About Fishing…

       I’ve got a couple of things to pass along concerning Ozark lakes that are really interesting.   One is about crappie fishing in Norfork Lake where biologists just recently finished a lead-net sampling of fish.  They checked about 700 crappie to learn the ages associated with different sizes.  From their reports it looks like there will be some exceptional fishing for black crappie this spring on Norfork with a big improvement over their findings from 2022.

      The Fisheries division of the Department submits this report…..

”Crappie in Norfork Lake are reaching harvestable size (10 inches) in just 2- 3 years and growing to 12 inches by age 3-4. The collected fish ranged from 3.4 to 14.6 inches, with an average size of 9.7 inches. Perhaps the most exciting finding was the large number of 1.5-year-old crappie averaging around 8 inches in length. This strong year class indicates excellent fishing opportunities on the horizon as these fish reach prime harvestable size in the coming year or two. The sample was dominated by Black Crappie (89%), likely due to clear-water conditions in Norfork Lake, which favor Black Crappie over White Crappie.”

 

      Then there was news from the Missouri Fisheries division that beginning now, the 15-inch length limit on bass at Tablerock Lake will pertain only to largemouth and smallmouth but not to spotted bass.  Spotted bass and Kentucky bass are the same fish with two different names. And the new length limit on that fish is 12 inches. The average fisherman cannot tell the difference between a 12-inch spotted bass and a 12-inch largemouth just by looking at them.  

      Spotted bass, though the belly spots for which they were named may not be as prominent, can always be distinguished by the rough, rasp-like patch on top of the tongue.  If it is a largemouth the top of the tongue is smooth.  Fisheries biologists know all about the differences but I doubt if many conservation agents can tell one from the other if the fish is in the 12- to 15-inch range.  There’ll be some problems there with a few fishermen getting them mixed up and keeping a 12-inch largemouth.

      Spotted bass are not native to Ozark streams where  smallmouth are found.  Smallmouth males sometimes cross with spotted bass females and create a hybrid between the    two that some anglers refer too as a ‘mean-mouth’.   Fisheries biologist say that they do not like the spotted bass thriving in smallmouth waters as they compete for habitat and food that the largemouth does not seem suited for.  Therefore it can be said that largemouth in smallmouth rivers are not as much of a problem for smallmouth as the spotted bass are.

 

      I have a favorite hard-to-get-to stretch of water on the Sac River where spotted bass grow unusually large. In most waters they grow much slower than largemouth and if you ever land a five-pound spotted bass you’ve done something akin to landing a six-pound smallmouth.  They just don’t get that big without a few more years of growth. Even smallmouth get to four pounds quicker than spotted bass.  A largemouth will get to four pounds in an Ozark river in about five or six years.  A smallmouth needs about eight years to reach four pounds and a spotted bass needs about ten years to accomplish that size.  If a spotted bass reaches 12-inches a largemouth of the same age has probably reached 15.  So there is the reason for this new regulation shortening the spotted bass length limit in Tablerock and it ought to be done the same on every lake and river in the state.

      The Sac River stretch I mentioned has walleye and largemouth too but the spotted bass outnumber largemouth and there are no smallmouth to speak of in that western Missouri river.  I keep spotted bass when I want fish to eat because unlike smallmouth the meat is very white and solid and tasty.  In that stretch on the Sac I once caught three or     four spotted bass above three-pounds in a couple of hours   and then landed one above four pounds.

      One spring afternoon a friend and I motored up a large tributary to the Sac and found a small bluff-hole just full of spotted bass weighing about one to two pounds.  We must have caught 20 there where the water was about 10-feet deep and dinghy colored from a spring rain. On our light gear it was some fishing I will never forget.

      You can despise the spotted bass because they hurt    native smallmouth but you can’t gripe about the way they fight. Get a two- to three-pounder on light gear and you won’t be complaining.

 

Read about all kinds of   fishing on   my book  “Recollections of an Old-Fashioned Angler”. Find it   on www.larrydablemont.com  Email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com

 

Walleye Time

        Walleye are a different kind of fish!   They may not always be in deep water, but they are almost always close to the bottom. If you are serious about walleye fishing, you have to give it some effort; walleye don't often come easy in our waters.  And the time for that effort is now.  Successful walleye fishermen in the Ozarks begin to catch them as they prepare to spawn.  The first of the walleye spawn takes place in late February into early March and many of them will have finished by April.

       If there's plenty of water, they move up the tributaries and streams at the slightest warming of the currents that call them.  If there isn't plenty of water in those creeks and rivers, they will move to rocky points and rip-rap near dams and bridges and spawn there.  Northern fishermen spend more time fishing vertically for walleye than they do casting for them.  

       Sometimes they find the schools by trolling for them, and then when they locate a fish or two, they go back and drop a jig tipped with a minnow down to the bottom and lift it up and down only a couple of feet off the bottom.  When a walleye takes a lure fished vertically, he seldom hits it very hard, you just start to lift the jig and feel the weight of the fish.

       Some of the best walleye fishing I have ever had was on the Mississippi river in March, up near the Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois corners, fishing below the locks and dams, drifting in the current.  We were vertically fishing 1/2-inch blue and white jigs tipped with big minnows.  To keep the minnows on, you would run the hook through the mouth, out the gill and then through the back under the dorsal fin.  That day, we must have caught twenty big walleye between the three of us, up to eight pounds, and all over three pounds.

       You can catch walleye that way in the winter on Bull Shoals, Norfork, Stockton and Truman lakes, fishing points and deep channels around standing timber.   But in March, if you fish the same way in creeks and rivers which feed the same reservoirs with lots of persistence you can have some success. Walleye stage in the deeper holes and eddies below shoals in March, and they feed better early and late in the day and even at night.  They spawn at night, moving up to that shallower swift water where the eggs are fertilized and roll in the current.

       One old-time walleye fisherman on the Little Red River in Arkansas, which feeds Greers Ferry Lake, (where walleye over twenty pounds have been taken) told me that he catches huge walleye at night from the Little Red River in the wake of the first couple of big spring storms which come through.  He says those storms, which accompany the first warm spells in early March, quickly raise the water temperature, and walleye come up to stage at the foot of the shoals.  He finds them there and catches them on large chubs and minnows and even bluegill.  His favorite bait is small bluegill.

       Walleye, as the late winter progresses into early spring, will also hit crank-baits, and the long-billed, narrower ones are the best producers, on Stockton, Bull Shoals and Norfork lakes.  Use yellow and red and chartreuse combinations. 

        Every year with the first good fishing weather in late February and early March; meaning whatever temperatures I can stand, I fish tributaries to the lakes for white bass, black bass and walleye.  Sometimes the other species are much easier to find, but it is the walleye which I treasure, because they are so good to eat. I went after a big walleye in the Sac River a few years ago with the same jig and minnow combination I have used so often with good success in Canada.

       I concentrated my efforts on a deep pool below a shoal and sure enough, I got the fish on I had been hoping for.  He was heavy, and fought like a walleye of ten or twelve pounds, staying deep and lunging long and hard.  I handled him like a master and in about ten minutes brought him up to the surface.  And he was a beautiful silver-blue instead of the walleye gold and bronze I had been looking for.   It was a huge drum, about fifteen pounds.

       I am going to try the same technique again in early March, here and there, where walleye ought to be.  I know I'll catch some bass and white bass and maybe another drum or two, but there might someday be a horse of a walleye in one of those places.  I caught an eleven-pound walleye years ago in Manitoba.  I just know I can get a bigger one somewhere if I keep at it.  The time to do it is upon us.

       

An Owl Before Dawn

There is no more efficient predator than a great horned owl.  Silent and deadly, he can eat whatever he wants, up to and including a roosting wild turkey.  Their flight is completely silent, and they occasionally break the neck of roosting turkeys in the darkness before the dawn.  But that does not happen often if there are plenty of possums, rabbits and small ground mammals to feed upon. And, he will attack and eat a skunk with enthusiasm.

Always, beneath a February or March moon, when there is a little snow on the ground, I watch rabbits playing around my place, in the pre-mating-season antics which include games like jumping over each other and kicking their heels up as if they had never heard of a great horned owl.  Certainly the semi-uncivilized atmosphere around my home, and the presence of my Labradors, eliminated the threat of foxes and coyotes, which stay down in the woods behind the pond.  So this became a sort of haven for cottontails, especially with all the brush piles I have built here.  

       Of course, I would probably opt for not having one house mouse or Norway rat in the whole Ozarks, but I like the idea of some ground mammals like the woodrat and harvest mice and white-foot mice…and rabbits! I’d lot rather have cottontails and quail than hardly anything I can think of.  I would have more if the great horned owl that lives beside us were gone, but I would not want to never hear or see him again.

My grandfather, who always lived out in the woods or on the creek somewhere, sawed the top out of medium-sized trees up about twenty feet from the ground, to create a flat landing place for the great horned owl, and then would set a steel trap there, and bait it with a wood rat or small squirrel.  He was paid a small bounty at the county courthouse for the feet of owls, but he also saw no good in them, and believed in maintaining them only in strong enough numbers so that they survived along the river miles from where he kept a few chickens.  Grandpa liked to eat eggs and the owls liked to eat chickens, and he was much more inclined to believe in the survival of things he liked to eat, like rabbits, quail and ducks, than things he didn’t eat. 

There were so fewer men back then, than there are today. Grandpa wasn’t so far removed from a time when a man’s greatest concern wasn’t so much the economic stimulus, but what he was going to eat and perhaps what might be about to eat him. Who could believe we would ever make a great and drastic impact on the land, and perhaps endanger our own existence in time?

When I was 15 years old, Grandpa and I floated a particular Ozark river in a wooden johnboat he built, and caught some nice fish from it.  Today that stream is nearly dry. If I mention it on occasion when I speak to a live audience somewhere, it quickly comes to me they would rather I didn’t. So more often, I talk about the funny stories, which came from the old men in the pool hall back in that time. 

I figured out long ago that even if you know something, it isn’t always wise to try to explain it to anyone. That’s true of things like the spreading of billions of gallons of chemicals, all over the Ozarks.  Nothing will stop it, and what is going to come from it is going to come from it, and that’s that. 

Maybe God himself knows this, and is just watching and waiting, ready to reclaim, rebirth and regrow this old earth sometime in the future.  I guess it follows then, that the best thing to do is the best we can, to try to get our grandkids someplace where there are songbirds still singing and the water still has some crawdads and kingfishers and there are more trees than there are stumps.

If you wonder how any of this has anything to do with that owl, I can’t explain it.  I just thought about some of those things while I was listening to him, mice and rabbits and water, and that fire in California last year, and the mess the cities of this nation are in. 

 It was awfully quiet and peaceful up here on Lightnin’ Ridge that night, with the moon so bright it was casting shadows on my lawn as it sunk toward the west well before dawn. That old owl is likely sitting in a hollow tree somewhere right now, getting some sleep, and maybe a little bit hungry because there aren’t as many rabbits around my place.  Some of that may be his own darn fault. But at least he has no steel traps in flat-topped cedars to contend with now, and his feet aren’t worth a thing.

 Read other columns of mine on larrydablemontoutdoors.com, and see my books and magazines on larrydablemont.com

Firewood in Abundance

 

         I went to Bull Shoals Lake last week and you can see the effects of the drought there, as it is lower than I have ever seen it.   The Ozarks of both Missouri and Arkansas need inches of rain badly to fill our lakes and rivers to a level they all need to be.  The Buffalo River is so low that only the lower portion is full enough to float.  On upper sections, nearly three quarters of the river, there are shoals so shallow canoes can’t pass through or over without dragging.  That doesn’t bode well for all the canoe companies there.  Spring rains may fix that but my feeling is that we won’t get the kind of rains in the spring to raise lakes like Bull Shoals or Truman or Norfork.   

         Speaking of Norfork, my spring magazine carries a story by Robert Page Lincoln which was published in 1952 in an outdoor magazine. It is all about the new Norfork Lake, in which he expounds on its wonders as a fishing lake and one which is different than any others as it won’t fill in with silt as all others seem to be doing at that time in the Midwest. Lincoln didn’t like reservoirs because of many factors; chief among them is the fact that they destroyed free-flowing streams.

         When I was a boy there was talk of damming the Big Piney River where I grew up, but the problem seemed to be the hundreds of caves along the river, which would drain any impoundments there.  Right now, the up-river sections of the Piney are so low, even in the spring, that where my dad and I once floated in wooden johnboats, you can’t get down the stream in a kayak.  It is little more than a creek now in the area north of Cabool.  I think the Missouri Department of Conservation could use some of its millions to place a dam there on those headwaters, which could create a 2- or 3- hundred acre lake which would not hurt the stream at all and provide some good fishing for the folks in Cabool, Willow Springs and Mountain Grove.  That portion of the Piney is ruined for good, with not enough water for anything but green sunfish and punkinseeds.           

            Landowners have removed most of the trees, and in places where I remember deep holes with rock bass and smallmouth, there is little more than shallow, gravel-filled little eddies where even crayfish are few.  I would give anything to see a conservation-oriented group get behind the idea of a small dam there.  It wouldn’t put much of a dent in the MDC budget to create a dam, which would have no affect on the lower river.  Most of the upper third of the river that I know like the back of my hand is something of a skeleton of what I remember from the fifties and sixties.

         Down in Arkansas on the watershed of the White River, in a stretch of highway between Mountain View and Calico Rock, there is an ugly scar where a fire has destroyed several hundred acres of National Forestland.  Enough standing dead timber there would fill the stoves and fireplaces of thousands of Ozark homes if the National Forest Service would get behind a project to allow woodcutters from all over the Ozarks to come in and cut trailer loads of the dead oak and hickory and pine trees that will soon fall and rot. Right now it is illegal to go into that blighted area and cut firewood.  

         We are a nation of great waste and it tells you a lot about the Forest Service, willing to see so much wood going to waste when it would be so simple to build a road or two into the dead areas and invite woodcutters to have at it.  I believe some would come a long way and there is thousands of truck and trailer loads of good firewood there to be harvested and used.  But we are a wasteful nation, and government agencies like the Forest Service and even the National Park Service, that I once worked for, are bound up in regulations that prevent common sense approaches and solutions inside their boundaries.  But anyway, there is enough wood there in that burned wasteland to make a woodcutter rich. Maybe if someone were to contact the Forest Service there could be a way by filling out the right forms, to go in and cut some of it.

 

Don’t forget that I write columns each week for my websites.  See larrydablemontoutdoors and larrydablemont.com. My email address is lightninridge47@gmail.com.

My magazine, The Lightnin’ Ridge Journal, spring issue, will come out in late March. If you want to get a copy you should email me or call my office at 417 -777-5227 for details in getting a copy. The cost is $8.50.

Eat More Rabbits -- & bear seizure by MDC

 

    By the time you read this, the snow will likely be gone, and I will have eaten the last fried rabbit of the winter. If you don’t eat a fried rabbit or two each winter, you aren’t living right. There were so many of them when I was a kid, and from December until February, rabbits and quail kept many a farm family well fed. Eating rabbits makes you sharp-eyed and hones your reflexes. Rabbit meat makes you more resistant to the cold, and it makes your legs stronger. We were watching a college basketball game the other day and you could tell that those players descended from rabbit hunting families. If you see really short-legged people who can’t take the cold it is because they haven’t hunted rabbits enough. 

    I can’t see as well as I once could, and can’t walk nearly as fast or as far, and my reflexes aren’t as good. I blame that on the fact that each year I hunt and eat fewer rabbits. Correspondingly, I think eating more fish, as I seem to be doing as I get older, gives a person arthritic elbows and sore shoulders. The fish I catch are awfully big! I have noticed something about my fishing buddies… the more they fish, they more they stretch the truth. I think eating fish causes that too but it hasn’t happened to me yet.

    Up here on Lightnin’ Ridge, where I live, there is a little rough-edged road coming up to my house. As I drive up that little rocky hill, I have a garden off to the left of the drive, about the only open place on this whole oak-hickory ridge-top. At night this time of year, especially when there’s some snow, I often see four or five cottontails cavorting and playing around my garden, getting ready for the mating season. In the moonlight, I sometimes watch them running and jumping over one another. That isn’t necessarily because they know they’ll be eating my green beans in a few months. That leap-frogging is a mating ritual, indicating how close spring must be. 

    There are more rabbits here because of my Labrador, keeping coyotes and foxes and bobcats away from my place. A great horned owl is not so leery, and he quite often roosts in a big oak right beside my office. I lose a rabbit or two to that owl and his mate, and they get some flying squirrels too. But it is the way it is. God created all things, great and small, gentle and fierce, and he sees value in all wild things. That gives me hope, as I use to be a little wild. But not anymore… I have quit howling at the coyotes and shooting at house cats and I haven’t been out running and jumping in the snow in quite a few years. I envy those rabbits!

    On a poetic note… Soon the wicked winter will slide from the budding limbs of redbud and wild plum and fall gently into the warm crevices of March, as blooming forsythia and jonquils herald its welcome demise. Sometimes I get to writing stuff like that and feel like Carl Sandburg! I hope I am right about all that. There are things I can’t figure out, and some of them are important. How does the road-runner bird I saw recently survive our winters up here, when he is carnivorous, and never known to eat an acorn, and how do people who sell propane gas in February for those kinds of prices get a good night’s sleep?

    I don’t think about things like that much when spring comes, as I am too busy hunting turkeys and morels and fishing. It is winter that makes you know if you are independent. I don’t need the things city people need. Here on Lightnin’ Ridge I have a crosscut saw and a fireplace and canned goods from the garden and a spring for water. I don’t need electricity or gas or a super market. But I sure as heck do need April! I can’t wait to grow tomatoes and cucumbers and green beans, and fill the freezer with wild turkey and fish. And Carl Sandburg couldn’t do that, even if he was a better poet!

 

I received this letter from a reader, Lyndell Williams. It is a chance for all of us to help a young hunter wrongfully accused…and robbed!

 

            My son Wiley, an 11-year-old who loves the outdoors, shot a massive 421-pound black bear on our family land in Missouri. The Department of Conservation seized Wiley’s bear, accusing us of wrongdoing despite no charges against him. We fought back, but the judge ruled against us. Now, we’re seeking to appeal this decision, but the legal costs are overwhelming. We need your support to help us reclaim what’s rightfully Wiley’s. Any contribution, no matter how small, will bring us one step closer to justice. Thank you for standing with us during this difficult time.  We have set up a gofund me account to help with the thousands of dollars this appeal will cost. If you want to help contact me at …lyndellwilliams49@gmail.com 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A letter to the MDC

 

  

I wrote my last MDC column about how a man and his son had a 19-point buck confiscated by an MDC agent name Clare Burch. Here is the letter he sent to the MDC chief of enforcement with the form they require. This is his attempt to recover the valuable set of antlers after the whole charge and citation was dismissed in court. Want to know what MDC’S wardens are like? Read this letter... from Joe DeAngelo

 

 

To whom it may concern... After my son's deer was loaded on the truck we were going home and past Matthew Gingrich (an Amish farmer) on the road. We came home to start getting the meat in the cooler on ice because it was almost 60 degrees and couldn’t hang overnight. So we got it all cut up and was getting rid of the bone and carcass. And right before we got back Matt called Ray and told him he called the MDC on him because if he (Gingrich) couldn’t get that deer he (Ray-my son) shouldn’t have it either. We got home and Clair (MDC agent) was waiting there. She asked about the deer and where it was. I told her we had to process it and was in the cooler in my garage. She went in my garage, opened up the cooler and then was asking why we processed it so fast. I told her because it was way too warm to let that deer hang. 

            When she was standing in my barn, I watched her key the radio and call for a thermal drone. There was 3 of us that heard and seen her do it. So then she asked us about what was going on and where the rest of the deer carcass and remains was. So I took her out there to it. When we got to where the carcass was, the officer from Lafayette County came out there also. I didn’t get his name. And at this point we had been up for two and half days with no sleep. They were calling me a liar for cutting it up so fast. I would think your agents would know better. It was 60°! You can’t let something hang. So the 2 1/2 hour interrogation went on and on asking us the same question 10 different ways. They knew we were worn out and exhausted. That shouldn’t have happened till the next day. We went back to where she took the meat and the hide and the head. She put all that good meat in a scented garbage bag. 

            She asked why we didn’t tag the deer when we got to him and Ray told her because there was no service there. When he got service, it went through. Nope she said that wasn’t true and we were lying. I told her go back over there and she would see there was no service but nope. The Lafayette County agent was calling us liars about the broad-head shot through the shoulder and was ready to take me down with a severe attitude because I was telling him it was shot with an arrow through the shoulder. So I finally called Raymond after being called a liar multiple times he seen Raymond coming over there and started screaming him to get back in the truck. I said hey man, he’s the one that shot the deer he’s the hunter he need to show you something so that changed his attitude. Raymond showed him the video of the deer with the arrow clearly protruding out of its body and then that changed his tone after us being called liars multiple times I was just about done with them at this point. I’m a businessman in Ray County. I’ve lived here my entire life. I’ve hunted for 32 years with never having a problem. I’ve run a business for almost 18. I have never been dehumanized and called a liar like that in my life not even close. I was ticketed Sunday for illegal transportation of a carcass and for the use of a drone. I’m sure you see all the charges that they liked to pile on. 

            My problem with the whole thing is when Clare got down to my 17-year-old’s face and told him this was gonna sting. Wasn’t it losing that deer she tried provoking an altercation with a minor… I know two other people she has done this too, and then she tried pressing charges on them for intimidating a law-enforcement officer when they blew up on her this is her game. Pretty disgusting and sad! We were harassed for 12 days with a drone. I called Clair. She denied having a drone that wouldn’t stop so I finally called the Ray County sheriff and made a report and then it stopped. I had called Jade I guess in Northeast Mo he denied that you guys had a drone two days straight. The drone was lined up with my living room window. My kids saw it one evening from my living room. 

            Sunday morning I went back out to Calvin‘s where we hunted at 5 AM and there were drones in the sky. I seen two and MDC denies it. So if the MDC does not have drones, she had to call in a third-party because three of us heard her do it and seen her do it, and we all witnessed the drones and harassment. I have video of them over my farm and house. People here are sick of the double standard. She violated and abused the fourth amendment right for sure. She had no right to enter my garage. Our privacy was violated for days and days. my advice to people to ask me is to plead the fifth not tell your agent a word and get a lawyer because all they do is dehumanize you and make you look like a monster that you’re not. Not only did she keep the deer that was tagged in before she took it. So that Ray lost his buck tag also and couldn’t hunt the last 3 weeks of the best part of bow season too.

             Also last January we were checked three days in a row by Clare on the same farm with the same truck. She actually came a fourth time to check us and my brother called her and asked her if she was just harassing us so not really sure what her problem has been but she’s never had a reason to have a problem. we are not law breaking poachers like they want to make us to be. We have abided by the law, our entire lives. I feel like fair is fair if you’re gonna make the people walk this straight and narrow with no common sense used in any situation than the people should make sure the MDC is also walking straight and narrow by the law. Both my grandfather’s were US Marines, and then went on to be New York City police, which they both retired. Always had the most respect for law-enforcement. But not gonna lie after being scrutinized like this I know how the minorities feel now and understand why they feel the way they do sorry to say. You would never understand until you were treated in this way I never understood either until then.

 

The White and the Browns

 

Gaston's Resort guide, Frank Saksa

         

         Every year at this time I mention the great trout fishing found on the White River… where the brown trout reach gigantic sizes. Brown trout are more active in January and February because it is their spawning time in waters where they are native, mostly in Germany and Scandinavian countries.   Browns are not native to the United States. They have been stocked in the White and no one would think they could successfully spawn there, but when the water is high this time of the winter, they actually do to a lesser degree, but not to any great extent. To thrive there they must be raised and stocked.   

         They, and rainbow trout, have to be raised in hatcheries then   released into the White when they reach a certain size.  This year a disease devastated the trout in those hatcheries and so in January the stocking was limited to a fraction of what was normal. White River fishermen were not allowed to keep any trout at all because of it… catch and release only.

         I talked with Arkansas guide, Donald Cranor, who told me that in February the catch and release plan is still going to be in effect, but fishermen will be able to keep two trout only.  He says most of his clients this time of year are after big brown trout and they are a fish that are mostly released anyway.  Fishing with him, anglers often catch ten-to-twenty-pound browns and it is possible to land them in the thirty pound range.   Rainbows that are stocked    do not reach sizes often that are above 12 or 14 inches.

         I suspect the disease that has infiltrated the hatcheries is something called whirling disease, which causes trout to swim in circles on the surface of the water before dying.  There is no real   estimate as to when the white can be fully stocked again with trout.

         Guide, Frank Saksa, who guides fishermen out of Gaston’s Resort, told me that because of the brown trout, and even the diminishing numbers of rainbows, he hasn’t seen a big decrease in  winter fishermen, as catch and release fishing has never been a big problem in the winter with the type of fishermen that come to the White and seek guides.  But if the situation continues into the spring, I think it may really hurt the resorts along the river.  In a future article I will interview some Arkansas biologists to find out   more about the situation.

         In the winter I have fished for brown trout with Saksa, and once I landed an 8-pound brown.  I fished once with Cranor, and   wrote about his experience with another outdoor writer from Arkansas. They were using some horny-head chubs to try to catch a   big brown trout and the writer got confused. He wrote in his article that he and Cranor were using horned toads!           

         If you want to fish the White, I certainly recommend hiring a guide like Cranor.  Saksa too is a great guide for browns but he is now in semi-retirement.  If you want to hire Frank, you have to call Gaston’s Resort.  That resort has the distinguished honor of selling more of my books in the last twenty years than anyone else, including the big national bookstores.  To meet or talk with Frank Saksa, go to Gaston’s Resort sometime or call 870- 431-5202.  You can call Donald Cranor at 870-430-5484.  These two guys can tell you more about the situation on the White than anyone I know.

         I urge you to also read my website concerning a theft of valuable deer antlers… larrydablemontoutdoors.  My email address is lightninridge47@gmail.com