For me, Memorial Day brings back memories of home, fishing for bream with my grandfather

We are just hours away from the day that brought me to my best bream fishing experience ever.

It was Memorial Day 1967, and I’d just finished high school and was getting ready for a summer of American Legion baseball. My grandfather, Dee, came by and told me in 50 words or less to get myself ready because we were going bream fishing. Our family had a membership on a club lake outside Carthage called 3-H Lake,

My dad and I often fished with fly rods for the big bluegills and redears that live there, but Dee had found a big communal bed just off the end of a short pier that ran out from our boathouse. After picking up some nightcrawlers forced up from below ground by a half a teaspoon of gasoline poured on their mounds in the yard, we threw them in a couple of tin cans and headed for the lake.

I know now that using gas to get the giant worms to abandon their burrows and make themselves available to fish bait was an environmentally unsound practice, but that’s what happened.

Even more than 55 years later, memories remain vivid

We had a couple of cane poles stuck in the window of Dee’s ’62 Chevy, and we were ready to go at his top speed, 40 miles per hour, to the lake. We got there and pushed the old johnboat out to the end of the pier and started fishing.

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It was a clear and cloudless day, and the sun got hot quickly. I remember dipping up water from the lake to pour onto the metal boat seat to try to cool it down. It wasn’t much help, but the fish were big and plentiful, and we had a remarkable time.

There were bluegills pushing a pound and redears that weighed up to 1½ pounds. It was the best time I’d ever had, and I still remember the sound of the monofilament line zipping across the water as if it were hooked to a big bonefish. Of course, I’d never caught a bonefish at that point in my life, so I had to rely on the pictures in my head from stories in "Outdoor Life."

Remember, these were bream — bluegills and redears, also known in southern circles as shellcrackers since it’s reputed that anglers can often hear the sounds of the extra large fish crunching on the shells of tiny mollusks they pluck from the sandy bottoms of the lakes where they live.

Ahem. It's bream, not brim

There’s no such thing as a “brim,” as some people have written, and I still recoil when I hear a Central Texan talk about perch. That denigrates and reduces the fine fish that are bream and should never be called anything else.

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Those fish will be spawning during the next few weeks, dotting the bottoms of tanks and lakes with the saucer-shaped beds they dig out and guard zealously. They’ll usually be close to shore, which makes them perfect for kids with poles or fly anglers hungry for some action.

There are no size or bag limits on bream in Texas, and that makes them even better targets. Catch some big enough that you can fillet them, and you’ll enjoy some of the best eating you can find.

My favorite way to enjoy them is to remove all their scales, then score them on the sides with a sharp knife. That lets them cook better in the oil. Drop them whole into a cast-iron Dutch oven and then enjoy them with some fresh onion slices and maybe a few french fries.