Trotlines

 

       The first thing you need to catch a big flathead catfish is a nice farm pond full of “perch”. Well, actually they aren’t perch. They are sunfish, of one kind or another. “Perch” is a term the old timers in the pool hall gave to all types of panfish in the Ozarks, and it has been too difficult for me to stop calling them that. Perch in the Ozarks are most often green sunfish or long-eared sunfish or perhaps small bluegill.

       Sunfish…when you get good big ones, they are very good to eat. In Ozark streams, green sunfish can get very hefty, and so can bluegills in our farm ponds and large Ozark reservoirs. But most of the time, in a farm pond, or along the shallow water of a reservoir, you will catch those species just too small to eat. So you convert them to catfish by using them as bait. The spectacularly colored long-ear sunfish, also known as a ‘punkin-seed’ to many, seldom reaches an edible size, but they are great catfish bait. And sometimes in farm ponds around the Ozarks you will find hybridized sunfish, half of one species and half of another. 

       It doesn’t matter, a flathead catfish wants live bait, if not night crawlers and any of those little sunfish will do. It should be pointed out that we spent hours and hours on the river seining bait that was just as good as sunfish. If we could get suckers that were up to 12 inches long, grandpa was tickled pink. A sucker that is 12 to 15 inches long is a great meal for a 30 or 40 or 50 pound flathead. Just as good were the horny-head chubs, often 12 or 10 inches long and what we call ‘doughgut minnows’, which you could seine below swift shoals.

       So to catch a big flathead, you first have to find a place where you can catch a hundred or so live sunfish, chubs and big minnows and then you head to the river or lake, where you set a trotline in water where the flathead, also known as yellow catfish, would be found. They like a little deeper water this time of year, around big bluffs, where there are huge underwater boulders or submerged logs of substantial size.  You learn in time, what to look for. Flatheads come in all sizes of course, but if you set a trotline, you are hoping for something between 20 and 50 pounds, and aware that on occasion Ozark fishermen catch them up to 70 or 80 pounds. That’s a tremendous fish.

       In lakes throughout the Ozarks, there are also channel catfish, which can reach sizes up to 20 or 25 pounds, but normally are less than10. The blue catfish is more similar to a channel cat than a flathead, but different in many ways, the main ways being the size to which he can grow. Blue catfish too, can be taken up to 70 or 80 pounds, record flathead and blues both exceed 100 pounds. Both blues and channel cat will take the live sunfish, but they are also taken on nightcrawlers, dead shad, chicken livers, and prepared “stinkbaits”. But, for any of the three species I prefer the sunfish. And besides, if you have youngsters or grandchildren, they’ll love helping to catch the bait. There’s nothing wrong with going to a farm pond or creek and doing some “perch-jerking” as it is so often called by old-time Ozarkians like me.

       I have been after catfish a whole lifetime, guided as a youth by my grandfather and those old timers in the pool hall who reckoned that though trotlining was a lot of work it was worth doing.

       It only takes one 30 or 40 pound flathead to feed a lot people, and that’s what I am going after. But I often am happy with a 20-pounder. I set trotlines for flatheads with rock weights about the size of a man’s fish, one every five hooks along that line. You need big hooks for flathead or blues, size 4-0. While the 6-0 is plenty big enough for the channel cat, why use them when you might hook a huge blue or flathead. Stay with the bigger hooks and you won’t be sorry. Be sure the hook-lines, called stagions, off the main lines, are between 15 and 20 inches in length, and don’t use snaps. Loop them on, and be sure there are knots in the main line so hooks and stagions won’t slide.

       But that weighted line is dangerous. Should you become entangled in it, or hooked, it can pull you under, even if you have a life jacket on. Grandpa and Dad taught me when I was very young that it was mandatory to wear a sharp knife in a sheath for that very possibility. You need to be able to cut yourself free in a hurry. Two sheathed knives on your belt won’t hurt.

       Remember if you set trotlines, you are only allowed a limited number of hooks depending on what state you are in and they must be spaced three feet apart to be legal. And remember that on one end, you must have a tag of some kind, (I use a flat piece of wood) with name and address on it, and your fishing license number if you have one.

A Drama in the Woods

         I was just in the right place at the right time to see it, and it didn’t last long.  A hawk came out of the timber and passed across a small opening in the woods with a cluster of oak leaves in his talons, pursued by four or five smaller birds, and about the size of a blackbird.  I watched the hawk so closely I didn’t pay much attention to the birds. He flew across a little opening with those birds all over him, just screeching and diving at him with a vengeance. Then they all disappeared into the brush on the other side of the opening, where the drama continued unobserved.

         One might have wondered what it was all about, a hawk with a fistful of leaves.  But it wasn’t the leaves the smaller birds were so incensed about; it was what was in them.  The hawk obviously had snatched a young bird off of a limb and took the whole perch in his hasty attack.  A tragic story, if you look at it from the standpoint of that mother bird and her troupe.  But if you were the hawk, it wouldn’t seem so awful. The hawk was feeding its own young.

         In this day and age, you’d find the hawk thought of as a villain, with great sympathy for the weaker prey, regardless of what it was.... a rabbit, a young bird or a squirrel. The sight of a two-week-old hawk fledgling being eaten by a fox would reverse everything.  Then the hawk, losing her baby to the wily old fox, would be looked upon with sympathy.

         It is how it is, there is no good or bad in nature, and it never changes unlesss man interferes.  That is a hard thing for many to accept. I remember when my daughters were little; how I tried to explain nature to them, and yet, protect them from the harshness of it. We’d be on a trip somewhere, and one of my girls would notice a dead rabbit in the road.  They’d ask their mother if it was a baby rabbit, or a mama rabbit and she’d tell them ‘no, it was just a bad old daddy rabbit’. That seemed to help. 

         I even learned to help. I would point out that the dead raccoon on the highway had probably just staggered out of the pool hall half drunk and had been chasing a little helpless bullfrog across the highway when a semi nailed him!  That way it sounded like he had it coming and the girls wouldn’t be so sad.  In time, when they grew old enough, I took it upon myself to explain to them that among wild animals, things were far different than with humans.  I told them how the hawk would only have two or three young ones in a year, or perhaps over two years, while a mother rabbit might have as many as 100, and couldn’t even name all of them.  God had it figured out so both would survive as a species.

         Christy, the second of three daughters, and the one who would become a biology teacher and park naturalist, could accept it much easier. In time she would become a hunter, and spend time with me after deer and turkey and ducks when she was just a young girl.  Lori, the oldest daughter, who would one day become a doctor, accepted the way it was, but always thought it should be different, and never lost her tenderhearted ways. She went on only one hunt with me, shot at one rabbit with a pellet gun, and wouldn’t ever go again. 

         But I know in her work, Lori sees human suffering and difficulty on a scale that her father could not deal with, and I hope the understanding I tried to pass on to her that God is in charge, even far from the woods where hawks eat baby rabbits, and evil-looking owls are a   threat to grandma’s chickens, makes it easier for her to accept His plan and His will, and do her best to ease that suffering when and where she can.

         It is beyond understanding, even when you have seen as much, and learned as much as I have in my life of studying and experiencing the outdoors. I cannot fully comprehend it all, really, even after all these years.  I still hate to see a fawn drug down by a bobcat, and hear him bleating a plea for survival, knowing his fate is to feed her and a litter of wild kittens somewhere beneath the root wad of a fallen tree.  I wish to heavens that the old bobcat would just feed them mice and rats.  But shucks, a mother rat does not look at her young as being any less wonderful than a fawn.  Only us humans do that. 

         Many times in the woods, I have felt God beside me while I watched His work go on before me. Whether it is the victory of survival for the hawk or the rabbit, the fox or the quail… I know He still is in control. 

Fishing Advice

 

       There are many people out there who want to learn to fish, and many who have been fishing for years who have questions about the right tackle.  One of the most asked questions is...what should I bring to fish with?   Every guide knows that the success of a fisherman who hires him depends to a great extent on whether or not he has the right gear, and whether or not he can use what he has properly.

 
      We'll take it on a species by species basis.  If you want to catch big bass, you need to learn to use an open-face casting reel, and it needs to hold relatively heavy line.   Some of those casting reels I use for bigger bass on reservoirs, and fish with jigs or plastic baits and for those I use heavier line and stronger rods.  When you are fishing in lakes for larger bass, one perhaps 8- or 10-pounds, you need 14-pound line, minimum.  And heavier line stretches less, so it is easier to set a large hook in the bony jaw of a big bass or walleye or catfish with the heavier line. 

       If I want to fish a stream for big smallmouth I might want to go with a more limber rod, a little shorter because of the restrictions of overhanging limbs when I am casting, and lighter line, perhaps 8- or 10-pounds.  And some smallmouth fishermen would argue that they prefer spinning gear with line only 6-pounds.  I use that too, of course, when I am fishing smaller lures.  You can't effectively fish large crank-baits, large spinner baits, buzz-baits and big topwater lures with a light spinning reel.

       Heavy spinning reels can be used for heavy fish of course, with stronger line and stiffer rods.  Up north, they go for trout and walleye of considerable size with the heavy spinning gear and 10- or 12-pound line.  But here in the Ozarks, my spinning reels are used for lighter fish, smaller lures, with lighter line.  Casting reels should be used with lures and weights of 3/8 -ounce or larger.  Light spinning reels should be used with one quarter-ounce lures or smaller.

       No, you can't effectively cast a little quarter ounce jig with an open face casting reel and 10- or 12-pound line.  Fishermen learn with experience that a jig falls in the water in direct proportion to the diameter of the line.  With 4-pound line, a small jig drops much faster than it will with 8-lb line.  That's why crappie fishermen like the spinning reels with light line.  For crappie or bluegill, use a light, limber little rod which helps you feel a slight tap, and gives you a fight out of a fish that doesn't resist all that hard, and doesn't take a strong hook-set.

       I use medium spinning gear and 6-pound line for white bass when they are hefty, the 3- or 4-pound specimens not found often.  Most of the time, when I am fishing a spring spawning run for whites that only average a pound, I want 4- or 6-pound line on a light or medium spinning rod.   If I am going to fish for hybrids or stripers, I want to use heavy casting gear, and if the stripers are big enough, strong rods and 20-pound line.  Same thing for big catfish when using live bait.

       When I go to Canada to fish for smallmouth, muskies, largemouth or northerns, I use casting gear and strong line 10- to 14-pounds.  Sometimes, just for kicks I fish for smallmouth in Canada lakes with light action spinning tackle and 6-pound line.   For walleyes that are usually less than four pounds, I use that same gear, but heavier spinning gear for lakes, which have 6-or 8-pound walleye.  The thing about walleyes is, they usually are found in unobstructed waters up there, and they aren't going to run away from you.  They usually stay deep and under you.  Big bass don't do that, they find something to get around, and you have to horse them a little.

       But though I often fish with the heavy casting gear and catch bigger fish with it, I just love to fish with an ultralite spinning outfit, and four pound line, for smaller fish, trout, white bass and crappie, even goggle-eye and bluegill.  Sometimes in the summer, I like to find a cool shoal on an Ozark river late in the afternoon and cast a small floating minnow type lure for smallmouth from 10- to 15-inches long.  What fun that is on the light tackle.  Of course, sometimes an 18- or 20-inch bruiser takes your lure and leaves you wishing you had a heavier outfit.

       It is wise to stay away from push-button, spin-casting reels if you want to become a serious fisherman.  I guess they are ok for kids, or inexperienced fishermen who won't go very often, but start a youngster out learning to cast the better tackle, and you'll be glad you did.

 

        For more about fishing you might want to read my book,  ‘Recollections of an Old-Fashioned Angler”. Email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com or call my office at 417 777 5227 to find a copy or have one mailed.

The Stealing of a Jug - MDC

 

THERE WAS A  TIME WHEN CONSERVATION OFFICERS WERE A DIFFERENT BREED

       Charlie Curran, the eighty-eight year old Big Piney river-guide whom I wrote about recently, made a trip over to the Osceola area of Truman Lake with a friend, to fish for catfish.  He took with him twenty jugs, each with his name, address and phone number on them as the law requires. Early that morning he baited the hooks from each and set them out in a large area where he could watch them   all.  About mid-morning he saw a boat come in close to the outer ring of jugs and pick one up, leaving with it.  About mid-afternoon Charlie and his friend picked up the 19 jugs that were left and though they looked for the 20^th one it was gone for good. Charlie figured it had been taken by a fisherman who was in that boat.  It wasn’t a fisherman!

       Two weeks later Charlie got a letter from a Truman Lake game warden charging him with leaving a jug on the lake.  The ticket enclosed said the offense had taken place at 9:45 that morning, about the same time Charlie had seen the boat circling his fishing area.  Charlie called the agent who tried to justify what he had done by, saying the jug had been there for days because it had algae scum on it.  All of Charlie’s jugs are like that because he has used them often on Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Lake as well.

        Friends who fish on Truman say the game warden does that often when the address on the jug makes it unlikely that the fisherman will come back to fight the phony charge in court.

       “People in Osceola do not speak very highly of him and I would have liked to fight that ticket,” Charlie told me. “But I couldn’t drive four hours just for the seventy-five dollars I might save.” 

       With the judge there in that county, Charlie would have wasted his time. That judge once put me in jail for stealing a gate I never saw.  I will soon publish a book about that experience entitled “The Justice of St. Clair County.”  I did some investigating and found out the MDC has built the judge a duck hunting marsh. What I uncovered about the MDC working with judges there is unbelievable.        

        Apparently the game warden has an easy work situation on Truman.  Looks like he is a real enforcement officer when he can write lots of tickets to innocent people that way with no confrontation. He can just mail them! 

       I myself had a run-in with that game warden years back. I had come across a buck deer on Truman that was hung in a barbed-wire fence with both back legs broken.  A Corps of Engineers Ranger and I was hunting ducks and I couldn’t stand to see the deer suffer so I killed him to put him out of his misery. Against my hunting partners advice I motored back to my pickup and drove into Osceola and called the agent to tell him where the deer was so the meat could be put to use. 

       He told me he wanted to write me a citation for what I had done, so therefore I needed to come to meet him.  Some rather salty language took place from both of us. I hung up on him and went home that night to clean ducks, and I am sure he never went to find the deer.  But knowing he wanted me to let the deer suffer told me something about him.  What he did to Charlie tells me more about him.  It is a shame because before him, back in the 1980’s that area had one of the best game wardens anyone could ask for.

       In this day and time the MDC has many really bad agents. Some have broken the law and some have violated citizen’s rights.  I can back that up with evidence and facts. But when I was young and the game wardens worked for the MO Conservation Commission, (MCC not MDC) I knew and idolized many of them.  In next weeks column I will talk about some of those wardens and the great things they did when real game violators were dealt with rather than innocent and vulnerable people.

 Don’t forget the big sale and the opening of my Big Piney Museum on Saturday June 28.  Contact me for information at lightninridge47@gmail.comor P.O. Box 22, Bolivar, Mo   65613. Or call my office at 417 777 5227.

Summer Hunting

 

         I was walking along a wooded ridge top trail years ago when a young fox squirrel fell from a limb above me and landed with a thud not more than ten feet from my boots.  He didn't waste any time leaving but he would have been a goner if I had wanted to shoot him.  I just couldn't do it.  The little rascal had hidden in that treetop well enough to keep me from seeing him, but his curiosity had caused him to lose his balance and his dignity at the same time. As I walked on down the trail he sat on the limb of a nearby oak and barked at me.  In my younger years I would have been less forgiving of that kind of insolence and he would have ended up in a potful of dumplings.

             I learned a great deal about hunting when I was a kid, chasing squirrels in the summer. If you grew up in the rural Midwest chances are good you too learned to hunt by searching the branches of an oak-hickory woodlot or creek bottom for squirrels. Bushytails are efficient teachers.  And in the summer, when leaves are thick on the branches, squirrels have little trouble finding a place to hide. 

 

            There are several methods of squirrel hunting that work all over the Ozarks.  The first one of course is 'still-hunting'. When I was a youngster I'd take my old Iver Johnson shotgun down to the Tweed bottoms just off the Big Piney River and walk an old wagon trail where gray squirrels were abundant.  Occasionally I'd spot one by moving slowly along but when I'd reach a certain spot on a rocky hillside I'd find a big flat boulder and sit still enough to be taken for a part of the rock.  Within 10 minutes, gray squirrels would forget there was an intruder and begin moving about.  When one presented a good shot within 30 yards or so, the old shotgun would roar and the forest would be still again. 

    I learned if you stayed put, marking your downed quarry, that in 10 or 15 minutes things would return to normal again and squirrels would begin to scurry about. A still hunter could sometimes take three or four squirrels in less than an hour from one spot.  

   And then I learned that two hunters could effectively find squirrels if one hunter became the eyes and the other became the feet.  Hunter number one moves slowly along, watching the branches as best he can but traveling quietly and slowly.  Usually he won't see squirrels that have already seen him. When he's well down the trail he stops and waits and hunter number two advances in the same manner moving on well past his partner to take a new position. 

            Squirrels react to a moving hunter by moving around the tree, well concealed by the trunk or branches.  And while they are concentrating on the moving hunter they expose themselves to the waiting hunter who is still, and watching. 

          If you like to mix fishing with your squirrel hunting, a floatable stream is a good place to be in the summer when squirrels concentrate along stream bottoms.  If you float, you'll see plenty of them along the bank and in the trees along waterways. If you can paddle quietly you can stalk these river squirrels with a boat.  If you can't paddle you may not do so well.

             Today, I like to hunt squirrels with a .22 rifle but only in areas where I know there aren't farms or livestock nearby.   Where there are large blocks of timberland or a stream flowing through National forest, it's a challenge to hunt squirrels with the small bore rifle, but always think of where that bullet may travel.  The gun made just for the squirrel hunter is the combination  .22-.410 or .22-20 gauge.  I love the old Stevens over-and-under combo with a selector button giving the hunter a choice of rifle or shotgun barrel.  With such a firearm sitting squirrels can be taken with a .22 and head-shots insure undamaged meat for the skillet.  But the shotgun barrel is always there when needed.

             Whatever you hunt squirrels with you probably will hunt with little competition because there aren't many squirrel hunters left in this day and time, especially in the summer when it is hot.  But what hunter ever complained about being out there alone in the woods?

 

The Big Piney museum and nature center is on the east side of highway 63 two miles south of Houston Mo.  The address is 6410 south highway 63.  It is about a half mile to the north of the Souls Harbor church at the top of the hill on hwy 63.  The museum is a work in progress and will be open all day on Saturday, June 28, when we will have a big open house and yard sale to help finance many of the new exhibits we want to put in.  Anyone who wants to help in the project should come on Wednesday and Thursday June 25 and 26 when we will be working to put up various exhibits. A list of sale items can be sent to whoever wants it. Contact me by calling my office, 417 777 5227,  or emailing lightninridge47@gmail.com.

Old Timers and Nature Center News

 

Charlie Curran with goggle-eye

       Charlie Curran was born close to the Big Piney River in 1938 and for 88 years he has stayed close to the Big Piney River.  He lives near Duke, Missouri on the lower third of the river where he fishes regularly for goggle-eyes and bass, sets trotlines for flathead catfish, and rides horses.

       There are no men left who know the river like Charlie knows it.  In 1946 an uncle by the name of Wilford Lee had a pair of St. Louis fishermen he had to take fishing on the Piney, and he knew that his nine year old nephew, Charlie, could paddle a johnboat well enough to take one of them.         He became a Big Piney fishing guide that day and it was an occupation that lasts until today.  Charlie and I went on a float trip last spring and landed a dozen or so goggle-eye and half that many bass. We also found a 100-year-old railroad tie that will someday be in my museum.

       “When I was a boy guiding in the 40’s and 50’s every fisherman used a fly rod and flies.” Charlie told me.  “The casting reels and lures came along after the war, especially in the1950’s.” 

       Charlie dropped by my Big Piney Center and Museum last week and we shared stories about the river and our experiences. He agreed to come back in late June when we have our big sale and meet with people, and tell many of the stories he has about the river and his memories of people from a long ago era. 

       But that’s not all. Charlie is an accomplished wood carver who carves birds from tupelo wood, birds of all species that look like they could fly away. One is a full size pileated woodpecker, another a quail, a cardinal, a wren, a goldfinch and many others.

 

       There will be another remarkable historian there who is in his 80’s.  He is Butch Stone from Arkansas who is a flint knapper.  That means he makes arrowheads from flint stone.  That day he will show you how to do that, which should interest anyone who would like to learn to make their own projectile points.  Butch has made his own primitive weapons for most of his life and has killed deer and wild turkey with his handmade bows and arrows and atlatls.  He is a fascinating maker and user of primitive    weapons plus a great storyteller of the early days in the   Ozarks.  Butch has written magazine articles about his experiences and will have some of those magazines for sale.

       I can’t say enough about Charlie and Butch, who will be there from mid morning until early afternoon.  To get the exact times and a list of for-sale items, contact me and I will mail or email that to you with a map showing how to find us in the woods about two miles south of Houston MO.  Again, the date is Saturday, June 28 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

       The proceeds of the sale will go to pay for displays in the museum that we have yet too make.  We are wanting to buy a really big, six-foot aquarium to show the fish and aquatic creatures from the river.  I will be there with my books to sign and inscribe and to discount by 30 percent.  I now have 12 books on the outdoors.

       I love to meet people at my Big Piney Center so I am really looking forward to this.  An outdoor writer like me spends most of his time alone on the river or in the woods somewhere, my home is 12 miles from most people.

 

To get a list of what we have for sale on June 28, email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com.  Remember there is no g on the end of lightnin…  OR I have a post office box in town, P.O. box 22, Bolivar, MO 65613. If you call our office at 417-777-5227, I will mail you that information.

The list includes:

-bass boat trailer

-Dodge Dakota extended cab pickup

-fishing lures over 100 for 2 dollars each

-casting rods and reels, spin casting rods an reels Shimano and Ambassadeur brands

-Antique fly rods and fly casting reels

-Antique lures and casting reels, steel rods

-Several hundred 1970’s and 1980’s outdoor magazines

-Several hundred outdoor antique magazines. 1920’s through 1940’s

-Brand new Browning pump shotgun

50 assorted hand tools

-assorted garden tools

-Carved duck decoys-- antiques

-Two eleven-point deer mounts

-Mounted bobcat

-Wildlife art matted and framed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wylie’s Bear & the MDC

 

         The idea of a bear season in Missouri was to make money for the Department of Conservation. It amounts to that and nothing else. There is no “wildlife management” or “For Nature and You” to it!  To buy a bear tag you first had to get in the drawing and to do that you had to send the MDC ten non-refundable dollars.  During the first year of that drawing about eight thousand very gullible would-be bear-hunters sent in their ten bucks and just like that the MDC made eighty thousand dollars.  

         From those eight thousand applicants, four hundred were selected to buy a bear tag.  Seven thousand and six hundred applicants lost their ten-dollar applicant fee and got nothing for it.  Then the chosen four hundred had to send twenty-five dollars more in order to hunt.  So the MDC got another ten thousand dollars.  Bear season made them a cool 90,000 dollars and there were only going to be eight bears killed.  Chances are good that even though the MDC outlawed bear baiting, that’s exactly how most of them were taken.  Who cares… for 90 grand the MDC would make a tag for mountain lions or tigers or giraffes. They do exactly that to sell a five or six elk tags each fall.  It’s the economy stupid!  Make money and to heck with anything else.

         In a state, where there are a few hundred bears that have filtered in from Arkansas, we can surely sacrifice eight or ten. Last bear season there were a few more taken.  This season there will surely be another eight or ten killed.   So the MDC tells folks they figure we have about twelve hundred bears in the Ozarks, which is double what are really here.  It’s a good practice; fool those gullible neophytes and the few bears killed won’t be missed. For that kind of money who cares if they all are killed.  Who will miss them?  Ninety thousand dollars for a handful of bears!  Lets do this every year!  In ten years or so, the MDC can make nearly a million dollars and probably not lose a hundred bears total.

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

         Twelve-year-old Wylie Williams sent in his 25 dollars in 2021 and got a bear tag, one of the 400 issued.  His family owns land next to the National Forest and Wylie and his dad didn’t have to bait for bears.  There is a marker tree there on the Williams property where a big male bear came to scratch his dominance over all other bears and Wylie waited there successfully.  The male he killed was the largest one killed that year.

      When the Powers That-Be found out how big Wylie’s bear was, they sent some agents there to investigate.   But it was too late when they did try to find any bait, so they just assumed it had been there and they wrote a ticket anyway.  

      Wylie’s father said they came to him like old friends, wanting to know where the bear hide was.  He wouldn’t tell them.  So they said since they were buddies if he would tell them where the hide could be found they would make the fine a lot less money.  They made the ticket out for littering and Mr. Williams told them the hide was at a taxidermists shop.  That’s all they needed to know.  They went to that taxidermist and confiscated it.

      Wylie will never see it again.  The MDC wanted it because it is worth a couple thousand dollars or more.  My bet is it will wind up in one of Johnny Morris’s Bass Pro Shops or with a very rich friend of one of the Commissioners.  The best lawyers in the country can never find out where it is or how much money the full mount will bring.

If Wylie's family had refused to talk to the agents, they would still have the bearskin.  Let that be a lesson to all. Never ever cooperate with an agent, never let them in your home and never talk to one of them.   That is the only protection you have, to keep a deer head, a bear hide or a firearm they might want.

The MDC is a corrupt organization, a Missouri mafia that is indeed above the law.

       Their control of the media makes it impossible for this column to be printed in many newspapers or made known through radio and television stations. The director of radio station KWTO in Springfield told me…and I quote…”They pay us a lot of money to keep criticism of them off the air!”

The Storm at Squire Lee's. Part 2

 

         At the end of the last column, brothers Roy Wayne and Tom Morton and I were sitting in a cave above the river praying the raging thunderstorm would end soon.  I remember Chinese philosopher Confuseius saying, “It is better to sit in a cave and watch the storm than to sit in the storm and look for a cave.”  Anyway I think it was him who said that!

         We had seined up a good batch of live bait but thank goodness we had not tied out the trotlines yet.  If we had, a rising river would likely have taken them that night.  It was chilly in the cave because we were so wet and I was still vibrating slightly from the effect of the lightnin’ bolt which struck the barbwire fence I was straddling minutes before.

         An hour later the sun was shining and the three of us were dipping rainwater from the boat, warmed up and enthused again.  We paddled up the river against a rising current to our camp a half hour away.  Thankfully our old bedraggled mattress, covered with the canvas tarp, was still dry, but nothing else was.  With the river rising I didn’t option for setting out trotlines.  We got out our fishing rods and dug some night crawlers and began to catch rock bass and yellow suckers out of the dinghy-colored current before our camp.  At dark we built a nice fire to light up the hot, humid evening, conditions that spelled “a storm is coming” in capital letters.

         We had thrown the wet bread into the river and had strung some goggle-eye and suckers when I heard the first thunder rumbling in the distance. About an hour later the tornado siren began to blow in Houston about six or seven miles to the southwest and I began to panic.  The course of action seemed clear.  Preservation!! Ten minutes later, I had the old pickup parked in front of Squire Lee’s house, pounding on his door.  The storm was close, but Squire Lee, in his nightshirt and cap, came to the door with a kerosene lamp, aroused from his sleep.  He did indeed have a cellar but he said it was awful dirty and might be the home for spiders and snakes. I didn’t say anything but I would curl up fairly close to a copperhead rather than be blown away by a tornado.  Mr. Lee said to just drive the pickup into his open pole barn, built so solidly it would resist the winds of a hurricane. We did exactly that.  

         The damp mattress was comfortable for Roy Wayne, who slept like a baby, but there wasn’t much room on it for Tom and I, who spent much of the night biting our fingernails and praying.  The sirens stopped in a little while but the storm didn’t.  Best thing is, we stayed dry and somewhat confident that the well-built pole barn would at least weather a high wind if not a tornado. Rain pelted down in buckets.

         The day dawned still and foggy but in time the sun shined brightly through and an hour before noon, I and the Morton brothers joined our parents in church, a bit more attentive and repentive than we had been through past sermons.

         And this too is the truth… a year later as a  17-year-old student at School of the Ozarks College, I had my first date, a girl back home who I went home to see in mid-summer. We went to a movie. But a couple weeks later, on a beautiful Saturday in June, I took her down to the Ginseng eddy on the Big Piney to set a trotline.  I even have a picture of the two of us there in an old Johnboat baiting up the line. That particular afternoon I have no idea where the Morton Brothers were.

 

The above story is an excerpt from the yet unpublished book, “The Life and Times of   the Pool Hall Kid”.  To see a dozen of my other books and back issues of my magazine, go to the website, larrydablemont.com.  

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. 

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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.