I grew up in a sleepy little river town called Jeffersonville In. It's not so little and not at all sleepy anymore.
Me and my buds were regular Huck and Toms. I knew all the places up and down that area you could reach on a bike from the Falls to Utica.
The Falls as dangerous a place as that is was my playground, Lancassange creek was my swimmin hole, Ariic springs and Brickhouse pond were like the swamps of the Okavango Delta.
I knew all the old river rats too. Boots Burns, Pete Jenks, Cotton Elder, Ol Man River, the old shanty boat man at 6 mile island, and several others.
There was always something to do depending on the season, but one of my favorite times was Chub season.
Every spring when the Chubs would sweep out nests in the pea gravel and start to spawn people from all over would decend on the river with fish poles in hand.
There werent no limit that we knew of and we would catch fish till we ran out of worms.
Chub season was a big deal in that area and it kept you goin in this late winter weather just thinkin ahead to those first delicious morsels of spring.
Chop their heads off, dig their guts out with a finger, knock the scales off, roll in corn meal and fry crispy. They was delicious.
I was just tellin some highbrow bass fisherman thats gettin ready to go down south on a trip about them and he said I was crazy. He claimed I was makin it up.
People dont eat bait.
That got me wonderin. Does anyone else remember eatin Ohio River Chubs in the spring?
Dennis, here in Salem we would jump on the ladder on the side of box cars and ride to a place called first bridge with our fishing poles and tackle boxes in the other hand to fish a small part of Blue River.. We would catch small mouth, blue gill, catfish, carp and chubs.. I used to eat chubs a lot as a kid! We would even build a fire under the bridge sometimes and cook crawdads.. Not crayfish, not crawfish, CRAWDADS!.. It was the best time of my life!!
I think I'm gonna try and catch a few this spring.
We used to dig worms from a manure pile that had yellow tails and they would wiggle like crazy. If you tied on two hooks you could catch chubs two at a time.
My mom loved suckers. She would Send me out with a feed sack and a gig, and she wanted all of them I could get. Suckers Riffle when the Dogwood blooms in the spring. Never 'et me no chubs, though. Were they the ones with little spikes on their heads?
I expect I ate a few chubs, but we ate everything, mostly redbellied sunfish, goggle eyes, and an occaisional bass or catfish, but the first two species were the lions share. rarely did we catch anything of size out of Salt River, but we didn't care, we most always caught fish, with nothing more than a hook, line, and whatever we could catch for bait. Them was the good ol days !
