I enjoy reading Ronda Rich’s column each week but was somewhat surprised that she had a pet possum and even more surprised when she said they ate mosquitoes. I know they will eat ticks and pretty much anything else dead or alive they can find, but I don’t know how they would catch mosquitoes.
I have eaten most every wild animal in Georgia, from raccoons and snakes to beaver and robins, but somehow I have never tried possum. I think the main reason is catching them in my rabbit box boxes growing up. They always made a mess in my boxes and stunk them up.
I was happy to catch them, though. A rabbit would bring me 50 cents, but I could sell possums for a whole dollar. I would take my catches to town in a croker sack in the afternoon and stand outside one of the small grocery stores.
Many folks didn’t have refrigerators back then, so they came to town and bought fresh meat for dinner every day. Rabbits could be killed and eaten right away, but possums had to be “fed out.”
Since possums will eat carrion, it was said they tasted better if penned up and fed table scraps for a week or so. I never tried it either way. I also heard they were very fatty, and that didn’t sound very good.
I had possums around my house for years and they have not been much of a problem too often. The ones that did create a problem for me was when I had a couple of cats and fed them in a utility room off my garage. Possums found out free food was available here like they did at Rhonda’s Rondarosa. Rather than making them pets like she did, I killed the freeloaders since my cats would not go near them.
The worst experience I had was when a rotten meat smell started wafting up from my heat and air vents. I thought a mouse had died in the vent ducts, but the smell persisted. I got an HVAC technician to come check them.
After crawling under the house, the technician came back out and asked for a shovel. He had found a dead possum near the vents under my house!
Two dogs I had, both mixed black labs, kept possums away from my house for many years. Squirt would chase them down and bark until I came out and shot them. The possums would play dead as long as he was near.
I thought he was killing them until one disappeared almost as soon as I turned my back. From then on I made sure they would not get away. I didn’t have that problem with Rip. He grabbed them and shook them until he broke their neck or back.
I have not seen one around here in years, but maybe the next one I find I will try baking with sweet potatoes and turnip greens!
Last Saturday, 15 members of the Potato Creek Bassmasters fished from 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Oconee for our May tournament. We brought in 42 14-inch bass weighing about 86 pounds. There were three five-bass limits, and two members didn’t have a keeper.
Kwong Yu had a good day, landing four keepers weighing 13.88 pounds for first and had a 5.53 pounder for big fish. Kinny Delay had five at 10.16 pounds for second, and third went to Mitch Cardell with five at 9.40 pounds. Doug Acree rounded out the top four with five weighing 8.70 pounds.
Practice misled me. I caught two good bass, one about 3.5 pounds and another just a little smaller, in the middle of the day Friday. Both hit Trick worms around grass.
Then on my first stop Saturday morning, I landed five bass before 7 a.m. I had two good keepers and three more very close to the 14-inch limit on a spinnerbait around grass. That and practice seemed to tell me to fish that pattern the rest of the day.
I did land my biggest fish, a 2.8 pounder, at 9 a.m. on a Trick worm but never got another bite around grass in the next five hours. I did catch a few short fish trying shaky heads and jigs around docks but no more to weigh in. I ended up with 6.03 pounds in ninth place.
One problem I had was fishing used water all day. Berry’s Marina had the first day of their Classic, with 97 boats in it, the same day on Oconee. After 7 a.m., every place I tried to fish had a boat on it or one came in ahead of me soon after I started fishing.
That’s one of my excuses — I always have many when I don’t catch fish!
Till next time — Gone fishing!
