Big Black Battling Bull Bream — Bite!

One warm, sunny April morning, while my boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird and I lounged on his front porch, enjoying cornbread chunks in cold buttermilk, and gazing across my father’s Mississippi Delta farm, he said, “No work is going on, planting time is a few weeks off, and we’ve got nothing to do. Let’s try those big black bull battling bream in Blue Bottom Bayou.” When I opined that bream, so delicious when fried and eaten with hush puppies, probably weren’t bedding yet, he said, “Maybe, maybe not. Some years bream bed early, fixing to spawn, and that’s when they battle at their best.” We loaded the johnboat in his pickup and headed to Fratesi’s Grocery to get crickets for bait and our favorite fishing day food — sardines, onions, crackers, and RC Colas. On the way, Jaybird showed me his new fish basket. The old black man was mighty proud of his purchase. Before, we used stringers, which were troublesome because they had to be untied from the boat to string up the catch. With the basket, pushing the lid down and dropping in fish was much easier and quicker.

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