The Storm at Squire Lee’s --PART 1

 

The deep dark waters of the bell rock eddy awaited us as an afternoon storm warned us away.

       Squire Lee was an old country gentleman who lived on a sloping hillside above the river. His home was not far from the little cabin where my dad spent much of his childhood. In the river below his old two-story home was a deep eddy with a giant rock sticking out of it. Dad and I always had permission to drive through Mr. Lee’s land to fish there. Some 20 to 40 pound flathead catfish had been taken from the river around the big rock.

       In May of 1964 I had turned 16 years old and could drive my dad’s old 1950 pickup.  So one Saturday in May of ’64 I, and brothers Tom and Roy Wayne Morton, cooked up a trotlining trip.   We had a canvas tarpaulin that would cover the rack on the pickup and I found an old mattress in Grandpa McNew’s barn.  We could sleep periodically in the bed of the truck while running trotlines during the night.  So we put the mattress in first, then the johnboat, and then loaded gear and groceries and headed for the river to yank out some of those flathead catfish.

       The Morton brothers and I seldom got too skip church on Sunday unless it was for fishing. Proclaiming sickness didn’t always work. So we were awfully happy that Saturday morning bouncing toward the river in that old pickup with the sun shining brightly and birds singing from the roadsides.  Most 16-year-old boys back then were looking forward to taking a girl to the movies on Saturday night but not me. I was addicted to the river!  Not only that, I wasn’t blessed with the finances for such a Saturday night, nor was I blessed with the looks to convince a girl too go with me to the movies even if I found a free one!

We drove down past squire Lees big old two-story home to the river bottom where we unloaded the boat beneath a big old sycamore and set up camp.  

       We had ourselves a baloney sandwich with an RC Cola and some chocolate cupcakes and then loaded the trotline gear to head downriver.

 

 

       

The first rumble of thunder came while we were seining minnows about 500 yards downstream from the pickup two hours later. Just after that, the darkening skies told me to retreat to the big cave above the river nearby. Flashes of lightning to the southwest began to worry me. We pulled the old johnboat way up on the bank and tied it, and I headed up the slope behind Tom and Roy Wayne. Halfway there I encountered an old barbwire fence and straddled it in my wet swimsuit and wet shoes. Just then a bolt of lightning streaked down upstream from where we were and I felt numb all over as I tried to get myself up off the ground.  I realized that I had been the victim of a lightning strike and I realized that while I was hurting everywhere… I wasn’t dead!

       I had remembered Ol’ Bill and Ol’ Jess at the pool hall talking about how a lightning bolt didn’t always kill a feller and that in the aftermath of such a calamity, folks who lived was sometimes reduced to being not as smart as they were or much smarter than they had been.

       I am not sure that a kid who would reach out and grab a fence in a lightnin’ storm could get much dumber.  The proof that I was smarter could be seen in the rapidness with which I gained the awaiting cave shelter, where I quickly started going over algebraic equations I never thought I would remember.  And another thing I remember is that my long hair from that time had lifted my cap up an inch or two above my forehead.

       So there we were a good quarter mile below our camp at Squire Lee’s home in a raging storm about midway through what had been a great Saturday afternoon.  Decisions had to be made.  Thankfully we had covered our mattress with the tarp so it should remain dry, as well as our quilts, stored in garbage bags.   BUT… if the river rose ten feet it would reach the back of the pickup and all our breakfast eggs and baloney and Little Debbie cupcakes would be washed down the river.  I was more worried about that truck of dads.  If it got washed down the river, I would just as well go with it. 

       On the bravery side I could leave Tom and Roy Wayne and get in the boat and paddle upriver against the rising current in that storm, dodging broken limbs and lightning bolts and move the pickup, if it wasn’t stuck in the mud.  On the not-so-brave-but-smarter side I could stay in the safety of the dry secure cave.  Would my as yet unseen bravery come through or would I use the increased intelligence that lightning bolt had given me and stay put.

In next weeks column you can read the exciting conclusion to this true account of the storm on the river.

The Toughest Fish

 

I figure the toughest little fish in the Midwest, and the Ozarks, is the green sunfish.  You might know him as the black perch.  He can get over a pound in size, and I remember catching them 8 or 10 inches long.  They survive everywhere… in the muddiest, smallest farm ponds, creeks and rivers of any size and huge reservoirs. They can live in low oxygen waters and reproduce in almost any kind of marsh, pond or creek.

The scrappy little fish has a mouth unusual for a sunfish, because it is large, like a bass’s mouth.  When they get 6 or 8 inches long, they can tackle a surface lure as big as they are or a huge spinner-bait. When school is out and folks want to take kids fishing, the green sunfish is the fish for that job. They are easy to catch and plentiful. 

I like to go to a local Ozark lake and set a couple of trotlines, then take youngsters and move along the rocky, shallow banks with my trolling motor, letting them learn to cast a spinning outfit with 4-pound line.  In one afternoon, they can learn to cast well. Close to those banks from May through September, you will find scores of those black perch (that name sounds better to a youngster who is learning to fish).  

Use a hook with a small split shot about 1/16^th or 1/8 ounce, and put a small plastic grub or a worm on it, and when it hits the water within two or three feet of that bank, a sunfish of some kind is likely to jump on it.  Keep them all-- it makes kids happy.  They hate to catch a fish and throw it back.  Put them in a live well or fish basket and use them to bait your trotlines or jug lines with, and you might wind up with a big flathead catfish.  Flathead seldom hit dead bait or cut bait…and they absolutely love green sunfish. So do channel cat and blues.  A bait shop not far from me makes a lot of money selling black perch for trotline or limb-line bait. I think they are about five dollars per dozen.

If you take a youngster out catching your own bait some of the fish you catch will be bigger hand-sized green sunfish, and they will really give a youngster with a limber little spinning rod a hard tussle.  I can offer one more word of advice.  You can catch more fish without ever doing any baiting, by using a 1-inch strip of white fly-strip pork-rind, and it lasts for a long time without replacing it.  Green sunfish love it, and every now and then a nice bass will show up from nowhere, to make a kid’s eyes twice their normal size.  Have a net handy.

You might want to keep the larger green sunfish, scale them and gut them, removing the head.  Then boil the fish for a couple of minutes and take them out and separate meat from bones.   Fry the meat left and you can you won’t believe how good they are to eat. 

***********************************************

 

I floated a short section of an Ozark River back before the rains came. Once a stream with deep eddies and clear clean water, it is now drying up, and the eddies are filling with silt and gravel.  On the shoals, the rocks were covered with slimy olive green and brown slime that would sometimes wrap around my ankles when I would get out to wade.   Thirty years ago you would never wade those places; they were much deeper and there were a couple of dozen springs flowing along the stream.  Most of those springs are dry now, and it will be a dead river in another 30 years. By that time, I doubt if anyone cares.  It won’t be a world where anyone puts treasure in such things as clean, flowing rivers.

       The day I floated it, there were huge gar ‘shoaling’… the term old timers used for spawning fish coming up into flowing shallow water.  There were dozens and dozens of them, and you could just wade out into some of those shallow shoals where they were congregated and dip them up with a net, many more than more than forty inches long.  On that day, with a bow you could have easily killed a hundred or so gar just by wading.  But though there are some recipes for gar, and a few old fishermen who say they are good to eat, they have a hide with hardened scales like armor, and it is a job to skin one.  They are such a repulsive fish I have a hard time thinking I would eat one if I could get anything else.

If you like to read about fish and fishing, I think you would enjoy my book, “Recollections of an Old-Fashioned Angler.    You can see it on my website www.larrydablemont.com

 

 

 

Goggle-Eye

 

                                              Rock Bass or commonly known as Goggle-eye

       Rock bass are to Ozark flowing streams what crappie are to reservoirs. Creel census figures show that they make up the largest percentage of fish caught and fish kept by stream fishermen in the Ozarks. Missouri fisheries people once kept track of the fish coming out of the Big Piney, Current, Niangua, Huzzah, and Courtois, and they figured goggle-eye made up 25 to 35 percent of the fish caught and kept. It is likely they overlooked the green sunfish caught when they did that survey. Green Sunfish most likely are caught at a very high rate, but not often kept. Biologists from that long-ago time also did a study of growth rates, which showed that rock bass on the Black and Jacks Fork Rivers were three years old when they reach six inches in length. But at Bennett Springs, next to the Niangua River, they were six inches long at two years. Three-year-old goggle-eye there were about eight inches long. Eleven-inch fish (a real rarity even then) from the same waters were seven years old.

       Rock bass will quite commonly reach a weight of one-half to three-fourths of a pound in the Ozarks. And goggle-eye of one-and-a- half pounds can be seen on occasion. A heavier fish in the Ozarks is a true lunker, in the same realm as a five-pound smallmouth or a ten-pound largemouth

       I know of a two-pound rock bass taken from the Big Piney River right at the mouth of Hog Creek back in the early ‘60s. My Uncle was fishing just after dark in a deep hole with a jitterbug, trying to catch a big smallmouth. That huge rock bass, which he landed, was the only one I ever knew to hit a jitterbug at night.       

       That’s one thing that really stands out to me in the years of river fishing I’ve done. If you want to catch rock bass, fish the bottom, use small lures, and fish slow. Despite the things I’ve read about rock bass hitting flies cast by fly-fishermen, I’ve seldom seen them come up after anything on top.

       

       When I was a boy and Dad and I floated the Big Piney and Little Piney Rivers in April, we had the best lure I’ve ever seen for goggle-eye. A man named Art Varner from Salem, Missouri, made a small spinnerbait called a shimmy fly. These lures, one-eight and one-fourth ounce had lead heads and honeybee yellow and black or yellow and brown bodies, with brown or black squirrel hair tied over them. The small offset spinner rode just above the body, and we’d dress this up with a split white pork rind fly strip.

       When shimmy flies became hard to find, beetle spins began to appear, and now there are a variety of plastic lures on the same type of spinners, which are very effective for rock bass.

       The colors don’t make a great deal of difference. 

       Of course, natural-bait fishermen will tell you nothing will beat a night crawler, and that is indeed a favorite of rock bass in the summer. 

       In the spring, they may spawn just below a swift shoal in water as shallow as three feet. In April and May, there’s no problem catching them during the day. In fact, when they are preparing to spawn in the spring, you may catch a dozen or so rock bass in one spot, any time of the day. In June they begin to spread out, seek deeper water, and feed well at night going to the deepest water and coming out at dusk.  If you like to fish with night crawlers after dark in a deep river eddy, you will find that they are a bit nocturnal then.

       The rock bass does indeed love rocks, but some of the best fishing I’ve had with minnows and night crawlers has been around large root wads of fallen trees washed into deep water any time of the year, any time of the day. They love a big submerged root wad just as much as a big rock.

       Something else I’ve noticed about rock bass in the Ozarks, is that they seem to go on feeding binges when a heavy rain muddies the stream and creates a small rise. Sometimes during a rise they move into areas of sand or gravel substrate where they normally wouldn’t be found. Years ago, when there was a slow rise in the river, and murky water coming with it, I would go to some favorite spots and catch lots of rock bass on nightcrawlers, along with bass, green sunfish, and suckers.

       I seldom fish for them today, as upper reaches of Ozarks streams have become shallow, and the rocks I once fished are becoming covered with silt and gravel. Progress…land clearing and erosion! But last spring I made a trip on the lower Big Piney with old-time riverman and fishing guide, Charlie Curran, and we found lots of goggle-eye to be caught on small rubber grubs fished slowly close to the bottom in deeper water. But 80 percent were less than 8 inches. In most streams where rocks are found in deeper water not yet filled ion. Ozark goggle-eye can thrive, IF fishermen will abide by that 8-inch rule. They have gone through hard times, but anglers willing to return all smallmouth, and return any rock bass under 8 inches, can play a big role in keeping rivers something like they were in that time long ago when only wooden johnboats drifted downstream, in the land of brownies, black perch and goggle-eyes!

Fishing is Like A Box of Chocolates

                                     

                        My daughter Lori Jean, who is a doctor at Missouri State University, is very alarmed about increasing numbers of tick diseases amongst her patients. She asks me to use a tick repellent on my boots and pants when I am outdoors.  That is something I have not often done, but the urgency in her voice concerning the Alpha-Gal syndrome spread by the Lone Star ticks makes me inclined to follow her advice. It makes one allergic to red meat and has caused deaths in the Ozarks.

            I have produced a 110-page summer magazine, which carries a two-page article about tick diseases written by Lori.  You need to read that article. I have about 100 of that magazine left to distribute.  To get one postpaid send seven dollars to Lightnin’ Ridge Magazine, Box 22, Bolivar, Mo 65613.  Or you can get one by calling my office, 417 777 5227.   The magazine has lots of great outdoor stories in it that I think you will enjoy.  But that article by my doctor-daughter will give you information you need to know about tick-borne diseases.

 

            Fishing is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get … and often you’d just as soon it was different than what you ended up with. That’s what happened to me this past week.  On a day that I figgered I would catch the farr out of ‘em--- I didn’t.  But I started out with great anticipation.  Casting nothing more than a twirly-tailed, yellow plastic jig with a lead head, I laid into a hard-fighting fish that arced my rod like he was a slab-sided, black-bellied, frog-eater.  He stayed deep and pulled like a roped goat!  I guess that’s what told me I didn’t have a bass.  A bass would come up and woller around on the surface a little, and maybe even jump clean out of the water.              

          This fish that had grabbed my little eighth-ounce jig just stayed down and pulled with determination…which led me to hope he just might be a walleye.  That was it, I told myself as I let him pull line against the drag of my spinning reel... I had a big walleye, likely 6 or 7 pounds.  In the depths beneath my boat I saw it finally, a white and pink- sided lunker, far different in color than what a gold-sided walleye would be.  I fought that fish for a good five or six minutes.  He was almost two feet long and too big to lift over the side of the boat with six-pound line, so I netted him and let it flop around for a moment as I cast aspersions upon her!  She was a doggone egg-filled drum!!!  But for an angler who   is only interested in fighting a big fish, a six or seven pound drum is not too great a problem.

            I can only add to this story that I was mostly trying to catch some white bass and never saw a one for the next two hours.  But the story is not over.  Two hours later I hooked another big drum, a good four pounds in weight, and had another tussle worth the trip up the river. This time I was more prepared when my walleye turned into a 20- inch drum.  But when you have fished for two hours for nothing but two drum you   aren’t exactly whistling and grinning about your good luck.  

            Then something happened that made the whole trip worth it.  I was just sitting in my boat taking my drum-tempting yellow jig off to put on a little crank bait when suddenly there was a big splash out in the middle of the river. Bass do that. Drum don’t.  So what I did was, I threw that crank bait out about where the rings were spreading out in the water and that bass nailed it.  It was a grand struggle, him taking off with my crank bait and several feet of line and me enjoying the bend of the rod and the whine of the reel. It was a bass all right, and I got to see him come up and jump out of the water trying to throw the hooks. I got my net beneath him, an 18-inch beauty that was half smallmouth and half spotted (Kentucky) bass.  You can see a color picture of the rascal on my website, larrydablemontoutdoors.   
             I don’t like that hybridation but it is seen often in some waters where the southern spotted bass has been introduced.  Most fishermen who catch one don’t realize what it is, but there is a smooth tongue on a true smallmouth and on the hybrid you will see spots on the belly, a raspy patch on the tongue and the red eye of the smallmouth.

            Well anyway that was the last fish.  A three-fish day over three or four hours of fishing isn’t something to brag about when you are an outdoor writer, but the afternoon was a boatload of treasure for me because I love being out there on the river by    myself, fish or no fish.  I shared the time with a pair of eagles and a mink and I thanked God for time I got to spend there. I always do.

 

            

 

Memories of a Fishing Guide

 

     Recently I wrote about floating the Roubidoux River as boy, working as a fishing guide for newspaper editor Lane Davis. Lane liked to fish that river because he felt it received less fishing pressure and might have more fish, if not bigger  ones.  I always wondered, what the Roubidoux River was named after.  The French name ‘robidou’ means “son of Robert”.

       It was a great river then, but not so much now.  Deeper eddies there have been filled with gravel and sand… so much of the fish habitat is gone.  And the water flow is much less now than it was in the 60’s, because dozens of small springs that fed the river have dried up. Modern Ozarkians do not realize what a water crisis our country will experience in another fifty years or less.  Our Ozark rivers will become creeks. 

       Back in 1960 there were no aluminum river boats or canoes, but dad had built a couple of 14-foot wooden johnboats that you could use to float small streams. They were heavy but better to fish from than anything made of metal.  The wood bottoms were slick enough to slide over the rocks and gravel and so easy to handle even a kid could paddle one.

       Boy, those were the days… not so much because there were lots bigger bass and goggle-eye and green sunfish, but because there were so many more of them.

       The biggest smallmouth I have ever seen caught from the rivers of the Ozarks was a 23-inch bass I know would have weighed six pounds.  It was the summer of 1959 on the Big Piney, guiding a Houston man and his wife, Joe and Katy Richardson.  I was 12 and it was my first paid trip as a float-fishing guide in one of those old wooden johnboats.  I was paid 50 cents an hour and Joe gave me a five-dollar tip at the end of the day. I told my dad that I had found my life’s profession!

       Back then I had no landing net, so I got out in the water up to my knees and landed Katy’s huge bass by hand. She was a fine lady and fisherman and no one deserved a fish more.  I still have the black ‘Heddon River Runt’ she caught it on and her photo with the fish and the lure are on display in my Big Piney nature center.  I remember it like it was yesterday and I have never seen a smallmouth like it from a river. It was a dark chocolate brown with almost no markings.  I am going to use a picture of the fish to have a replica made for the nature center.

As to the nature center… on May 10 we are going to have a big yard sale there too help pay for some additional work that needs too be done and some displays.  Hope many of you can attend.  We have lots of stuff for sale, some guns and fishing gear, and hundreds of lures, a boat trailer and a kayak or two.

 

And I also wrote about brown trout in a recent column. Here is more about that species of fish…

       Brown trout were introduced to American waters in 1883, from the British Isles and Eastern Europe.  The western U.S. had several species of trout, but there were no brown trout. Missouri stocked a quarter million of them in the Ozarks in the late twenties and early thirties.  Arkansas followed at a later time.

       The brown trout has been stocked and today thrive successfully in Missouri’ Meramec River, the Niangua River Taneycomo Lake, the Current River and the North Fork River. In Arkansas, they are stocked in the White River below Beaver Lake Dam, Bull Shoals Dam, Norfork Lake Dam and in the Little Red River below Greer’s Ferry.  There is evidence that they have actually had a few successful winter spawns in the Arkansas White River.

       Brown trout eat almost anything when they are smaller, from insects and crayfish to minnows, sculpins and shad. The larger they get the more likely they are to eat larger prey…from small rainbow trout to small ducklings to mice.

       Outdoor writer Jim Spencer tells of catching a brown trout near Calico Rock on the lower White that he believes was larger than 30 pounds. He nearly landed the fish but he couldn’t get it in a net he had. There are many browns in the White that are 20 to 30 pounds and most guides there know where to find them when the water is low.  Some have been caught and released.

       I hope readers will check out my websites, larrydablemont.com and larrydablemontoutdoors.   You can email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com.

 

March Smallmouth

 

            I like fishing big reservoirs in March.  Fifty-five years ago, I fished Beaver Lake with an uncle on a cold windy day using a lure called a spider, just a big spinner bait of that time. For three hours I didn’t catch a single bass, but about ten in the morning, only a hundred yards from my truck, I was rewarded by a hard strike. The biggest bass I have ever seen nailed the spider and fought hard for nearly ten minutes. I gazed in awe at the huge fish in the water beside me, and finally got my thumb in his mouth. His fight ended with a few flops on the boat floor.

            In Rogers, Arkansas at a sport shop, they weighed the bass at nine pounds and 14 ounces, for which I got a ‘lunker pin’. I had the fish mounted because I knew it was my last and only chance at a ten pounder. My uncle said it surely had weighed ten pounds when I caught it, but I should have put a rock in its gullet anyway. Only a few years back, however, I landed a nine pounder from Truman Lake and I have caught several eight-pound bass from various waters lakes, ponds and rivers. I must admit to losing more bass of that size than have landed. 

            But it is rivers that I love to fish and last week when the temperature rose into the 70’s, I took a trip to a river, going about five miles upstream from an Ozark reservoir.  It’s a reservoir where I have never caught a smallmouth bass. But there must be some there, because every March there is a movement of smallmouth up that river. It is something you are not suppose to see in smallmouth, a bona-fide migration of hundreds of   smallmouth. By sometime in May they are gone.  

            I found them last week and one afternoon I had a ball catching forty or fifty 14 to 18-inch brown bass out of one deep eddy. I was all by myself and the calm peaceful river was a reward in itself for the few hours I spent there. I was lucky to have found the bass. They were deep in a ten-foot hole about 40 feet wide. For about three hours they hit any deep-running lure I tied on, six different lures. But what they seemed to like best was a six-inch stick-bait that I could crank down about four or five feet. And with that I had something rare happen. There was a savage strike and after it, instead of a struggle, there was just a hard pull. Moments later I saw why… there was a 13-inch smallmouth on the rear treble hook and a 16-incher on the front hooks. Together there were about three pounds of bass. I netted them and there was chaos on the floor of my boat. It is hard to disengage the hooks on a pair of bass doing most of the fighting after they have been boated.

            But   the worst was yet to come.  I was casting a sinking, wobbling lure once known as a ‘Cordell Hot-spot’ when it was engulfed by a slab-sided frog-eater   of a smallmouth.  I could see his broad bronze side when he came deep alongside the boat, fighting against my drag with a fury I had yet to see on that day.  I    got him in   close enough to just see a big tail wave good bye. He made a powerful lunge that broke the line.  I hated losing that lure; hated losing the smallmouth. I would have released him anyway but had   he visited the inside of my boat I would have been able to tell you how long he was.  I am sure, in doing the algebraic equation of x equal a five inch tail and a five inch tail equaling better than four pounds in fish weight, that he weighed better than four pounds.   Being an outdoor writer bound to uphold the   ‘truth in journalism’ rule, I wouldn’t stretch things about any fish I lost, though I have exaggerated a couple that I caught.  For instance, before the day was over I hooked a real whopper-dock of a brownie and landed him.  I would love to tell you he was and 18-incher but he wasn’t.  He was short of it by about 3/8ths of an inch, doggone it.  It   could    have been a half an inch or maybe less.  The   fish just wouldn’t lie still to be measured accurately.  If I   had of scrunched up his   tail I expect I could call him an   eighteen incher…  but I am a real stickler for accuracy.  I may    go back and measure him again this week!

 

My website, which shows all my books and magazines, is www.larrydablemont.com and my email address is lightninridge47@gmail.com

MDC Slaughter!!

 

 

       The deer slaughter is over! It goes from mid-January to mid-March.  Last years extermination project killed more than thirty-seven thousand deer. That number may reach 50 thousand this year.  I don’t know how a “Conservation” department could be a part of such meaningless killing of a wild creature of any kind. Conservation is not what they are involved in now. The name should be changed.  The greater goal is more money. 

       The killing is being done in the name of chronic wasting research.   They say that ‘til now only one out of a hundred deer in the state have the deadly transmissible spongiform encephalopathy disease, which they refer to as chronic wasting disease, the brain destroying prion disease, which they falsely deny that humans can get.

       And there is also the belief inside the MDC that Missouri has too many deer anyway. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is a partner in the slaughter.  The MDC gets hundreds of thousands of dollars from USDA to carry out the extermination.  Maybe the new president’s DOGE will get wind of what’s going on and put a stop to it. If those thousands could be spent more wisely we could actually see some legitimate conservation projects in the state, like the preservation of rivers and the reconstruction of Schell Osage waterfowl area.

        In case you are unaware of where the money goes… think of ‘reimbursement’ for the expense of rifles, ammunition and the salary and expenses for perhaps hundreds of different shooters necessary to kill 40 to 50 thousand deer in two months.

        Piles of corn are set out where blinds are built to conceal the shooters, even though farmers feeding deer corn can be arrested for that.  Part of the killing is done at night using spotlights.  A certain amount of lying is necessary.  The public is told the deer meat is utilized in the “share the harvest” program.  That’s baloney.  A source inside the department I have talked with says, “You think those shooters will gut and butcher that many deer? No way! Bulldozers can dig big holes where hundreds can be buried or burned! Not all are even tested when a late night accounts for a whole pile of carcasses and crippled deer.”

       The shame of it all is that this past month hundreds of doe deer were killed with one or two fawns in them not long from being born. Thousands of big bucks are also among the count, bucks that will not be taken by hunters who spend their money on deer tags this coming fall.  The record low kill seen last fall will be even less next season. And once again, the MDC experts will come up with all kinds of reasons for it, warm weather, too many acorns etc. 

       What you won’t hear is “There are fewer bucks because of our winter slaughter, but that’s’ alright, we had too many deer anyway. The decline in hunter success is tough luck”.

       One landowner called me and told me he refused to let the MDC and USDA kill deer on his land but a neighbor let them in.  He has found dead deer and wounded deer on his place the last few weeks, ones that were shot on that neighboring land. Another call was from a lady who said they had bought 60 acres next to MDC’s 280-acre Cover Wildlife Area in southeast Missouri and for two months they had to live with the constant sound of rifle fire from late afternoon until way past sunset as shooting teams exterminated dozens and dozens of deer.  She fears that there will be few deer left on their own land. 

       The U.S. Dept of Agriculture contributes personnel to help kill the deer, and tons of money to the MDC for the slaughter. Like so many things, it all comes down to Government money, which likely means millions to the MDC over time.

       If you buy a deer tag this year, you might oughta be okay with less of a chance of seeing a buck.  But that’s okay. Remember the MDC slogan… ‘For Nature and you!’

 

 

Here is a news bulletin….Next fall and winter landowners will be offered 10 deer tags. In designated Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Core Areas, landowners of 5 contiguous acres or greater are eligible to receive up to 10 no-cost CWD Management Permits for use on their qualifying properties.

CWD Management Permits give eligible landowners the opportunity to take an active role in managing CWD in areas where the disease has been detected by removing POTENTIAL positive deer from the landscape. The permits also increase surveillance in CWD core areas by offering landowners, and/or hunters they designate, the opportunity to harvest additional deer on their property and get reimbursed for processing if they have their deer tested for CWD.

 

Browns on the White…

 

                           Frank Saksa with a large brown trout

       There may be no better fishing to be found in the Ozarks in March than the brown trout fishing on the White River, for many miles below Bull Shoals Dam. Brown trout actually spawn in the White in December into February, and there are some fish there in those waters well over 20 pounds. In fact several 30-pound plus browns have been caught in the past 20 years from the White River.

       They feed ravenously after the spawning period, as do the rainbows. Trouble is, it is difficult to catch big rainbow trout from the White, because they are caught quickly on natural bait and therefore not given much chance to grow after they are stocked. They rarely bring off a successful spawn in the White, but it is not unheard of. A 14- or 15-inch rainbow isn’t hard to catch from the White, and on light spinning gear, they are strong fighters.

       It is not unusual for inexperienced fishermen to hook and land brown trout from 5- to 10-pounds. The river has a large number of brown trout much larger than that, a real prize for the White’s early spring anglers. Browns are known to be warier than rainbow trout, but they are particularly susceptible to 5- or 6-inch Suspending Rogue lures.

       A Suspending Rogue is a lure which is easy to cast because it is fairly heavy, and long and slender. And it takes no great talent to make it look like something a brown trout takes a shine to. Usually browns and rainbows both will hit the lure when it has stopped, so be ready to set the hook. Use six- to eight-pound line if you aren’t experienced in this type of fishing. If you are an old hand at it, four-pound line will work even better because it has lower visibility. Just keep that drag set well.

       White Rive Guide Frank Saksa say’s that the best brown’s he sees each year fall to those Rogues, which are jerked several feet and then allowed to drift in the current, then jerked hard again.

       “You’ll see, after you have fished awhile, how many times they hit those Rogues when they are dead in the water.”

 Saksa says, “Jerk ‘em a few feet, but resist the urge to just keep working them. Let the lure stop a few seconds, and hang on.”

       Saksa’s clients land several brown trout between 10 and 15 pounds in March. Most are photographed and released to grow larger. And while there are thought to be a number of 20- to 30-pound browns in the White, the Norfork and the Little Red, few are ever kept. All are released to grown larger. These fish grow very fast; reaching lengths of 18 to 20 inches in only three years, and the females will exceed five pounds in weight in that time. They may live more than 20 years and grow a maximum weight of 40 pounds in the Ozarks.

       Saksa says a dead brown was found on the White in the winter a few years back, which was partially decomposed, but thought to be larger than 25 pounds. Fishermen who fish for brown trout year round tell of seeing or hooking fish they think will exceed 30 pounds, but they seldom have the tackle to land one that size. Saksa says many big browns are also caught in the spring and on crayfish, white jigs or spoons.

       When winter-kill shad are coming through the dam and drifting down the White, you can catch both rainbows and browns on a 1/16 to 1/8 ounce white jig. The smaller the jig and the lighter the line, the better luck you will have.

       But the Rogue is more fun. The brown trout, are a catch-and-release species. If you get a big one, take a picture and release it to let it grow. Keep the rainbows to eat. They do not produce in any appreciable numbers Brown trout do. The limits on the two species change from time to time.

       There are techniques involved on the White River and the Norfork River, which you do not learn overnight. Spend a day with a knowledgeable guide like Saksa and you will learn more in a day than you might learn in a month of fishing on your own. Talk to folks in resorts up and down the river if you do choose to fish without a guide. There are length limits to know about, some areas where you may not use barbed hooks and natural bait. Those catch-and-release areas like the one just below the White River Dam are places where bigger fish can be found, rainbows, even walleye from time to time. In that area below the dam, you may keep walleye or crappie sometimes found there, but not trout.

BE sure of the limits, and stamps and licenses you need. Ask the resorts and docks about the best lures at the time, the best colors, and even line color. Those are things they know, which you need to know.

Short-Eared Oddballs

 

                

      Several years ago in late February a gentleman called me to tell me he had seen around 200 owls the day before in one small area in the western Ozarks.  He said that on one corral fence there were more than thirty in a group!

      When you are a grizzled old outdoor veteran like me, you figure you have seen about everything in the outdoors, and I have never seen more than four or five owls of any species together in the woods ever.  So, you can figure if I haven’t ever seen something, I won’t believe it ‘til I see it.  And folks, ‘I went there and seen it and I ain’t never seen nothin’ like it’.  

       Near Greenfield, Missouri was a huge group of short-eared owls, a species a little bit like the barred owl in size and appearance, but with small ears sticking up. In habit, they are much different than most of the owls we are accustomed to hearing and seeing in the Ozarks.  They have a mean look to them, with ornery-looking bright yellow eyes rather than the brown eyes the barred owl has.  And the face is much different, with a pronounced circle of feathers, contrasting white and dark brown, and two little feather patches referred to as “ears”, which are much like the horns on a horned owl.  Except the ears on a short-eared owl can usually not be seen, they just barely stick up above the forehead most of the time.

      They are a species not so much fond of forests; they do not seem to need a tree.  They stick to a more open country like that prairie land along the Missouri Kansas border, with scrub timber and thickets.  And they nest on the ground!  Now that is something, when you think about how most all owls nest in hollow trees.  The barn owl often nests in old buildings of course, and there is an odd little burrowing owl which nests in holes in the ground.

      It is interesting to note that an owl can’t build a nest because his beak isn’t made for carrying and assembling nest materials.  A burrowing owl doesn’t dig his burrow, and barn owls don’t build a nest at all, they just lay eggs on a barn loft or ledge.  Great horned owls and barred owls find a natural hole in a tree and nest there, or sometime use an old hawk nest.  But short-eared owls actually nest in the grass on the ground, which they trample down and flatten down, and they actually try to arrange a few sticks in a situation which really doesn’t resemble a nest. Knowing that other owls do not carry sticks, that’s something I’d like to see.

      On this little flattened grass “nest” they will lay anywhere from 3 or 4 to 7 or 8 eggs, depending on the whim of the female owl I suppose. They lay their eggs in May or early June, and the eggs aren’t much more than an inch wide, about an inch and half long.  That is a very small egg for a bird that eventually will mature at a size of 14 to 16 inches tall and weigh about a pound. Most owls and predatory birds, known as raptors, are nesting now, sitting on or laying eggs in late February or early March.

 Ornithologists examined the stomach contents of 110 short-eared owls many years back, and found that three-quarters of their diet had been mice or voles of one kind or another, about 10 percent small birds and nearly as many moles and shrews.  About 7 percent of the diet appeared to be insects, with the stomach of one owl containing about 30 big grasshoppers. So that tells you they didn’t do that study in the winter!   Another odd thing about the short-eared owl is that he is a daytime type of owl, actively hunting during the day more than at night, when most other owls are active.

       But why do they bunch up in flocks? Why are so many owls concentrated in such a small area together?  Who can explain that?  Certainly not me, and up to then I though I knew everything!  Obviously these short-eared owls do some kind of a migration, perhaps not very far, but likely from a place where food supplies of small ground mammals had been decimated for some reason or another. It is likely a mass movement of a species looking for food. I don’t see, anywhere in books I have, any naturalists talking about a migration of owls.

      Obviously, as I have said so often, no one can know all there is to know about nature.  Those of us who spend a great deal of time outdoors see unexplainable things.  A modern day outdoorsman or naturalist who tries to learn by the book can know little of the secrets of nature.  You have to be there sometimes to see things which perhaps no one has seen before. 

If you like to read about the outdoors, see my websites, www.larrydablemont.com 

An Excerpt from the Book, “Life and Times of the Pool Hall Kid.”

                                                       Lane Davis

An Excerpt from the Book, “Life and Times of the Pool Hall Kid.”

       In the 60’s, Houston Missouri had a weekly newspaper called the Houston Herald. The owner and editor was a man I got to know well. His name was Lane Davis.  I started guiding float fishermen at a young age, in an old wooden johnboat, and Lane was one of my clients.  He liked floating the Roubidoux  River  over by  Plato.  It was a small river with much more water back then than it has now, some deep eddies and lots of smallmouth, goggle-eye and black perch (green sunfish).  Lane was a good fishermen and he always caught lots of fish.

        I was 13 in the summer of ‘61, a troubled youngster who hated school, rich people, teachers and most all of the kids I went to school with. I was at a dangerous crossroads in my life.  I took my .22 pistol to school that fall to shoot a 15-year-old bully. I came close to using it, and I still sweat a little at the memory of that.  I wasn’t a mean or cruel kid, but I had been convinced I was worthless and without any ability. My grades were low, and I had no size or athleticism. I only wanted to be in my dad’s pool hall or alone in the woods or on the river.  Everywhere else there was conflict. 

       Lane Davis was one of three men that helped salvage a young life and get me through that awful time.

       Floating the river in the spring of ‘64, Lane convinced me I could write!  Then he said if I would write stuff about the outdoors he would publish it in the Herald.  The first few columns I wrote for the newspaper was entitled, “Summer on the Piney.”  That was the first one or two of nearly 6,000 newspaper columns to come over the next 63 years, outdoor columns published in more than 200 newspapers in five states.

       The week I graduated, at 21 years of age, I was hired as the outdoor editor for the Arkansas Democrat, the states largest newspaper out of Little Rock.  Lane Davis was my lone reference, and the only one I needed. The pay then, in 1970 was 509 dollars per month plus travel expenses.  I thought I was the luckiest man alive. 

       At M.U. when I was only 19, I wrote a manuscript about one of those old johnboats dad had built we called Ol’ Paint.  I had been reading Outdoor Life and Field and Stream magazines in our pool hall since I was 12 years old and I told my friends I was writing that article for Outdoor Life Magazine.   No one believed that that huge magazine would even consider it, including me. I was a kid wanting to be a writer, reaching for the stars.

              There is still an old Underwood typewriter in a storage closet in my office that belonged to my new wife, in 1970 who had been the secretary to the vice president of McDonnell Douglas Aircraft in St.Louis.  At only 18 years old she could type 110 words a minute on that old manual typewriter.  She typed that manuscript and I sent it to the editor of the largest outdoor magazine in the world.  A letter came back in the next couple of weeks from editor William Rae, saying that Outdoor Life was pleased to receive it and with my permission they would publish it and pay me 1500 dollars. I nearly fainted! 

       The ‘Old Paint’ article was published in Outdoor Life in1972 and that year it was chosen to be the only outdoor story published in a NewYork book entitled “The Best Sport Stories of 1972” It was also published years later in a 500 page anthology entitled, “The Best of Outdoor Life.” It had about 75 articles chosen from magazines covering 1890 thru 2000. I could scarcely comprehend mine being one of them.

       What I remember about that latter book was articles in with mine were written by Zane Grey, Archibald Rutledge, Jack O’Connor, Edwin Way Teale, James Oliver Curwood and dozens of other legendary outdoor writers. That first year out of college, as the new outdoor editor of the Arkansas Democrat, I began to sell articles to Outdoor Life, Field and Stream, Sports Afield and several west coast outdoor magazines put out by Petersen’s Publishing company. In the next ten years I sold articles to more than 60 outdoor magazines. One of those magazine articles,  some written in only an hour or so, would pay me 2  to 3 times my monthly salary for the Democrat.

       Today the  Houston Herald still uses my column each week, a self-syndicated outdoor column which is used in about 40 or so newspapers in 3 states.  I hope that somewhere in heaven Lane Davis knows that and how important those fishing trips were on the Roubidoux. On those trips he helped a hapless, confused kid become a successful naturalist and outdoor writer.

Outlaw

 

Outlaw

         I don’t remember when the old hound wasn’t around. He was that old. Jess called him Outlaw…raised him from a pup. In his day he was a big powerful trailing hound with a voice they talked about all across the county.

         I remember those nights in the Big Piney River valley when old Outlaw struck a hot trail and all the talk around the campfire would stop In the silence, the lonesome bawl of the legendary hound floated over the hills, distinct from the baying of the other dogs, so powerful and strong it sent a shiver down my backbone.

         Maybe you wouldn’t call it music, but Jess and the other men knew it as such. All I know is, the voice of old Outlaw was different than any fox along the river had ever heard before. I remember that year as I grew older and winter came on, how the aging hound became stricken with disease. He didn’t eat much and he lay around most of the time growing thinner and lazier by the day. He was beginning to lose his teeth when Jess brought Outlaw to the vet.

         “How old is this hound, Jess?” the veterinarian asked, shaking his head as he looked him over.

         “Right at fourteen years, I reckon,” the old woodsman answered.

         With sympathetic eyes, the doctor looked into the weathered face of the hunter He knew Jess and he knew his advice wouldn’t be easy to swallow.

         “He’s old and sick, Jess,” the vet told him. “Maybe if he was younger I could help some, but at this age there’s nothing I can do. He’ll just go downhill and sooner or later you’ll need to put him to sleep to keep him from suffering.”

         Jess took it hard but he never let it show. The ring of old-timers who looked forward to those late winter fox hunts with such jubilance now prepared for a hunt with sadness. Jess had announced it would be old Outlaw’s last chase. It was cold that night and some said they could feel snow in the air. Fallen leaves lay along the old logging road that led down the river and they crackled beneath the shuffling feet of the hunters. It was just like always before, with most of the men joking abut someone else’s dog or telling some wild story about the past deer season. Only Jess was quiet.

         Everyone acted like nothing was different, but there was a strained atmosphere that night. Grandpa had instructed me to not ask any questions and that was a tough job for a 13-year-old boy. But I tagged along quietly behind him and Jess, heart saddened and feet heavy.

         Old Outlaw walked beside Jess for a long while, unlike the times in years before when he was the first hound on the trail. The other dogs had headed for the river upon being released. Jess’ other hound, a young pup, kept returning to the group as if urging old Outlaw to join him.

         But the big hound stayed by the side of his lifelong friend and master, his muzzle ever far from the old woodsman’s hand.

         No one seemed to notice when he left us, but as we grouped around the fire on the river’s edge, I noticed that Outlaw was gone. The other hounds had a chase going back to the south and most everyone assumed he had joined them. But as the first chase faded farther away, there came a long deep bawl from the low ridge to the east witch paralleled the river. There was no mistaking that voice.

         Suddenly the talking stopped and most of the men rose to listen one last time to those clear, long, drawn out notes. I stood too with those chills playing up and down my spine again like always before. Jess’s young dog joined Outlaw for awhile, but as the chase left us and crossed the river downstream, the young dog returned to the fire, apparently somehow aware that this trail belonged to Outlaw alone.

         Across the river, the pursuit turned upstream again and Outlaw’s voice became strong as he moved near us. I wondered how that voice could remain so clear and deep and strong while the old hound became weak and fail with age. Most of the men couldn’t believe that those aging legs could carry the big hound as far as the chase had led him, but the voice never wavered and Outlaw forged on, hot on the trail of another fox. Jess moved out away from the fire and stood alone, his hands thrust down into the pockets of his overalls, his mind way up on that ridge with his dog. I was glad that the darkness prevented everyone from seeing his face… and mine.

         But then the chase turned away, high into the hills across the Big Piney, westward into the vast timbered expanses of the National Forest. We listened in the stillness as the old hound’s deep, bellowing voice became harder and harder to hear, eventually silenced by the distance.

         Outlaw never returned that night. He must have sensed it would be his last chase. Oh, I knew that dogs couldn’t think or reason but I liked to imagine the big hound knew it was better that way, better especially for the old man who loved him so much.

         Some of the men figured he had caught up with big old red wolf that they said roamed those river hills and some said maybe he trailed a mountain lion to his doom But I don’t know, I wonder if he didn’t just keep running until those tired old legs would carry hi no farther.

         Age my have stopped those old legs and stilled his strong heart, but nothing could have stilled his voice. On a cold, clear winter night it echoes across the valleys of my memory and I can see old Jess standing there in the edge of the firelight saying good-bye to his old friend.

         Occasionally, hunters along the lower Piney claim they hear an extra voice in with their hounds on a cold winter night… a voice deep and clear, which seems to fade away into the timbered hills to the west. And one old trapper who travels the river in the midst of the winter, swears that on a still night, if you stand quiet and listen hard, you can hear the far away baying of a hound… a hound with a voice of pure gold, beginning and ending deep in the wilderness across the Big Piney where the spirits of old fox hunters are listening still.

The Miracle Fish

 

         There was no underestimating the size of the walleye I hooked. He was a dandy, five or six pounds a least and maybe bigger. You could see him easily as I fought him alongside the boat, with my fishing partner whackin’ at him with the dip net, something like a great blue heron would stab at a sunfish.

         I just didn’t have my drag set properly on my reel. Most generally that is something I do at the beginning of every fishing trip, I check the drag on whatever I am fishing with. And you need to check the last few feet of your line for any nicks or abrasions.  I am just getting too darned old to remember everything I guess, and I forgot to check either. When that walleye saw my fishing partner waving that net around like he was a highway department flagman, he really got wild, and he made a huge lunge for deep water and broke the line.

         The lure was nothing of great importance, it was one of those four- or five-inch black and white minnows that look like the old Rapala lures, one that you can jiggle around on the surface or yank down under maybe three feet or so when you reel it in. I was catching some really hefty white bass on it. I had some good ones and one walleye just a little better than fifteen inches long. Then that big walleye came up from the depths and engulfed it and the fight was on. He won, and I lost my lure.

But I have several similar ones that are even better, lures referred to as ‘Rogues’.  I tied one of them on and kept fishing.  And I didn’t throw my hat on the boat floor and utter an expletive and moan about that lost walleye like my fishing partners have seen me do before. A fisherman with my experience gets use to losing big fish on occasion when using light line and a switch for a fishing rod.

         You don’t become a grizzled old outdoorsman like me without watching big fish disappear in the depths on occasion, leaving you limp-rodded. You just figure God had a better purpose for that fish than a sizzling destination in my frying pan. You have to occasionally blame the Great Creator for your dirty rotten luck as a fisherman, unless you want to blame yourself for not checking the drag on your reel or not replacing old line.

         But now we are coming to the unbelievable part. I tied on that other lure, just like the one I lost except different, and almost an hour later down the river about a half mile, I made a cast and when I reeled the lure back, it had hooked and retrieved the one I lost. I swear folks, that is the truth! When I reeled it back in the boat, the one which broke off and last seen in the toothy jaw of that big walleye, was dangling from the back hook of the new one I tied on to replaced it!!! It sounds like something an outdoor writer might make up? But honest, I swear on the life of  my best coon dog and my camouflaged War-Eagle boat.  If I am lying, may it have a hole in the bottom it, and may my Ugly-Stick break right in the middle!!

         My fishing partners both ‘seen it themselves’, and you can ask them, a couple of the most honest men I ever met! But we hadn’t seen nothin’ yet. Wait ‘til you hear this! I tied that old lure back on, and reset my drag so that it was perfect. And I started catching white bass again. Its a drizzly, dark afternoon and one of my fishing partners caught two walleye that were 16 to 19 inches in length, fish that my previously lost lunker might have sired in his earlier days.

         And nearly two miles down the river from where I lost that big walleye, and a mile and a half from where I miraculously recovered my lost lure, I cast it out into a deep eddy below a shoal and a huge fish engulfed it only four or five feet from the end of my rod. He looked like a monster coming up from the depths. He stripped four or five feet of line against the drag and I told my fishing partners I was about to lose that lure a second time in two hours!

         But this time, one of them got the net under that big walleye and it was mine. I don’t know how much it weighed but it was 25 inches long and hefty. I knew that the Great Creator was trying to let me know how sorry he was that I had lost the first one. Maybe the fact that I am trying so hard not to cuss as much when I lose a fish is paying dividends. Or maybe He just decided it was that second big walleye’s time to finally sizzle in my frying pan, as he would, soon.

         Maybe that second lunker wasn’t as deserving as the first, I can’t say. But that two hours and the course of events in which a lost lure was found, and a second lunker walleye was hooked on it, certainly makes a man think; something I don’t do a lot of.

         I swear this story is the truth, all of it. It happened in February a couple of years back. I can show you that lure. It has big tooth marks all over it!

 

The above story is an excerpted chapter from the   book “Recollections of an Ol-Fashioned Angler”  To get an autographed copy call my office at 417 777 5227   or email us at lightninridge47@gmail.com  See all my books and magazines on the website… larrydablemont.com