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Last weekend marked the beginning of an early spring ritual of loading up the white perch baskets on the boat to set on the Roanoke River near Quitsna Landing - a makeshift boat ramp at the end of Grabtown Road as it turns into a dirt path between the beautiful Worthington Farm located about six miles southwest of Windsor, NC. It was a gorgeous Saturday afternoon as my nephew Raggs, his girlfriend Briley and I slowly crept up the river tying the long ropes that hold the homemade chicken wired funneled fish traps to tree limbs over hanging the sandy banks. After the baskets "soak" for about three days, we check them and empty the contraptions of their catch, as I did last Friday with my son Nixon and his cousin Jeb.
Some folks catch the tasty fish with hook and line from the banks, as the subjects of this painting were doing that same pretty day. Someone, who had driven up sightseeing as we were loading up the boat, asked, " How do you know when when the perch are up this far? The scientific answer is that during early spring the White Perch, Herring, and Striped Bass travel up the Roanoke River from its mouth at the Albemarle Sound to spawn. The answer I've always been told is, as the lady in the painting echoed, "They get here 'bout when the Dogwoods bloom".
