promptly exchanged for a hand-sized bull, bluegill brim as I wiped the blood off my lip with the back of my hand. The next time I purposely poked a cricket inside my head was when I was fishing with my oldest daughter Amy. Amy is scared of. bugs and just about everything else. A fact that it was demonstrated to me recently as I pulled up for a visit only to see

my grandson Tripp run her around the yard with a lizard he'd caught while he laughed and she cried threatening to beat him up. I tried to fix her one day while we were fishing decades before Tripp terrorized her with his captured reptile. Amy, hand me a cricket. Oh, daddy, I don't want to. Amy, hand me a cricket. Daddy, I don't want to.

I'm scared. Scared of a cricket? Watch this. In a moment of sheer genius, I devised a plan not only to show my firstborn child that her father was a woodsman, but that he was also fearless. I reached in and grabbed one,

held it in front of her with two fingers as the cricket's legs churned for freedom as she sat on the boat seat next to me. And with one deliberate and exaggerated toss, I lobbed that squirming insect into my mouth and closed it, looking at her like she was the crazy one. Her face reflected the whole seven years of her life up to that point and the bewildering thought that with one and a half billion fathers in the world,

she got this one. Now, on a side note, no idea how that edible cricket market is done. doing so well and projected to get better. Crickets taste about like they smell, and if you haven't had the malodorous opportunity to experience the unpalatable aromatics of an unwashed legion of Grilode's Sigillatus, consider yourself fortunate.

Bate. It is the middleman between me and my aquatic vittles. You can use bait you buy in the store or that you gather yourself. It doesn't really matter because either way, it's one of the first stepping stones that gets you from the couch to the outside. And outside, well, that's where all the fun is. Thank you all so much for joining me this week. The Bear Grease Survey is live until June the 14th.

You can find it in the show description, or you can just Google Bear Grease Survey and it'll lead you right to it. But that's all for me until next week. This is Brent Reeve, signing off. Y'all be careful.