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Click to Call (662) 357-8521
Back in the early '80’s, before we had armadillos, coyotes, and fire ants, rabbit hunting was a must. Around the Big Muddy, its islands were renown for what we refer to as Swampers, not the cute Cotton Tails. These are large rabbits average 2’ long 4-5 lbs. dressed.
In May of 1540 the Conquistador Hernando De Soto and his 400 troops discovered the banks of the great Mississippi River, which is now the location of Bordeaux Point RV Park.
In 1963, on Tunica Lake (then called the Tunica Cutoff) there were 3 fishing camps. Sparkey’s then is now called Rick’s, Poor’s camp became Bordeaux RV Park, and H & R camp, now non existent and just woods. This was before Nel-Win was built. The Tunica Cutoff was, and is, the finest fishing lake within 200 miles of Memphis.
My Dad was born February 13th 1910, he and his identical twin brother Clarence. They lived at 1390 Venton, in what is now mid town between Union Av. and Central Av. Grand Dad planted two Red Oaks, one for each boy.
Growing up on Hollywood Plantation, my dad was a seed breeder for Cokes seed company and he wrote a book on growing soybeans. He was the first farmer in Tunica county to grow rice in this part of the Delta. He had a seed cleaning business, and a grain storage, the first 12 row equipment in 1959, and the first 16” irrigation well, that to this day will pump 3000 gallons a minute. It takes 15000 gallons of water to put one inch of water on one acre. That well had a 60 horse powered motor. The well ran off natural gas and the transmission line was 100 yard away from the well with an endless supply of fuel.
When we opened in January 1983 there was an ole well on the property and a filtering system to remove iron from the shallow well. The well man went out of town and forgot to buy propane. The filling system froze and broke. We straight lined the well into the piping system and if you mix a bourbon and water there was so much iron in the water it was black.
At the bait shop I had 3 concrete minnow tanks with aerators in each one, and a big fan and hammock stretched out over the tanks full of water and aerators and fan running. A good napping place for after lunch with that hammock and all that wet air blowin' by the big fan. Lots of folks called that the Tait Tate think tank in there.
After the droughts of the 80s and the plug blowout. The lake would stay up with the river rise, and drop again with it's falls, which made fishing conditions awful. I started out with the County Board of Supervisors. You see in the 80s the four fish camps were almost as big as the town of Tunica, about 160 acres of property, 1 mile long and 1/4 mile wide.
In the 1960s we had the Wild Life League, a piece of property between Mhoon's Landing and the north end of the Cutoff. It was a big timber company's property and our Tax Assessor, Bill Webb, worked it out somehow to form this league.
The Cutoff, in the beginning. The southern-most fish camp was H & R camp, south of Nel-Win. A man named Henry Lee ran H&R and they had a rail and tram, no dock. They would put their boats on, loaded with gear and motor, and launch it into the water ready to fish. The camps all had restaurants with cold beer and the kitchens would always cook what you caught that day.