I had an old "buddy" call me a few days ago and ask me to write a blog about some Frog Giggin' adventures from our past. I told him this was a family blog and I couldn't tell EVERYTHING, but there's still some good stories out there suitable for families. I've even got a few "preachers" who subscribe to this blog so I have to be somewhat selective. A couple of them have been Giggin' with me in the past and I'm sure they don't want me even telling all I know (although it's really pretty mild).
To understand what "giggin's" about helps if you do it, but if you haven't or don't care to, then I'll try to explain how it's done. Since we're the land of 10,000 strip mine lakes, it's pretty easy to find a good "giggin' hole" around here, although now you have to purchase a permit to enter the land of these former mining operations because they're managed by the Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife.
The "giggin' hole" that was my favorite was one at the former P & M Mines near (in fact in sight of) TVA's Paradise Power Plant. It was just over the hill from the old Aidrie furnace (of John Prine's "Paradise" fame). This hole was a gigger's dream. To get to it, you hauled a John Boat (with a good trolling motor, strong battery and a good set of oars just in case). Your giggin' equipment was simple. You wore a flashlight (preferably a miner's light with belt pack) that attached with a headband, and a giggin' spear. A giggin' spear was usually four-pronged and very sharp. It was usually attached to a light weight pole about 8' long. It's also a good idea to take along a gun (pistol or rifle) in case you found some unfriendly water moccasins (fortunately I never did).
You drive as far (or as close) to the pond as you can get via a four-wheel drive. Then you walk the last half-mile, packing the boat and your equipment. The boat should accomodate three pretty husky giggers, their equipment and a couple of coolers (one for hydration, the other to keep the frogs fresh). You have to be careful not to get too "hydrated" where you might reach into the wrong cooler and try to drink from a frog. This isn't a good idea.
Once you launch the boat and load the equipment, the trick is for the occupants (giggers) to space themselves evenly so as to not overturn the boat or get the trolling motor hung up in mud. It is usually pretty humid in these sub-tropical, "rain forest" type lakes so it is imperative that you begin the "hydrating" early on. This also helps with two other possible problems....(1) having the nerve to do this in the first place and (2) having an effective pain killer should your "gig-mate" accidentally gig you while handing you a spear.
Now let me give you a brief description of the lake and it's surroundings. These aren't the type of lakes you might see at a television advertisement for "Sandals Beach Resort," nor are they the type you'll find on the cover of a Chamber of Commerce Tourism Brochure. These lakes are thick with a "sea-weed" type fungal plant that keeps wrapping around the propeller of the trolling motor. Beavers managed to get into these areas years before man discovered them (hence the reason the lakes are there to begin with) so trees are fairly rare although there will be at least 2,000 neatly chewed and pointed stumps just below the surface of the water. Since John Boats are basically flat on bottom the odds are pretty good that you'll hit one of these about every ten seconds. The hardest part about frog giggin' isn't finding the frogs....it's getting to them.
For all of you frog fans, I don't mean to "bust your bubble" but frogs make Turkeys look like Rhodes Scholars. Unlike the elusive turkey or deer or Tibetian Tiger or Bull Rhinoceros who hide from their hunters, frogs will yell at you to let you know where they're at. Not only that, but once they yell, they'll stare back at your headlight beam with eyes that look like two 60 watt bulbs about four inches apart. They'll do this from a hundred yards away. Then when they see you coming at them, stopping periodically to clean the seaweed from the boat propellor, getting hung on a tree stump every ten feet and cussing like sailors because you are having such a hard time getting to them, they still just sit there.
As long as you keep your headlight beam shining directly on them, they'll sit there and dare you to gig them. One thing, though....if you take the headlight off their face, even for a split second, they're gone... and they'll stay underwater for another hundred yards before popping back up and yelling for you to come get them again.
I have an "ex" Brother-in-Law who was a world class frog gigger. He was the one who furnished the 4x4 truck, the boat, most of the headlamps, guns, extra gigging spear heads, etc. All we had to bring was the cooler and hydrating fluids. He liked to bring two pistols, a rifle with scope, a bayonet and 10,000 rounds of ammunition in case we saw any snakes (notice I didn't say Water Moccasins, I said Snakes). It didn't matter to him if they were Moccasins or not, a green snake was evil to him. He would wear two "ammo belts" across his chest. We called him "Rambo."
The only time I remember seeing a snake was one night we were near the bank trying to pull ourselves to a "four-incher," (that's a frog with eyes about four inches apart...legs about a foot long) when my "X Bro-in-Law" spotted a snake floating beside the bank. It was about three feet long.
Trouble was that someone had gotten to it earlier and had already shot off it's head. That didn't matter to my brother-in-law. Fast as lightening, he picked up the rifle and emptied about ten rounds into the carcass and then put down the rifle and emptied one of the pistols into whatever was left. While he was doing all of this, I was trying to keep my headlamp on the "four-incher," but because I was afraid my Bro-in-Law would shoot a hole in the boat, it was impossible. The frog jumped and swam away quietly. Even though this snake was already dead when we spotted it, at least we could take comfort in the fact that it was REALLY DEAD now!
One of the neat things about these lakes is that they are probably not over 4' or 5' deep but you never know. It was a common sight to be gliding between the stumps away from the weed below the surface and see a three foot "Gar" or two swimming alongside your boat just below the surface. If you're not familiar with what a "Gar" is, they're an inedible, unlovable fish with a mouth full of teeth about an inch long. If you ever saw the movie "Trilogy of Terror" years ago, the face of a Gar looks incredibly like the face of the dreaded "Zuni" Doll in that movie.
For your information, here's what a Zuni Doll (and Gar) look like: (If this picture doesn't download, go to Google Images and type in Zuni Doll and you'll see what I'm talking about!)
I can assure you that seeing a school of these swimming alongside your boat will make you dehydrate quickly, so naturally you'll reach into the cooler and take on as much hydration as humanly possible. Fortunately, Mother Nature only allows these hydrating fluids to remain in your body for a short while, necessitating standing up in the boat and ridding yourself of them, thereby running off the Gar. It's nature at it's best.
Back to the gigging adventure. I forgot to mention that this is usually a late night (and early morning) activity so it is quite common for a fog bank to come rolling in on these lakes. Most of the time when this happens, you can't see your hand in front of your face, much less any frogs a hundred yards away. This is usually the first hint of when it's time to quit (usually happens around 2 a.m.). Unfortunately, these lakes aren't perfectly round. They meander between hills and through valleys and sometimes in your quest to gig a hundred frogs, you'll travel a couple of miles. With the thick fog, it becomes even trickier finding your way back to your original launching site and the narrow path back to the truck.
One of the funniest trips I can remember was one we took to Gibraltar Mines, an area we hadn't gigged before. My ex Brother-in-Law had to work that evening so I gathered up two other buddies and we set out ourselves. One was John Mark Pendley who was about my size and the other was Russ Croley who was about half our size. The only John Boat we had belonged to my Dad and it was narrow and small. We hauled the boat and equipment out to the site in John Mark's two wheel drive pickup truck. We bounced along a trail that should have been impossible but somehow we got back there. We got the little boat out of the back of it and placed it in the water. It was at this point where I saw the tag that said "maximum weight - 500 lbs. passengers and gear." Let's see... some quick math - I weighed about 260 at the time, so did John Mark, that already made 520 lbs and we still had Russ (about 150 lbs. then) and the cooler, battery and gigging gear. That made for a little over 700 lbs. "Oh well, we're already here!" we kept saying, "might as well give it a try."
Russ, being the lightest got in the front of the boat. We handed him the gigging spears and the cooler. He placed the cooler just behind himself in the front seat. Next, John Mark got in the middle, just behind the cooler. I then handed him the battery to set in the floor just behind him and had him connect the trolling motor electrical leads to it. Voila...we had power. Finally, I climbed into the back of the boat. It floated but the sides were only about two inches out of the water. We'd have to be very careful. Slowly we pulled away from the bank and drifted into the darkness. This lake seemed a little more "civilized" than our regular lake and there didn't seem to be as many tree stumps and practically no grass below the surface. In fact the water was amazingly clear and clean looking. We putted around the lake for the biggest part of thirty minutes or so and didn't see or hear a single frog. I began to realize at this point that frogs like thick seaweed and lots of stumps and plenty of "Plankton" and bugs to feed on. This lake seemed to be devoid of most of that, hence no frogs. After you've spent several minutes (or hours) in a John Boat, your legs tend to cramp and go to sleep. This necessitates shifting one's "Gleutis Maximus" (butt) from side to side to increase circulation to the legs. When John Mark decided to shift his to the left, it forced me to spontaneously shift mine to the right....to counterbalance the boat and keep water from coming in over the side.
We had been out about an hour and were getting discouraged when a school of Gar decided to join us. There must have been about ten or fifteen of them swimming around the boat. To compound matters, the dreaded "fog bank" started coming in and we were lost. I know men are no good at asking directions, but there was no one out there to ask directions from. We were lost and weren't even sure what direction we were going in. All I could see was the Gar who seemed entertained by all of this (sort of like Dolphins but not as lovable). We decided we were going in the wrong direction so since I was in the back of the boat by the trolling motor, I elected to spin the boat around and head the other way. My chief navigator, Russ, like the first mate on the Titanic, failed to see one of the few stumps left by the beavers and we ran upon it.
In fact, we ran upon it so hard we were actually balanced on it and couldn't get off it. The boat just frantically pivoted in circles and would not budge off of it's newfound pedestal. We couldn't afford to shift our weight to get it loose as that would have let water enter over the sides and we'd be doomed for sure. The Gar swam around us like a pack of buzzards. All I could think of was "give me some hydrating fluids. I'm very dehydrated right now."
We took a break and surveyed the situation. Finally one of us remembered we had a pair of oars under the seats. We retreived them and fortunately the water was only about three feet deep at this particular point and we were able to push on the bottom and shove ourselves off the stump. The fog was really thick by this time but somehow we managed to get back to our launching point. I looked at my watch when we got back on the bank. We had been out on the water over two hours and never saw or heard a single frog. We got home about 4 A.M. and if I've ever been frog gigging since (and this was about twenty years ago), I don't remember it.
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