The Marsh that Used to Be. -- MDC

 

USED TO BE:  flock of ducks dropping into Schell-Osage marsh

         In the 1980’s when I lived in North Arkansas, some friends and I often went to southern Missouri to hunt ducks at a waterfowl conservation area known as Schell Osage.  It was some of the best duck hunting you could find anywhere and back then I hunted ducks each year in several states and two provinces in Canada. There are few hunters who spent the hours I did in the marshes and wetlands hunting ducks.  I loved it then as I do now.  At the University of Missouri I studied to be a waterfowl biologist. 

         At Schell Osage the blinds were spaced well and the pools were full of smartweed.  Ducks of all species loved it. It was built in 1962 on 1400 acres next too the Osage River to the west of El Dorado Springs, MO. It was planned and built by employees and equipment of the MISSOURI CONSERVATION COMMISSION, the effective and efficient  (and honest) state agency that really did work towards the conservation, (wise use) of the state’s wildlife.  That agency was the forerunner of the present day, Missouri Department of Conservation which I believe has become corrupt and inefficient.

         As a full-time outdoor writer in those days when Schell-Osage  was a premier waterfowl area, I wrote about hunting there, with articles in Outdoor Life, Gun Dog and Petersen’s Hunting magazines.  One of the articles was entitled “A Day in Old F-13”.  That blind was bad luck all the way around. It sat way off by itself near the river and over days and days, the records showed there were only a handful of ducks that were bagged in that blind by dozens of hunters.  As luck would have it, we drew it one day in early winter.

           I hunted often with a pair of Arkansas duck callers who were the best I ever heard, and that day a front moved through. New ducks came in by the hundreds. Duck calling is not only knowing how to imitate a mallard, but how to use different types of calls and when to use them. The men who taught me were the very best at doing that.  

          That day in 1978 we killed limits of greenhead mallards and three other species, then sat and watched the show for hours. Our young Labradors learned more in one day than they had learned the rest of the year.

         But that was then.  Today, thanks to the MDC, there is no Schell-Osage waterfowl area.  And my prediction is that in my lifetime, and maybe longer, there will not be.  It is now and it has been for years, a drained and bulldozed, ecological desert. 

         Several years ago, the Missouri Department of Conservation decided to obliterate what could have easily been redone and reconstructed, for very little money.  A waterfowl haven built by employees of the Conservation Commission in two years back in ’62 was destroyed about 5 or 6 years back and has not been worked on since.  Let me tell you why I think that is.  The MDC allotted 18 million dollars for that reconstruction to be paid to several companies.  Apparently one company has received most of the money and they are drawing interest on those millions of dollars.  Does that give you an idea of why nothing is getting done? 

         Investigate it? Not a chance.  Our legislators won’t touch the MDC.  There is no one to investigate.  Years back the state auditor called me and asked me to write about  corrupt spending inside the MDC.  She said her agency had found something the state’s citizens should know but the MDC had political autonomy so she couldn’t do a thing about it.

           So figure up the interest on 18 million bucks.  Just imagine that some higher-up employees or commissioners or ex-employees that guided that money where they wanted it to go, are getting paid well from that 18 million, which  is not being spent, just sitting in several bank accounts.

         Now you have an idea of why the Schell Osage waterfowl area will never be again. I feel sorry for local folks who made their living from thousands of out of state hunters who came there each winter to rent motel rooms and spend their money in local restaurants.  That is a thing of the past, and so is the sound of wings over a spectacular marsh, and the sight of shorebirds along the edges of the pools.  Now there is quiet.  Now there is mud.  Now there is 18 million dollars we all paid the MDC through that 1/8 cent sales tax and our license dollars.   Where did it go?  No one can ever know, no one can ever find out.

         It was duck hunting to remember and I do.  I have records from days I spent there through hundreds of photos.  If only we had the men and dedication of an agency that could build such a place in two years… a group long forgotten men, called the Missouri Conservation Commission.  And truthfully the marsh could be made  to be what it was for less  than a hundred  thousand dollars before the bulldozers were  called in.   An MDC engineer told  me that.

 

If you  want to read more about the duck hunting at Schell-Osage, get my book “Memories From a Misty Morning Marsh”.

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.