Some people collect paper currency from countries of the world, others make quilts, still others have doll's from the Victorian period. Those are called hobbies or people who are collectors. So what is the difference between being a collector and having a
passion? Bill has fishing as a passion, so let his story or at least some of his exploits, spell out what is a passion. Then determine whether you too have a passion as intense as Bill's passion for fishing.
In our story titled brothers, we told you about how Bill got up before the crack of dawn to set his hooks then load up the boat with fly fishing gear to catch large
mouth bass. Well Bill loves to find alligator gars, really, really big ones, which he uses for bait to catch really, really big alligators. If you have every been to Bayou La Batre in Alabama during the blessing of the fleet you have probably seen Bill put on his
fund raiser for the Mobile Catholic Archdiocese. He wrestles the largest alligator he has caught during the previous twelve months. Last year the 45 foot critter had scales so big that they looked like china dinner plates.
Sorry for the wee side track! Now back to our story. Bill launched his boat on the Mobile Bay Causeway one Saturday morning and had barely gotten into the water with 500 pound test lines and a mammoth alligator gar was hooked. Off when his air boat
traveling up the Alabama River faster than his twin 250 Volvo engines would go at top speed, twisting and turning up the Cahaba River to Lake Martin. That ole gar finally slowed down enough for Bill to holler out to someone on a dock that he was hungry and thirsty
too. By now he had traveled for ten hours with only a remainder of six cases of Miller Lite and four baloney sandwiches in tow. Circling back around the lake the fella threw Bill three stalks of green banana's and six cases of regular Miller. Dummy!
The beer that is, but Bill sure was hungry and thirsty.
That ole gar must have been miffed by all the noise, cuz he took off like rocket, even faster than before, but Bill chowed down on two green banana's and woofed down three beer in less than five minutes. Oops! Not a good mix, cuz his stomach started to rumble,
foam at the mouth and his eyes crossed.
When Bill awakened from his "passed out" it was midnight dark. As his eyes focused it seemed he was in Pickwick Lake. Muttering to himself and wondering how in blue blazes he had gotten up to north Alabama. So back to the hungers and more beer and
banana's until another "passed out" and finally upon awakening the air boat was dead in the water within sight of where he had launched, the Mobile Bay Causeway.
Ole Bill called Aiko on his cell phone. Thankfully Aiko was home, cuz Bill only had two minutes left on his "frequent flyer" plan for the month. When Aiko saw the size of the alligator gar, he told Bill that there was no way on earth that Bill was going
to use that gar for alligator bait. The best thing to do was to fillet the gar and arrange for refrigerate trucks to haul the fillets back to their farm in Mobile to hold a benefit fish fry for the Buccaneer Yacht Club.
Three days later that ole gar was filleted, the meat packed into fourteen reefers and they began frying fish for the benefit two days later. Four tanker trucks filled to the brim with peanut oil were finally emptied two weeks later along with all of the
fillets. Folks sure had some good ole "southern hospitality" those days and a pile of money was raised for the yacht club too.
I do not think that Bill has eaten a banana since those days, he turned to regular Miller, which is just fine. Cuz a Lite beer is sorta like bottled water with all of the nutritional facts on the label. Now water is water and beer is beer. There is
really no sech thang and Lite beer except for the label and if a southern lad or lass does not know that water is water, then they have been brain washed by "Yankees."
If you wonder if beer was purchased for the benefit, it was not. The empty beer cans were in abundance and filled with "red eye." Bill saves every empty for a run on the aluminum market one day which he plans to corner and become a millionaire. That
leads into another fishing story about Bill and how he "green fishes."
No bait, live or otherwise. Just regular Miller beer cans. When a can is emptied, he dangles one of those African wigglers Rhonda, his Kiwi Lil Sis, sends each year. That worm wraps around a hook, dives into the water, grabs a fish and throws it out
of the water. Then ole Bill throws an empty beer can, pops the fish silly and he nets the stunned fish to place it in his ice chest.
Of course Bill retrieves the beer cans. Our brother believes in "green everything." Well almost everything. I have never known him to drink "green tea." On every fishing trip, he bags river debris and uses what he has gathered for fuel in his
incinerator, which in turn powers his biomass recovery system, sorta like Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, if you do not remember, do view the movie. It provided the blue print for a better world according to Bill. Otherwise known as "The World According To Bill."
That is where Garp got the movie title with his name.
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Copyright: 1986-2010