| When I was a kid, my father would choose a | | | | it allowed air flow. I covered the box with window |
| weekend for a catfishing trip to Lake Texoma, giving | | | | screen wire on the bottom and sides in order to |
| me ample notice to catch lots of trotline bait. The | | | | keep the crickets from escaping. Then I made a |
| pond I liked to get bait from was full of black perch | | | | tight-fitting frame covered with the same screen |
| and bluegill from 3 inches to 3/4 pound each. They | | | | wire for a lid and hinged it to the box.The box was |
| liked crickets. Lots of crickets.It took me an hour | | | | half-filed with torn up lettuce leaves from the grocer |
| after dark to chase and catch a dozen crickets to | | | | and placed outside against the wall of the garage |
| fish with the following morning. Then the perch ate | | | | with the lid propped open. This was the trap.The lure |
| them so fast that I ran out within a half-hour or so. I | | | | was a simple invention... an extension cord with a |
| had to figure out a better way to supply myself with | | | | garage trouble light plugged in. The key was the red |
| enough crickets to catch enough perch to run a 100 | | | | lightbulb. The red light was positioned so that the light |
| hook trotline at least four times. That takes a lot of | | | | fell on the lettuce bed in the box.The crickets |
| perch and even more crickets.I noticed that the | | | | swarmed the red light at night, falling into the lettuce |
| crickets I needed were on the ground, dead, at the | | | | where they remained chomping merrily away all night. |
| gas station on the corner every morning. They were | | | | All I had to do was quietly remove the light and close |
| piled up under the light that stayed on all night. | | | | the box lid at daybreak and I had thousands of |
| Nowhere else were they so numerous.That gave me | | | | crickets free of charge.My live tank at the pond was |
| a brainstorm. I went down to the grocer's and | | | | filled on schedule and many church fish fries were |
| begged an orange crate from him. Don't laugh... | | | | supplied with fine catfish from that Lake Texoma |
| oranges came in wooden crates in the mid 1950's. | | | | trotline.Submitted by Albert McBee. Copyright |
| The slats failed to cover the entire box bottom, but | | | | December 2006. |