On my way
back from a Canadian fishing trip, I stopped in Iowa to call my cousin-in-law,
Becky McNew, and asked her where I could find a good camera. The reason I need to
update my camera gear is because I am going to become a fully engaged part-time
river fishing guide and photographer. Taking others fishing brings back
memories of those times so many years ago as a kid on the Big Piney, and again
in the 70s and 80s in north Arkansas.
I know the floatfishing isn’t what it
was, but when you are as good at it as I am, I consider anyone who floats a
river with me to be one lucky fisherman!
That sounds very conceited but everyone is good at something, and that
is what I am good at. If I try to
do much of anything else, it is a disaster. I can’t do anything mechanical.
The only
thing I know to do with a spark plug is use it for a duck-decoy weight. I tried to change my trailer bearings
once and had to buy a whole new axle.
My wife wont even tell me if there is something broken around the house
because she knows if I try to fix it, it will be broker than it was.
But you
should be with me floating down the river because I can definitely paddle a
boat. If there were a boat-paddling
hall of fame I would be in it. And I can tell you right where a big smallmouth
lurks just from all the years of catching lunkers on my own. But I am about to quit fishing and
begin seeing to it that others catch lunkers.
I am also
going to quit killing monstrous bucks and great big gobblers and help others do
it. From now on when I sit in a
deer stand I will be sitting there with a camera, and when I sneak through the
woods in the snow next winter, the only barrel I will have will be a short
telephoto camera lens. When
mallards drop into decoys, I will shoot the whole bunch with my camera, and
when I see a classy little English setter frozen before a covey rise, not one
quail will escape my wide-angle lens.
For that
you need a great camera, and I had one for many years, but it might be outdated
now. Besides that, I have spent
great sums on batteries to run it, and now the door on the battery compartment
won’t latch.
Becky took
me to a couple of places in the huge mess of a city called Des Moines. I think that is a Spanish name meaning
something in Spanish. But there
are some stores there big enough to play football in, and one of them had a
Nikon camera with two lenses that never needs a battery, normally more than 800
dollars, on sale for one more day for 500 dollars. They only had one left, and now it is mine.
With my
sudden increase in happiness, I volunteered to take Becky to a real fancy place
for dinner and she opted for a restaurant named for some kind of colored
lobster. A lobster of course a giant crawdad, apparently found in various Iowa
lakes, a northern subspecies not found in the lower Midwest. It is normal for creatures in Iowa to
be extra large. Take an Iowa
raccoon for instance. They pig out
in those cornfields and before they are half grown they are big enough to cause
grill damage if you hit one on a back road somewhere.
Iowa is
really proud of those giant colored crawdads, price wise. To eat one of them,
you need to have a good-sized bank account, and my camera purchase had nearly
eliminated mine. Becky said if I would order a black-end catfish, it was fairly
economical! So I ordered
it. Now I have caught and eaten
white catfish and blue catfish, yellow perch, green sunfish, black bass, brown
bass and even a red snapper once when they had some on sale at Aldis grocery
store.
But I never
even heard of a black-end catfish! When I got it, there were some little
biscuits and mashed potatoes to go with it and NO GRAVY! I asked the lady who brought it to us
if I could get some gravy or if they were just out of it that afternoon, and
Becky acted like I had asked for a midwinter watermelon! “He’s from the Ozarks,” she said
apologetically.
Apparently
folks in Iowa don’t eat much gravy!
And that black-end catfish I had was not at all black. It was sort of
brown, and would have been SO much better with gravy! Of course, I do not know
what he looked like before he was caught.
Maybe one end was black, but I would like to know what color the rest of
him was.
Well this
week I intend to bring in some great outdoor photographs with my new camera.
Although this is known as a website, that name is deceiving. It has nothing to
do with a real spider web, of which I have a photo. I also have a photo of a
web with a really pretty black and yellow spider right in the middle of it, but
it is hiding somewhere in the midst of my photo files.
I am pretty
proud of my photography, because I am fairly good at it. But I am better at
paddling a boat, and if you want to be paddled down the river and photographed
catching big fish, you ought to call me.
Or I might could take you turkey hunting or deer hunting this fall, or
quail hunting or duck hunting or whatever. I might even take a few folks
mushroom hunting next spring, but Ill insist on blindfolding you until we get
there.
Another
thing you ought to do is, you really ought to call my office before July the
first to receive a copy of our 96 page full color Lightnin Ridge Outdoor
Magazine summer issue. We will run
out in a hurry. Our executive office number is 417-777-5227. We can now take credit cards. Tell
my executive secretary, Ms. Wiggins that you want to talk to me. Or you can write to me on the computer
at lightninridge@windstream.net
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