After I observed the feast swimming to shore I would head slowly towards the creek,
walking through the water softly so I wouldn't spook any flounder. Wading into the cool
water always brought a shiver, but I completely forgot my discomfort when I saw all the
crabs clinging to the pylons and the seawalls that jutted into the water. It was hard to
decide which crab to net first when there were so many, so I typically just ran my net
along the bulkheads and raked everything in, big and small. Culling was a task saved for
later. My net was full after several scoops.
I slid carefully back to the beach to empty
my catch into one of numerous buckets we'd brought with us. I say “slid” because along
with the bay inhabitants that were mostly harmless there were also many that could inflict
a surprisingly stupendous amount of pain. One of these was the stingray, which was
usually present in large numbers at jubilees. The stingrays weren't all small either.
Some had a wing span as large as a foot and a half. Rays this big, even when buried,
could easily be sidestepped , but people would slide into the smaller ones because there
were so many and they were harder to see.
Stingrays and flounders have the defensive
behavior of burying themselves until only their two eyes are visible, and this makes them
difficult to see. A stingray barb entering the foot feels at first like an unusually large
thorn piercing the skin. A few minutes later the injured part swells a little and actually
starts to hurt. The pain can be alleviated somewhat by baking soda or tobacco, which we
always kept handy.
Crabs were generally easy to catch, and very good eating, but my favorite thing to do
on a jubilee was gig flounder. Gigging a large flounder gained me an immense amount
of respect from the jubilee crowds on the beach. It was a sign that I was a seasoned
jubilee goer, that I knew the difference between pan-sized and “the big ones.” Everyone
would point and stare at me in awe as I walked down the beach with my trophy held high.
I managed to bring in the biggest flounder of the jubilee on a couple of occasions and
enjoyed bragging about it for the day. During jubilees the flounder usually congregated
down at the creek, where the water is fresh and shallow.
I'd catch all the crabs I wanted
at the beginning of the jubilee, then start the half mile walk to the creek for floundering.
The water at the creek is filled with thousands of tiny fish: catfish, ground mullet,
croaker, pinfish, flounder, sole, minnow, angelfish, needlefish, pufferfish, sheepshead
and even the occasional speckled trout. It looks like something out of a television show
with all the shiny bodies jumping in the air and churning the water into soft, silky foam.
Hundreds of baby flounder and sole sit underneath all the torpedo-shaped fish.
I
had fun running my hands through all the little fish, then staked out an area at the creek
and walked around it looking for flounder, being sure to hold the floundering light in
front of me so I wouldn't cast a shadow and scare my prey. Once I spotted one I walked
quietly through the water to stand over it and slowly lifted my gig. Gigging flounder is
tricky because the refraction of light in the water makes the flounder appear to be where
he isn't.
I gigged with a steady hand to secure my thrashing prize to the sandy bottom,
then squatted down to slide my hand under the flounder, being careful to avoid the razor
sharp teeth. Holding the flounder firmly to the gig, I lifted my impaled victim out of the
water. Generally I stayed at the creek floundering for the rest of the early morning,
securing a legacy for myself. I had to run back to my grandmother's periodically for
more buckets to hold the catch.
As the suns' rays begin to pierce the early morning darkness the fish in the creek
start dwindling in number. At that point the group catch was usually about fifty pounds
of crab and flounder that needed to be hauled back to my grandmother's, so I
relinquished my gig to one of the younger cousins and lugged one of the buckets into the
water so I could float it home.
I always kept my eye out for softshell crabs as I walked. I
knew they'd be hiding in the patches of seaweed that lay close to shore. Many times as I
walked back, I passed neighbors who were just waking up and realizing what they'd slept
through. I could count on the older people to offer me a drink, and I always accepted a
coke from one lady who my cousins and I dubbed “the coke lady.” A spirit of
camaraderie usually reserved for the Christmas season pervades the beach on a jubilee.
