Our Willis Home

My darling has been working the flower beds and they are just beautiful.   This is just one of several flower beds.

This is a small bed of flowers out back that she has planted.

Ice Cream Party

<Rene and Sunshine serving ice cream.

>Bobby with ice cream and some of my fried fish.  I took about six pounds of cat fish fillets and they did not last very long.

Just a bunch of chicks ice cream.

Rene helping Mary with her ice cream.

Our hard working Methodist Men

I caught Wayne, Larry and Bob having a short break in their efforts to repair our church parking lot.  You’ll notice that Larry and Bob have working gloves while Wayne works with his bare hands.  Wayne says that a real working man does not need gloves, just calloused hands.

OK the break is over and back to work.   Now you see why Wayne doesn’t need gloves and Larry’s gloves must be for appearance only.  Bob may be the only one of this group needing physical therapy before the parking lot patched.

New family in the neighborhood

For several years, our neighborhood has been blessed with several pair of wild geese.  They normally nest in the immediate area and have raise their babies.  Once the babies can fly, they’ll depart for cooler temperatures.  And next year they and/or their babies are back to raise some more babies.  Today mom, dad and five babies appeared.  Mom and dad had been frequent guest to our corn feeder over the last couple months.  We have another pair of geese nesting and hope for some more babies in the next few days.

trying to catch some pollywogs

This is how I catch pollywogs for my jugs when fishing for the big ops.   These noodles have about two feet of line and are baited with beef liver.  The noodles are put out in the shallow waters and left over night.  In most cases, the mudcat will swallow  the hook.  No problem, I just cut the line and leave the hook in their mouth.

Below is an example of what I trying to catch.  These are just the correct size.  I’ll cut the fins off and hook them on a jug.   Now, I’m waiting on a big blue or big op.

recognize these gals?

These three ladies sit together in this order every day near the front door of  Hemphill Care Center.  That is Maxine Ladner on the left, with mother in the middle and Nannie Poindexter on the right.  In the background is Bobby Butler.

Kenny’s back!!!

Kenny is back on the lake and a warning has gone out to all fish, hide, protect your love ones, do not bite his hook or you’ll be sorry.

Kenny and his dad caught these crappie with the help of his friend, Leroy.  Now don’t be fooled when looking at the big fish.  It is not a crappie but a fresh water drum.  Kenny just does not have mercy on any fish.

Kenny gets help from his dad while holding this nice string of crappie.  Most of the crappie are males as the mass of females have not came to the shallows.

How about this string of fish!

I grew up fishing on the river and creek banks with my papaw Keel (the top photo), We fished with a cane pole and used craw fish tails as  bait.  We caught lots of perch and a few cat fish.  Occasionally, Papaw would catch a bass which he called a trout.  To him a trout/bass was trash fish and would be thrown on the bank to die.   This photo includes a fresh water drum (commonly called a ‘gould’) which I caught.  We were fishing the Neches River.   Today I clean fish using an electic knife and keep only the boneless fillets.  Back then, we scrapped the fish and cooked them whole minus head and guts.  Mom was always concerned about us kids getting a bone hung in our throat, but it never happened.  The crispy fried tail was the first part to be eaten.  Oh how times have changed.

Johnny with a 17 op catfish

A couple days ago, I caught a bullhead catfish on one of my jugs.  This is the time of year for the bullhead (also known as pollywog, mudcat, and johnson cat) to be in the diet of the Opelousas catfish.  The bullheads are not a desirable fish for you or me  to eat.  So rather than discard the bullhead, I cut his fins off and ‘turned him around’ and used him for Op bait.   It took two days before this little op came along and took a bite of the pollywog.  So now, I’ve got several floating noodles in shallow water baited with liver in attempt to catch some mudcats.  And then, we try for for some real big ops.

Remember the 20# cat fish

This is a portion of the 20# Op that I caught a few days ago.  After cleaning him, I got the fillets ready to cook.  Then I put them on a tray and placed into the freezer.

After the fillets are frozen, they are put into gallon zip lock bags.  This fish produced four full bags of fillets (6 pounds).   Now they will be delivered to the grand kids.  So when fish is on the menu,  mom/dad will heat up the fry daddy and drop the fillets in until everyone is full.