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Barefoot In The Sand: Remembering the Waning Days of the Hopewell Community (1998) Bruce C. Gragg 60/123

wanted to clean the "big one”, no one argued. He also wanted to
handle cooking it himself, that was some of the best baked fish I've
ever had. Mud Fish tastes good if not taken from muddy water, here
they have a tendency to take on a muddy taste. It was so big he had
to cut in half so it would fit the roaster. When it was cut in half
just below the rib cage the flesh was in rings, each ring was about
the size of a quarter. He also concocted a sauce to go along with it.
In those days we had only a refrigerator that we had to buy ice to
cool it and keep things, it did a pretty good job for those days. So,
in the warm days of summer when we had fresh meat of any kind it had
to be used up very soon. A hundred pound block of ice would last four
to five days, depending on how much we used for iced tea or made ice
cream. That could be quite a chore, putting a block of ice in the
upper ice compartment of the icebox.

In the forties a number of hurricanes came up the east coast and
dropped a lot of rain on us, this helped keep a lot of the lakes and
ponds in the area full of water, in turn they had a lot of bream and
other fish. Some of the ponds spilled over into the road ditches and
kept them full of water and fish for several weeks at a time. It was
not uncommon to see several different types of bream, catfish, even
occasionally there would be a pike or two swimming around. The lakes
were easier to fish than the river, the banks were not as steep to
climb up and down. They usually had a better stock of bream with few
catfish or mudfish. These lakes also had a little fish we called a
"red eye", a little bream type of fish. They didn't get very big, but
when cleaned and fried in hot oil the bones became crunchy and most
of them could be eaten. The ponds and lakes were more prone to have a
supply of water snakes and moccasins. It was not uncommon to need to
dispose of a couple on a fishing trip. At that time the Suwannee had
a good supply of various types of game fish. That was a big treat for
us to go for an afternoon of fishing. At times we would get some of
the

neighbors to go also. It seems as though in this time span the
"Garfish" began to appear in great 'numbers. They are a billfish and
a fish of prey and other fish especially the smaller varieties tend
to leave an area infested with them. They have some very sharp teeth
in their bill, that can cut a fishing line in a wink when caught.
They have a tendency to be a mean variety of fish. They jump a lot
while feeding like Mud Fish and they are very difficult to catch.
They are so bony they are only good for hog feed when caught, rumor
has it they don’t taste very good.

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