Here's an unlikely story from Richard Gams-

The Mississippi Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo 1972

It all began when Michael caught a big fish, a spotted weakfish. But we didn't call it that. Michael caught a speck, short for speckled trout, so named to distinguish it from a white trout, which is smaller and not so tasty. None of these are really trout. It seems many fish on the coast are called trout. As we were to find out, the largemouth bass that come up into the brackish waters of the bayous are called green trout (we call them black bass in Texas).

It was June of 1972, and I was ending 11 years of service in the Air Force. We had been stationed in Massachusetts, Texas, and finally at Keesler AFB in Biloxi Mississippi. My last day on active duty would be June 30, and on July 1 we would be on our way to my first civilian job in Birmingham. When we were transferred to Biloxi, we naturally adapted to the saltwater environment of the Mississippi Sound and the brackish waters of Fort Bayou, learning to use live shrimp for specks.

Our family—Barbara, Rob, Dave and Mike—had begun tent camping when Rob, the oldest, was less than a year old, and we had camped with infants in diapers when there were no disposable diapers. All of my sons had been fishing from the time they could walk, and all of them were passionate about it, with Michael the most enthusiastic of all. He'd fish in a rain puddle.

Only five years old, Michael was already an accomplished angler, as were his two older brothers. ‘Keep the rod tip up.' 'Don't give him any slack.' 'Let the drag do the work.’ If I'd said those things out loud, Michael would have given me a withering look. "I know how to fish," he’d have said. He didn’t need my advice.

Our boat was a 15 foot Chrysler Commando with a 55-HP Chrysler engine. A fisherman friend of mine had recommended it as ideal for use in the Mississippi Sound, capable of going as far as the offshore Ship and Horn Islands, as long as the weather was calm. But the boat turned out to be a disaster. No matter how many times I brought it back for tuneups, the engine would stall just as I was bringing the boat into the dock, preventing me from stopping its forward speed by applying reverse power. How we avoided disastrous crashes I'll never know. We stuck with that boat until the boys were in their teens and it no longer had enough power to pull them on water skis.

Back to Michael's fish.

Michael fought that monster for quite awhile before it finally tired. When it was close enough to the boat, I scooped it up in the net. My son knew this was a big fish, bigger than any he had ever caught. As I was dislodging the hook with longnose pliers, he got the fish scale from the tackle box.

"Look, Dad, over 5 pounds. Remember, you promised, you promised."

And so I had. If any of the boys ever caught a fish weighing more than five pounds, we would have it mounted.

"Let's go now, please Dad?"

We had been out long enough anyway, so I headed back into the bayou and up to the boat launch. After backing the trailer into our driveway, we unhooked and headed for Biloxi and John Cook's taxidermy shop. It would be the first of many visits.

We were in the midst of selling our house and the new owners wanted to move in as soon as possible, so we had to find a place to stay for my last week of duty. The Flint Creek Water Park is in Wiggins about 40 miles north of Biloxi. We decided we would camp there for that final week and set up our tents on Sunday.

After we had pitched the tents, we found that there was a covered area with boat slips that were available to the campers. All of the slips were empty, so we launched the boat and took it over to one of the berths.

Monday morning, after breakfast, we took the boat out for a spin. It was a very pretty lake surrounded by pine forest. It was small enough that even with a speed limit of less than 10 miles an hour, chugging along with the engine just idling, we could go from one end to the other in 15 or 20 minutes. There were fishing rods in the rod holders and Mike said he wanted to fish.

"C'mon Dad, let me troll a lure."

"There are no fish in this little lake, and you'll just get hung up."

"Please, Dad? What lure should I use?"

I looked in the tackle box and found a Bomber bait we had used for bass fishing in Texas.

"OK, tie this one on, and toss it over and let some line out."

The bomber bait had two sets of treble hooks and a lip which made the plug dive down and bounce off the bottom. Sure enough, a few minutes after tossing out his lure, Mike's rod arched over and the drag began to sing.

I put the boat in reverse to stop it, intending to back up and unsnag the lure.

"Dammit, I knew we'd get hung up."

At that moment, there was a fearsome splash and a sizeable bass came leaping out of the water, head wagging trying to throw the hook. Mike kept up the tension on the line and didn't give any slack when the fish jumped, and in a few minutes had it alongside the boat so that I could get my thumb into its lower lip and haul it aboard.

The bass was still struggling, and I had to be careful not to impale myself on the treble hooks. A landing net might have been safer, but when fishing with plugs the hooks would get tangled in the net so it wasn't worth the trouble.

No sooner had I gotten the hooks out with the pliers than Mike had the scale out. "Six pounds, Dad. Can we have it mounted?"

What could I say? I had promised. That afternoon, we drove the 40 mile to Biloxi to John Cook's. "Nice fish," commented the taxidermist. Even he seemed impressed.

Now Mike had two fish mounted and Rob and Dave were somewhat peeved. The next morning, the sun had just risen when Rob and Dave were shaking our tent shouting, "Get up Dad. C’mon mom. Let's go. Get up. We want to go fishing."

"Hold your pants on, boys. Breakfast first."

We were on the water by 8 and we had four rods in rod holders trolling Bombers. In a weedy lake like this, we were bound to lose some. Sure enough, we hung several times, but if I stopped the boat quickly enough and reversed, the lure would come loose and float to the surface.

After about an hour of trolling, we passed over the hot spot where Mike had caught his fish, and for the first time that morning when the rod arched over, it wasn't because a lure had hung. We could tell from the quivering rod tip that we had a fish on.

David was closest to the rod and he pulled it out of the holder. After a few minutes of playing the fish, letting it tire against the drag, we were able to land it. He got out the scale and announced "Six and a half."

Not wanting the fish to lose a drop of weight, he took off his T-shirt and dipped it in the lake, then wrapped it around the fish and put it in the cooler.

Another hour of trolling resulted in two lost Bombers and no more fish. After a quick lunch, nothing would do but to get in the car for a ride to the taxidermist. "Nice fish," he said once more.

I was beginning to worry about how much all this mounting of fish would cost. We stopped by a sporting goods store and bought half a dozen more Bombers in various colors and headed back to camp.

The next day would be our last on the water. Then I would be going to the base to get my medal and discharge papers, and we would be preparing to break camp for an early start on our trip to Birmingham and the new house and new job.

Rob had yet to catch a fish worthy of being mounted, and he was impatient to be fishing. We trolled over the two spots that had been so productive. It was a good day of fishing. Rob finally got his bass. Dave and Mike each caught one, and my wife Barbara reeled one in as well. After lunch, we drove to the taxidermist to have the two largest bass mounted. Fortunately, one of them was Rob's, so he finally had his trophy.

As the taxidermist was writing up our order, he told us that he was the weighmaster for the Mississippi Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo starting on Saturday, July 2. The tournament was held every year in Gulfport Mississippi, and this year it would be during the July 4th weekend. It was by invitation only, and he'd be happy to enter us in the "green trout" division, green trout being the local name for largemouth bass.

To clinch the deal, he said "And the first prize in that division is a Honda Mini-Trail motor bike."

That got the boys’ attention and Rob said, "Dad, let's do it, let's enter!"

"Hold on," I protested. "First, we'll be up against the pros, so what chance do we have? Second, we can't stay at the campground, which will be full on this holiday weekend. And last, but not least, I have to be in Birmingham to start my job, and I'd rather not be late for my first day."

However, I was only finishing up my tour, so it wasn't a retirement ceremony with everyone passing in review. Instead, it was the hospital commander, the chief of medicine, and a few of my colleagues sending me off to my new life. Someone had brought some champagne, and after a toast and the presentation of my medal for meritorious service, I headed back to Wiggins to start a new adventure.

The campground was already filling up for the holiday weekend. There was a lot of traffic on the park road, so it took me a little while to get to the campsite. I stared in disbelief. When I had left that morning, driving our red VW Beetle, our site contained two green umbrella tents and a blue and white VW bus. But now, there was a big ugly orange and blue cabin tent and two pickup trucks.

"What happened to the people who were camped here?" I asked the new owner of the site.

The man shook his head. "Sorry. There wasn't anyone here when we came in this morning. This is the site they give us at the office."

I went back to the camp office, and the manager said, "I thought you'd be by. The missus asked me to tell you we found you a site in loop B across the lake from where you were camped. We had a last minute cancellation. Pretty lucky, huh?"

I found the other site, and there they were, all set up and looking proud as punch. "We did it all ourselves." Rob was pretty puffed up. "We talked them into giving us a site for the weekend and moved the whole camp ourselves."

I was still a bit confused, though I must say I was impressed that my wife and 3 little kids were able to move the camp themselves.

"Why did you bother? We didn't have to break camp till tomorrow morning, and we thought we'd beat the holiday traffic by getting an early start."

"But Dad, now we can enter the fishing rodeo."

'What the hell,' I thought.

"Why not? I guess I'd better call my new boss and tell him we'd be a little late getting to Birmingham." He had told me there was no rush, and to take my time and let him know when we had arrived.

There were a few boats out on the lake on Saturday morning, the first day of the tournament. From the way the fishermen were casting toward the shore, I assumed they were using plastic worms. Usually purple in color, they had become the favorite bass bait. A sliding sinker would be placed on the line above a large single hook. The worm would be threaded onto the hook, pushed up the shank until the point came through. Then the hook would be rotated and pushed back into the body of the worm, making the rig "weedless."

You could toss a plastic worm into the deep cover preferred by the fish and not get hung up on the underwater tangle of weeds and roots. It took patience. Raise the rod tip, let it fall (imagining the worm fluttering back down), and slowly take up the slack. If you felt a tug, you let the reel freespool with the fish taking the bait and starting to swim away. After a moment, you'd close the bail or thumb the spool (if you were using a casting rather than a spinning reel) and jerk hard, setting the hook into the fish's mouth. Sometimes the fish would swallow the worm and would not survive dislodging the deeply embedded hook, but in those days most of us were meat fishermen and didn't practice catch and release.

We didn't own any plastic worms. We had left Texas just before they became popular, and we hadn't developed the skills necessary to be successful with them. So there we were, chugging along, bouncing the bombers off the bottom behind us, and stopping now and then to retrieve a snagged lure.

Our previous days of fishing had taught me that bass prefer certain spots. If we caught a large fish and came back to the same spot the next day, we'd find that another big one had taken its place. So we trolled the same path and, sure enough, we caught two more large fish in exactly the spots we had caught the others.

We drove down to Gulfport and found John Cook at the weigh station under the big tent. The area was crowded with fishermen checking in their sharks, redfish, groupers and other gulf fish that made up the bulk of the tournament categories. As he weighed and registered our two fish, he asked, "Do you want to mount these as well?"

"No," I replied, "I can barely afford to pay you for the fish we are already mounting."

"Well then, do you mind if I mount them for myself to display in my shop?"

Wow, a high compliment indeed.

"No problem," I said, although I could see that Rob and Mike were disappointed. "Sorry boys, we just can't mount any more. Tell you what, though, if any of your fish win a day prize, I'll let John mount that one for you." At the time, it seemed a pretty safe promise.

That night, after supper, we went to the camp office to watch the evening news on the TV. They were interviewing John Cook about the tournament, and he talked about the day's winners. He pointed out the giant hammerhead shark, the huge grouper, the enormous redfish, and then he held up a black bass caught, he said, by the green trout Gams family.

We all let out a shout, and then I realized that Mike had won the day prize. We would be mounting another fish after all.

There were a few more boats out on Sunday, and we had another very good day. We caught four fish, one each, none less than 7 pounds. When we arrived to check the fish in, there was a small crowd at the scales.

"Did you catch them on plastic worms?" someone asked me.

"Er, yeah," I said, not wishing to give away our secrets.

"Did you go up in the bayou?"

"Um, yup." Fishermen never reveal their hot spots.

At this point a reporter from the New Orleans Times Picayune asked the boys and Barbara to pose for a photo holding their fish. The picture was published in the next day's paper.

Monday, July 4, was the last day of the tournament and our last day in Mississippi. We had an early breakfast and were out on the water where, to my amazement, we found dozens of boats, some with two or three fishermen casting worms to the shoreline. It occurred to me that someone must have followed us back to Wiggins for word to have spread about where we were catching all the big fish. In fact, Dave's fish had won Sunday's day prize.

We went cruising over our usual route, and it wasn't long before we had a fighter on the line. It must have jumped 10 times before Rob managed to reel it in, and it seemed like every eye was on us as he fought the fish. When I got it into the boat and removed the hooks, I grabbed it by the lower lip and held it up in triumph. A few people in neighboring boats even applauded.

That fish, weighing in at 8 pounds and 2 ounces, was awarded the first prize.

That evening, after the award ceremony and the fireworks display, we wheeled the Honda mini bike out to the van and managed to squeeze it in among our other possessions. By Tuesday night, we were in Birmingham.

During the tournament, I was driving the boat, so I didn’t catch any fish. Rob never lost his love of fishing and is now a charter boat captain in Orange Beach, Alabama. Now he’s the one driving the boat and is no longer catching fish.

The Honda ended up being stolen from our garage in Birmingham, and I'm not sure whatever happened to all those mounted fish.