Newest Additions (The Lure of the Fat Blackberry)

The following specimens were preserved and mounted by Singleton Taxidermy in Rogersville, Tennessee -- Ms. Sylvia Singleton presiding.

There's a great story underyling this big trout, pictured above. Years back, I was in the Nantahala National forest near a feeder branch when I notice a blackberry thicket that seemed oddly out of place for a dark mountain hollow. It hung out over the water and would have created a patch of shade had it not alreay been in one of the shadiest places in the world, with its thick mountain laurel and roseby huddled around the base of ancient hemlocks. I already knew, or had heard about the trout population that resided in the small tributaries. Then, it occurred to me that the blackberries invariably had to find their way into the water owing the to position of the bush, with the help of gravity. And since even trout cannot overcome the ambrosial taste of fat, ripe, mountain blackberries, I avowed to return, which I did, with a rod and reel, during the peak of the next blackberry season. I slipped into the woods and was as quiet "as a mouse pissin' on cotton." I inserted the number 8 sized hook into a slighty overripe blackberry and almost instantaneously, the unfortunate trout, preserved above, struck and struck hard. It would be the only fish I would catch that afternoon, but it was a trophy, thanks to the lure of a big, plump, fat-assed North Carolina blackberry and a hollow so dark and so remote that you'd have to put panties on your chickens to keep the hootowls from screwin' em'. Believe it or not.

These two perch were caught in Lake Erie.

Upper right is a Sauger caught in the Clinch River in 1969. The big Hybrid Striper was caught in Cherokee Lake in 1994.