Tadpoles in the Hole

Every so often Grandad

would need to get some feeder fish to put in the fishing hole that he stocked with channel catfish. Those fish were pretty greedy and would eat every thing that moved in the "Rock Pit". The Rock Pit was a spring fed pond originally, that he had bulldozed out years before as a stock tank and fishing hole. As I said, every once in a while we would go to one of the smaller ponds on the place and take some seine nets. It was always quite a spectacle, someone would always fall in, mud would be every where. Then there were the buckets. Once the net was brought out Mawmaw Opal and Mom would start sorting out the fish in buckets. Catfish, feeder fish and would go in one bucket. Any large fish would be saved to clean and put in the freezer and I got to play with the crawdads and tadpoles. These tadpoles weren't the tiny little wriggly things you might be used to seeing. These were bullfrog tadpoles. They were always huge, sometimes bigger than by nine year old hand. We used to go frog hunting some spring nights at these ponds and get thirty or forty frogs a night for a frog leg fry. One time when Paul was dating Patty, we had a Frog Leg fry and Patty was determined to help out cooking. She being a city girl had never fried frog legs before. Cledith didn't tell here that fresh frog legs would jump when you throw them in the hot grease. She freaked out that first time. Anyway, the tadpole were the most interesting part of this whole adventure to me. They would let me take some home in a pickle jar.