Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 4, 1992 TAG: 9203040266
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: ROCKY MOUNT LENGTH: Medium
Nah. Let's talk about Leon Dudley's bathtub.
Shortly after midnight on Monday, Leon was fishing at Smith Mountain Lake.
Leon pulled in a formidable walleye. We call them walleye pike, though they are not pike at all. They are perch.
Species notwithstanding, they're pretty good eating. Leon's pike-perch was formidable - 24 1/2 inches long and weighing about 5 1/4 pounds. As pike-perch go at Smith Mountain Lake, that is decent size.
Leon was not through fishing just yet, so the perch-pike with the walleyes lingered in his boat until about 4 a.m. Monday.
Leon Dudley and his fish went home to Rocky Mount. Leon put the fish in his bathtub.
He filled the tub with water to keep the fish fresh, and don't you know it but that fish started to twitch and flop, and before long the perch-pike was swimming just as happy as a flounder in Leon Dudley's bathtub.
"Isn't that, um, unusual - having a pike-perch swimming about in your bathtub?" we ask Leon Dudley.
"City water, too!" says Dudley. His is a lasting tribute to the quality of Rocky Mount tap water.
Leon Dudley, in case you are curious, is married. His wife did not come unglued upon finding a pike-perch plying the icy waters of her bathtub.
"We have two tubs," said Leon, proudly.
Jerry Mills, on the other hand, was not much concerned with the pike-perch's amazing will to live, or about the quality of Rocky Mount's water.
Mills is a taxidermist and a man who likes to eat fish.
Mills needed a plump pike-perch to cheer him up after a particularly rough weekend that is part of the taxidermy business.
Excited hunters and fishermen bring him their prizes within days, even hours, of the big kill, and ask that they be mounted.
"There are some guys'll call me every single month for six months, wanting to know if their deer is ready," says Mills, who gets backed up beneath the avalanche of deer hides and heads and horns that come into his shop during Virginia's hunting season.
By the time they're ready - affixed to a plaque, or propped on a tree limb or a bed of dried forest leaves - the thrill of the hunt is gone. And suddenly, the balance due looms large.
"Those guys who call?" says Mills. "I can't find 'em. I get stiffed a lot," says Mills. "All taxidermists do."
Mills fared only marginally better during the weekend when two customers picked up their mounted fish. Neither paid the full price. Mills preferred to salvage a few dollars and let the fish go at the reduced cost: "A trophy is in the eye of the beholder. Why do I want them? What good does a fish somebody else caught do on my wall?"
So Jerry Mills, who has by default inherited hundreds of stuffed squirrels and raccoons and deer and turkeys, was brightened by Leon Dudley's presentation of a pike-perch fresh from the bathtub.
Mills said he'll probably stuff it, just as an advertisement. To make way for the stuffing, he skillfully removed some fillets, which he planned to eat.
by CNB