Cypress Creek...

[Soupy_1us]

Back a few post , in another thread, I was talkin' about fishin' on Cypress Creek....
Since that's where I done my growin' up , I thought I'd just start a thread for it.....Lord knows the stories that come offin' that creek bank......From playin' Cowboys and Indians, WAR (dirt clod fights), or just huntin' and fishin', it's where I grew up.....

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p115/Soupy_1us/Fishing/CypressCreek-1.jpg This map will give you some idea how much playin' I done as a kid...
The white cross is where I live now (Dekoven,KY) and the small city you see on the map is Sturgis,KY .. That's where these stories are goin' to come from... That's where it all happened....
Cypress Creek (Little Cypress as we called it) trails all the way around Sturgis and dumps into Big Cypress which in turns dumps into Trade Water River that dumps into the Ohio River , just below where I live now.
Now that we got all that dumpin' outta the way..
I spent most of my life on those creeks, huntin' fishin' and just gettin' out .
Some of the best fishin' I ever done was on that creek...As you can see all these creeks go to the Ohio River so, that means.. Heavy rains, lots of run off and the the Back Water comes up... Back up all these creeks to my back yard when I lived in Sturgis....I've seen days when we had to take a Jon boat to the grocery store for bread... That's just how far that ole river came up.....and that's where all them fish we use to catch come from......Every year we'd wait for that back water so we could get some big fish in our Little Cypress.
But, to get to that Little Cypress Creek.......................I had to walk across my neighbor's HOG LOT !.
Well... time for bed...gotta get up early in the AM 'cause ole Lyndell is workin' and I'm gonna go catch me some fish without him.:evilgrin0039:

[Soupy_1us]

As I was tellin' you guys about my fishing on Cypress Creek as a kid, I told you about "The Hog Lot" we had to go through to get to the creek......Yep.. HOG.... just one. But it looked like one of them hippos or something...
This hog lot was the neighborhood hog lot... It belong to one man but, it bordered all the back yards in that neighborhood.... Everybody had their own gate to get in that hog lot.'nother words... every back yard had a gate in that fence.... These people , even my dad had something in that hog lot....
There's was Billy... Big horned goat.....Flicka , a little pony ,turkey,chickens, just about any kind of farm animal you could think of was in that lot... EVEN THAT HOG.
Everybody on that end of town fed these animals just like ifin' they owed them....EVEN THAT HOG...........
The animals came and went as ifin there weren't no fence....Always in the yard or gardens....But, no body seem to mind... Said it kept the ticks outta the yards...
Back to the fishin' trip....
We'd gather up as many of them old red worms that we could dig up outta that sewage and get our poles and some hooks and line...
We'd meet at the gate in my backyard....Two or three of us......They always sent me out first 'cause I was the smallest (or youngest)...
I'd open that gate...................................and run!
There was a path through that lot out by the barn , to the woods and out into that field just before ya get to the creek.....And one more fence to climb.
And that's where that dang Hog would be everytime.....Just waitin' for me to get there.....
Funny thing was, after I run all that way and was climbin' that last fence....I'd look back and see them other boys goin' around the long way???? Didn't know they were that scared of that hog.... Go figure.
Not much tellin' how many pairs of them jeans I ripped up tryin' to get over that last fence 'fore that Hog got to me.....
'member one time I figured I'd carry some apples with me and see ifin' that would make him leave me alone......
It was a few years later that my dad finally told me "you dummy" ,that's why the hog was chasin' me.....He was wantin' them apples I was carrin' out there to him....

[gofish]

lol good story there soupy...remember every spring goin ta git piglets,farmer we got em from jus penned the sows,let the young uns run free...wed pick out the one we wanted an chase it down....remember makin the mistake of grabbin one right next to its mama, sow bout broke the pen tryin ta git me....never did that again...lol

[Soupy_1us]

Once we got past the hog,chickens,goats and made the cats (that follered us to the creek) go home.
We'd set up in the first big hole we'd come to....Now ya got to understand that in the summer time this creek wasn't very deep, hell you could see the bottom just 'bout everywheres ya looked...But, when ya did find a hole that ya couldn't see bottom, there'd be fish in it.. Most of these holes were few and far between.
We would set our poles out in the first hole, try to get as close to the other side of the creek as we could, 'cause that's where the "big'uns" would be hidin'.
That little bobber would just be settlin' down 'bout the time it would just disappear.... Got one!... nice ole yeller belly cat. Never did figure how much these things weighed, we just called 'em "Big'uns" ..We had "Little 'uns" , "Big'uns" and "Great Big'uns", the "Great Big'uns"would be the ones that broke the cane poles and got away.
After a few catches in this hole we'd decided to move up or down the creek to 'nother ole... Now we'd have 6 or 8 "Big'uns" on a stringer from our first hole that we didn't want to be packin' with us to the next hole ,so we'd just stick it in the ground real good and take off, thinkin' that we'd be back to pick them up later....
We'd spend the whole day (Saturday) down there on that creek.. Either fishin', playin or tryin' to solve the world's problems.....
Come afternoon.. we'd head back down or up the creek to fetch our other stringers of fish and head for the house..
But, there would always be one of them stringers of fish that wouldn't be fish no more.......... HEADS ! yep.. that's all that would be on that stringer???? We'd pull that stringer outta the creek and there ain't nuttin' but heads left on it.. For a long time we thought there was some kinda "Creek Monster" it that creek 'til one day we finally got a chance to see it......A Turtle Head stickin' up outta that water just enuff so his eyes were a lookin' at us.... That dang turtle done et every dang fish we had on that stringer, left us nuttin' but the heads.....
So, ya know what the next story is gonna be 'bout..... Turtle Huntin'
It was a part of our life growin' up on that creek.... and we spent a lot of that life chasin that dang turtle........

[Illinoisgiller]

Thanks for sharing Soupy.Your experiances on Cypress Creek are quite similar to the ones we had on Pope Creek by my hometown of Keithsburg, IL. :party0011:(Minus the Cypress trees of course. lol ) . Lots of fond memories as a kid on that stream. I also lost a few stringers to the turtles. I've had them try to eat the fish right beside me.lol Mike

[gofish]

cant wait fer this one,can jus bout see where its goin lol....quit usin them fish baskets when i was a boy an found a big ole snake curled up in one,swallered one of my gills an couldnt git back out lol.

[Soupy_1us]

Got a couple of pretty good ones about a snakes too.. I think you'll like them.....

[cattracker16]

Great stories soupy, kinda reminds me of when i was gorwing up when the creek would go way down and my brothers and i would go hand fishing in the small pools left.

[Soupy_1us]

We called that "Hoggin"...If I play this "Adventure" all the way through (and the "hog" don't get me), there will be a spot on that too ! Might even be a snake or two in that tale also.
Kinda wish Ole Lyndell was around back then......He would have made for some very interesting tales by himself.....

[Soupy_1us]

Well, as I was a tellin' y'all in that last tale, we had a turtle problem on that ole creek....
After a year or two of fishin' down there and takin' home a bunch of fish heads (for the hog) we decided to try and catch that turtle.....
So, we spent the day out in the woods and sloughs looking for the biggest cane pole we could find... and man did we come up with some good'uns......Some of them things were ten or twelve feet long and as big around as your arm... We were ready.
After school, Friday....got everything ready to go to Cypress Creek and hunt down that turtle.....Carbide Lights,skeeter dope, poles,worms (that we dug in the neighbor's sewage) some hotdogs just in case it was an all nighter, canteen of water (to drink and for the carbide lights) jute rope (to tie that turtle up with) and some of the biggest hooks we could find at the Western Auto store up town. At that time we didn't know what a sporting goods store was.
Now , a long with all them goods we had with us, there was a dog....."Tippy" one of them kinda mixed up kinda dogs but, a good'un...He had some Rat in him and maybe some of one of that rabbit dogs in him too....Small dog...but a good'un.
Tippy was a pretty smart dog too...Ifin ya walked outside carrin' a long gun (rifle) he would run around lookin' up in the trees, he knowed we were going squirrel huntin' , ifin ya walked outside with your old double barrel shotgun, he would stick his nose to the ground and start huntin' rabbits.......He just goes plain nuts when you're carrin' a fishin' pole...jumpin' up and down , runnin' around in circles,,, he was ready to go!
Me , the neighbor kid and Tippy would head out across that "hog lot" ( runnin') so to get to the creek before dark.(Tippy would stop and bark every now and then , that would make us think the "hog" was comin', we'd run a little faster.)
Got to our first big hole... where we knowed there be some "Big'uns" in it ,set our poles out and waited....Caught us several of them "little'uns" right off the bat....Kept 'em too..... "Bait" ! :) ... Bait for that dang turtle....
We got out one of them big "o" cane poles and put us a piece of that "big" stagin" string on that pole about 15 feet long and a fishin' hook as big as a hay hook, stuck one of them "little'uns" on that hook real good and tossed him back out in the water.
While we waited for that turtle we caught several "big'uns" to put on a stringer and we waited some more.
It was dark by now... broke out the carbide lights and fired them up, rubbed down real good with that skeeter dope 'cause them lights would bring them skeeters a runnin'.
And ya all know what happens to some young'uns on the creek bank.....after dark....by themselves.......................Those sounds !
Them sounds ya start hearin' as soon as the sun went down.........Things walkin' in the weeds behind you, splashin' in the water........and a whole bunch of "What's That" or "Did you hear that"? and I'm here to tell you there was a bunch of that goin' on but, we were de-ter-mand to catch that turtle........So we stayed.
That ole creek bank would be growed up real bad with "horse weeds","Blackeyed Susies" , "Cut Grass" and some stuff we didn't have name for.....Everywheres 'cept where we'd be fishin', always had one of them corn knives to cut out a hole in them weeds for us to sit. Kinda like a little fort.....
Back when you were a kid.................Did ya ever notice how dark it got on them creek banks after the sun went down..... It gets dark....
Back to fishin' and waitin' for that turtle....after a couple of hours (minutes) and several "Big'uns" on the stringer (three) We'd decided (with the help of all them noises around us) that Mr. Turtle weren't gonna be there that night.
We'd start packin' up for that long trip back to the house.....We'd roll up our cane poles and that "big cane" that we were usin' for Mr Turtle.. Gathered up all the lights and bait..............................and then we'd grab that stringer...............................Yep......re ckon ya figured out what happened by now............
HEADS !...... That's all we'd have on that stringer again.... That dang turtle would slip in there while we were lookin' around in the weeds (for them Monsters) and eat our fish again......
Mad,cold and scared... we headed for the house.... .Makin' plans for the next time we got a chance to go back to that creek.....
Seems funny... the trip home (at night) was longer than the trip down to the creek in the daylight.:confused0024:

[Soupy_1us]

It was a week or two before we had a chance to get back to the creek....
This time we went prepared!
Chicken Liver,treble hooks,stronger line, even had an old gun with us.....Carbide lights,hotdogs.....(for some reason, we always had to take some hotdogs with us.. It was like we were going to starve to death before we got home)... Fishing poles and those sewage worms, Tippy (my little Rat Dog).......Got all our gear readied and away we went.
The "Hog Lot"... This time we weren't scared... we had a gun ! (22 cal.single shot rifle, that's all dad would let me carry at the ripe old age of 9 or 10)...
Made it through the "Hog Lot" and didn't even see that darn hog this time....Reckon he was feedin' someplace or chasin' some of the other neighborhood kids...
Made it to the weed patch just before ya get to the creek.... No problems yet, other than we had to stop and wait on Tippy, he was squirrel huntin'
On the creek bank.... Baited up a couple of the cane poles we had to fish wth, still ain't seen that turtle yet. Knowed he was there though........could just feel it....he was lookin' at us from under that water. Waitin' !
Waitin' for us to put our stringers out......Well, this time we fooled him....Our stringers had a treble hook on the end of it. :).. Gonna get him this time.
We fished for a while, had some luck catchin' some small yeller bellies and a couple of them old yeller gilled carp.. Best fightin' fish in that creek.
It was startin' to get dark.... Time for all them sounds and again, the "What's Thats" and "Did you hear Thats"? Them sounds you hear and make when you're tryin' not to be scared but, you are. Tippy was just sittin' there shakin' like them little dogs do.....Weren't cold or nuttin' he was just shakin'
We had put a couple of them little yeller bellies on a couple of them stringers.........with them treble hooks on the end of them....
Then it happened.......We seen one of them stringers startin' to crawl toward the water......Real slow like..At first.....then it took off............................................... ..............Luckily we had it tied to one of them big horse weeds that stood near the bank of the creek....We jumped on that stringer like it was goin' someplace and pulled as hard as we could...........Nuttin'..
Weren't nuttin' on it....Still had that little yeller bellie on the hook??? Just no turtle.... So we thorwed it back out there in the water and waited s'more.
Weren't long that stringer took off again...... This time we waited.......We let that ole turtle eat all he wanted.....Then we started to pull that stringer .....real slow like, to the bank.....There it was ! Dang turtle had a head on him as big as a softball!
We got him hooked real good...or we thought we did.
We pulled that stringer with that turtle on it , up the bank of that creek and when we got him to the top of the bank, we found out something real quick.........He weren't hooked, he was just mouthin' that catfish......and chasin' it up the bank............right to us !
That darn turtle was as big as a #2 wash tub ( to us anyhow) Biggest thing we'd ever saw come outta that creek.......And he started snappin' !
He was just snappin', not at the fish , not at us, he was just mad enuff to snap at anything he saw. Tippy was a barkin' and snappin' right back at that ole turtle. Heck that turtle could've et him in one bite.
Weren't but one thing to do.............................I grabbed that ole gun......put a shell in it and fire right at that turtle's head...............................Did you know that you could shoot one of them big snappin' turtles right in the head.......................and he don't die !.........We didn't know that back then.
The fight was on......................like a couple of old coon hounds that has a coon down....we were knockin' down weeds,kickin' our fishin' poles in the creek, even turned over that can of sewage worms we had...Set the grass on fire with our carbide lights.......................... Smashed that bucket of chicken livers we had with us too. Finally got out my old huntin' knife I carried (fishin') a stuck it in his head....stuck it plumb through his head and stuck him to the ground....He was still kickin'!!!! By this time, Tippy had decided it was time for him to go home...
Well, now what...............We watched and waited... Surely that turtle's gotta die sooner or later.............................Well, it was later. I bet it was an hour afore we could get close enuff to that dang turtle to see ifin' he was still alive or not. We'd poke him with sticks and cane poles (that didn't get kicked in the creek) He's still tryin' to crawl off.
Well, before that night was over for us, we found out that, that turtle must of been twins 'cause we lost two more stringers of fish while we were fightin' that one turtle...
Later on in the year we did start huntin' them turtles and ended up catchin' several from that one spot.....
Some of the best eatin' a man can pull from a creek.
Just watch your fingers.
By the way.....Tippy was on the back porch when we got home.
Don't forget.....comin' up: Hoggin' fish from that creek and the snakes that tried to stop us.

[Schoe]

Well, did you ever go back and get him? Schoe

[Soupy_1us]

"Some of the best eatin' a man can pull from a creek."
We got him and several others.......

[Soupy_1us]

As I was thinkin' back to them days a growin' up on Cypress Creek.
We caught them fish just 'bout anyway we could....
We used our hands (Hoggin') trot lines ( with 4 or 5 hooks) cane pole,rod and reels,seines and guns...
Every year the backwater would come up and re-stock that little creek so we never run out of fish,turtles and or Snakes !
On a good day that creek was 'bout 10 ft at it's widest point and 'bout 3 ft at it's deepest part ,'cept for the holes.
Now some of them holes could go up to 6 feet deep,so ya had to watch where you was a walkin'.
In them 6 foot holes is where you could find some big fish ( cats up to 5 lbs and carp ,well, some big'uns).
We would get together sometimes on a Saturday mornin' and go to that creek, without any poles or nets... Just a stringer to put the fish on and our bare hands.
We called this "Hoggin'". I know they got a different name for it now-a-days but, that's what we called it.
The way we did this was to get in the creek (real quiet like) about 50 feet apart...Most the time it took three of us to do this but, there would be 'bout half a dozen of us there on some days....
Two kids would stand side-by-side and one would walk the creek (toward them two kids) real slow like.....The one doin' the walkin' would drive the fish to the other two kids...
When them fish come swimmin' by us, we would just grab them and sling 'em to the bank... Ya had to be quick !
We had 'nother kid on the bank with the stringer, threadin' them fish on it.
On this one particular day, I was a catcher ( that's one of them two kids standin' side-by-side) . Well, not payin' much attention to what was on the bank next to us, there happened to be a little tree standin' on my side of the creek...
We had the whole neighborhood down there that day...
My dad was leadin' the pack.....
We got everything ready, I was in the water with a boy named Frank, one of my brothers was and his friend was gonna do the drivin'.. Now, the backwater had just gone down and the fish were thick....We were gonna have a good day.....! ( I thought).
Dad told my brother and his friend to start drivin', me and Frank were ready.. Here come the fish, ...man they was some big'uns there too....But,...........everybody just stopped in their tracks.....................then I noticed that they were all lookin' at me.....I hadn't done nuttin' wrong..... I was just waitin' for them fish.........Then I heard my dad say..... " Son" ( and you knew right then, something was wrong) ...
"Son".... DON'T MOVE !...... Now.. you tell a ten year old kid , standin' in muddy water up to his waist... "DON'T MOVE"... you know what's gonna happen... and I did......I moved.....and when I moved I saw it !................A dang snake comin' outta that little tree, right at my face! (from behind)..
Now, I didn't really see what kinda snake it was, all I really remember was that I reckon I was the first kid on our block that knew the meanin' of WALKIN' ON WATER, 'cause I did.
I run so fast , I left my sneekers in them foot prints that I had made when I first got in that creek .
After 'bout a hundred yards of me a runnin', all I could hear was all them folks a laughin' at me.....That snake was 22 feet long and as big around and a grown man's leg, when I saw it.....But, after I got stopped and took a good look at it, it weren't but 'bout two foot long and was a danged ole Chicken Snake lookin' for somethin' to eat........and it weren't gonna be me.
After we got settled down and was about to get back to hoggin' them fish my dad started laughin' at me agin and told me to look at my jeans I had on.........I had run so fast gettin' outta the way of that snake, I had run so fast gettin' outta that creek my jeans had dried out ..........

Now, folks......this story is true, it really happened just the way I told it....We did get some nice fish that day and the rest of the guys got a big laugh outta me and to this day when I run into some of those ole boys, they just look at me and say: SNAKE !...
And this is just another Fish story from... Cypress Creek in KY.

[Timotha7]

Keep em coming Soupy, sure does bring home a lot of memories wether you are from Kentucky or Iowa or wherever
Seems like kids get into the same kinda situations wherever they grew up don't it

Thanks for sharing
Tim

[gofish]

dang........folks we all jus learnt sumptin REAL portant.......how ta git soupy ta movin!!!.......SNAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:confu sed0068::icon_biggrin::icon_biggrin::icon_biggrin:

[wewamohawk]

i realy enjoyed read your story and hope you keep them comeing ;;;maurice

[Soupy_1us]

So far all I've been talkin' about is the creek and fishing....and playin' some games on that creek....
This area of the county was and still is an old coal mines.. All growed up now.
The old shop in still standin' and the water shed lake is still there. (By the way , that water shed lake has some of the biggest 'gill and crappie in it that I've ever seen but, you can't fish it... that's another story)
Rabbits,deer squirrel and coons ! Lot's of walking but, they're in this area....
On a cold winter day, with a little snow on the ground , you can find just about anything you want to hunt....Rabbits was the best.....Big Ole Swamp Rabbits ! Big enuff that most dogs would run from them when they walked up on them...
With my 22 rifle and my bag of "hotdogs" I did a lot of rabbit hunting down in these creek bottoms.....
You could walk for miles and not see a thing because they were hid, you had to know what to look for....Some days you could get your limit on plain ole rabbits in just a few hundred yards ....They were there...
One day I decided to go rabbit huntin' down on that Creek Bank.. It was cold and had some snow on the ground.......Tracks everywheres! Rabbit,squirrels and deer had been through there all durin' the night and early mornin'..Every now and then you could see a pile of feathers on the ground , where a fox had jumped up and snatched a bird from a tree limb for breakfast or dinner...Or you could find one of them holes dug in the ground where a curious squirrel was lookin' for a nut or something.... But, when you saw that track from one of them Swamp Rabbits you knowed you hit pay dirt !
Some folks don't believe in Swamp Rabbits, they say it's just a tame rabbit that somebody has let loose... Folks, I'm here to tell you that they're real ! In our part of the country anyhow.... They're kinda like the "BigFoot" of rabbits.... You hear legends about them but, you hardly ever seen one.....
When you do see one , you don't know whether to shoot or ........run.. ..
Well, on this day I saw one......
It looked like it was as big as one of them German Police Dogs......Had teeth as big as a Snaggle Tooth Tiger.... I bet it weighed ten or fifteen lbs. It was the biggest rabbit I'd ever seen....'cept for the ones we had in that cage at home, tame rabbits, yeah , back then everybody raised them along with their turkey,chicken and a "Hog" or two.
This rabbit was hidin' under a tree fall and thought he was doin' a good job of it too but, half his body was still stickin' out in the path that I was walkin' down...Rabbits ain't really the smartest animal in the woods...
I stopped and watch for a minute or two, just to see ifin' he was gonna run or something....
He didn't..... I raised my ole rifle.............aimed real good and pulled the trigger....
Well, after shootin' the bark off that tree that rabbit was hidin' under I had to track him for a while...
I even stopped and built me a little fire so I could cook up a couple of them "hotdogs " I had brung with me... I reckon I walked another five miles lookin' for that ole rabbit.....But, like "BigFoot" he just vanished back in them woods along Cypress Creek... To be hunted another day or to hunt another day....

[gofish]

sounds bout like them "snowshoe" rabbits i used ta hunt.....cept i didnt miss.....much lol:evilgrin0039:

[Timotha7]

Yep I was thinking bout them Jacks that was up north round my grandpas farm

They were rare to see back then (60's) don't think I have seen any since mid 70s
but those were some HUGE rabbits

[Soupy_1us]

Some of them Swampers didn't get away.......Some of the best eatin' a man ever had.