Fishing Stories: The "Poor Banks"

When I was about ten, my dad found a new place to fish. A truly wild and remote place less than forty miles from Concord, this spot is as isolated today as it was fifty years ago. It is the east side of the Pee Dee river in the free flowing section below Lake Tillery, and above Blewett Falls Lake. Here, when the turbines are running at the Tillery dam, the swift water roils and boils past the steep and slippery banks. When the turbines are still, the swift water runs away, and the river becomes a patch work of pools and rocks. The spot my father discovered is about five miles below the Tillery dam, close to the confluence of Rocky river on the far shore.

Getting there was an adventure in itself. Highway 731 did not bridge the river just below the dam as it does now. We would take the Lilly bridge road to Hydro (the road to the power plant), and then, a few miles on we turned off onto an old logging road, pushing aside the brush and tree limbs that hid the entrance to the road. Once on the road, some of the foliage had been cut back by my dad and his buddies so that you could at least see the obstacles ahead. My dad had an early fifties Plymouth station wagon that had been used as a delivery car by his employer, until, when it was worn out, my dad bought it for a fishing car. The old car's clutch slipped when you showered down on the gas in high gear, but pulled fine in first and second. My dad, a mechanic, could have easily repaired the clutch, but he drove the car softly on the highway, and it never was much of an issue. The road in to the Poor Banks was a different story. There were a series of water filled elongated muddy pot holes that required a high speed running start to traverse them. My dad would pull up to one, and reconnoiter it as if he were in a canoe about to float a dangerous set of rapids. Then he would back up maybe a hundred feet or so, gun it in first gear, and with the engine whining hit the water like a stone skipping across a lake. We usually make it. On occasion, we would stop disappointingly short of our goal. Then it was jacks and poles and muddy feet. The last two hundred yards was down a steep slippery hillside to the campsite. There was no question about making it to the bottom, the ruts were so deep, he barely need to steer. The climb out was a whole nother story. The flat area that comprised our campsite became a runway for the liftoff up and over the hill. The old Plymouth's mud grip tires spewed mud and stones into a rooster tail out behind the car. It lurched and groaned as my dad sawed the steering wheel back and forth searching for the best traction. The progress became slower and slower until just as the car was about to bog down, we crested the hill. All this was usually achieved in one try, but when we failed, backing down the hill for a restart was butt puckering.

The campsite did not have the sense of permanence that my uncle Aurthur's camp at Whitney had, but it had all of the amenities. There were some benches and half picnic tables built out of lumber from a slab pile. There was a foot log over the steep banks of the small branch where it joined the river. Fifty yards up the creek which rose rapidly up the valley from the river, there was a natural rock pool where the caught cat fish swam until they were netted for dinner. The cat fish would be trapped for weeks in the little pool unless a heavy rain flooded the creek and they were reunited with the river. Just above this little pool, we obtained our water for drinking cooking and washing. It was most always clear and clean, straight off the lizzard's back as my father would say. In addition to the permanent fixtures of the camp there was the gear that was too bulky or too much trouble to take home every weekend. An axe, set hook poles, fire grate, all sorts of things were hidden up in the woods. This flat area that comprised our campsite extended downriver to a point where the creek entered the river. Here, when the turbines were spinning, the water was deep and a reverse eddy would slowly sweep my fishing rig counter clockwise from the downriver side of the creek, ark around just below my feet, and as it reached the upriver point, would be swept out into the current to repeat the process again. I could catch serious fish here, large bream and redbreast, an occasional cat fish, once or twice an eel.



The real fishing was done at night. A cane pole with a short line and medium sized hook was placed standing upright about every twenty five feet along the river for a half a mile or so. Along about dusk, my dad and his buddies would cross the foot log over the branch and follow the trail along side the river, baiting the hooks and sticking the poles out over the river side so that the baited hooks dangled in the water. Then every couple of hours through the night, they would walk the line of set hooks, and remove the caught fish. With a hundred or more poles set, by morning there would be plenty of fish to eat, take home, and to store in the pool if the fish weren't biting on a subsequent trip. Of course, there was plenty of time to drink before the poles were set and between trips to check them.

Bring too young to drink, I wasn't always brought along for these trips to the Poor Banks, so I only know about a few things that happened there.

I know that one year, my uncle Claude fell off the foot log and in climbing back up the bank, he got a case of Poison Ivy so severe that he had to be hospitalized. Another time, my dad came home with a bad cut on his neck which had been sewn up with fishing line. The snakes were bad. I never saw a rattle snake, but the copperheads were very common, and you had to watch your step when you walked the set hooks, and always watch where you put your hands or feet. We killed 13 copperheads one particularly warm Easter. Four of us walked right by a really big one beside the trail in broad daylight. My dad's little dog spotted it, jumped it, and killed it before he could be bitten. A dog will bite a snake and shake it like his life depends on it, which in this case it did.

One year my uncle John had been released from prison, and so far had been behaving himself. He camped with us on the river one week end in late summer. I was thirteen or fourteen at the time. Usually on Saturday, the turbines were spinning and the water was at full flow, but this particular Saturday the turbines were shut off and the water was low. This, by the way, was almost always the case on Sunday mornings. you could wade all the way across the river when it was low, and if the water was released through the turbines, you could actually hear it coming, and see the rising water a way up the river before it reached you. When you would first notice that the water was coming, you had five or ten minutes to get to shore before you were swept away. When the the water was low and you had not caught too many fish the night before, there was an opportunity for some discrete telephoning. With one person cranking, and a couple of people with nets, you could catch a sack full in just a little bit. There are a lot of fish in that river.
Usually the telephoning was done early on Sunday morning, on the theory that wildlife officials would not be out and about in their little plane. My uncle John, who was recklessly fearless (thus the prison time) and I (young and dumb) decided to go grabbling.

We waded out into the river with a burlap bag, and we would wade up to a big rock surrounded by water. the water was usually a foot or so deep around the rock. We would get on opposite sides of the rock, and submerged up to our chins, feel around for holes under the rock. There was almost always a hole on each side of the rock, and a water filled cavity underneath. There would usually be several catfish under each rock, ranging in size from ten inches to two feet in lenght. The trick was to move around very slowly with your hands, until you could pin the fish and get your thumb in its mouth and your fingers behind it's lateral fins and the horns on their leading edges. Then it was a simple matter to pull them out and put them in the sack. I'll admit that it wasn't like the Okie noodlers show on PBS, we didn't get up under the banks, or put our heads under the water. We never saw a snake when we were out away from the bank grabbling, but we would occasionally see a large eel with just its head under a rock. We weren't that crazy about eels, so we would by pass those rocks, there were plenty more. I don't think I could bring myself to go grabbling today. My uncle John hung around town for a while, until the rest of the family was glad to finally see him leave. He went to work on a shrimp boat down in Florida, and came home at Christmas either that year or the following. His best friend who he worked with came home with him, and they stayed at my Aunt's house for several weeks, with no madness or mayhem. A few weeks after he and his buddy went back to Florida, John was arrested for murdering this same fellow, and John served seven years for manslaughter. After he was released from prison this time, he went back to Florida to work. I don't remember him ever coming back to Concord.

My dad became very good friends with a black man who lived in Mt Gilead. He and his wife, Mayzel, and their kids would sometimes walk in from the road to fish, and would often eat with us. He lived in the country out side of town, and we rabbit hunted with him several times. My dad always referred to him as Nigger Bill, and I don't believe any offence was taken or intended. Bill named his youngest son after my dad. Things have changed.

My dad finally retired the old Plymouth, and got a newer model. This time it was a 56 Chevy panel wagon, also a cast off from where he worked. It ran fine, he had rebuilt the engine, but it had a habit of slipping out of high gear. It was just a linkage problem, that I'm sure could have been easily fixed, but he found that a forked stick wedged between the dash and the gear shift lever worked fine. By the time I was eighteen, I had his fishing car and several of my friends to camp at the Poor Banks, and I'm sure they still remember the place. I haven't tried to get there in years, in fact, I think that the access road has been gated and posted. I have canoed the river between the two dams several times over the years, and its a beautiful trip. You can see Ospreys and Bald Eagles along the river, and in late summer the water is usually very clear. You have to be very careful in a canoe on the river, there are some small rapids and submerged rocks and fallen partially submerged tree trunks. The water is so swift that even in fairly shallow spots, you would not be able stand up if you capsized, and the banks are so steep and rough you would play hell getting out.

When I canoe the river, I always look for our campsite, but its rough and overgrown, and I can't find it from the boat.