Early in 2020 I had the pleasure- through the kindness of Ken Penhale (curator of the Helena Museum)- to sit down and talk with his friend Charles Griffin. Charles is an expert on the history of Native Americans and a collector of artifacts. He is also an expert on redhorse snaring in the Cahaba River watershed. That was the topic of our conversation below. (Except where noted the words are Charles’ based on my notes.)

My great-great grandfather moved to the Helena area in 1816. He may have learned to snare redhorse from the Indians.

I learned from my older brother- who wasn’t good at it. I don't remember him ever catching anything. I had to carry the pole and hold the light for him.
I caught my first redhorse at age thirteen. I remember walking down from the train depot to the upper point on the Cahaba River, above the train bridge. I caught a little bed horse. I walked back to the Nash brothers store to weigh him (one and three quarters of a pound). I went back that night by myself and caught my second one, which weighed 5 pounds.

We used old miners’ carbide lights. I would go to the mining camp store to buy parts and replacement kits to rebuild old lights. They produced a soft light that penetrated the water, but didn’t scare the fish or reflect so that we couldn’t see. My big brother didn’t know how to use the light well. I could hear him struggling with it. He would have it set too high, shooting out a six-inch flame, and then it would sputter out. I would have to go help him with it.

In the past Buck Creek had some good fishing. In the shoal below the lilies we caught 2-3 pound white suckers. In the 1950s redhorse came up as far as the mineral railroad trestle. Bottom feeders like these are affected by water quality before other fish. When pollution increased (with more development upstream) they either died off or moved further down the Cahaba River.

I trained my boys to be good at redhorse snaring. Charlie, Jr. is the best. He has the patience, know how, and good eye sight.

I would take the boys out of school for 3-4 days when the red horse were spawning. We would go to the river and camp out. We fished day and night. I remember fishing until midnight and then would nap on a gravel bar for several hours. When I woke up in the “gray morning” I would go back to fishing. This was a great time because the fish couldn’t see you, but there was still enough light to barely see the fish.
At other times, when the moon was almost full and overhead, we could fish at night without lights. After fishing a spot during daylight, we would mark a spot on the pole that indicated how far the bed was from the area in which we were standing. Though they were 10-14 inches deep, if the water was clear you could still see the outline of the fish.

Sometimes when the boys were young, we brought a step ladder for them to set on the edge of the bank so they would be able to look down into the water more easily. When one of them was about twelve-years old he was fishing from the top of the ladder and we were catching a lot of redhorse, including several six-pounders. I didn’t want to stop, and kept saying, “Let me catch one more…” Well the one on the ladder snared a big fish and it pulled him into the water. I can still see the water dripping from the sleeves of his cover-alls when we pulled him out. “Well, I guess you will have to leave now” was the response of someone who was fishing with us.

There was a dentist in Helena who liked to go red horsing with us. He would keep saying, “I’m going to catch one more. It’s okay if I get to the office an hour late. I can catch up.”

I can remember Clyde D. fishing from the highway 52 bridge with a rod and reel and a snare on the end. His dad was with him and told him there was no way he would be able to land anything he caught from there. So his dad climbed down the bank. He stood on the base of the bridge support and helped him pull in the fish he caught. That family ate everything they ever caught, regardless of the size. They once had a burlap tow sack so full of fish it was hard to carry. The family’s old-timers pressure-cooked the red horse they caught and canned them in fruit jars. They then ate them all year long by making them into patties, like you would with salmon. Redhorse have sweet meat, but it is very bony (I never tried filleting them). Pressure cooking them softened the bones, so they were able to eat them, bones and all.

Once we were horsin’ on the Cahaba just upstream from the highway 31 bridge. One of the utility companies was running lines across the river at the time. We heard several whistles, but ignored them and kept fishing. Suddenly there was a boom that shook the ground below us! They had exploded dynamite to put a hole through a rock wall! When that happened, all of the fish disappeared!

VB: I have read that the blooming of the tulip poplars coincides with redhorse spawning and snaring.
CG: No, its a plant we call Bush Ivy, or Wild Azalea. It grows on rocky cliffs and has a pretty pink bloom and looks like an azalea. I dug some up and planted them in my yard so I would know when it was time.
I remember my wife telling me once, “ Have you looked at that bush out there? Y’all need to go to the river!”

I enjoy just sitting and watching the fish go through the preparations and spawning. The male RH fight for supremacy, swimming into each other forcefully, making contact with their noses. The dominant male, called the bed horse, is usually not the largest. We avoided snaring the bed horse because this meant that the battles for dominance had to start over, which delayed the mating, and therefor the snaring. Males (horses) grow “warts” on their nose which they use (along with their belly fins and tails to hollow out a bed in the shoals. This may take 4-5 days, sometimes leaving the bed horses’ nose raw and bleeding. The bed is usually 2-3 feet in diameter, but could be as large as a pool table. (I once was fishing from a boat on the Cahaba River and anchored near a large bed in water about 4 feet deep. I snared a big one which dragged the boat back and forth across that bed.) A bed could also be made in as little as twelve inches of water. I remember in shallow water being able to see the backs of the redhorse above the water as they moved. The water must be warm enough for the eggs to develop. When the temperature is in the 62-65 degree range a female (mare) approaches the bed. There have been “cold easter snaps” in temperature which caused the redhorse mating to stop for a few days. If the dominant male isn’t ready, he will chase the mare away. When allowed in, the mare centers herself in the bed. The bed horse chooses a helper male and one approaches her from the left and the other from the right, bumping into her sides until the force breaks the roll which contains her eggs. The trio drifts slowly backward. As the eggs are released, they “muddy the water” with their color. Some of the eggs attach to gravel and await sperm, which must enter a tiny hole on the egg’s side.

The mares are golden-bronze, weighing less than 5-6 pounds. The males (horses) have a greenish tint to their skin and are in the 3-3.5 pound range. (Charlie, Jr. added that you can identify them by just the way they approach the bed- the horses darting in, while the mares move in slowly.) Before polarized “fishing glasses” became available in the 70s, we learned to fish by feel as much as by sight. If the reflection of the sun was bad, we could often see the ripple on the surface of the water as the mare came into the bed.

I once went snaring with some friends in Chocolocco Creek off the Coosa River, where red horse could grow to 10-14 pounds. They used me as a decoy, putting me where they had caught fish in the past, but didn’t think I would be able to catch any that time.
I caught one that weighed eight and a half pounds. I knew they wouldn’t believe me, but I didn’t want to kill it, so I kept him alive by tying the stringer he was on to a sweet gum bush.

VB: What was the hardest you worked to snare redhorse?.
CG: “It was never hard because I knew where to go and when to go”

I use a 16 foot pole (some use 18 foot, but that has more flex and weight, which decreases the control). The poles were this long to prevent the fish from being spooked. We would also wear dark-colored shirts or camo. The poles were river cane, which had to be cut and prepared early. They were tied together in groups of three, to begin to straighten them. Then the group was hung from a tree, upside-down— with a brick tied to the bottom to straighten them as they dried. The joints could be reinforced with tape. some people use a fiberglass crappie pole. Attached on the pole tip was a snare made of 22(for larger fish) or 24 gauge brass wire, with a weight attached. (This wire was once hard to find. Kathryn Tucker Windham, the story teller, used to go red horse snaring with us. Once we couldn’t find any brass wire locally. Her daughter was able to buy some in a store in Selma. Five Points Hardware is a location where the wire can be purchased in Birmingham. (It is mainly used by florists.) If the snare is too big, as it slips over the fish, it will slide to the tail and the fish will flop out. The snare needs to stop at the dorsal (top) fin. Then as the fish struggles, the snare gets caught between this fin and the gills. One of the mistakes people make is trying to catch the fish, rather than letting it hang itself. Cotton twine, 36-40 inches, is tied to the pole just below the third joint. It is then wound around the end of the pole. The length of the snare is always the same size. but the length of twine varies depending on the depth of the water.

Later the same year I got my first redhorse, I caught thirteen in one day near Helena. My best day was 158 fish (plus 35 more that night)! I have caught thousands during my life. One of the keys is to have just enough lead weight (about the size of a buckshot) on the bottom of the snare so that it stays on the river bottom, but isn’t too much to prevent controlling the pole well.
I have never seen a small redhorse. There is another fish in the same family called a red-fin sucker. People sometimes call these redhorse- that offends me!

VB: Did RH snaring ever get you into trouble?
CG: No, we would just leave. There was a cranky, old preacher who lived around Trike’s ford. We would catch hundred’s of fish there. He would say, “This is my river!”. (People buy property on the Cahaba and think they own the river.) I dropped one of the boys off in a boat so he could float downriver to some of the spawning beds. I told him not to get into a fight with anyone, just move on away from them. After the preacher saw us on the Archie Phillips TV show, he learned we released the redhorse. He didn’t mind us fishing there after that.

There were some people, though, who didn’t show respect to others when it came to redhorsin’. (VB: Mr. Griffen mentioned three families by name who fell into this category.)
Once I was standing in the edge of the water red horsing and a snare came down in front of me! Someone on the bank above had stuck their pole out over my head!

Another time we were fishing with Uncle Henry and someone walked right out in front of us to take our fishing spot. I never heard Uncle Henry say a bad word about anyone. This day he said,”Boys we need to leave before I say something I shouldn’t!”

(VB: At a couple points in our discussion, Charles mentioned fish traps. These are natural river features which allow fish in, but don’t allow an exit. The Nunnely fish trap was the best because it caught bigger fish than the Laney fish trap.)

Charles exhibited a good sense of humor in our discussion and I close with an example. I asked about his favorite recipe for cooking red horse. He responded without hesitation, “Go buy yourself a steak.”

VB