Frog Gigging

My 1st wife Suzy and one of her workmates decided that they wanted to go out frog-gigging after work 1 Friday evening. Suzy and Lily-Anne had discussed it quite a bit and informed the 2 husbands around noon.

Louisiana bayous have always held a wondrous place in my heart. Always a pretty place but even more-so late evenings and early mornings and I was looking forward to the chance to get out with the delectable Lilly-Anne. Lilly-Anne was a work of art in her own right and Suzy was always very pretty to me. Her husband Jamey, I'd never met but we'd all had small town roots and beer and wine coolers were on the menu.

We had just recently purchased a new aluminum 14' flatbottom aluminum boat and were looking for a motor to go on it. I had a good spotlight, frog grabbers, paddles and anything else needed for the expedition. Lilly-Anne had worked out Jamey would borrow a boat motor from 1 of his brothers. I dropped off the ice chest with Suzy at her store and was told it would be properly supplied when she got in from work.

I hustled our sons off to the Grand-parents and returned to get things together.

After loading the boat, PFD's (life jackets & seat cushions), was patiently waiting for Suzy when she arrived from work. She quickly changed cloths while I added the ice chest to the load in the back of the truck and we were off to the boat ramp.

I had the boat unloaded and supplied by the time Jamey and Lilly-Anne arrived. Jamey & I put the motor on and off we went, just at dusk.

We didn't need the light yet, a nice Q-beam that would reach to the moon, possibly to some of the closer planets. I think the girls had been pre-lubricating at work, they were both a bit giggly. The motor was a Evinrude 3 horsepower and while not a speed-demon, it was adequate to motivate us up the bayou. The lilly pads were just starting to come out and the moss was getting thick anywhere out of the channel.

We started out from the launch on the lower lake end. When we reached the upper end of the lake where the bayou wound into the trees, there was a large gator, probably in the 12' range crossing the channel and by the slower motivation of the Evinrude, the gator didn't know we were there until we were almost on top of it. I had spied it but was thinking it was only a log that had floated out of the woods ahead. With a great thrust and splash with it's tail, it took off when we were about 30 feet away. We were all a bit surprised but all got to see it.

The old bayou had been dammed up to make the open lake on the lower end but the upper end was trees and open moss fields. The State had come thru and dredged out a channel but it didn't follow the original channel. Bay trees and Cypress stand tall and short as sentinels claiming this area.

I swung the boat up into the old channel and into the thickest part of the woods. I was looking for a moss field that lied along side of the bank, an open area that should yield a few frogs. The area of the old channel is deeper than most of the bayou excluding the dredged channel. The trees are close and they were blocking out what light was available so out came the spotlight.

Jamey and I were sitting on the 2 back benches watching the 2 cute butts of the girls. Squeals and laughter abounded from the girls as they went thru spider webs. A couple of times they spotted snakes swimming serpentine thru the water, as cautious about us as we were of them. All of the sentiments seemed to indicate there was no love lost amongst this bunch for the snakes.

Our pace up the old channel had been further reduced due to the tightness of the trees on either side of the channel. Just picture a creek-bed thru the woods and how the trees grow so close. Then picture it with 6' of water on top of it and trying to navigate a boat up that creek. We were having a ball though.

Soon the trees opened up a little on the west side and we could were catching glimpses of the moss field I was looking for. A little further on we came to an opening wide enough to get the boat thru and into the field. Keeping the motor at an idle I was creeping towards the bank. The moss hadn't completely taken over the field yet but there was a lot of it and it was causing problems with the motor. Finally we had to stop to clear the moss from the motor. The sky was very clear and the stars were all out. We had a lot of light to see from the stars and with the mirror reflection of the bayou.

It only took a moment to clear the moss from the motor but this was the beginning of the real fun. The motor wouldn't restart. While Jamie and I played with it, did surgery on it, rebuilt the carburetor on it, the girls were sipping and cracking jokes. Finally getting bored, they asked if they could just paddle us on.

Several sips of beer and a few expletitive/deletives (about an hour) later, Jamey and I realized that we would be unsuccessful at getting the motor started again. We came to this conclusion when we managed to pull the pull-start rope out of the pull-starter and didn't have the tools to repair that.

About that time, Suzy asked us which way we should be going. Realizing that we should probably start paddling back to the launch site since we had traveled about 7 miles up the bayou, I informed the girls. Lilly-Anne's response was "Ok, which way is that"?

I answered back "I don't know, where are we"?

The girls had been paddling for an hour without any real destination in mind. If you've never been out on the bayou at night, all the trees look the same. I didn't know exactly where we were. The open moss field that we were in when the motor took a vacation on us wasn't where we were now.

I had grown up running trot-lines and yo-yo strings on this bayou. There probably wasn't much I hadn't seen here. I will admit that I didn't know exactly where I was but I wasn't lost yet. There's a 1,800 ft TV tower about 5 miles west of the bayou and on clear nights (as tonight) you can tell which direction is which. A quick glance at the big dipper confirmed the same. We just needed to head south to get back to the open lower lake. There are several camps with lights there that would give indications of where exactly we were then. No, I didn't give this tidbit away to the girls. For some reason, they were still having a real ball, maybe it was the wine coolers.

The night was quiet also, no other boats on the bayou, we would have heard their motors. I just keep feeding the notion that we were lost on the bayou. The girls were enthused with looking at every tree we passed to see if there was a snake we needed to avoid. Somehow, Jamie and I ended up with the paddles. If the girls were looking for excitement, I guess they had found it; lost on a snake and alligator infested bayou at night with no boat motor. What more could you want for excitement? And me, I just had to keep feeding that snake/alligator issue. Jamie, a bit on the quiet side had opened up a little and was getting his licks in too.

I forgot about the gnats. No mosquitoes but gnats were everywhere and the spotlight was attracting all kinds of moths too. When one of the moths happened to hit the top of the water, the fish would swirl the down. There seemed to be a lot of gnats hitting the top of the water. This always got a stir out of the girls too, them not realizing what was causing the commotion.

About 9:30pm, we got back to the open lake. The girls realized then that we at least had a chance. Jamie and I turned the paddles over to them for a while. Jamie and I had worked good together, sculling the boat. For those that don't know, 2 people have to work together to scull a boat. If you paddle on just 1 side, you will go around in circles. If you take stronger strokes on 1 side than the other, you will still be going around in circles.

Suzy and Lilly-Anne couldn't seem to grasp the concept of working both sides equally to keep going in 1 straight direction. Wisely, us guys managed to keep our mouths closed at this point. The open lake had just a bit of head wind and we weren't making much headway with the girls paddling. Almost graciously, Jamie and I took back over sculling the boat. The girls were spent at this point. No more sassiness out of them.

It was a little after midnight when we reached the landing. Jamie and I were worn completely out at this point. It was all we could do to load the boat back up into the back of the truck. 0-frogs.

Suzy and I never did go frog gigging again . . .