Stabs In The Dark: Gigging For Suckers In The Ozarks

Every fall, a centuries-old tradition takes place on Ozark streamsgigging for suckers at night. The author tagged along with a few locals who have perfected this deceptively challenging skill. They also throw a hell of a bonfire party.

- T. Edward Nickens

 

The river is on fire, lit with 4,000 watts of spotlight bolted to the bow. I watch the men on the front deck, a pair of silhouettes against a river that glows green, blue, and yellow, like a witch’s cauldron.

Each figure holds the long shaft of a wicked gig, the barbed tines fat as cigars. The man on the right suddenly tenses, shifts forward, and slides the tip of the 14-foot-long pole into the water. The boat shifts in pursuit, the gigger on the bow deck tracking his target. Then, without warning, he jabs the gig down, into the green light. It’s a miss. He pulls the gig up, makes a second jab, then a third. I watch, spellbound. My turn is coming.

“That fish has him dancing,” says Brad Reed, who’s sitting beside me, manning the outboard tiller. Reed is an anvil of a man who farms beans and corn and handles cattle with hands that could crush river rocks. His buddy John Helling is too focused to respond. On the fourth jab, Helling pulls the gig from the water, and turns toward us. A 3-pound sucker droops from the gig tines like a sopping wet mustache.

“That’s a good one,” Reed says. Helling scrapes the fish against a welded plate bolted to the bow deck for just this purpose. Freed from the tines, the fish drops into a galvanized washtub, and Helling turns back to the river.