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

       

A Great Day at a Great Place

  

         I have been letting people know through this column of the outdoorsman’s swap meet I am holding at our now-finished ‘nature center-museum’ building a mile south of Houston MO on Hwy 63, come Saturday, October 26. We have spaces for a half dozen more “vendors”.  Vendors, being someone who brings a table and sells outdoor gear… old fishing lures, old guns, etc.  There is no cost so if you want to come join us, please let me know so I can save you one of those spaces.  If you have an old gun or two, or only a few fishing items, or any kind of antiques (old tools, old paddles, etc), bring them and I will try to sell them for you at my table.

         If you just want to come and see what we have, show up between 9 and 3 and you might win a valuable painting of the Big Piney River, done by nationally known Duane Hada, an Arkansas wildlife artist and river ecologist who has no equal in painting the Ozarks. He intends to do a painting that morning which we will raffle off. 

         Jerry McCoy, the Ozarks historian and antique fishing gear guru will be there to tell folks stories about the rivers he has been a part of and the experiences he has had.   I also believe there will be several old shotguns and rifles on sale, and perhaps 500 fishing lures for sale, many of them antiques.  You can’t miss the place, because we will have signs up and a big banner out front along south highway 63. 

         After the swap meet event we will begin putting in displays relating to old times on the Big Piney River.  We are looking for a large aquarium, four feet long or better. We already have a big antique pool table which was made in 1920 called a Victory Table and was made by the St. Louis A.E. Schmidt Company and brought to Houston when it was new.  It sat inside the pool hall where I worked as a kid until it was sold in the 1980’s.  I bought it a few years later and in December of this year we will use it to have a pool tournament.  There will also be a 15-foot johnboat on one wall, built by my dad and I and was used on the Big Piney many years ago.  The real antique boat is the 22-foot aluminum johnboat that was the first one built in Missouri in 1951. It has a serial number of 0001 and was built for the old Missouri Conservation Commission to use on the Big Piney and Gasconade Rivers. It was said to have carried some of the most famous Missourians down the river, including Thomas Hart Benton, Harry Truman, Charley Schwartz and Stan Musial.  I discovered it sitting in an old barn. 

         There will also be displays of many artifacts made by the early bluff dwellers from hundreds and even thousands of years ago, who lived in the many caves along the Big Piney River.  That includes a 4-inch-round ivory disc pendant said to be the only ivory artifact ever found in the Ozarks.  Radiocarbon testing proves it to be 8,000 years old, likely from a tusk of a mastodon.  There will be lots of other things, from the history of the people, the fish, mammals and birds of the Big Piney River. And it is free for all who want to visit, even as we go about putting up the displays.  

         Anyone who wants to help can do so.  We will put up a donation box so that those who want to donate can help pay the electric and water bills.  We will have no cash register and our nature center will be manned by volunteers, free to all who come. It will be a place where old-time rivermen and  float fishing guides like Charlie Curran, Dennis Whiteside, and me can tell about our river experiences. Charlie floated the Piney in the 1940’s. and Dennis once the Chief Naturalist for Arkansas, can tell you about his experiences as a river guide and fish and wild creatures in the Big Piney as well.  In the winter we will have a big fire going in the fireplace, coffee and donuts, checker boards and domino and card tables for visitors and old-time Ozarkians who might tell a few good stories about the old days. 

          This place has been a dream of mine for many years and the Great Creator has allowed it to happen thru a series of miracles and some special people. From this article I am sure you can feel how excited I am about this Nature Center and Museum and I hope many of you can be with me to celebrate the beginning of many great days to come there. Contact me at email, lightninridge47@gmail.com or call me, 417 777 5227 to reserve a space at our swapmeet.

Who Wants a Used Mower?

 

         Dad and I closed up the pool hall one late summer night, noting that we had only accumulated a total of 16 dollars as a result of the entire day’s business. That wasn’t a good day, but it was a good day to float the Piney rather than play pool.

         Today there are few 13-year-old kids worrying about family finances, but I really stressed over those hard times when Dad was worried about paying the pool hall’s electric bill. I offered my ideas on saving money. One was the elimination of my regular haircuts. About every month Dad would come to the pool hall before Main Street businesses closed and send me across the street to the barber shop, in a day when Mr. Holder, the barber, thought that if there was any hair within 3 inches of your ear, it ought to be whacked off. If I had had the nerve to be rebellious, I would have had a fit about that.

         I’d go back to the pool hall after a hair cut and the old men would all have some kind of smart-aleck remark about how much lower my ears were growing all of a sudden, or how good I smelled. So I told Dad that I figured he was spending about 20 dollars a year on my haircuts, and that was one whole good day’s profit in the pool hall, and an absolute waste of money. He thought I was on to something there, and proposed perhaps having Uncle Roy cut my hair. 

         Uncle Roy had three sons and if he had taken all three of them to a barber shop, the annual outlay on haircuts for him would have been about 60 dollars. His sons, Butch, Dave and Darb, always looked a little scalped, like me and most boys back then, so none us relished a haircut delivered on the back porch by Uncle Roy. I wonder to this day if I would have had more success with girls if I had ever had hair long enough to see if it curled or not.

         Eventually I convinced Mr. Holder, who liked to play golf, that if he would cut my hair free, I would keep him supplied with almost new golf balls I found scouring the weeds around the golf course, which sat up above the river next to the McKinney Hole only a little ways from our home. Other golfer-pool players, like Shorty Evans, found out about that and I began to make some pretty good money finding and selling lost golf balls for a quarter. When you combine that with the money I made in the summer guiding fishermen on the Piney River, you can understand how I could sometimes accumulate a pretty good sockful of money in my secret hiding place. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Dad, but you can see how a man hard-pressed to raise a family in that time might be tempted to borrow a little if he knew where I kept that sock. And I never did think that float trip arrangement was fair. I paddled the old wooden johnboat all day for three or four dollars and Dad got three dollars for renting the boat! 

         One of those old timers at the pool hall said that when he was a kid, his dad gave him a nickel to go without supper, then snuck in a stole it out of his overalls pocket while he was asleep, and wouldn’t let him have any breakfast because he had lost the nickel!

That kind of childhood didn’t seem to have any lasting affect on him though, as he was fairly rotund and happy. But you could make an argument that he suffered psychologically, since he showed up at every church picnic and ate some or all of everything. He would dang near empty our penny peanut machine every time he came in and would put a handful of peanuts in his soda pop. You could argue he was trying to hide them from someone, going back to his boyhood and those stolen nickels.

         It might be good to go back to a time when we could trade used golf balls for a haircut. Bartering worked really well once, in a time when Grandpa McNew traded a shoat for a 1949 Chevrolet pickup, then traded a bushel of potatoes and a dozen eggs to have some neighbor fix it so it would run. Maybe that kind of thing wouldn’t work today in the city, but it would here in the country.  I have a lawn mower that I would trade for a good fishing reel or a box of .22 shells. 

         I never have wanted a lawn mower.  Do you realize the futility of mowing a lawn when you live out in the country? Mowing a patch of weeds like the ones that make up my lawn might kill a baby rabbit or two, or mash some whippoorwill eggs or ruin a patch of wild flowers about to bloom. And what good will it do? The whole thing grows back in a couple of weeks just like it was.  I’d druther fish than mow.  Let winter take care of the weeds!

         

 

The above story is a shortened excerpt from my new book, “The Buck That Kilt the Widow Jones.”   To get a copy, call my office, 417 777 5227. And read other articles and the story about how the local sheriff’s office tried to charge me with trespassing at a local place on a day when I was 50 miles away! That’s on… www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com

The Evils of Gambling

 

                 Bill and Joe estimating size of a bass
 

 I have a few long-time friends, but not many!  There are a lot of differences in them. Take Joe for instance.  He is apt to underestimate the weight of my fish, the distance of a good shot, the length of a turkey beard, that kind of thing. Bill, on the other hand is bad to exaggerate. I have seen him declare that a fish he caught would weigh six pounds and turn it loose before anyone could argue. As an outdoor writer, I have to strictly adhere to the facts. If I fold a flying mallard at 50 yards I just can’t report that it was 60. When I catch a six-pound bass, you can pretty much figure him to be right there, give or take a few ounces due to climatological factors.

       On a recent summer float trip, we all agreed to put a quarter on the biggest smallmouth, a quarter on the biggest largemouth, a quarter on the first fish and a quarter on the most fish. Since we turn them loose anyway, it isn’t necessary to pull one in the boat and put him to all that stress. If a bass gets loose on his own and we get a good look at him, that counts. It’s a situation where a fisherman can make a couple of dollars if he does well, and he can lose a dollar if he don’t. I don’t like to brag, but one summer I came out two and a half dollars ahead.

       We headed down the river one late summer morning in my 19-foot square-sterned canoe, which is the way folks ought to fish. Two of my daughters own kayaks, and I feel awful about that. It is very disturbing how kids nowadays often forsake the solid upbringing of their parents. Grizzled old veteran outdoorsmen will not be seen in a red or yellow kayak. Heck, I’ve caught fish big enough to sink one of those dinky little ol’ sorry excuses for a boat!

       Anyway, I started out paddling that day, with Bill in the middle and Joe in the bow. Joe catches a legitimate four-pound largemouth on a buzz-spin, and the fish jumps out of the water and throws the hook. But it counts, because we get to see the fish well. By the time it is Bills turn to paddle, Joe is way ahead in all categories, but there is still hope because no one has hooked a big smallmouth yet. That’s when it happens! I was about to cast into a perfect spot ahead of the canoe where a log lay submerged just off the edge of the current. Joe, quick to see that I had focused on that very spot, cast there just before my lure landed. A big bass sucked it under and fought hard, staying deep enough to where we couldn’t see him. Joe played him toward the bow of the canoe, and he jumped up and threw the hook about three feet in front of us. That’s when he started yelling about the fish being a big smallmouth.

       Neither Bill nor and I could see the fish because of the bow of the canoe, and so we maintain we shouldn’t have to give Joe a quarter apiece for what might have been a carp, for all we knew. The debate raged for quite awhile. It calmed a little when we stopped late in the afternoon to drink a soda pop and rest on a sandy gravel bar. Some storm clouds blew in about the time we got relaxed, so we headed for the take-out point in a hurry. Joe never did get his turn at paddling, but truthfully he can’t paddle worth a dang anyway. Bill and I both maintain that we might have caught a bigger fish by dusk, but Joe carried on about how big that last fish was, and declared there wasn’t any chance of topping it. Anyway, the trip caused so much dissention that Bill thinks we ought to give up such gambling all together. We each gave Joe a dollar, which caused me to have to go without coffee one morning at McDonalds As you may have figured out already, those are not my old friend’s real names; cause if you figured out who they really are you might wonder why a well-known, distinguished and sometimes reliable outdoor writer of note like me would be fishing with the two of them anyhow.  I only did it for the money I figured I’d make, being considerably the better fisherman!  

       Last week I wrote about some big doings we are going to have at my finally-finished Big Piney Nature Center, just south of Houston Mo, with wildlife artist Duane Hada and antique lure and fishing gear expert Jerry McCoy coming up from Arkansas. It is a big building and there will be room for about 10 or 12 tables there where any of you outdoorsmen can set up and sell items pertaining to hunting and fishing and the outdoors.  You do not have to pay anything to join us, but just let me know as much in advance as you can.  Call my office at 417-777-5227 or email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com and I will save an eight-foot space for you.  The event is free to all and some valuable items will be raffled off including a Duane Hada painting.   It is to be held on Saturday October the 26^th.