Politics and Patience

 

 SPRING ISSUE #68 WILL OUT FIRST PART OF MARCH GET YOUR ORDER IN SOON

 

I don’t want to make anyone real awful mad here but I can’t tell you the name of one politician that I would want to go fishing with.  The whole bunch of them seems a sorry lot to me and I put them all in the same sack.   But then, what do I know about politics?  I only know about fishing, and if I had caught any fish this past week I’d be writing about that! 

 

       I once shook Harry Truman’s hand, and I have to admit that I was impressed with him, even though I was only about 7 or 8 at the time.  I also liked Ronald Reagan a lot. I can’t remember much about his presidency, as the hunting and fishing was extremely good back then and I was in the woods quite often.  But I really liked Ronald Reagan in those western movies he made after he got out of politics.

 

 I have read some things about Teddy Roosevelt that makes me think he was a lot like me, since he liked to hunt and fish so much and float rivers, and did some outdoor writing.  He and I looked very much alike too. But of course my favorite president will always be Abe Lincoln, who had two things no president or even presidential candidate will ever have again… he was poor, and he was honest.  Earlier in my life I too was poor and honest, and as a matter of fact I am still relatively poor, and I am being honest about that! Mr. Lincoln hunted and fished too, and split his own firewood, just like I do.  Almost no one knows this, but Abraham Lincoln wrote lots of poetry.   I have published some of it in my spring issue of the Ozarks magazine I put out.  His poetry rhymes really good and makes sense, unlike much of what that Browning woman wrote.  It is also said that Lincoln was an expert marksman and he never used a scope.

 

       My favorite politician was Davy Crockett.  He and I were so much alike that it is just amazing, except for the fact that he did get into politics, becoming a Tennessee congressman. Every man should be allowed one mistake in his life! My cousins and I watched Davy Crockett on Walt Disney when we were kids, and if you think I wasn’t influenced by him, you should know there is a big sycamore along the Big Piney river with the inscription carved in it… “L. Dablemont kilt a groundhog here.”

   

       There were no bears in the Ozarks when I was a kid, which wound up being an unfortunate thing for that groundhog.

 

       Crockett was loved by his constituents, just as I am loved by my readers, except for a few ladies who got mad about that article I once wrote concerning female bass.  Crockett was for the downtrodden and forgotten poor country people he grew up amongst.  He sacrificed his political career to stand against legislation which would take land away from the Indians the government had promised to them through treaties only a few years before.  That makes him a better man, in my mind, than anyone you will find in congress today.  He was honest, and he thought of others before himself, and he would not put money above all else.  Those traits are not found in people in political office today.  I think I am a little like that.  Once when I was a teenager, I refused to spend the day putting up hay, so I could spend it fishing for smallmouth in the Big Piney.  And consider this… I very often worked as a guide for float fishermen for only fifty cents an hour when I could have made 75 cents an hour mowing lawns.  Mr. Crockett would have approved of that kind of thinking.

 

       Davy Crockett said, “to heck with politics if it means I have to go back on my word”, and he rode off to Texas and into history where, as I understand it, he went down fighting a bunch of illegal immigrants from Mexico.   I would have loved to have fished and hunted with Davy Crockett, or Abe Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt, and I would have paddled any of them down the Piney in my wooden johnboat free of charge. Wouldn’t you love to vote for someone today with just a whisker of the character all those men had.

 

 

       I never saw a stretch of winter weather like we just went through, but what we are going to see in the future will be worse. Birds and wildlife need help and they get it up here on  Lightnin’ Ridge.  I hope you have been helping them too. I have been told that it is illegal now to put out corn back in the woods for squirrels and turkeys, because deer might eat it too and for some reason that isn’t good.  But I do it anyway.  You are not going to get caught doing that if you follow the rule, “Always place corn 200 yards from where a game warden can get to via pickup.” I worry about what that three weeks of ice and snow and Alaskan temperatures did to quail and wild turkeys.  I have seen a decline in turkey numbers over the past eight years that is way past ‘alarming’.  If there was a way that state conservation agencies could cut back season lengths and gobbler limits from two to one, and eliminate the youth season, where more illegal hunting takes place than the whole rest of the year, and still make the money they want from sales of turkey tags, then maybe we could begin to turn wild turkey numbers around. They had better do something!

 

  Remember that if you want to get a copy of my spring outdoor magazine, I need to hear from you by the first of March.  The printer mails them out shortly after that date. You can call my office to get one or email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com  The mailing address is Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. Phone number is 417 777 5227.

A Hole in the Ice and Frozen Fish

 

My cousin John McNew on a southern Iowa farm pond.. with blue gill and crappie

In days of yore I went ice-fishing in February, with a couple of Wisconsin friends who had access to an ice-fishing shack out on a frozen lake.  It was a little city of a dozen shanty’s that looked a bit like Ozark storage sheds. Most had pickups parked behind them… a little scary to someone who was accustomed to weak ice at the best; back in the Ozarks. Inside was a good-sized hole in the ice and chairs and a heat stove up off the ice.  All around the hole there were rugs and chairs and the fishing rods were only about 2 or 3 feet long.

Thanks to the stove, we stayed warm, and about every ten minutes one of us would haul in a respectable crappie or walleye.  There were a couple of northern pike caught too, 18 or 20 inches long. I wouldn’t say it was the best fishing I ever had in the north country, but it was fun, and I went back a couple of times just so I could be with those friends doing something that seemed ridiculous when I first heard about it.  

I’ll bet that ice was 2 feet thick, and every 30 minutes or so someone had to dip out ice to keep it from refreezing in the augured out hole.

Then a couple of years later, it was a really cold winter in southern Iowa and I joined two of my cousins to fish a couple of Iowa ponds on which there was a layer of ice that didn’t look all that strong.  They laughed at me when I tied a rope around my waist and tied the other end to my pick-up bumper next to the pond.  I wasn’t taking any chances because I had seen those two get into some fixes at times, ever since we were kids.

They had a gas powered ice auger, those short rods and mealworms for bait that looked to be about the size of rice grains.

We were bundled up enough to not get cold, and built a warming charcoal fire right out there on the ice in a big bucket with sand in    the bottom, which seemed a sort of dangerous thing to do… but it didn’t melt the ice.  And we hauled huge crappie and bluegill out of that ice hole, one every few minutes.  In just a minute or two every fish laid out on the ice quit flopping and in time we had 40 or 50 of them.  

We ate them that night and I don’t think I ever tasted panfish that were that good.  Everyone says that about fish caught through the ice, even the northern pike.  Both my cousins, brothers who smoked heavily and drank enough beer to fill a nice pond in southern Iowa, died when they were only 59.  But they knew how to have fun, and we hunted and fished in southern Iowa for a lot of years.  In February, there was nothing to hunt, so we fished through the ice.

I would give anything to do it again, just about anywhere.  And I am thinking, with what is happening now in Missouri and Arkansas, and Kansas that it might just be a good time to try it.  All I have to do is fix up one of my old broken rods to be about 3-feet long, and find someplace that sells mealworms!

I want to remind everyone who likes to read my outdoor magazine that our spring issue will be out in March.  If you want to get a copy sent to you, they are still mailed from our printer for 5 dollars each, but the list of people to get a copy has to be turned in to them the first week of March.  If you miss that first mailing, we have to add 3 dollars in postage.  So call my secretary, Ms. Wiggins, if you want to get the cheaper price. The number is 417 777 5227. She can also help you get a copy of the other magazine, Journal of the Ozarks, the same way. You can see the magazines and my 10 books on my website, www.larrydablemont.com You can send the five dollars by mail, Lightnin’ Ridge, Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. And you can send the five dollars by mail, to Lightnin’ Ridge, Box 22, Bolivar, Mo.  Don’t nobody get to thinkin’ I live in town.  I live out in the country ten miles from town, looking out across a wide river valley through the oaks and hickories that grow high on my ridgetop, where it is always ten degrees warmer in the winter and ten degrees cooler in the summer, and wild birds and other creatures play in the snow around the corn feeder.  Right now I have to go split some more farr-wood for the cook-stove so I can boil a rabbit for supper.

The Striper and The Trout

Back in the nineteen-seventies and eighties, we would fish in the Long Bottom area of Bull Shoals all night long, under submerged lights. At that time we would catch all species of fish, and a number of big rainbow trout, some up to 5 or 6 pounds. Many of them had gashes across the body, and at that time it puzzled me. It doesn’t anymore. 

   

The lake had big stripers in it and I can tell you with no doubt that stripers are death on trout; their favorite food, even above shad.  It finally came together one night when I was on a KMOX- St. Louis radio station outdoor program. There was a fellow on with me by the name of Tony Albright who owned a resort with guide service on the Missouri arm of the lake south of Theodosia. Allbright passed away in recent years.  Back then he was touting his fishing service for great striper fishing on Bull Shoals where he and his clients were catching huge stripers. Tony really had it figured out, and caught huge stripers up in the 30 pound range. Of course the stripers came from fish stocked long ago in both states, they do not spawn there on any regular basis except when heavy rains raise tributaries and kept them high for a long time in the spring.

Down the lake from that long bottom area about a mile, the Arkansas Fisheries department had several giant net pens that were full of trout, kept there and fed all winter, then released in April as the water began to warm.  In the deeper parts of the lake, there was water that stayed cold all year long… a perfect situation to grow big trout, with the lake full of their favorite food, gammarus (fresh water shrimp) and small threadfin shad.  

In time the big stripers declined thanks to Allbright’s very good job of promoting ways to catch them.  As a result, the fisheries department in Arkansas began to contact boat docks in the Arkansas side of the Bull Shoals, which is about 75 percent of the lake, and giving them smaller winter net pens to attach to their dock, filled with 7- or 8-inch trout.  Dock owners would feed them the food the game and fish department would supply and in the spring, after several months of feeding, the trout would average twelve or thirteen inches in length.  When released, thousands of them swarmed out into the lake and fishermen bought trout tags and caught good numbers of them.  I guess the Arkansas fisheries people and the Missouri fisheries people got along fairly well back then.  That isn’t the case now.  There’s some grumbling going on.

Missouri has effectively caused the trout program in Arkansas to be worthless, with plans to release up to a half million stripers in their side of the lake, to be continued each year.  They have made these plans without consulting with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission or taking into account Arkansas’ trout program.  I have been told that Missouri’s fisheries people think the stripers will quickly grow to giant sizes because of the trout still living in the lake giving them such a fine food source.

On Bull Shoals during the month of December, I came across two young University of Missouri students, who were trying to find transmitter-fitted stripers that had been released in that Missouri side of the lake.  Apparently the fish had gone into Arkansas because the two fisheries students were not finding them.

Last week some animosity on the Arkansas side of Bull Shoals was beginning to show.  The Missouri Department of Conservation had contact an Arkansas resort on Norfork to reserve rooms and cabins for two months, so a crew of Missouri University students could fish all spring with Arkansas guides to catch stripers out of Norfork. In Norfork they do actually have successful spawn during some high-water spring rains.  The resort owner said ‘no’ to the proposal and some guides are saying the same thing.  A local resort owner who is a good friend of mine says the whole thing shows a lot of gall from the MDC.  “The Missouri fisheries people want to take our Norfork stripers and take them to Bull Shoals where they can destroy the Arkansas trout stocking program.  Folks down here don’t like it.”

He went on to say that the striper fishing in Norfork still is good, but there are few fish caught that exceed ten pounds now.  “It seems that bigger stripers are rare,” he told me.  “And for the last few years, thousands of stripers have died in the lower part of the lake.”

I will write more about that striped bass die off in a future column, and tell you how all of a sudden, you can catch Norfork Lake stripers way up in a Missouri tributary from a canoe or kayak or from the bank.  Now what a story that has become!

In the meantime, I suggest that the MDC send some folks down to the AGF to discuss a way to make fishing better on both sides of each lake.  Obviously the MDC sees a way to make a lot of money from stripers in Bull Shoals or they wouldn’t be doing this.  Possibly they have some special striper tag in mind that would raise another million dollars.  But if they cooperated with the fisheries people in Arkansas and both sides decided to have big stripers in Norfork and add trout pens on the Missouri side of Bull Shoals, you could add to the coffers in the Missouri side by selling a special Bull Shoals trout tag, and a special striper tag on the Missouri side of Norfork.  But first the MDC should listen to Arkansas fisheries biologist.  That seems to be a reasonable and polite thing to do with a neighbor.

 

Horned Toads For Trout

       Years ago a fishing tackle company invited a number of top-flight outdoor writers to come down to the White River in Arkansas and go fishing. When they couldn’t get them all to show up, they called and asked if I wanted to come. The company was giving away their fishing lures free, and a day of trout fishing with guides. I thought there might be a good story there, so I went. I also never turn down a free fishing trip! The guide I met was a fellow by the name of Donald Cranor. He was a good one, and also a good story.

 

       He told me, “Rainbow trout aren’t the smartest fish in the water!” On the White, I caught those rainbow trout on a 5-inch-long suspending rogue lure with which we were actually hoping to catch a lunker brown trout or two.  I have caught some very nice browns on the White, lots of them in the 4 to 8 pound range, every one of them on a suspending rogue. I have never even seen one above 10 pounds but a guide like Cranor, who is out there everyday, sees quite a number of them.

 

       February is the time to catch big browns, and Cranor had seen quite a few of them, the latest a 17-pounder, taken on a white jig. He told me that he likes to get the brown trout on large minnows, which he thinks is the best bait when the river is full and flowing, as it is right now, and was then.  He prefers that bait because he can control how they drift and the client only has to set the hook and fight the fish. The rogues and white jigs get the most fishing time. Cranor says any novice can fish a rogue; you just jerk it and stop it, jerk it and stop it. And the white jig, especially efficient when the shad are dying in Bull Shoals and coming through the dam, is also easy to fish when the river is running high.

 

       Novice or not, I fished that rogue lure all morning, and I probably hooked and released a couple dozen rainbows, keeping my limit of five bigger ones for a wild game dinner that was coming up. Rainbow trout, no matter where they come from in the Ozarks, are grown in hatcheries and do not reproduce.  They are pretty much always going to be dumb, and ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent of them will be 12 or 14 inches maximum length. But they are good to eat, especially when you grew up eating bass and catfish.

 

       Guide Donald Cranor was a fine guy to get to know, and we exchanged hours of fishing stories seeing who could outdo the other. It was a draw, but I’ll relate one really funny story he told. Not too long ago, he took an Arkansas outdoor writer fishing, and put a big minnow on a hook, trying to help the writer catch a lunker trout. Sure enough, a hefty fish took it, and headed down over a shoal with the bait. Cranor said the writer let the fish take it for awhile, then jerked hard. The fish had swallowed the whole thing and had the hook down in his gullet, where there was also lodged a big nine-inch horny-head chub, a 10 or 12-inch sucker-like fish with little knobs on its head.  Apparently the big brown trout had just eaten the chub, and when the fisherman jerked that hook, he buried it into the chub and it came right out of the trout, with that horny-head on the hook. Cranor explained what an oddity it was, hooking that horny-head, and thus allowing the trout to get away. The writer, as many of today’s suburban outdoor writers often do, got things mixed up, and in his newspaper story allowed as how he had hooked a horned- toad in the big trout’s gullet, confusing a considerable number of readers.  Cranor’s own father called him and wanted to know what kind of big stories he was telling people! 

    “Arkansas ain’t never had no horned toads,” he said.

 

See my website, www.larrydablemont.com where you can see my outdoor magazine. In March we will publish the 68^th Issue of the Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Journal and the 14^th issue of our Journal of the Ozarks magazine.  You can write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo, or email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com

      

 

A Chipmunk From Long Ago

       When a twelve-year-old boy becomes a hunter he gets to where he longs to shoot something! When I was 12, I started tying my single-shot16-gauge Iver Johnson shotgun to the handlebars of my bicycle, stuffing my pocket with a half-dozen shells, and peddling down some gravel road to a patch of woods near the river, where my only goal in life became the collecting of two or three squirrels to bring home for supper.

 

       There were many places I had permission to hunt, where the squirrels were drawn to the oaks and hickories, along draws or small creeks which fed the river. I would find a nice big flat rock to sit on, and watch and wait. Squirrels were plentiful along those woodlands where I hunted. 

 

       Always before me lay the best of God’s creation, whether it was a deep draw with a creek below, flat woodlands along the river bottom, or a scenic ridgetop. I always felt that God was there with me, either behind me or above me, watching, letting me see something different on every trip. There or on the river, I was always talking to Him in my mind, asking questions. At the age of twelve, it doesn’t matter if you get all the answers. I figured that I’d know it all in a year or two if I just kept watching and listening.  

 

       Getting closer to everything was the problem. If only I could get closer, closer to see a passing grey fox or a hawk that is winging away with a mouse in it’s talons. If only I could get a better look at a pileated woodpecker or a screech owl. That’s why, on that one afternoon which I will never forget, when I saw a flash of red among the rocks below me, I wished I was closer. I knew it wasn’t a fox squirrel, but I shot anyway. And moments later I held it in my hand, lifeless and bloodied, the only chipmunk I had ever seen up close. It was beautiful, with those stripes of black and beige, almost white, but not quite. I couldn’t stop looking at it.

 

I was so fascinated, and then so plagued with guilt. He was far too small to eat, and the rules were, spelled out so many times by my dad, that you shoot nothing you do not intend to eat. I left him there on the rock, so no one would know. But as I peddled home with no squirrels, I wasn’t happy at all. I just wondered if that chipmunk had a family somewhere that depended on him, and if God would ever show me anything again for fear I would shoot it.

 

     It just kept bothering me. I had to tell someone what I had done, so I confided in Jess Wolf, one of the old men who sat on the front bench of my father’s pool hall, where I worked after school. 

  

     “They’s lots of chipmunks,” he said, stoically watching a game of snooker which interested him a great deal more than me and that chipmunk. “Reckon it won’t make a whole lot of difference…. exceptin’ to you. I ‘spect you won’t shoot but one yore whole life. That kinda thing happens, you bein’ a boy. Boys do such things.” And then he just sat there. I needed a better answer. I asked him if he thought God would be mad at me for killing one of his creatures for no reason.

 

     “I ain’t got no idee what God would think of such a thing,” he told me. And it was quiet but for the clack of billiard balls. Finally he added, “I reckon you’d have to ask God about that.”

 

     That was a powerful answer. I knew Jess wasn’t a church-goer, but he was a religious sort of man, because he never swore much like Ol’ Bill and Ol’ Jim, and he never came right out and lied about fishing or hunting, as far as I could tell.

 

     But right then, I promised God I would never kill another one of his creatures for no reason, and I felt so much better. I felt a lot worse about things when the next spring I killed a robin with a homemade sassafras bow and arrow, just to see if I could hit something with it at such a distance. I never meant to do it… I thought I would miss. I most always did when I shot at anything with that bow. That chipmunk vow was the first of a lot of promises I made to God which I broke in time.

 

     But you know, I still go out into the woods figuring the Creator is going to show me something I have never seen before, and it seems He always does. Even now, I see marvelous, fascinating things, floating down a river in the summer or standing in the water up to my waist in the dead of winter, watching duck decoys whilst I’m about half frozen.

 

After all these years it is still no less of a wonder to hear and feel a new season coming with all the wonders of it. It is winter now and I am busy hunting ducks and thinking there ain’t no better time than winter. But I can feel March coming, and when it gets here I’ll be just as happy catching a walleye or two about the time spring peepers begin to be heard. The wonders of those dwindling lonely wild places are the greatest reward in life for me. Every now and then I see a chipmunk!

       

A Magnificent Place…Unusual Sights

 

 

 

         You see some strange things in nature when you spend as much time outdoors as I do.  I live in the woods far from people, and I always have…always will.  And I travel all over the Ozarks visiting wild places, seeing things that amaze me.  On the first day of January I saw something that really surprised me.  It was a flock of ten or fifteen white pelicans on Truman Lake, which lies just along the edge of the northern Ozarks of Missouri.  

         Do you realize how odd that is?  Pelicans migrate from northern waters well up into Canada each fall. They are usually down around the Louisiana coast by now, and not migrating back north until April.  Why would they be in the Ozarks now?  The only reason I can think of is the abundance of food.   On Truman Lake, gizzard shad are dying off by the thousands, as they do each winter.  If the water doesn’t freeze, I suppose Pelicans can stand the cold, to slurp up hordes of dying shad.  Pelicans are at the peak of their numbers now, overpopulated to my way of thinking.  But never ever have I seen a pelican in the Ozarks in January.  

         That isn’t the only unusual occurrence this January.  All over the Ozarks there are flocks of shoveler ducks, also commonly known as spoonbills.  I killed one a day or so ago while duck hunting.  I’ve never even seen a flock of shovelers in January that I recall.  They migrate early, just a little behind blue-winged teal in the fall.  Then they are one of the early migrators in the spring too.  You will see them in bright plumage, coming through the Ozarks earlier than any other duck beside the blue-wings.  And then, they are a beautiful bird, but not so much now.  They, along with the goldeneyes are perhaps the poorest eating of any of the puddle ducks, and not very large, just a step or two larger than the teals and buffleheads. Last year about this time I saw the only flock of ruddy ducks I have ever seen while duck hunting.

         I am seeing the natural world completely out of alignment over the last few years, and I wonder what it means.  Now I am seeing the black vultures moving into the northern Ozarks as well, and I don’t like it.  They are scavengers, but also killers.  They will search for and kill newborn calves, and other offspring of farm animals.  Native turkey buzzards won’t do that.  I would kill every black vulture I could if I was a rancher or farmer.  Conservation departments everywhere should encourage that, but instead these non-native birds are protected, expanding and coming north, I believe partly because of the thousands of dead chickens and turkeys that huge poultry farms discard.

         I spend hours along the watershed of this giant northern Ozark reservoir, Truman Lake, because of almost 120 thousand acres of land around it set aside and protected from developers.  There is one particular area that is as close to a natural Ozark wilderness as I have ever seen, with gigantic trees of dozens of hardwood species larger than any individuals of many species I have ever seen.  It is a phenomenal place.  It is full of Ozark wildlife too, eagles nest there, as do most birds, and migrating waterfowl of all species pass through.

         From February through April, I take up to a dozen people at a time to that area via a large pontoon boat and guide them into that forest to see and enjoy what is really rare woodland.  That goes back to my days as Chief Naturalist for the Arkansas Park System and a stint as a naturalist for the National Park Service on the Buffalo National River, and then the years I worked as a naturalist for the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission, exploring and reporting on rivers and woodlands in the  Ozark and Ouachita mountains.  On these trips into natural areas on Truman, we return to have a big fish fry on the lakeshore, and do not return to civilization until the sun sets.  You can join me if you want on one of those trips, which will continue until the morels are gone in April. I take any group of 8 to 15 people. 

         The timber is so large and diverse that it will be destroyed someday.  The Missouri Department of Conservation is a partner in managing much of the 120 thousand acres with the Corps of Engineers, and they make part of their millions by contracting loggers to take the big trees from such areas. They have been doing much of that on the upper end of the big lake for years. But for awhile that forest is there to enjoy, and I spend countless hours there this time of year with my camera.  It is a magnificent natural area, something representative of the Ozarks long, long ago.  I wish such areas could be saved from the loggers, but of course they cannot. A nation with exploding populations never has enough lumber. I just thank God every time I go there that I get to see such places, while 99 percent of Americans spends such days in crowded suburbs, office cubicles and traffic jams.  I know they are the normal ones in society.  I’m the oddball.  But I like being one!

        

         We are looking for good stories for our Outdoor Magazine and for our Ozark Magazine as well…  also a good artist or two and good photos for either magazine. You can see my books and magazines just by putting my name on a computer search site.  Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo 65613 or email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com. 

Fishing in the Winter

 

            I would really like to take a trip to Canada this time of year, to the Lake of the Woods region, and fish with some friends who catch walleye and pike and crappie through the ice.  If you have never caught fish through the ice it may not sound too appealing to you, but it is really fun.  Some of the best times I have had in January were sitting on the ice of Iowa farm ponds with my cousins, catching blue-gill and crappie on little tiny meal worms, with a rope around my waist and the other end tied to a tree on the bank. They thought that was hilarious, but you can never be too cautious! Eventually I got use to sitting out there on the ice, hovering over a little eight-inch hole with my cousins, yanking out crappie with a rod about three feet long.

 

         I am going fishing in January and February though, as soon as the duck season and quail season end.  The best of the brown trout fishing on the White River takes place between now and March.  You catch them on the six- inch suspending rogues, and someone usually gets a 15- to 20- pound brown during that time of year.   Lots of five- to ten-pound browns are caught.  My biggest is eight pounds but I've hooked and landed a number of four- to six-pound browns.

 

         All through January down on Norfork lake, the anglers who brave the cold and go after them catch stripers, whites and hybrids, in the mouths of the big tributaries where they school in deep water following the hordes of threadfin shad.  With all the shad they have in that lake, I don't know why a striper would be attracted to a big shiner minnow, but they are.  About ten years ago I was fishing for them in Norfork on a very cold day and we caught a  half dozen nice ones in only a few hours at mid-day.  They were over 50 feet of water, about 40 feet deep, but usually in January you will find them at about 40 feet over 60 to 80 feet of water.  You about have to have a good depth finder to fish for them. 

 

         A friend I was fishing with knows where the stripers are most of the winter, so I just go with him.  He ties on a circle hook, size two-ought, with about a half-ounce of weight 15 or 20 inches above the hook, hooks a shiner through the lips and counts out forty feet of line. Then he blows up a little biodegradable water balloon they sell at toy departments for kids until it is a little smaller than a tennis ball, and he ties that stem of the balloon around a 15-inch loop in the line.  When the fish hits, it just pulls that line right through the knot of the balloon, and the fight is on.  The balloon is not at all a strike indicator, it just floats off.  It is merely a device to allow you to play out your line so that you can be fishing forty feet deep, but a good distance from your boat.  In mid-winter, with the clear water, stripers might be spooked a little if they are directly beneath the boat.

 

         In late February or early March, at the beginning of the full moon, with warming night time temperatures, the night fishing for stripers and walleye on Norfork lake will get good.  The stripers hit that same suspending rogue that we use for brown trout on the White River.  I hope to hit it at the right time this year, when the nights are not too cold, and you can hear the geese passing over in the moonlight.  What a thrill it is when a big striper nails that rogue.  You never say, "I think I had a strike!!!"  You have no doubt what has happened.

 

         Of course over the years, some of the best bass fishing I have had takes place on large tributaries to Ozark lakes in late February and early March.  A few days of warm weather can trigger that, and when a fisherman finds them, he can follow them for a couple of weeks before they disperse.  I know I won't get to do all of the fishing I want to do, but the anticipation and planning is worth a great deal.  It makes it easier to get through to April.

 

Email me at Lightninridge47@gmail.com, or write me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo 65613.  You might like to see my website, if you like to read… www.larrydablemont.com