Mosey out, cast a net and make a memory

Back in the day, if you wanted a mess of shrimp and you had a net and a saltwater creek nearby, you cast your net and took home your cache. It never dawned on you that it might not be shrimp season.

Shucks, in April or May when the weather warmed up, if the tide was moseying out (about an hour before dead low tide), well, it was time to hit the creek for the best chance of catching enough of those delectable crustaceans to stink the pot.

In the late ‘60s, husband Harry and brother-in-law Carlyle Hubbard went out shrimping on the May River one day and brought home a #2 washtub full of creek-size shrimp. Needless to say, all of us, adults and children, gathered around the tub under the shade of our large cedar tree, and there was some serious pinching heads off shrimp going on.

Of course, I had to dip out a pot full to boil, and that was everyone’s payoff when we got the pinching job finished. Then we sat around the wooden picnic table eating boiled shrimp drowned with a glass of sweet tea or a Pepsi-Cola. Good times, good food, and good family togetherness.

My daddy, Jesse Simmons, knitted nets, mullet and shrimp nets. He started out making all-cotton nets and then went to nylon twine. When monofilament nets hit the market, there weren’t as many requests for his handmade nets. During the slow period, he made mini, 15-inch replicas of the regular 6-foot shrimp nets for all of us young’uns and all of his grandchildren. What a memorable keepsake!

These days, a season is set aside for shrimping, with rules and regulations that include licensing and quotas on what you can catch and keep. Also, South Carolina has licenses and rules and seasons for baiting for shrimp, and rules for deep-holing for the larger, white shrimp. (For more information on shrimping in South Carolina, visit SCDNR-shrimp-SC.gov.)

Regardless of how you go, when you go, or what size shrimp you catch, you still need a net. And regardless of the length of your net, whether it’s a 4-foot bait net or a 10-foot deep-hole net, you need to know how to throw it. My daddy taught me how to throw one, and I practiced by casting it on the grass in our front yard before heading to the creek.

As I was taught, you wrap the hand-line rope of the net around your wrist several times, then catch the extra rope in oval loops and hold in the same hand. Place a bit of the lead-line between your lips, grab a portion of the lead-line a little farther down in your other hand, and then in synchrony, release the net into the water. It opens into a perfect circle before settling to the bottom. When you feel it settle, give the rope a few quick jerks so the net will tuck. That gathers the shrimp for you to pull up.

Some years ago, I took my net to Drayer Physical Therapy Institute in Bluffton when I was having therapy for a bum shoulder. I wanted to show my young therapist, who was interested in shrimping, how to cast a net. We went outside, and she practiced on the grass while I took photos for her to send her mom. She was tickled pink. I sometimes wonder if she ever had a chance to try her luck in a creek somewhere.

Frank Herbert, an American author, once wrote, “If wishes were fishes, we’d all cast nets.”

Happy casting!