A Fall Fishing Excursion

 

                 Canada in early October 2024

A Fall Excursion

         When we pulled into Canada’s Lake of the Woods country in early October, it was 70 degrees under a bright sun. Five days later it was still that way and it hadn’t changed much in the entire week we were there. In all the Octobers I have fished in northwest Ontario, I have never seen that kind of weather. Normally you can count on some temperatures in the 30’s and 40’s, some strong cold winds, and some rain at least part of the week. It is in most areas a wilderness, and beautiful with fall color and migrating waterfowl.

          It has never bothered me to go up to Canada and fish alone because those conditions have never concerned me.  My ancestry is from French Canadian trappers and Canadian Cree Indians so maybe that has something to do with it.  In bad weather, you find a place out of the wind and concentrate on fishing those areas. And, in the fall, you don’t do much lure-casting unless you are fishing for northerns or bass or muskies.  If it is walleye you are after, you fish in 25 to 30 feet of water jigging bait or quarter ounce jigs up and down off the bottom. You catch yellow perch that way and occasionally a bass, crappie or northern as well.  

         This year I didn’t go alone as I usually do.  I took with me an old friend from college days who is a river guide in the Ozarks.  Dennis Whiteside grew up on the Current River, and we began hunting and fishing together when we were 18.  He is a very good fisherman who often contests my assertion that I am a better one, and a better boat paddler as well!  

         We spent the first day or so trying to keep up with who caught the most and the biggest. No doubt Dennis caught the biggest fish, a six- or seven-pound northern, but I got a bigger bass, a close-to four-pound smallmouth whose size my fishing partner questions to this day.  The thing about Canadian smallmouth is, they often have a 15- or 16-inch girth when their length doesn’t reach 20 inches.  But do they fight! On the light gear we were using they made it a tussle in 26 feet of water.  As for the walleye in Lake of the Woods today, they are a fish made for light action gear because most of them are 14- to 15-inch fish, caught deep beneath the boat on sand or small-rock substrates. 

         Every day we fished different areas, most that I found years ago, and caught dozens of walleye, plus some 12- to 13-inch yellow perch and a few 15-inch smallmouth. I also caught a15-inch black crappie.  Dennis caught that northern pike while fishing for walleye and I hooked another big one minutes later that bit off my 6-pound line pretty quickly. It is the perch you would like to catch because you can bring home thirty of them and the filets are just like those of the walleye when it comes to eating. They are usually as large as those of an Ozark crappie.          

         On two different days I caught 17-inch walleyes. This year Ontario biologists, worried about the ever increasing fishing pressure on that giant lake, set a regulation requiring that no walleye above 16.9 inches can be kept. But who cares? We ate a bunch of 15- to 16- inchers at our cabin.  If you should catch a walleye above 29 inches you can keep it according to the new rules.  Twenty or thirty years ago there were no more walleye than there are now, but most were larger. I remember catching some 20- to 25-inch fish on each trip, sometimes 2 or 3 per day.  Those days are over, but I make the most of it.   On my light outfit a 12-inch yellow perch or 15-inch walleye fights like a slab-sided lunker.  

  

       Last year on my birthday in mid-October I landed only two walleye above 17-inches in three days, a 19-incher and a hefty 23- incher.  But I also boated the only genuine 6-pound smallmouth I have ever caught. He weighed two ounces more than that on a Nestor Falls grocery store scale and later swam off to find the underwater haunts he likely still rules.

         Each day the 70-degree temperature with light winds gave us the opportunity to fish in shirt-sleeves and we caught so many fish it was hard to complain about anything.  We headed home one morning at 4:30 and got to Lightnin’ Ridge at 10:00 that night with a cooler full of walleye and perch filets.

         Anyone can go to Canada and fish on a budget if you contact my old friend and bush pilot-guide, Tinker Helseth.  I can put you in touch with him if you’d like, and tell you how to make a trip in the spring, summer or fall affordable.  I have some numbered copies of Tinkers book, “Tinkers Canada… memoirs of a bush pilot”. You can get a copy for $12.99 by contacting me at 417-777-5227.

 

Our address is Box 22, Bolivar, MO 65613…and our email is lightninridge47@gmail.com.  You  can read most everything I write on the computer at larrydablemontoutdoors.

         

A Lure Full of Memories

 

       There are two Little Piney Rivers in Missouri, one flowing into the Gasconade River near Arlington and the other flowing into the Big Piney west of Houston Missouri.  Because of declining water levels and the drying up of Ozark springs you would never believe we once floated and fished the latter.  Today that Little Piney is more of a creek, than a river but once it was quite a float fishing stream, at least the lower half of it, which flows in the Big Piney near the Dogs Bluff bridge on Highway 17.   

       What memories I have of that stream!  I actually guided a few of my float fishing clients on that little river in a 14-foot wooden johnboat when I was a boy.  It was a super smallmouth stream and my dad’s biggest brown bass came from one of its eddies when I was about fourteen or fifteen years old.  But he didn’t land it… it jumped out of water only a few feet from the boat and threw the lure.  

       It is the lure I want to write about today.  That lure was a four inch long ‘Cisco Kid’,  brown and white, jointed and with a metal bill that made it run about three feet deep.  I still have it and can’t catch anything on it today, but you can understand why I keep it in my office.  Of course there are many lures in my office, not kept there because of their value but because of the memories that go with them.  There is that wiggle wart that we used on a teal-hunting  float-trip one September day years ago when we  put  one fishing rod and one lure in the boat not expecting fishing to be much good.  Were we wrong about that.  All day long that little brown and orange wiggle wart caught  bass to the  point we forgot about the teal ducks.   It is worth five times what I paid for it.  

       If you have wiggle warts, I  have seen them selling from ten to fifteen dollars at  lure shows.  I have an old rapala lure that was made in the fifties which has the name “rapala-finland’ across the bottom.  It is worth some money because it is in the box it came  in.  Old lures do have value  but those in the box they were sold in are worth even more.  Also, any of the old 1920’s and 30’s wooden lures with glass eyes that are in good condition will bring some money.   Some of those have four trebles, which was eventually outlawed. I saw one of them sell for 250 dollars.

       This sounds preposterous and I wouldn’t have believed it either, but I have seen  lures sell for hundreds of dollars when lure collectors get together. There are some which bring thousands.  Old friend Dennis Whiteside sold hundreds of old lures to collectors from Japan and made a small fortune doing it. He can tell you about that if you come to my big swapmeet at my newly finished nature center-museum near Houston, Mo.  But there is a bigtime lure collector who will be there too… Jerry McCoy of Bull Shoals, Arkansas.  I have fished with him on occasion and I have never known a man who has his knowledge of antique fishing and hunting gear.  One of the most knowledgeable and colorful of fishermen, Jerry will be selling antique items and lures and also buying some.         

        If you have old lures or outdoor items, bring them by and tempt Jerry with them.  He purchases a lot of antique outdoor gear for a shop he has a mile west of Bull Shoals dam. That Opening Day precedes the bringing in of exhibits. We have antique johnboats in place already and a 1920 pool table.  It is this Saturday, Oct 26 from 9 to 3.  In addition to Jerry, there will be Duane Hada, on of the best wildlife artists in the nation.  He will paint a picture of the Big Piney and we will raffle it off.  Some of  his original paintings sell  for  thousands so if you go home with it you  will have some valuable art.  I  will be there  selling off some of my office collections and my books and magazines, and  I think I will have 200 old lures for sale.  If you want to bring your own outdoor gear to sell, just bring it.  I think it is going to be a good day and I am anxious to show off our new building.  There is no charge for admission.

     For  more information call me at 417 777 5227  or email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com     See Duane Hada’s website too.

 

Interviewing the Director

       

 

       I took a recent trip to Jefferson City to interview the new director of the Department of Conservation and it turned out to be the disappointment I expected. I was trying to get him to come to some venue in the Ozarks to meet with hunters, fishermen and outdoorsmen.  It would be an event where he could answer written questions they would submit. It would give him the opportunity to debate me over topics like CWD and its danger to hunters, and the wild turkey decline.  You can bet he would be informed about some questionable tactics of conservation agents, many accused of breaking the law and violating the MDC’s own set of rules for personnel.

           He gave a good answer, “We’ll think about it.” He won’t of course.  He’d have to answer questions they never will answer, like, “Why does the MDC pay tens of thousands of dollars to state newspapers, television and radio stations to keep any criticism of what they do out of the public eye?” No one knows they do that, and the director and his staff want to keep it that way.

           I asked him about the drastic decline in wild turkey and their decision to do nothing about it.  He still clings to the ridiculous assertion that it is all due to habitat change, which is baloney, and I told him that.  In the Ozarks where thousands of acres of timbered habitat have not changed for thirty years, wild turkey have declined as much as 75 percent.  He also declined to come and spend a day with me where I could show him the results of way too much hunting pressure and too many hunters who have learned easy ways to kill gobblers.  The director could learn so much from meeting with landowners and hunters and spending a day in the woods with me, and he could learn a lot from a meeting this fall with the Missourians who put out the millions of    dollars to make the MDC rich enough to waste   hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time.

        As long as they control the media with money, real truths will never be known.  Like why the MDC is giving 18 million dollars to a private firm to rebuild the Schell Osage waterfowl marsh when that company had no other bids to compete with.  The MDC owns millions of dollars worth of equipment to do such a job, and much of it will set idle for months at a time.  Investigations need to be made and answers need to be asked, but they cannot be because the MDC owns the media, large and small.  Think about this… When have you seen a television or newspaper report on something the MDC   did not approve of?

        I asked the director too, why the Conservation Department, with almost 200 million a year for a budget, (amongst the top three state conservation agencies in the nation) will not help landowners along the major Ozark rivers use federal monies to keep cattle out of the rivers.  The MDC could do this without losing a penny, but they will not. Our rivers continue to silt-in and carry loads of mud and manure and coliform bacteria because of it.

       I was pleased to meet and interview the Chief of Enforcement for the MDC, Randy Doman, who worked for many years as a conservation agent in the     field.  I liked him enough to invite him to come to the Ozarks and spend a day with me looking at some problems he needs to see.  I think he will do it.  I will devote a complete future column to my interview with him, which left me with some hope for a way for innocent folks victimized by agents to get help. If you feel you are one of   those people, call me at 417-777-5227    and I will relay your   experience to him.

       Talk with me in person on Saturday October 26 at my new Big Piney Nature Center a mile south of Houston Mo. when I am hosting an Arkansas artist, Duane Hada, who paints river scenes and fish and wildlife like no artist I have ever known.  Join us and you may win one of    his paintings.

 

Get more information at my website, larrydablemontoutdoors, or by emailing me at lightninridge47@gmail.com

Long Beaks and Big Eyes

 

Woodcock

        In Canada this week I will take time from fishing to hunt ruffed grouse.  Usually when I hunt grouse I find a few woodcock, but there are fewer each year.  The odd little birds are migrators because they are primarily earthworm eaters, and of course they feed on other grubs and insect larvae under the leaf litter.  So when the ground freezes hard up north, they have to move south.  With a small shotgun and light loads and a close ranging little bird-dog, I would have been elated to find a good flight of fall woodcock in another time, when I was younger. But they, like grouse, are birds of fairly thick cover or timber where they can find the worms in soft ground.

I haven’t often taken a full limit of woodcocks, never ever went out just to hunt them alone.  The taking of woodcock usually comes on quail or grouse hunts.  But northern friends often spend a day just hunting the heavy north-woods cover for a bird they sometimes refer to as a “timber-doodle”.  Woodcock hunters are dog-enthusiasts who once smoked pipes, wore tweed hats and carried 28 gauge doubles, which sold for more than my whole collection of shotguns would bring.  In   those days, years and years back, there were 3 or 4 times more woodcock than today.

Forty years ago in Arkansas, I dropped a limit of eight woodcock in an afternoon of quail hunting along the Buffalo River in early December.  That’s fairly late in the year for these little brown long-billed birds in the Ozarks. Brother are they different to hunt than quail! You find one or two together, but not in a covey. Should a hunter and a good dog have plied those woodlands along a half-mile or so of the river bottom, for a few afternoon hours, chances are there would have been several dozen to be found.  Those numbers are not to be found today. But a hunter who goes after woodcock has to get into the heavy cover, not typically the kind of place you’d look for quail until they are flushed and scattered.

       Woodcock are not much like a quail; they do not exhibit strong swift flight.  They just sort of flutter up from beneath your feet and away, but there’s usually so much heavy growth that they are not easy to hit.  They very often sit back down within 40 or 50 yards of the place they are flushed, but the flight gets longer and stronger when they have been shot at a time or two.

       And they aren’t bad eating; the meat is dark, like that of a dove, but not as dry.  You’d like it perhaps, if you could forget they eat grubs and worms.  That’s not a problem for us grizzled old outdoor veterans.

       Woodcock are beautiful birds, but without any bright color whatsoever.  Their feathers are brown and buff and tan and black with a little white.  They blend into a forest floor’s leaf litter carpet like a green caterpillar in a suburban lawn.  You can’t see one unless it moves. Thirty years ago they nested in the spring near a little wet woodland spot on my land, where worms were plentiful.  But I haven’t seen any here in 20 years. The woodcock I flushed in the spring and fall on my place were easily seen though when they moved, bobbing along looking for worms before they flew.   

       They are about the size of a quail…. heavy, chunky little birds, but with big eyes set toward the back of the head, and bills longer than their legs, for reaching way down into the soil for worms.  The last half-inch or so of the three inch beak is hinged, so that the tip of the bill can probe, search, feel for and grasp any retreating earthworms.  Their mating flight is something to see, with male birds flying high into the sky in a spiral, then gliding   back to the ground to strut before a female.

       I hope to see a woodcock while hunting grouse in Canada.  But I will never shoot another one. Those which come to the Ozarks come from Canada or Minnesota or somewhere up north in the advancing fall, then go on to the south when the ground freezes   Then we’ll have a few woodcock return during the spring, coming back from the deep south, to raise young and spend the early summer. But most go farther north to nest.  In the early spring, if you are lucky and spend a lot of time outdoors, maybe searching the woods for wildflowers or mushrooms, you may come across mating woodcocks flying straight up into the woodland sky in that high spiraling courtship flight.  And then in early summer you may come across a mother woodcock, leading her chicks through the woods, helping them to learn what a tasty morsel an earthworm can be.

 

If you want to learn more about our October 26 swap meet email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com or call 417 777 5227.  Read more about the event by reading the details at larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com