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Fish Thumper’s

Your fish billy's look great. Properly applied they should knock any fish cold.

I have made a lot of fish billy's in my time. Back when I was doing a lot of fishing I fished with my best friend who was employed by Nissan in a parts distribution center. I was just as crazy about fishing in those days as I was about woodworking.

This parts distribution center would receive parts in crates. Sometimes these crates contained really interesting wood and my buddy would tear down the crates with interesting wood and bring it to me. I would turn it into toys and such. Sometimes the crates had corner pieces of stock 3" square or even 4" square. in the corners. Sometimes this wood was very dense and heavy. We never knew what it was and I kept a lot of it in my shop.

We went fishing every chance we got. At the time I was living near the Chesapeake Bay. We fished it very frequently for trout, big blues, flounder, huge black drum. channel bass (red fish) and cobia. When we weren't fishing in the bay we fished out of Oregon Inlet in N.C. 17 miles out in the Gulf Stream for King Mackerel, Wahoo, Dolphin and the like. Back in those days I kept my freezer full of fish all the time.

Because of the larger fish we used a fish billy to obtain their cooperation before we put them in the fish box. The last thing you need is a 12 or 14 pound blue fish or 20 pound King flopping around snapping its jaws. So we knocked them silly when we brought them into the boat for safety. I turned several fish billy's from this very hard and heavy wood that was in the corners of crates. We kept two or three of them handy on the boat. They were designed to fit in the rod holders and were three feet long so we can safely calm an unhappy toothy snapping fish.

Each Fall, in October we took a week of vacation and camped out at the Oregon Inlet campground. October was a prime month to catch the migrating King Mackerel in schools. It was not unusual for us to catch our limit every day. We would rent freezer locker space and freeze all the fish we wanted to take home and sell the rest to the fish markets. Selling the fish would help defray the cost of gasoline which was the primary expense of the trip. We used about 60 gallons every day.

One year a guy I worked with who I will call Daryl to protect the innocent happened to be on vacation in Nags Head the same week we were fishing and I invited him to go with us. It was easier to have a third hand on board so that one guy could fight the fish, one could help keep the trolling lines clear and land the fish while the last guy drove the boat.

It was my friend Jimmy's turn to fish, I was tending the rods and landing fish and Daryl was driving the boat. Daryl was about 6'7" and weighed less than 200 pounds. To say he was skinny is an understatement. We had a strike and Jimmy picked up the rod. After a brief fight I grabbed the leader and pulled a 20 pound King onto the boat and with billy in hand I raised the club above my shoulder to hit the fish. I did not realize Daryl was looking over my shoulder and on my backswing I popped him right between the eyes in the middle of his forehead with the club.. He went unconscious and started to fall out of the boat. All of this was happening behind me and I didn't even know I had hit him. Jimmy dropped the rod and grabbed Daryl to keep him in the boat. I went about my duties and beat that fish senseless and removed the hook. I had the fish in hand and was taking it to the fish box when I saw Daryl sitting in one of the pilot chairs with blood streaming down his face but awake. Jimmy was holding onto him and trying to apply a gallon jug full of ice to his head to staunch the flow of blood.

We offered to take Daryl back to land to see a doctor but he said no that he felt fine. We wrapped his head with a T-shirt but he had stopped bleeding. He went on to catch several Kings that day and said he had the most wonderful fishing trip of his life.

We finished the day, cleaned our fish and placed what we wanted in the freezer locker. Then we sold the rest and went to a local tavern to celebrate our victory over nature. Daryl was black and blue and had a huge lump in his forehead which we had covered with a large band-aid. He had blood on his shirt, Jimmy had blood on his shirt and I had blood on my clothes from a King that started flopping after I hit it in the gills instead of the head and flung blood everywhere.

The beer was good and cold and the stories were loud and funny. I still have two billys in my shop that I turned but never used.
 
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Frank Fusco said:
Very nice. They can also be useful on unfriendly two legged fish.
In some places folks call those clubs "priests". I have no idea where that moniker came from.
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A priest (poacher's, game warden's or angler's "priest"), sometimes called a fish bat, is a tool for killing game or fish. The name "priest" comes from the notion of administering the "last rites" to the fish or game.
 
Don Baer said:
A priest (poacher's, game warden's or angler's "priest"), sometimes called a fish bat, is a tool for killing game or fish. The name "priest" comes from the notion of administering the "last rites" to the fish or game.
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I have heard them called a priest but back in those days no self-respecting priest, even the wooden kind, would be found on any fishing boat we were on.:rolleyes:
 
Mike Stafford said:
I have heard them called a priest but back in those days no self-respecting priest, even the wooden kind, would be found on any fishing boat we were on.:rolleyes:
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Well, she wasn't a priest but a minister, but Carol Reed probably would have hung out on your fishing boat just fine. :D

Also, the Episcopal priest who officiated at LOML's and my wedding would fit right in on a fishing boat. She was the mother of a good friend of mine. She joined the priesthood after retiring as a RN, and she was a pretty salty Welsh lady who saw the value in a stiff drink or colorful language now and then. :beer:
 
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Vaughn McMillan said:
Well, she wasn't a priest but a minister, but Carol Reed probably would have hung out on your fishing boat just fine. :D

Also, the Episcopal priest who officiated at LOML's and my wedding would fit right in on a fishing boat. She was the mother of a good friend of mine. She joined the priesthood after retiring as a RN, and she was a pretty salty Welsh lady who saw the value in a stiff drink or colorful language now and then. :beer:
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Carol was a sweetheart and being around her elevated everyone....even a bunch of woodturners.

Carol Reed and Mike (Custom).jpg
 
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Frank Fusco said:
I heard the term on one of those Alaska TV shows. They dispatched halibut with them so the fish wouldn't thrash around and ruin meat.
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The only time I saw a large halibut caught they killed it with pistol shots to the head before they brought it into the boat.

It has been my experience that really large fish are very hard to kill with a club and do more damage thrashing around after you hit them. I tried to kill a large tarpon with a club and all I did was make it mad and it proceeded to thrash me and the boat until we finally threw it back in the water.
 
Frank Fusco said:
Glad you said "before they brought it into the boat." Shooting a pistol is not recommended if ye want to keep yer head above water. ;)
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Amen, brother Frank, amen. I don't even like the idea of shooting a large fish outside the boat. When we used to catch really large fish we used a flying gaff through the jaw to pull it close and then we tail roped it. We would then lash it to cleats and let it drown sort of like Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea. Yep, fish can drown. Sometimes we would pull or cut the gills out of the fish and that would kill it in short order.

When the fish was dead we would then put it in the boat. The largest fish we ever brought on board a 21 foot Robalo was 287 pound mako shark that we wanted to get weighed because we were in a shark tournament. We also planned to steak it because mako steaks taste as good as swordfish steaks.

You can beat on a shark with a wooden stick until it is reduced to splinters and the shark will only thrash with every blow. Even a relatively small shark is hard to kill unless you have a lance/spear or harpoon.
 
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