Issue 5.14
I think it was the year 1940; I was living with the Scharf’s on South Montana Street in Butte, Montana. We had a next door neighbor by the name of Les Ledibur. He was married and had one little boy. My nephew, Gene, and I sometimes went over to their house and played monopoly so we became good friends with them. Les worked in the mines and made a decent living at it. The underground mines have many mice that live there.
Les was an avid fisherman but he took his fishing one step further. He procured a hard wood 4″
X 10″ X6″ box with a sliding lid. This is the size box that school chalk comes in. Les took this box, cut a one inch round hole in the end and pounded needles around the hole on the inside so that mice could enter the box but the needles prevented the mice from exiting the box. His idea was to take this to work with him. He put bait on the inside and slid the lid shut. He set the box down where the mice would find it and went to do his shifts work. At the end of his shift, he took the box that contained quite a few mice. The next day was a Saturday and his day to go fishing. Les and his partner gathered some foot long pieces of scrap one by sixes and headed for the famous Madison River. It took two men to work this plan so they took turns.
One man would take the box of mice, the scrap boards and the hook end of the fishing line and walk a ways up stream. He would tie a mouse to the triple hook and upstream of their favorite sweeping bend of the river, he would place the as yet unharmed mouse on the board and float it out into the current. His partner who had the fishing pole in his hands then had control. At the precisely correct moment he would jerk the mouse off the board. Of course the mouse would try to swim which would cause excitement in the water. This mouse was too big a mouthful for none but the biggest fish. This was a prize for the biggest fish in that part of the river so that’s who took the bait. Les didn’t tell me if they caught a fish at every attempt but I know it was pretty close. They had a cooler that was about 30 inches long and the fish they brought home were about that long. The day’s fish limit in Montana at that time was fifteen fish per day so one day’s fishing filled that chest. In Montana during the depression many people’s diet was strongly composed of wild meat. At the Scharf’s, we ate much fish, venison, pheasant, rabbit and water foul. Les always shared some of his catch of German Brown Trout with us and with others also. My Brother-in-law, Ernie Scharf knew where to get the best wild mushrooms, which he shared, which always complimented an otherwise good meal.
Sam Wyrouck can be contacted at 801-707-2666.