Page 104 - South Mississippi Living - January, 2017

OUTDOOR LIVING hook line & sinker
Duck hunting and fishing for speckled trout in Pascagoula River marsh
The Christmas Holidays bring back
fond memories of my youth in the 1950s when we
got two weeks off from school and
my dad took my younger brother, Gerald, and me duck
hunting in the marshes between the east and west tributaries of the Pascagoula
River.
My Dad, who delivered mail in east Biloxi for
many years and was known by his close friends as Fox, kept a 16-foot wooden planked skiff at Mary Walker Bayou Fishing Camp in Gautier. Mary Walker Bayou emptied into the west Pascagoula River just north of Old Highway 90. The Andrews family, who owned and operated the fishing camp, provided live bait shrimp in the bait well of Dad’s skiff when we went duck hunting.
My dad, like other duck hunters, would build a duck blind in one of the small ponds that were prevalent in the Pascagoula River marsh. The duck blind was framed with pine in a teepee shape and was constructed about three feet above the water level to allow the skiff to be pulled into the blind. We would hunt from a small planked platform built above the area
where the skiff was tied up. The blind was camouflaged with cane and reeds that we cut from the marsh.
My dad always built his blinds close to the entrance to the pond to take advantage of the changing tides that brought the speckled trout up the river from the Gulf. We fished during the middle of the day when the ducks stopped flying. Dad fished for the trout with a 12-foot cane pole rigged with a cork leader and no lead weight so the live shrimp could swim freely to attract the trout.
Sometimes we would catch perch, sheepshead and red fish in addition to the speckled trout. There aren’t many places where you can duck hunt early in the morning and fish for trout during mid-day from the same location. I remember that Queenie, our retriever, would get just as excited over seeing a large speckled trout lifted out of the water as she did when she jumped in the water to retrieve a duck that my dad had just shot.
Upon returning to the fishing camp at the
end of the day, I was always happy to hear
the stories of the other hunters and fishermen who had rented skiffs and had been hunting and fishing in the same area of the Pascagoula River marsh. Needless to say, there were always several versions of “the one that got away” — ducks and trout!
story by Walter J. Blessey, IV
photo courtesy of Walter J. Blessey, IV
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