Diary of a Teenage Swamper
Erin Rice erinerice@juno.com

I am Erin Rice and I am nearly 15 years old. Now that I look back on my life I realize-- when I was younger I spent days up to my knees in swamp muck. This was a great thing for me as I got to see many of the local Florida fishes and other fauna that inhabited the lake we lived by, as well as those in every swamp, stream and promising ditch that happened to come across our paths when my Dad were collecting.

This winter my dad offered me control of a 55-gallon aquarium in his fish room.As I was deciding what types of fish I wanted to put in the tank, my Dad tossed me a copy of Peterson's guide to Freshwater Fishes and I started to flip through it. As I was browsing I came upon plate number 26 with several madtoms in it that brought back memories. You see, when I was smaller my dad took me fishing very often, and we tramped around in the swamps, ditches, and streams of Florida.

On one of these excursions my dad warned me on multiple times not to pick up or touch a fish that he described as a Mad Tom. He said it could sting. Now, how on earth a fish could sting was quite beyond me. Wasps stung. Fish did not. I didn?t get it. So, later while I was pointedly not touching any fish I couldn?t name, I was greatly startled when my dad pulled a brownish-looking fish out of a net, and said ?This is a Mad Tom.? The fish was flipping around a lot, and seemed bigger than the Killies and Flagfish that were our normal targets.

The second thing that struck me was that the fish had whiskers, like a catfish, except much smaller. The third thing was the most stunning. My dad reached into the net, carefully holding the fish, and pinched a fin, causing a barb to slide out. This rewrote my book on fish, besides surprising the snot out of me.

Another incident, or rather, chain of incidents involved a distant relative of this Mad Tom. As I mentioned earlier, we lived by a lake. Or to be more specific, there was a lake roughly 10-20 feet away from our back gate. This lake was a rehabilitation project in progress by my dad. He brought in many fish to repopulate the lake, which at the time mostly consisted of duckweed. One of those fish was a channel catfish that came to earn himself the name Monstro. When Monstro arrived at the lake, he was very thin, very hungry, and very homeless.

The dam that built the lake that he used to reside in had broken, and the pond was quickly drying up. My dad netted him and settled him in one of his signature, labor-intensive, fishy-style condos. He filled an empty bucket part of the way with concrete, let it dry, and then tossed it to the bottom of the lake. There Monstro lived, fed, and grew larger.

I personally had had no contact with Mr. Monstro up to this point, nor had his name been coined. This catfish came to be known as Monstro when, about a year later, we went fishing. Now, Monstro was not our usual fishing fare. Most of the time, we?d pull in a bluegill, or an empty hook that told us that a fish had recently visited and enjoyed the snack we?d provided. So, when I tossed my line in that afternoon I had no idea something that big even lived in our (now flourishing) lake. I put my line out, tossed some bread, and waited. Then this huge force grabbed on to the end of my line and started pulling.

This fish was more than a match for my unprepared self, and Monstro proceeded, and very nearly succeeded, in pulling me into the lake! My dad ran up quickly and pulled me back. The elusive fish snapped the line and swam off into the depths of the lake.

Next time we went fishing we were ready! By that I mean that my dad had the pole. He caught Monstro, held him up to the light, and asked what his name should be. At this point I should explain that my little sister and brother were in love with the Disney movie Pinocchio. They named him Monstro, after the huge whale. Thus he was named, and released, to swim another day. After this, Monstro was aware as to the dangers of being caught and thus became a lot harder to catch, providing the family with challenge for months of fishing to come.

Now, one afternoon, the whole family had decided that today was the day: Monstro was going to be caught. We dragged out fishing chairs and rods and waited, pulling in the occasional bluegill, but no Monstro. My dad had out the nice pole and was waiting patiently for our fishy friend. However, he needed a refill on a drink and handed my mom his pole so he could go inside. Two minutes later, Monstro struck.

And my mom reeled him in, to my dad?s immense surprise. He just walked inside, came back out, and when he was back, mom had the fish out of water. This provided a great story to tell the neighbors, but really, we wanted concrete proof to show off this giant fish, which was getting increasingly harder to catch after he?d been caught and released a couple times.

And so, some time later, my dad and I were fishing once again for Monstro. After some time, my dad hooked Monstro and we got a wheelbarrow, filled it with pond water, wheeled it into the kitchen, filled the sink with water, and dumped the fish into the sink, which he, by the way, barely fit in to. Then began the frantic search for cameras. This one was broke, that one had no batteries, and the rest had no film. Having finally caught the fish and put it in a place where we could get a picture, we could not find a camera.

So, as Mr. Monstro was beginning to look rather uncomfortable, we wheeled him back out to the pond and released him once again. We never caught him again. Having since moved away from Florida and our lake, I can?t be sure, but I?m sure Monstro still terrorizes the lakes populace of fish and proves to be the elusive catch for any young fisher willing to toss in a line.

I?ve had a pretty unusual upbringing being so involved in fish things. This has led me to many good things. I?ve grown to appreciate the natural world and have a love of science.I have seen more fish, more water holes, more swamps and more weird and wonderful animals than most kids my age. The fact that I loved doing it has made it all the better. This also has led me to certainty of my future career- I want to be a veterinarian. So take a kid out swamping who knows what you will bring back.