Larry Dablemont Outdoors

Friday, July 10, 2009

Hot Off The Press - Summer '09 Magazine

This is the new Lightnin Ridge Outdoor Issue, 72 pages of great outdoor reading. You can order your copy (summer issue) by sending a check for $4.00 to Lightnin Ridge Summer Issue, Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Otters and Old Tires

We had baited a couple of trotlines and were just drifting down the river casting some top-water lures for bass, and it was getting very late in the evening. We passed under a tree hanging out over the river and a wild turkey began to nervously call, the putting and perking sound which tells you he has seen you and is upset.

He was right above us, walking back and forth on the limb where he had meant to spend the night, uncertain as to whether he should stay or sail off into the dusk, risking his neck just to find another place to sleep. He had a dandy beard, telling us he was a mature tom, if nothing else. Finally he pitched down into the undergrowth and there was a great deal of crashing and thrashing around, making it sound as if he may have misjudged his landing area. As tremendously sharp as a wild turkey’s vision is, he doesn’t see well at all in dim light. I am hoping he found another limb and got a good night’s sleep.

Believe it or not, there is still some mating and nesting going on amongst wild turkeys, and there will be some poults hatching in August. It is nature’s way of insuring a few young turkeys every spring, regardless of the heavy rain we might receive in June, which is devastating to ground nesting birds like young turkeys, quail, pheasant and grouse.

Running our lines the next morning we came across a mother otter and three of her young ones. As comical, graceful and beautiful as they are, they are cursed by those who know how many fish they can kill in one week. There was a time when our rivers were deep and clean and gave enough habitat and cover to make the impact of the otter negligible. Not today. In a small stream, the new populations of otters, soaring in the years just after they were restocked, found bass and catfish all too easy to catch. And they found, in this time, an abundance of fish ponds, well stocked. They didn’t have those back in early part of the last century, when otters were nearly wiped out by trappers.

It is easy to become a real villain when you and your young have just eaten most of the catfish someone bought, stocked, fed and so painstakingly worked to raise to good eating size. Otters soared in number because their niche was unoccupied, and ground on which the seed was sown was so barren and fertile. Now, with the value of their fur as it has been, they are coming back to earth a little. The otter is one creature with a fairly high biotic potential (potential to survive and live long) and a fairly high reproductive potential (potential to reproduce in good numbers). In the future, he may become less noticed, and actually decline in number to create less havoc.

I doubt that is so with the great blue herons, which are very efficient fish killers too. They are very much overpopulated and there are few factors to control them. So too are the cormorants which seem to darken the sky every winter on our lakes. Both of them have that high reproductive potential and high biotic potential. I wish that they were good to eat. If cormorants were good to eat, there wouldn’t be half the chicken houses in the Ozarks, and our waters would be cleaner because of it.

Speaking of clean waters, I have mentioned before the old tires that show up in our rivers because to leave a tire at a tire shop, you must pay a government-mandated fee. Did you know that tires can yield oil, and a very high grade of steel that can be economically recycled without pollution of any kind. All the talk we have about “going green” by politicians who wouldn’t know poison ivy from a tomato plant, is really hollow. We could do so much by recycling what we throw away, and we could even use water for fuel.

You heard me right. A neighbor of mine, Don Jones, showed me how he has hooked up a unit consisting of rubber tubes and wires and three quart jars under his pickup hood. In the jars he has water and baking soda, and it brings about the creation of hydrogen, which is injected into his carburetor and mixed with gas. It allows him to emit oxygen rather than carbon dioxide and it gives him about 30 percent better gas mileage. (see his website about this… www.ozarkswaterasfuel.com ).

What if every car and pick-up in our nation had such a device beneath the hood? What would it do to those greedy oil companies we despise so much, and that little dictator in Venezuela who sells us so much oil while he berates us. There is probably too much common sense in what Don can do so easily for the government to make it work, too much common sense in paying for old tires and recycling them rather than charging you to dispose of them in landfills. Common sense doesn’t seem to work anymore.

We do a lot of talk about changing things, about global warming and “going green”. I think there are too many people on the earth to change anything now. It is too late… we are way too smart, too technically advanced and too content with what we have to change anything. I don’t know for sure that something catastrophic is coming, and I don’t know what it might be if it is. I can just feel it at times, and I think those who are closest to the land can feel it too… and see it.

Our progress a giant rock-slide which cannot be stopped now. It may be that there is nothing to worry about in seeing the ever increasing dumping of millions of gallons of sewage sludge all over the Ozarks watershed. Those who are doing it say it is safe… nothing to worry about in those viruses and chemicals. They just disappear, and it is all safe… and besides, what else can we do. There is ever-increasing tons and tons of it.

It may be that just because streams I floated and caught fish from as a boy have dried up and disappeared, and it may be that just because ponds and creeks everywhere are increasingly devoid of life and choked with scum, and water tables are said to be farther beneath the earth than they were ever known to be, we really have no water problem at all.

It could be that we ought to make all our important decisions about what affects the earth merely according to what the economics dictate. But if you know anything about the basic fundamentals which sustain life, you know there is something wrong which economic answers seem to cause, rather than fix. Something will have to reduce the number of humans on the earth eventually. If He who created it all does not intercede before then, it will happen, as surely as the sun rising tomorrow. I think it might be good to live in the deep woods at that time. As for now I am going to sit on the back porch and listen to the birds and wait for my tomatoes to ripen, a problem sufficient for the day.

Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613 or e-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net. My website is www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com

Monday, June 15, 2009

Fish Canada Affordably

Gabe Boros spent 30 years as a game and parks ranger in Canada's most primitive wilderness areas. He is full of knowledge about canoeing and fishing ontario's waterways.

When you fly over ontario you see millions of acres being stripped of timber, right down to bare earth, to meet the demands of paper companies. In Ontario, a six inch pine is an old tree, and not likely to stand long.

In late May we crossed through International Falls, Minnesota, into Ft. Francis, Ontario. It was about 10 p.m. and we had to pay a 10-dollar toll to cross the Rainy River Bridge. Canada doesn’t miss any chances to collect American money. The border guards asked if we had tobacco, alcohol or firearms or raw potatoes. All we had was the potatoes, since neither Rich nor I drink or smoke. But Rich’s name is Abdoler, which may have once been Abdullah, since his father’s ancestry is Syrian, and he does in fact look like a muslim terrorist just a little bit. And I have small eyes and look something like a criminal, so they decided to go through everything we had.

Few Americans go fishing in Canada without beer, but they worry about alcohol and tobacco being smuggled in to Canadians who can escape enormous taxes by getting it from Americans. As for the raw potatoes, your guess is as good as mine! We eventually drove into Canada and were greeted by this enormous sign saying, “Experience Canada”. At that same time, you are greeted by a tremendous stench coming from a gigantic, smoke-spewing, Canadian paper mill on Rainy River which will nearly gag you. And for miles, driving into Canada, there isn’t much about it, which is pretty. You have to get away from the people, the small towns and Indian reservations, where there is as much poverty as you will find anywhere, to see the beauty of Canada. They have been smart enough to preserve the forests around the waterways where Americans come to fish, but on the rest of the forested land the paper companies and timber companies are stripping trees in gigantic swaths.

When you fly over Ontario, the land beneath you looks like it has been eternally devastated.There are tremendous burgeoning numbers of humans on the earth, and the increasing demand for lumber and paper will never cease. Canadian trees grow slowly because of the short growing season, and few of them will ever get larger than 6 or 8 inches in diameter. Logging trucks are everywhere. It’s just the way it is and will always be. I don’t know what affects it has on wildlife, Canadian species like moose and bear, beaver, martens, fishers, and grouse seem to do fine around the lakes where the timber is left uncut, by design. If you don’t leave those waterway forests, you are not going to appeal to American fishermen, and much money is brought in by sportsmen from the states. The fees are high, it costs about 40 dollars in licenses to fish a week, and the fish you are allowed to bring back will probably fit in the smallest cooler you have. I like that idea. Eat all you want, and release all but a small number to bring home. Fishermen like Rich and I don’t make anyone much money.

If you get to thinking you have to be wealthy to go there and fish, you are wrong. Common Ozarks outdoorsmen like you and I can do it by planning, finding the ways to do it economically, and of course, not going to the big expensive lodges. Take your food and gas with you. Many years ago, I got to know Tinker Helseth and his sister Dawn, who descend from an old-time outfitting family maintaining fishing camps as early as the 1920’s. Tinker is one of the most experienced and capable outdoorsmen I ever met, himself a trapper, fisherman and hunter. I spent a lot of time with him years ago flying around in his pontoon plane, fishing and hunting around Ontario’s giant Lake of the Woods. Today, Tinker is grounded, awaiting bypass surgery, which we all hope, will get him back to full strength. His sister Dawn has a little cabin on Off Lake, just south of Lake of the Woods, and while she is getting out of the business of outfitting fishermen except on a small, limited basis, she is a great contact for Ozarks anglers. We were discussing the fact that a law has been passed making it illegal for Americans to use minnow traps or seines to obtain their own bait, in order to protect bait dealers who charge about 6 dollars a dozen for minnows. In some ways, they are making harder for Americans to afford to come to Ontario. As Dawn told me, "it is all about the money". Her brother Tinker once told me, “Someday our government needs to start trying to find ways to make it easier for people to come up here and fish, not harder. We need to welcome Americans with open arms, and make licenses cheaper, laws simpler.”

There was a time when I came to Canada and hunted grouse and ducks and geese, and wrote about it, but those days are over. Now it costs $50 dollars for each hunting firearm brought in, and license costs are high, laws complicated and scary. Hunting there has become pretty much a thing for the wealthy. But still, fishing and enjoying the beauty of Canadian waterways is affordable, if you find folks like Dawn who have accommodations and the knowledge to tell newcomers where the fish are and how to catch them. The waters are full of fish and there are dozens of lakes to fish, many of them available only by portaging canoes, with no motorboats, no cabins, and no people. Her husband Gabe is thinking about arranging canoe trips of several days in the real wilderness waters far from any roads. Gabe has spent 30 years as a wilderness park ranger, and he once worked on the Canadian border to Alaska trying to apprehend the elite trophy hunters who flew small planes across the border in search of giant grizzly bears. Some of
Gabe’s experiences are going to be printed in upcoming issues of my magazine.

Dawn doesn’t have a website, but you can e-mail her at rainbow@escape.ca or phone her at 807-482-2110. She can give you information on fishing for bass and crappie, walleye, northern pike, muskellunge and lake trout. And she can arrange affordable accommodations for groups of two to eight visitors. There’s good fishing to be found anytime between now and mid-October. Jackfish Lake at a little cabin the Helseths once owned, now in the hands of a new proprietor, and it too is very economical for 4 to 6 fishermen. You can see it on the website, http://www.jackfishoutpost.com/, and make connections with them through that website.

I love the wilderness waters of Canada, and the old-time bush-country people like the Helseths. Spare me their government and their anti-hunter attitudes, and their tax systems. I am not much interested in the big-time outfitters who cater to the elite outdoorsmen looking for trophies. If you are a capable outdoorsman and a fisherman and you aren’t looking for something easy, you can find some fishing in those northwest Ontario waters that you will remember for a lifetime. And you can find the wilderness. You need to bring your own boat and or good canoes, and look for a way to get to the hard-to-get-to waters. It takes some work, but it is worth it. I have been eating ripening mulberries this week from trees around here on Lightnin' Ridge.

Did you know some fishermen swear by mulberries for catfish bait? More about that in next weeks column. Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613, e-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net. You can view some Canada photos on my website, http://www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com/