Yo Yo-ing Dugdemona Creek

Yo-yos exploded on the outdoor scene in the early 1960s. A mechanical fishing device made of galvanized metal, it is about the size of its namesake, only thinner. There is a short string for attaching it to a limb, dock, or set pole, and a spring-powered spool contains fishing line with a swivel, to which a baited hook is attached.

As the line is pulled out, the spring is wound tight. The yo-yo is then set by locking a trigger device. When a fish grabs the bait, the trigger is tripped and the spring snags the fish. The spool then plays the fish and eventually brings it to the surface to await the fisherman.

My Uncle Preston Copeland schooled me in the art of springtime yo-yoing.

His son Gary and I often accompanied him on the April fishing trips and learned the tricks to catching channel catfish and the prized Opelousas, or flathead, cat. Along the way, we also learned all of the important place names along the creek, such as the Round Hole, Pin Oak, McDonald Buffalo Hole, Fish Trap Slough, and the Little Water.

Back in those days, almost every bend and hole had a name, but, sadly, the old names are fading from knowledge. Fishing on the creek, as the locals refer to Dugdemona, is not as fashionable as it used to be and hunting leases have cut off access to many people. As a result, the place names are fading from memory. Someday, I plan to make some signs to nail to the cypress trees to keep the names from being lost altogether.

Yo-yoing with Uncle Preston was always an adventure, and usually required navigating logs several feet long across sloughs to get to the ten-foot cypress boat he kept on the creek. Our neighbor J. M. Green made it for Preston for forty dollars around 1960.

 Once on the water, Gary and I would pester Preston with questions. “How deep is it here?” we’d ask every time he paddled over one of the creek’s larger pools. He would respond by jabbing his long, hand-made cypress paddle into the murky water until it disappeared. “Woo!” he’d yell, “There ain’t no bottom here!”

It was a scary thought, and my young mind envisioned all sorts of monstrous creatures lurking in those bottomless pits (which, I found out later, were rarely over ten feet deep).

Running yo-yos at night was like entering another world, with thick foliage often crowding in around us, and the air reverberating with the croaks of frogs and the buzzing of jillions of insects. Preston paddled from the stern and I searched for the yo-yos with a light. When a fish was on, the yo-yo would flash brilliantly as it twisted with the fighting fish.

One of the exciting things about yo-yoing on the creek was that you never knew what you might catch. Channel cats, Opelousas catfish, mud cats, bass, gasper gou, white perch, and myriad other species were possible.

Snakes were always on my mind because they often stretched out on the limbs we used for yo-yos. Whenever Preston checked a yo-yo, my end of the boat would inevitably drift into the bushes.

“Watch out for snakes!” he’d laugh as I disappeared among the branches. Most of the ones we encountered were harmless water snakes, but it was unnerving, nonetheless.

One of the greatest shocks in my yo-yoing career occurred as a teenager on a trip with Uncle Rodger Jones. It was one of the first times we ever used an outboard motor, so he ran it and allowed me to work the yo-yos.

We saw what looked to be a nice channel cat on one yo-yo, and Rodger positioned me next to the limb. I grabbed the line and pulled it up and over into the boat. To my surprise, the “channel cat” kept coming out of the water, and before I knew it, a long, slithery eel was flopping around my feet.

For a second, I thought it was a water moccasin and in a fit of the heebie-jeebies flung it over the other side of the boat. Rodger nearly fell out of the boat laughing. It was the only eel I ever recall having caught in my many years of yo-yoing.

My bucket of yo-yos tends to gather dust now that I have slowed down in my old age, but those springtime memories on the creek are among my most cherished. h

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Dr. Terry L. Jones is professor emeritus of history at the University of Louisiana at Monroe who has received numerous awards for his books and outdoor articles. In March, Arcadia Publishing released his essay collection, Louisiana Pastimes: Ancient Fishing Methods, The Hippo Bill, A Squirrel Stampede, and Other Tales. The book presents, in Terry’s vivid and nostalgic style, fragments of life in Louisiana’s most sacred spaces; analysis of pieces of its stranger histories; and personal recollections we Louisianans can all find a bit of home in. Fifty of the essays included were first published with Country Roads as part of Terry’s longtime “Pastimes” column with the magazine.

Louisiana Pastimes can be purchased at arcadiapublishing.com. You can also read more of his work HERE.