A pair of spring plumage blue winged teal pass through the Ozarks on their way to nest in the northern prairies.
I found this vicious snarling creature inside a hollow tree along the river...
No one is going to believe this and I know it. I can’t hardly believe it myself. So I
am not going to write about it because it just sounds too far fetched!
Oh
what the heck… I do have witnesses.
My two fishing friends ‘seen it themselves’. The two of them often go along with me in my boat, getting
free access to some of the best fishing either of them could ever have due to
my experience and adeptness at finding fish in hard-to-get to places.
Despite
that, despite the fact that I have taught them so much, the two of them are
constantly making derogatory remarks about the expertness of my fishing ability
and underestimating the size of my fish.
There
was no underestimating the size of the walleye I hooked though. He was a dandy, five or six pounds at
least and maybe bigger. You could
see him easily as I fought him alongside the boat, with Rich whackin’ at him
with the dip net, something like a great blue heron would stab at a sunfish.
I
just didn’t have my drag set properly on my reel. Most generally that is something I do at the beginning of
every fishing trip, I check the drag on whatever I am fishing with. When using heavier casting gear
it isn’t so important, but when you are using four-pound line with light
spinning tackle, that drag better be set right. I am just getting too darned old to remember everything I
guess, and I forgot to check it.
When that walleye saw my fishing partner waving that net around like he
was a highway department flagman, he really got wild, and he made a huge lunge
for deep water and broke the line.
The
lure was nothing of great importance, it was a Wal-Mart special, one of those
one dollar four- or five-inch minnows that look like the old Rapala minnows,
one that you can jiggle around on the surface or yank down under maybe three
feet or so. I was catching some
really hefty white bass on it, had maybe eight or nine good ones and one walleye
just a little better than fifteen inches long. Then that big walleye came up from the depths and engulfed
it and the fight was on. He won,
with the help of Rich and that doggone dip net.
I
don’t mourn the loss of one of those lures; I bought several of them back in
February when the Wal-Mart sporting goods department put them on sale. It was gone and forgotten because I
just tied on another one. And I
didn’t throw my hat on the boat floor and utter an expletive and cry about that
lost walleye like my fishing partners have seen me do before. A fisherman with my experience gets use
to losing big fish on occasion when using four-pound line and a switch for a
fishing rod.
You
don’t become a grizzled old outdoorsman like me without watching big fish
disappear in the depths on occasion, leaving you limp-rodded. You just figure God had a better
purpose for that fish than a sizzling destination in my frying pan. You have to occasionally blame the
Great Creator for your dirty rotten luck as a fisherman, unless you want to
blame yourself for not checking the drag on your reel or not replacing old
line.
But
now we are coming now to the unbelievable part. I tied on that other lure, just like the other one
except different, and almost an hour later, down the river about a half mile, I
made a cast and when I reeled the lure back, it had hooked and retrieved the
one I lost.
That’s
right, when I brought it back in the boat, the one which had been broken off,
last seen in the toothy jaw of that big walleye, was dangling from the back
hook of the new one I tied on to replace it!!! It sounds goofy doesn’t it, like something an outdoor writer
might make up? But honest, I swear
on my camouflaged War-Eagle boat. If
I am lyin’ may it have a hole in the bottom of it, and may my Ugly-Stick break
right in the middle!!
Rich
and Dennis both ‘seen it themselves’, and you can ask them, a couple of the
most honest men I ever met! But we
hadn’t seen nothin’ yet. Wait ‘til
you hear this! I tied that lure
back on, and reset my drag so that it was perfect. And I started catching big white bass again. It was a drizzly, dark afternoon and
Dennis caught two walleye that were 16- to 19-inches in length, fish that my
previously lost lunker might have sired in his earlier days.
And
nearly two miles down the river from where I lost that big walleye, and a mile
and a half from where I miraculously recovered my lost lure, I cast it out into
a deep eddy below a shoal and a huge fish engulfed it only four or five feet
from the end of my rod. He looked
like a monster coming up from the depths.
He stripped four or five feet of line against the drag and I told my
fishing partners I was about to lose that lure a second time in two hours!
But
this time, Rich done good. He got
the net under that big walleye and it was mine. I don’t know how much it weighed but it was 25-inches long
and hefty. I knew that the
Almighty was trying to let me know how sorry he was that I had lost the first
one. Maybe the fact that I am
trying so hard not to cuss as much when I lose a fish is paying dividends. Or maybe he just decided it was that
second big walleyes time to finally sizzle in my frying pan, as he will, soon.
Maybe
that second lunker wasn’t as deserving as the first, I can’t say. But that two hours and the course
of events in which a lost lure was found, and a second lunker walleye was
hooked on it, certainly makes a man think, something I don’t do a lot of.
If
you don’t believe this story, I don’t blame you. But I can show you that lure. It has big tooth marks all
over it!
I
have made myself a couple of new turkey calls, and will be out there this week
hunting gobblers and mushrooms, and fishing for crappie.
I don’t have to work for a while
because both my spring magazines are finished. But if you can’t find them on the newsstands and you aren’t
a subscriber, send six dollars to my executive secretary Ms. Wiggins and she
will send you either the Journal of the Ozarks or the Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor
Journal, whichever you prefer. If you send twelve dollars she will send both.
And for 14 dollars more you can get a copy of my new book, a humorous account
of my first years in college at School of the Ozarks, entitled, “The Prince of
Pt. Lookout”.
Please
see the photos I got this past week, whilst outdoors here and there. They are in color on my website, which
has been renewed recently. I am
proud of those photos. The
website is www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com
Email me or Ms. Wiggins at lightninridge47@gmail.com or write
to us at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613
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