Just Angling for March 11, 1999
by Donald Millus
Marion Smith's Dad Would Fish in a Bucket
One of the best things about Conway is the hospitality towards visitors. On my Saturday evening walks with my friend Baby, we like to stop at the Smith house on Tenth Avenue. Baby sits on the stoop and watches the front of the house to make sure no unmannered cats wander across the lawn, and I drop in to see Conway's most personable tax accountant. "Bunny," as Marion is known to his friends and family, always has some good stories to tell.
My favorite is of how he caught three fish on one hook. Like the works of most tax accountants, there is a bit of adjustment on the figures. Seems that on a Wednesday afternoon trip with a couple Horry County personalities, Marion went out on the river and on one hook pulled in three fish at the same time. The catch was that the fish swam into a fish trap, not to be confused with an IRS trap, and when he pulled in his heavy line there were two fish in the trap and one on his hook that had dived into the trap.
Being extremely honest, like most tax accountants, Marion did not keep the windfall profits, but only the bream on his own hook.
On another trip with the famous Horry County senator, James Stevens, Marion was being outfished three to one by the politician. Stevens, always the gentleman, took his hook and line out of the water until Marion managed to land four redbreast and make an even dozen for the afternoon excursion. (The reason these two busy men were able to take the afternoon off was that they had been locked out of the office in which they were meeting. No office, no papers, might as well go fishing.)
Marion, who grew up in Florida, insists that his father was such a fanatic fisherman that he would drop a line in a bucket of water. His tackle was always in his car trunk, just waiting for a chance to fish. I understand perfectly.
My tackle was in my car the other day as I left Coastal Carolina late in the afternoon. Instead of heading for home, I drove to my favorite pond, near the Waccamaw. Fortunately for the folks who live by the river and their insurance companies, the floods of 1998 were not repeated this year. But even with the ponds down, the crappie were biting and I landed and released five in an hour. A sixteenth-ounce Cotee Jig with twister tail in pink and two-pound test Berkeley Trilene line were my main weapons. I switched to lighter line to cast the light jigs further and it works just right with the light jigs: no kinking line, no tangles, just a pleasant hour on the water with the fish biting on a still cold spring day.
Marion's dad would have liked that.