One of my favorite childhood memories is of a family reunion of my Mother’s family. My Mother’s family did not get together much as I remember. Probably one reason was that her parents were divorced. Although they were divorced, they both lived in the same community and got along well. The reunion that is burned into my mind was held at a “rock mill pond”. Many of you probably have never heard of a rock mill pond but during the 1960’s and 1970’s they were home of some record sized bass. The reasons for the large sized bass were the thousands and thousands of bream which grew in these ponds.I grew up in Crenshaw County on a small farm outside of Luverne, Alabama. Much of the land in Crenshaw is of the heavy red clay soil type which constantly stained our cloths and bare feet. In this clay was a sometimes vast amount of iron ore which was mined in a pit. A critical part of the pit was the pond constructed to provide water required to wash the clay off the ore.The iron ore pits and ponds were crude affairs and built as cheap as possible. To construct a pond, they would locate a small stream and dam it up with out clearing up the pond site. Therefore, years after the mining operations had ceased, the trees had died and fallen down into the water. You can imagine the vast amount of cover afforded the bream which made full use of it to produce thousands of offspring.

In nature when food is plentiful, prey animals such as bass also increase. Although these ponds contained vast number of fish, they were difficult to catch and mostly all you caught were small bream. My Aunt and Mother often took us fishing and we caught hundreds of small bream while replacing many hooks and broken lines. Of course for a young boy the size of the fish and lost hooks did not matter because we were fishing! Young boys and fishing have always been for each other. I am sure it was during one of these trips when my Mother and Aunt decided to have a family reunion at this old rock mill pond.

On the selected date Grand Parents and most of my Aunts and Uncles and their families showed up and starting fishing. Grand Daddy was placed in charge of cooking rather than Grand Mother who loved to fish. Someone had brought a few cast iron cooking pots and oil to fry the fish and hush puppies. I helped Grand Daddy locate a few large rocks, probably iron ore left over from the mining. I remember that the site was fairly clear due to the lack of top soil on top of the red clay. After we got setup, I joined my many cousins and started fishing.

After we had caught a good many fish, the adults began cleaning them and Grand Daddy starting cooking. In my memory it seemed that we fished, cleaned fish, and ate fish for several hours. I do not remember anyone catching a large fish but it created a large memory for me about a great family reunion in the outdoors.

Photo by Jwinfred

Being outdoors in nature and having a great time doesn’t require much money or equipment. I wonder if that old pond still exists where I can take my grand son for an outdoor adventure and catch a few fish.