The Mrs. Doesn't Like Me Speaking of Redbreasts

(Or Stump Knockers, or Titty Bream, or Cooters, or... ) Southern humor, read by the author

Taboo topics for Southern swamp fishermen to avoid at fancy dinner parties, if they wish to stay married.

It would have been a tragedy that would change my life forever. Yes, my lovely wife threatened to divorce me again during the full moon of May, when the bream fish come out to play, running in numbers through the swamps and creeks of my beautiful South Carolina Lowcountry.

The noted S.C. outdoor writer, Havilah Babcock, once wrote about “bream widows” who are often abandoned during that special time of the year when the hungry panfish bed up to lay eggs and attack any bait you throw at them.

But he neglected to inform us what to do when a man returns home with a full stringer to find an empty home, and such bream widows threaten to become bream divorcees and then hire a lawyer to take your house and your truck and your valuable collection of stump-dinged johnboats.

Abandonment issues aside, there is also my so-called “filthy language,” but we’ll get to that in a moment.

The problem, as I explained to our marriage counselor recently, is irreconcilable differences – a classic Venus and Mars conundrum. My wife is a lady of taste and refinement. When she thinks of water, she dreams of wistful walks on a breezy beach wearing capris and flip flops, or sipping cider while listening to the sweet soul music of a burbling mountain creek. When she thinks of boats, she pictures lovely dinner cruises on a glamourous riverboat while drifting the currents on a sultry Southern afternoon, or perhaps even a romantic ride in a gondola through the canals of Venice.

But I, dear friend, am a swamp fisherman. I like to bravely venture where gators gather and snakes slither, where the water is dark, and the sky above covered with a canopy of ancient trees. I like to jump out of the boat and get a little mud on my britches and in between my toes. And I like to say things that make people of polite society question my good taste and character.

For those unacquainted with bream and the lunatics who fish for them, I will explain. Bream, or panfish, as the snobbier anglers refer to them, are very colorful creatures, darting about the ebony waters of the Deep South in shades of blue, brown, orange, rust and even blood red. God made them that way, you see, to catch the eye and capture the hearts of the little boys and girls who catch them, so they will be hooked on fishing forever, returning often to the waters of their youth.

And for every colorful fish, Southern fisherman have bestowed a colorful, but often questionable, nickname.

My elegant wife frowns when I liven up her cocktail and dinner parties by bragging that I landed a “war mouth molly,” which is fishing slang for a large-mouth molly fish, but with my Southern accent sometimes the word “war” sounds like another word entirely.

That always sparks edgy table talk about the world’s oldest profession, and while my wife glares at me I try to change the subject back to fishing by telling my mother-in-law about “tearing up the redbreasts,” which, as everyone should know, is simply a glorious red-eared sunfish.

But I seldom get to hang around for dessert at these fancy dinner parties. I usually get asked to leave when I start talking about getting down and dirty with the “stump knockers” and the “titty bream,” which, as I explained to our marriage counselor, is just a Southern slang term for a mature bluegill bream that is so big and thick that a fisherman must hold it against his breasts to remove the hook.

Now I don’t want to ask you to take sides in our domestic dispute, dear readers. I’ll just sit here on this marriage counselor’s couch, listening to my wife rant and rave, all the while staring dreamfully at the therapist’s fish aquarium wishing I was somewhere else, far away and filled with water.

Maybe to liven this session up, perhaps I’ll tell them about another favorite swamp creature – the cooter turtle.

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An earlier, more family friendly version of this article was published in South Carolina Wildlife magazine.