Wilson Warden and his wife Mary have spent a rewarding four decades fishing on the New River.
The anglers reside near Hinton, where they like to fish for mudcats at night on the river.
“We use mostly softshell crawfish and hellgrammites,” Warden says of his baiting strategy.
“We’ve been fishing together for 40 years, and we’ve never gotten tired of it.”
The Wardens both grew up at Brook, about five miles west of Hinton.
Mary likes to fish for mudcats better than any other kind of freshwater fish.
“She does a better job catching fish than I do,” Ward says with a smile.
“She caught one mudcat last year that weighed 11 pounds, and she caught him on softshell crawfish at night.”
Mary has taken other sizable mudcats at one of her favorite fishing holes at Barksdale, on the New River, near the Summers County Vocational School.
The Wardens fish from the riverbank.
“There’s no secret about catching mudcats,” says Warden.
“You just have to sit there and wait on them to bite. You have to be there when they are ready. You have to give the mudcats time to swallow the bait before you jerk your line and hook them.”
The Wardens say they used to bass fish quite a bit.
“We caught lots of bass,” says the 62-year-old veteran angler at his home overlooking the river. “When we used a boat, we caught 25 or 30 at a time.”
Mid-summer is the best time to night fish for mudcats, according to the Wardens.
“Most fishermen complain about the summer heat, but we get started about the 15th of June and we don’t stop fishing until about the end of September. Right now, is an awfully good time for night fishing.”
What makes June such a good month for mudcats?
“It’s like they were trying to fatten up for winter,” Warden ventures. “They just seem to take the bait well during the month of June.”
Night fishing has become a tradition for the Wardens.
“We usually go about 7:30 p.m., right about dusk. We aim to be there by the time it gets dark. We just set up a forked stick in the ground and prop the pole on it, and hang a Coleman lantern so that we can see if the fish are biting. Then we just sit there and wait for them to bite.”
The couple packs a lunch of potato chips and cold drinks when they take to the riverbank at night. They fish until about midnight. “The fish begin biting about 9 p.m.,” Warden says.
“They move in and out. Mudcats travel a lot when they’re feeding. They’ll move to one spot for a while and then move out. Sometimes they’ll come back later in the same night.”
The Wardens use the quiet time on the riverbank at night to catch up on family talk. “We talk about family life: gardening and things like growing tomatoes, beans, beets, okra, corn, potatoes, squash, and lettuce, anything that can be picked in the garden.”
Still, Warden admits there has been a few incidents that occurred while night fishing that he’d just as soon forget about.
“I’ve hooked myself a few times,” he says. “It was my own stupidity. Sometimes while I’m casting, I’ll hold on to the hook and bend the pole and flip it like shooting a bow.
“If you aren’t careful when you do that, the hook will turn the wrong way and catch your finger.”
Another rather embarrassing moment occurred one night for the couple while they were fishing in a boat just off the riverbank near their home.
“We were just sitting in the boat, fishing, and I decided I’d reach over and grab some bait,” Warden recalls of the incident.
“I leaned back and the boat flipped upside down with both of us. We lost all of our bait and had to quit fishing for the rest of the evening.
“Mary got wet, but she just laughed. The water wasn’t too deep, but she could swim like a fish anyhow.”
He smiles, then adds, “Mary has caught fish many a time when I didn’t even get a bite.
“She used to say I didn’t know how to fish.
“She’s not a bit squeamish when it comes to baiting her own hook unless it’s worms.
“She will bait with a hellgrammite or a crawfish, anything that stings or bites, but she won’t touch a worm…”
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Top o’ the morning!