There’s something about a tin can full of good fishing worms that can make a boy feel like a million bucks. As a kid, the smell of those big night crawlers sliding around in a rusty old soup can never failed to bring a whistle to Grumps’ lips or to quicken his step all the way to the creek. The summer he was nine, fishing for sunnies and bluegills down at Sam’s Creek was pretty competitive sport for the boys in New Windsor, Maryland, and they didn’t take nearly so much pride in the fish they caught as they did in the bait that brought them in.

Among those who wet their lines there were two schools of thought. Jack Baile and Josh Owings swore by cow manure, and they dug their baits in barnyards outside of town. But for Grumps, chicken was king, and with the turn of a shovel in his neighbor’s chicken yard he could come up with a can of night crawlers that would make the most tubby sunfish bite. And while he and the kids debated the merits of what they called cow crawlers and chicken worms, Grumps’ father liked to make a pitch for the “bait of the elderly,” artificial lures. “When you boys get tired of playing with worms I’ve got some little feathered poppin’ bugs that will make a sunfish jump right in your creel,” he’d say.

Outside of town in Roop’s meadow there was a bend in Sam’s Creek where the water ran deep and brown, and back under the broken branch of a willow tree there was a big orange-bellied sunfish the size of a small basketball. Grumps knew because he’d hooked the whopper on one of his “Chicken Delights”, only to watch it shake itself free before he could play it out from under the limb. The cow contingent (Jack and Josh) were right by his elbow when the line went slack, and they were quick to suggest that the smell of his prized chicken crawlers was enough to gag a catfish, let alone a nice sunny. And for the rest of that day, in fact for the rest of the summer, three red-and-white plastic floats bobbed side by side and their lines crossed hundreds of times as they worked their worms to the spot where the biggest sunfish he’d ever seen slipped his No. 8 hook.

When it came to bait fishing Grumps was understanding. It didn’t take a great deal of skill to toss a float, a 2-ounce sinker, and a hook in the water. The work was done by the worm, and from the moment he lost that big sunny he knew that if he was going to reel him in before any of his buddies did, he’d do it with one of those big slimy night crawlers, the kind that only came out of the poop from under Murvie Green’s hen house when conditions were right.

Murvie, his neighbor, kept a dozen or so white chickens within 30 yards of Grumps’ backdoor and on evenings after a nice settling summer rain it was his habit to grab his Scout flashlight and an old broken-handled shovel and head over to her chicken yard to dig. If the ground was wet, the worms would be up grazing, and he’d shine the light along in front of himself and pick up crawlers faster than an aardvark sucks up ants. In a matter of minutes he’d have a can full of grand champions, the kind of bait that a barnyard just didn’t produce. The next day when he hunkered down on the creek bank, Jack and Josh would look up from their lines and say, “Get any good ones last night?”  Grumps would nod and start baiting his hook with the best his can offered. “Chicken or cow?” they’d ask. “Chicken,” he’d say, and as he flung his line toward the branch he’d steal a glance at their bait cans to see what the rain had brought up out in the barnyard.

The routine went on for weeks. They sat there on the grassy bank snacking on pork rinds and drinking Cokes, his buddies tossing out cow crawlers and Grumps offering up his chicken delights. The kids caught their share of bluegills and enough pan-sized yellow bellies to make an occasional meal, but the big sunny, the one that got away, wasn’t seen or mentioned again. They just watched the water, talked baseball and bait, and kept their hooks as close to that willow branch as they could.

However, the subject of the sunfish was anything but off limits on the home front. When Grumps’ mother served up a mess of his catches his dad would poke through the silver-dollar-sized fillets with his fork and say, “These fish are okay, but if you want that whopper you’d better forget about those live baits and give the poppin’ bugs a try.” Then Grumps would launch into his theory of fish baits---a thought that never failed to move his sister (usually away from the table). He was convinced that to make the catch it would take a live bait, perhaps a super worm, one that smelled stronger and wiggled harder, something the big fish would really relate to.

When the idea came it hit like a big hungry bass. Grumps was scanning the magazine rack at Brownie’s Soda Fountain when he saw the ad on the back of a periodical. Raise Your Own Chinchillas, it said. If chinchillas, why not worms? That night he was on his hands and knees in Murvie’s chicken yard groping like a hungry robin in search of the big ones, worms that would make up his breeding stock. It would be simple. He’d select a dozen or so outstanding specimens, plant them in one of his mother’s sheet cake pans, ice pick some air holes in the lid and voila!---New Windsor’s first baby worm  bank. Then He’d give his little worm farm a week or two to get their noses and toes together, and by mid-August he’d have me one hellacious herd—super worms---ones that even the whopper under the broken willow branch couldn’t resist.

Whether his sister opened the lid or he failed to close it after giving his buddies a look-see at his pride and joys is something that he and EA argue about. The lid was open over-night, it rained in on their back porch, and his herd stampeded. The next morning all that was left to greet him was a 9X13-inch cake pan full of chicken manure. His super worms were gone, washed to the four corners of his backyard. A two week drought followed, drying up Murvie’s chicken yard harder than a Target parking lot, and he found himself fishing with worms so puny that he kept his can covered for fear Jack and Josh would see. But barnyards dry up too, and within a week the “cowboy” worm boys had headed down to the railroad tracks to the first bridge with their tins full of dough baits to see if the carp were biting.

Poppin’ bugs were the furthest things from Grumps’ mind the day he was digging through his father’s tackle box looking for a new leader. But when he saw the clear plastic case jammed full of his prized red-and-white feathered lures he grabbed it, stuffed it in his pocket, and within an hour he was down at Sam’s Creek whipping one of the weightless bugs, throwing it like a cowboy would a lasso, into everything from willow branches to cow pies.

When he finally dropped the little floater in the water he let it sit for a second or two, and then tugged gently, crippling it out toward the broken willow branch. He sat there for an hour or more without moving. The poppin’ bug did the same. Then suddenly it bobbed. He watched it surface, then pop under again. His stomach tightened. Through the clear surface water he saw the culprit. A baby bluegill was pushing the bug with its nose, playing with the bait like a porpoise. He placed the rod between my knees, closed my eyes, and lay back to soak up the sun.

When the fish hit he was dreaming about baseball, making a great catch. His eyes opened in time to see the rod shoot from between his legs, with the reel clacking like a roulette wheel. He snaked through the grass, heading for the creek, and he dove and grabbed the cork handled butt of the rod. He yanked up on the tip as hard as he could; the rod bent and the reel continued to sing as he watched the fish zigzag across the creek. This one was too big for bluegill or sunfish and too much of a fighter for a carp or a sucker. What Grumps had here was a big ol’ catfish. He hated mudcats. They were ugly, dirty, and had tentacles that could sting like a bee, but if the fish wanted a fight, he was awake now. He’d hit the right line.

The tip of his rod was high now and he was playing the catch for all it was worth. Five, ten, fifteen clicks, Grumps turned the reel slowly, bringing the big fish in. Then twenty clicks out the fish made a run. His line cut into the water halfway across the stream and he watched the fish suddenly turn and begin to slalom downstream, back toward the willow branch. He pulled up hard on the rod again. No more Mr. Nice Guy; the catfish was coming in. His rod rainbowed while the sweat poured from under his baseball cap, and ran down his forehead and into his eyes. Ten clicks out and five-ten-fifteen clicks in. Back and forth they went. How long the battle lasted he didn’t  recall, but when he finally got the fish to within several feet he slid down the bank, placed his left sneaker in the water, braced himself, and yanked like he was pulling a tooth. The water came up in a monstrous wave, the fish flew back over his head toward the meadow, and he saw the sun reflect off its sleek belly. It was a brilliant orange. This was no mudcat. His dad’s poppin’ bug had caught me the big sunny.

“Hey, what’d you get?” a voice shouted.  Jack and Josh were charging across the meadow, their rods bobbing up and down as they ran. The fish had been flung free from the popper’s hook and Grumps grabbed the end of my line, released the artificial bug, and shoved it into his dungaree pocket.

“What you get?” Jack panted.

“The big sunny,” I said, nodding to the fish flopping free in the grass. They stood in silence over his trophy for almost a minute, then Josh spoke.

“Chicken or cow?” he asked.

“Chicken,” I said, slipping the big fish back into the waters of Sam’s Creek.

Since that day, claiming he caught the fish on a chicken worm has remained his fisherman’s lie. There were times when he almost came clean with his buddies about the poppin’ bug, but in the end he couldn’t bring himself to tell them something he knew he’d never admit to his own father.