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Today she lurks in deep
water, nursing a sore jaw. who knows where she put my stolen lure?
I
had vowed revenge back in the spring, when she stole a treasured lure from
me. It was a gold Rapala about
four inches long. I told her then
that she would pay for that sneakiness, that thievery. I was upstream a ways in early April,
using it to catch white bass, and hoping for a walleye. That’s the thing about those expensive
Rapala lures, you can fish them on the surface to catch the whites, or jerk
them down underwater two or three feet for walleye. I probably shouldn’t have been using such a treasured lure
on six-pound line.
But
I hadn’t suspected the sudden attack so close to my rod tip and with a savagery
often seen from smallmouth in a small Ozark stream. She struck just as I
attempted to pull the lure from the water. That close, the drag on a spinning reel doesn’t work as well
and she snapped it with a sudden boiling swirl of water that showed me this
wasn’t a smallmouth, but a big black largemouth of remarkable size.
She
had been lurking there in deep water beneath a flat rock ledge where I stood.
She saw her chance and took it… took my lure, took my peaceful and relaxed
demeanor and turned it into upsetness and aggrevation. I said then, “I will be back!”
And
I was, late in the stillness of evening last week, as chuck-wills-widows began
to call and an owl hooted from a distant ridge. Standing there on that flat rock, with stronger line and a
casting reel I tossed a bushy black buzz-bait upstream. I worked it over the
big rocks, down alongside the ledge, once, twice, three times. And she was down there, thinking
perhaps she would steal another one, thinking I still had weak line and that
peaceful demeanor of mine. In the
sudden wink of an eye she flashed from the depths and took it from the surface
and I let her have line as the drag on my reel buzzed like some kind of evening
insect.
As
she fought to stay in those depths I told her that I was the same guy she had
stolen from before, and I enjoyed my revenge as that rod arced and strained
against her heavy body. I knew she
would lose the fight. She was a
beauty, 20 inches long and hefty--full of eggs! Downstream, a friend waiting in my boat took a quick picture
as the dusk waned. She can find her way upstream to those rock ledges
again. Maybe her sore jaw will
cause her to remember to leave my lure alone… next spring, when I am after
walleye and white bass again… when my demeanor is peaceful and my line is weak.
The
other evening I was out on Stockton Lake and white bass were beginning to chase
shad on the surface out in the middle of the lake. That makes for very good fishing as the summer goes on. You have to find the schools of fish on
the surface and ease in to them via trolling motor. Sometimes you can see them several hundred yards away when
there is no wind and the surface is like glass. I like to fish either a white jig, retrieved rapidly through
the school or a surface lure of some kind.
Occasionally
those schools are made up of black bass.
The reason is the same, the fish are chasing shad up to the surface and
slashing through them, filling their bellies. In Bull Shoals years ago in July, I would take my daughters
out for an afternoon swim, then as the sun dipped low, take them into schools
of surfacing white bass where they would absolutely wear themselves out filling
the live well. This kind of
fishing is great in all those Arkansas border lakes and on Stockton. In Truman Lake, the surfacing fish
often include hybrids that weigh from 5- to 10-pounds. On Beaver Lake, huge stripers may get
into the shad-chasing act and you might see a surface commotion a half mile
away, because they splash water three or four feet in the air as they
feed. I will write about this
again, later in the summer.
I
love beautiful wildlife paintings, and have the walls of my office and home
adorned with many I have come across over the years that I could afford. If you have a den or office or whatever
that needs some wildlife paintings, you should visit a place called “Pictures
and More” on the east side of highway 13 south of Brighton, Mo., which is
perhaps only ten or twelve miles north of Springfield.
There
are all kinds of wildlife and nature paintings there selling for a little as 25
dollars, a fraction of the price
I
am going to move all my office art closer together to see if I have enough
space to buy one or two of theirs.
I’m not trying to give anyone free advertising but I always like to let
my readers know when I see real bargains pertaining to the outdoors. Truthfully
if the Creator had given me a choice in the matter I would give up my enormous
talent as the world’s greatest johnboat paddler just to be a mediocre wildlife
artist. What those people do with
a brush and canvas is so amazing, and few of them are conceited about it. If I could only do what they do…
I
got a recent call from an employee of the Missouri Department of Conservation,
who would be fired if I gave his name.
He said that when I wrote about the MDC agents abusing their power in
the collection of big antlers I was right on track. He said that the reason they won’t let me or any other
journalists witness them destroying antlers is because they never ever do that…
they just say they do. “Does
anyone think they don’t know the value of those antlers?
There
are hundreds of good honest employees working for that agency, but too many who
are not. Corruption abounds in
Jefferson City and those involved in it are strangely protected by this state’s
large media. The man who called me
says that a conservation agent here in the Ozarks has a storage building filled
with big antlers worth perhaps tens of thousands of dollars. He says the agent calls them his
“retirement plan”. He
says the antlers are a result of bucks killed on the highway and some he
bought. “But a good percentage of
them are from deer confiscated, some illegally taken by the MDC from innocent
hunters over some technical charge they often come up with, or just downright
bogus charges.” He says most
agents have some big antlers and there isn’t much a hunter can do if he is
charged, because a lawyer costs so much.
The best thing to do, he advises, is to never let anyone know when you
kill a buck with big antlers.
He
told me one thing that really hits home.
He said that if you hit a deer with a car and you call it in as a doe or
small buck, you can get permission over the phone to keep it, clean it and eat
it.
“Not
so if you tell them it is a big buck,” he says. “Just try calling in a deer
with 14 points and a 24-inch spread, give directions to where it is and see how
long it takes a conservation agent to get there.”
This
needs to be investigated by the Attorney General of this state. That stock of antlers the agent calls
his retirement fund should be seized and accounted for. But if you consider the fact that a few
newspapers I write for will delete this paragraph… you get an idea of how
easily it is for the MDC to break the law and violate constitutional rights.
I
have worked for years to see the truth come out about many things they are
doing. It is hidden by all
Missouri media except the small locally owned newspapers.
She is full of eggs, hefty and 20 inches
long. If she wasn't going to be a
mother, I would have had her for supper last week.
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