Raised in an early PK Fishing Camp
…oh the stories PK’s own Tom Ranft has to share…

Story by Michael Pearce | Photos contributed by Diane Ranft

Tom Ranft on one of many fishing excursions.

Tom Ranft is throwing in the towel. He said he’s had enough.

“I’m just sick and tired of cleaning catfish,†Ranft said. “I’ve burned myself out. I guess maybe I’m getting soft.†

Or it may be because he’s been cleaning them on a regular basis for the past 75 years, often by the wheelbarrow full.

The 85-year-old is quick to add he doesn’t feel that way about all other aspects about fishing, though.

“It’s my goal to go fishing every day,†Ranft said. “If I can’t go fishing, I’m going to spend a lot of time thinking about it. I still enjoy a good batch of crappie to eat. I’ll gladly keep cleaning them.â€

It’s possible that Ranft may have caught and cleaned more fish from Possum Kingdom Lake than any other living angler. That includes years of casting miles of fishing line and guiding others to do the same. He’s set trotlines with up to 50 hooks each for decades, and in his younger days he helped his father haul tons of certain fish from PK by special permit using long, fish-snaring gill and trammel nets.

Raised in an early PK fish camp

Fishing has been a huge part Ranft’s life, ever since his family moved to the same tract of land he now owns along the lake.

“I’ve been here since Sept. 25, 1945,†he said. “I was 8 years old when we moved here. The summer before, we were down here catching fish, and my dad and my uncle decided they might as well open a fishing camp on the lake. It was only the third fishing camp on the east side of the lake at the time. There may have been one on the other side, but I was 40 years old before I ever went over there.â€

The accommodations back then were more like primitive camping compared to the luxury resorts, hotels and houses that surround PK Lake these days. The family’s first area home was small, and it lacked electricity or running water. Ranft said they subsisted on rainwater from the rooftop that was diverted into a storage cistern.

“That’s the water we survived on,†Ranft said. “Luckily, it seemed to rain more back then than it does now. But we still had to haul in drinking water.â€

The property was called “Pat and Uncle Herman’s Fish Camp,†named after this father and uncle. Nothing was fancy. The first cabin at the camp was a converted two-car garage, and the next four or five were 16-by-16-foot government surplus wooded sheds. Boats and motors were small and rudimentary by modern standards, but they still were expensive.

Ranft said the cabins initially rented for $3.50 to $5 a night. Boats were $2, but a motor to go with the boat cost another $5.

“The boats we could usually find,†Ranft said. “First they were made of cypress, and then eventually aluminum. Finding a motor – any motor – was an entirely different matter. There weren’t many around back in the ’40s.â€

But there were enough fish in the lake to keep the young Ranft busy.

“People came in from the city on Friday afternoons and left on Sunday afternoons,†he said. “One of my jobs was to be waiting when they came in from fishing all day to see if I could clean their fish. I learned not charge a set amount, because that’s all I’d get. If I’d leave it to them and say something like, ‘Oh, whatever you think it’s worth,’ it was usually more than what I’d set as a standard amount.â€

With camp income only dependable a few months of the year, Ranft and his family turned to other occupations to make ends meet.

Angling professionally and for fun

For nearly 20 years, the family had a state permit to use nets to remove unpopular species of fish to make room for the more desirable ones, such as crappie, sand bass, catfish and black bass. Ranft said he remembers helping set nets hundreds of feet long to catch and remove carp, drum, alligator gar and long-nosed gar. They also removed tons of buffalo, a carp-like fish popular at some fish markets. 

“We could sell those,†Ranft said. “I think the best we got was 18 to 22 cents a pound, but that was for a fully dressed buffalo, packed in ice and hauled to Dallas, Fort Worth or maybe Tulsa.â€

The family also ate a lot of carp. Ranft said “carp croquettes†fixed in a pressure cooker are a lot like the salmon croquettes often sold in nice restaurants.

Running nets was a lot of work, he said, and the fish that weren’t cleaned to eat or sell had to be removed from the lake. That usually meant unloading pickup-truck-sized loads of dead fish on surrounding farm fields.

“Some of the farmers around didn’t mind us dumping the fish on their fields, because they made pretty good fertilizer,†Ranft said. “I have no idea how many times I’d get off the school bus, change out of my school clothes, then head down to our fish house and get to work for several hours to help out.â€

When he wasn’t working up a bunch of netted fish or cleaning scores of fish for clients, Ranft said he went fishing, and he often was alone as a little boy on the sprawling reaches of PK Lake.

“Dad told me I could go out fishing by myself when I could put one of those 2½-horsepower Johnson outboard motors on a boat by myself,†Ranft said. “I was about 10. I have no idea how many times I tried to wrestle that thing off a motor stand to take it to a boat. I finally ended up hauling that motor across the dock, the lower unit dragging every inch of the way. From then on, when I got a chance I got the motor, put on a life jacket, grabbed a can of gas and went fishing.â€

Guiding visiting anglers was one of several occupations Ranft had through the decades living along the shores of PK Lake. He’s seen the best and worst the lake’s had to offer for anglers over the past 77 years. 

The good times are now

Ranft didn’t have to think long or hard to say when fishing had been at its worst. Several winters in the early 2000s brought golden algae blooms that robbed the lake of oxygen, he said, and many thousands of fish suffocated. He and others hauled rotting fish from the lake by the boatload, and mats of dead fish often stretched along the shoreline for miles.

He said the lake has recovered nicely from the mass die-offs, and he spoke with pride about his grandson, T.J., who runs a successful guiding business bearing the family name. 

“The lake has a lot of fish in it now,†Ranft said. “It’s looking pretty good. Most times when (T.J.) calls, he’s gotten his clients into a lot of fish, mostly stripers and sand bass.â€

PK also produced more trophy-sized largemouth this year than any of the past 30-plus years, if ever, he said.

Catfish numbers haven’t been better in a long time, Ranft, said, noting that the state removed the minimum length needed to keep catfish, which was done to reduce the overall harvest.

“Now, if it has whiskers and you want to take it home and eat it, you can,†Ranft said.

But he admitted he probably won’t be keeping as many catfish as he once did. Compared to other kinds of fish, catfish are harder to clean, and Ranft said he’s too “old school†to rush through the process and waste any meat. That’s time he’d much rather spend in a boat.

“I just enjoy getting out there on the lake,†Ranft said. “I guess for me it’s always been a kind of therapy. I’ve always loved it.â€