One summer when I was about 14, my cousin Greg came and stayed with us for a week or so. He helped us raise gillnets, and helped pull a seine haul . It was the middle of summer, and the bullfrogs were noisy in the backwater in front of our house. So, Greg and I decided to spear a bunch. I had a fiberglass canoe down on the bank, and one night, armed with spear, bag, paddles, and headlamps with fresh batteries, we ventured out. Things went very well at first. This was the third or fourth time I had been spearing frogs, and pretty much knew what I was doing, and Greg learned quick enough. We would listen for a frog and then push and paddle close, then turn on the lights and find him and then ease in the final few feet to get close enough to spear him. The frogs are mesmerized by the light, but you have to be careful to keep the light on them, and not make too many waves, or the frog will escape.
After a couple hours, we had about a dozen frogs in the sack. Greg had just speared another one, and was trying to work it off the spear. I shifted on my seat without thinking, and put myself on the same side of center as Greg. The canoe immediately rolled to the side, and began to ship water over the edge. In a split second, Greg and I looked up at each other, catching each other’s face in our spotlights. Greg noted afterward that my eyes were the size of dinner plates. And then the canoe flipped over, dumping us, frogs, spears, and anything else in the canoe into the water. We weren’t in any danger. The water was only waist deep, and that was standing knee deep in the mud. We stood up, sputtering and laughing, and flipped the canoe back the way it belonged and searched for everything that had fallen out. Luckily, the frogs were still in the bag and Greg hadn’t speared himself as we tipped over. We got back in the canoe and managed to get a couple more frogs before we called it quits. To this day, we still laugh about that adventure.
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this page was last edited on: 09/16/08