This photo of a man holding a string of bluegill bream reminded me of
the many mill ponds my family and I fished in the 1950’s. This photo was taken at
Coleman’s Lake, off the Ogeechee River near Midville, Georgia where my family fished,
many times as I was growing up. . Georgia Department of Archives and History,
Vanishing Georgia Collection.

My father continued a long tradition when he returned from service in World War II: fishing the mill ponds near us that were to be found on the creeks that fed the great Ogeechee and Savanah Rivers. These outings were family affairs and were begun long before my father or I were born. The mills built along the streams ponds were often still grinding corn for grits, powered by the waters that ran across the dams and spillways that were built to create the ponds. Above the dams were the still waters spiked with dead tree trunks and covered with great patches of lily pads, places where the largemouth bass sight hunted for the frogs and minnows who dared show themselves. They could be monsters, some weighing ten pounds or more.

There was an art to fishing these waters and lures especially made to tempt the biggest of the game fish: the Lucky Thirteen that imitated frogs popping and gurgling across the surface, the skirted “Hawaiian Wigglers” with metal propellers that flashed and buzzed beneath the water, mimicking silvery minnows, and “Hula Poppers” that added a skirt to a flat-faced, painted wooden frog that came in many deceptive color combinations. My father’s tackle box was filled with these and more, with stringers and extra line, tins of lead weights and often a can of Vienna Sausages-in case he got hungry. He fished alone until I was older, paddling himself to the farthest backwaters where a stream entered the pond and where the bass watched for prey and even occasionally broke the surface in loud lunges to swallowed a duckling or bullfrog whole..

The great bass that hunted in the shallow edges in the early hours took refuge in deeper water as the rising summer sun heated the thinner waters. Even the most feverish fisherman would join there wives and children to have lunch and wait to resume their quest as the sun set in the early evening. A watermelon taken out of the ice tub and sliced up at midday to cool us all off as the temperatures of July rose to ninety degrees and more. .

The children fished in safer waters below the dam for redbellies and warmouths in the raceway armed with simple rigs hung from bamboo poles and braided nylon lines draped with corks, lead and small hooks assembled on braided nylon line -baited with worms or crickets. A five -year old could master the art. and we did. Every boy and girl I grew up had done it.

At the end of the day, the panfish were cleaned, coated in corn meal and fried over an open fire. Clumps of cornmeal with bits of yellow onion mixed in for sweetness were hand formed into patties, held together by a hen’s egg brought along for that purpose. These clumps were then gently eased into the hot melted lard and in minutes came out golden. Called “hushpuppies,” these fritters were prized especially by kids and dogs because there was no picking out bones in order to enjoy the fine flavor. And they went down well with iced tea. The men drank “Papst”bottled beer to wash down their fish and hushpuppies. The Methodist ban on alcohol was always suspended on fishing trips and at the beach.

Summer days are long in Georgia and by nightfall we were exhausted. We stowed the wash bucket, tackle boxes and rods and reels, as well as our folding canvas campaign chairs in the trunk, tied our fishing poles to the top of the old Buick and with the car windows all wide open, rode home, cool at last from the day’s unrelenting heat.