Plots / Story Lines - General Topics The Roots of Shep's Tales
Last Update: 06-20-2015
Fishing
Shep loved to fish
Put dozens of beer guzzling men in rowboats on Cedar Lake in Indiana in the early hours of the morning and you'll get a tangle of fishing lines, dirty jokes, yelling and screaming, and swatting of mosquitoes. Just the sort of thing that every mid-western kid wanted to do with his old man.
Along with ham radio, fishing was a passion of Shep's from childhood. He often spoke of fishing for 'crappies' on the radio and incorporated the tales into his movies. Be it in New Jersey, Maine or Indiana, he would seem to always find time to go fishing. Later in life he retired to Florida where he could spend his time following that passion.
On one shoe he gave his recipe for the ideal bait to catch channel catfish:
Corn meal 1/2 box in boiling water.
The day before get a pig or beef liver, about 1/2 lb . Put it on the porch, in the sun, 1 or 2 days. Cut it into little pieces.
Put handfuls in the water to boil, before the cornmeal. Add cornmeal until it gets real thick.
Before it gets hard, roll it into balls. Sink it to the bottom .
Several times on TV he appeared on CBS TV's "Fishermans World"