NEUTRAL BUOYANCY AND THE WAGGLER

The most skillful float to explain neutral buoyancy is the waggler. This quill shaped float is an import from European fishing and readily available in our bait shops. They are made of balsa wood and are shaped like a long straw.

The finesse of the float action is accomplished through the use of split shot attached below the float to achieve neutral buoyancy. Neutral buoyancy is achieved by the weight below the float being enough to counter the floating tendency of the float but not enough to pull it under.

With most floats (bobber or cork) the fish will pull it under the surface and the angler sees that as a chance to set the hook and retrieve the fish. However, this type of approach misses perhaps a third of the fishing opportunities.

When a fish takes a baited hook one of four things is happening. They will spit it out, run with it, stay where they are, or allow the float to rise up.

When the fish spits out the hook, the float may move and is generally regarded by fishermen as a nibble. If the fish runs with the bait, then he will pull the float beneath the surface. This is probably the most common point at which a fish is hooked and is often taught to young people as the time to set the hook.

In some situations the fish will take the bait and hook into his mouth and not move at all. There is very little visible action of the float. If the fish rises up from the location where he originally took in the bait, the float lifts up in the water. With a pencil shaped float, it results in the float laying over on the surface.

The extra buoyant waggler requires more leas split shot which give it more casting distance and stability. They are usually fished in waters at a depth of 1 to 10 feet. Under windy conditions, one would use a waggler with a little larger body. They can be used as either a fixed or slip float. Fishermen tend to use them according to the conditions of the moment.

A small split shot is placed on the line above the float at the distance from the hook that is equal to the depth at which the angler wishes to suspend the bait. The waggler is then applied to the line and a hook is attached to the end of the line. About ten inches above the hook, enough split shot is applied so as to make the float suspend upright in the water. In windy conditions, only the tip of the float is allowed to show as a strike indicator. This would require more weight below the float than more calm water conditions. If only the tip is showing, the float is not affected as much by the wave action making for more accurate responses to a fish attacking the bait.

If the float is properly applied and used, one should experience more bites than normal bobbers. It allows the angler to respond to what is actually going on below the surface.

                                                  Don Gasaway – The Ground Pounder

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Frog-Giggers and Other Greenhorns

July comes, and the habits of a grizzled old veteran outdoorsman changes a little. One of them I know goes out on Norfork Lake in the morning to fish just after the first hint of light. Jim Spencer, one of the finest outdoor writers in the country, and grizzled old outdoorsman if there ever was one, sent me this message just a while ago…. “I caught nine fish this morning - four hybrids, a white bass, two largemouths, a smallmouth, and a bluegill as big as a salad plate!”

Spencer likes to catch hybrids, the cross between white bass and stripers. They can get up to twenty pounds or so, but you don’t catch many above ten pounds. Nevertheless, a six- or seven-pound hybrid fights like nothing you have ever seen of a comparable weight. I wrote about catching a ten-pounder not long ago on the upper tributary to Truman Lake, and it took me twenty minutes to get that fish close to my boat. If you have ever used a medium light action spinning rod with only six-pound line, and caught a hybrid or striper above that weight, you know what it is like to have your drag stripped. A properly set drag is the only way you can land one. You give line and you take it, and you wear down the fish with constant pressure against him.

I am going to go see my old friend Spencer, and see if I can help him down there on Norfork. I have helped him with his hunting and fishing before and he doesn’t even acknowledge it. We have had some times in the past, like that turkey camp in the Arkansas Ouachita mountains twenty years ago when he arrived before daylight on a mountain ridge-top with a big old gobbler sounding off nearby and found a half a brick in his shot-shell box in place of his shells. He has always thought I done it!

But what we have in mind now is setting up my pontoon boat on Norfork some evening, putting out submerged lights to try to draw in threadfin shad, and catch fish beneath us in the darkness most of the night, then fishing with lures at first light from his fishing boat. We’ll have the pontoon boat right there to sleep on, sometime during the night or later in the morning. I can’t wait to try it, and in doing so, escape the mid-day heat.

Spencer lives deep in the woods next to the national forestland south of Calico Rock, Arkansas near a little creek called Sylamore, which flows into the Buffalo River. If Jim writes about something, he has done it, and seen it. You don’t much see that in outdoor writing nowadays. Most outdoor writers live in the suburbs not more than a few minutes from an interstate highway and a Wal-Mart shopping center, a long way from any woods or waters.

Last week I read an article in a large newspaper’s outdoor section about bull-frog season, and I knew just by reading it the writer had never been frogging in her life. She just found someone who said they had done it and wrote their comments. I don’t know if he was a grizzled old outdoor veteran or not but I doubt it, because his wife was concerned about how frogs jump around in a skillet while they are being cooked. Any experienced frogger knows that will happen UNLESS you cut the nerve sheath in the small of the back above the back legs before you fry the frog. With that done, they just quiver a little while they cook.

And another thing, why do writers talk about shooting frogs? No experienced river-man shoots frogs, because he knows you will lose some of them if you shoot them. They can be shot and still jump off into deep water and lost. Besides that, firing a twenty-two bullet at the water is a really stupid thing to do. Those bullets ricochet, and travel great distances after they do.

I am beginning to accept gigging of frogs, but when I was a youngster on the Big Piney, we looked on frog-giggers like a rodeo cowboy would look at a visitor at a dude ranch. You catch frogs by hand, using a headlamp to blind them, and you aren’t really a frogger until you have done that most of a night on an Ozark river. Gigs are for kids, old folks who can’t bend over so well, (and I am getting there) and greenhorns, and suburbanites.

I was thinking the other night about the rivers I have frogged, and they include the Big Piney, Gasconade, Niangua, Pomme de Terre, and a half dozen small creeks in Missouri. But then there are those in Arkansas, many years back, Crooked Creek, the Kings, the War Eagle, Eleven Point and the Buffalo. Those were the days! I will never forget one trip down the Buffalo on a summer night way back when bullfrogs were so abundant you could sometimes catch one in each hand.

I was Chief Naturalist for the Arkansas State Park System, when there was still a Buffalo River State Park, just before the National Park Service took it over. I hired a half dozen young outdoorsmen from Arkansas Tech College, to work as park naturalists that first summer. One of them was a country boy by the name of John Green, and John and I became long-time friends. He had never been frogging, so one night after our evening program in the park had ended, about 9 or 10 p.m., we set out down the Buffalo with two burlap sacks and paddles and headlamps. John had left his pickup about six miles downstream at a take-out point known as the old Rush mining camp, pretty much a ghost town after it’s heyday in the 20’s.

It was a night to remember, as we selected only the biggest frogs and had a limit even before we paddled alongside the Rush access road about two in the morning. And that’s when John began looking for his pick-up keys and couldn’t find them. Finally he realized he had changed out of his park uniform before we left and his keys were back at the park in his uniform pants.

I fired John on the spot, and we paddled back up the river to the park, arriving about daylight. Knowing we had to take a group of people out on a three-hour hike in only a couple of hours, I rehired him. John is still a hand-grabber frogger today I think. I haven’t seen him in awhile, but I don’t think he ever sunk to such a low level that he would gig a frog.

I hesitate to mention this, but if you are a frogger who floats a river at night in July and August, you can catch some gosh-awful big smallmouth bass on a jitterbug. Just turn the lights off, and fish that topwater lure in the slowing eddies beneath a river shoal. Don’t use spinning gear, use casting gear and twelve- or fourteen-pound line. If you aren’t a grizzled old outdoor veteran, it will be difficult to learn how to cast and fish at night in the dark, but you can learn how if you work at it, and you may catch the biggest bass you ever caught in the quiet of a dark night off down the river where greenhorns and suburbanites and frog-giggers seldom venture.

Write to me, if you want to protest my ‘grizzled old outdoorsman’ attitude, at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613. E-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net. The website, where you can contribute your own comments, is www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com

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Louisiana Coastal Fishing Scene Going Strong at Lake Calcasieu

Hughes Andry lifts a heavy speckled trout as

Mike Bonadonna unhooks another. 

* * *

Guide Brett Stansel lifts a 26-inch Louisiana

speckled trout that took a Corky suspending bait.

LOUISIANA INSHORE FISHING AS HOT AS THE SUMMER SUN

Summer has arrived on the Gulf Coast with the fish attacking soft plastics in western Louisiana's protected inshore waters.

Heavy fish, full stringers, salty air, golden sunrises and clean, green water.

Great Louisiana angling adventure as usual.

No news there, unless all you're reading is the bad news of the offshore oil spill far to the east.

Surely, the oil spill news is bad. The petro-disaster is real, relentless and seemingly endless. The oily sheen that is the spill’s trademark shares those same characteristics.

What the oil spill is not, though, is everywhere.

The western portion of the Louisiana Gulf shoreline, a stretch of more than 70 miles between the Texas border to Lake Calcasieu south of Lake Charles, has escaped with minor impact. Geography, weather and currents get the credit.

Certainly, that's good news on the salt marsh shores around the fishing village of Hackberry, 15 miles inland of the narrow Gulf inlet that marks the entrance to the Lake Charles Ship Channel.

At the legendary Hackberry Rod & Gun Club, discussion of the oil spill is constant table fare and a topic close on the minds and in the hearts of club spokesman Capt. Buddy Oakes and his staff of more than a dozen full-time fishing guides.

“We all have friends and family who are living with the oil every day,” Oakes said as a group gathered at the lodge dining room for lunch. “It’s hard to see this happening to anybody.”

Reality being what it is, life and business go on at Hackberry R&G. Certainly, the club and the region have taken their share of hits. The lodge is new and modern, a replacement for the familiar landmark facility wiped out by Hurricane Rita in 2005.

Also familiar among saltwater anglers on the Gulf Coast is the club’s reputation for putting hungry fish and hustling anglers in the same boat.

I made an afternoon trip out of Hackberry R&G with Capt. Dave Darnsteadt and Mike Bonadonna, vice president of Sportco Marketing, along with Hughes Andry. Bonadonna and Andry represent Shimano fishing products, which we put to the test for seven hours and hundreds of smooth casts.

The high-tech Shimano medium-action spinning tackle I used weighed less than 10 ounces, including the line and lure, The lightweight gear made a great impression on my casting arm, and it managed even the largest redfish with ease.

The speckled trout were in assault mode all afternoon. We finished with 27 trout up to 27 inches long and reeled in and released more than a dozen redfish, all keepers to 24 inches long.

Our fishing was within a 15-minute boat ride of the dock in front of the lodge, which was the final ingredient in a user-friendly and fruitful day on the water.

The next day started with a 4:30 a.m. call to breakfast. My boat, guided by Capt. Brett Stansel, pulled away from the dock at 5:15, first light. In the boat with us was then president of American Rodsmiths, Bob Brown.

We fished for five hours and were in aggressive trout and reds from the start. The action slowed about 9 a.m. but the fish continued to bite right up to the last cast on the local favorite Hackberry Hustler soft plastics and gold spoons. Our mixed bag included a 2-pound southern flounder that hit Brown’s fast-moving Hustler.

We also threw MirrOlure Top Dogs topwater baits and the company’s line of soft plastics, including a Texas classic, the Corky suspending baits. MirrOlure acquired the Corky brand last year.

The visit ended under a hot, clear Louisiana midday sky with a look back at the lodge on the edge of the bay. We had a two-hour drive to Houston ahead of us and a couple of great fishing trips behind us.

The motto of the Hackberry Rod & Gun Club is, “Ya should been here yesterday.”

Well, we were, and it paid off handsomely in new acquaintances, renewed friendships, good fellowship and a few filets for the skillet.

And there’s always tomorrow when, regardless of influences beyond the bayou, the fish will be biting in Lake Calcasieu and the guides at Hackberry Rod & Gun will be in hot pursuit, led by “Pooh Buddy” Oakes. I look forward to the next visit.

* Online see hackberryrodandgun.com, shimano.com and mirrolure.com

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8 Tips For Highly Effective Ground Pounding

Black Crappie Make Excellent Quarry For Ground Pounders

By following a few guidelines, one can have a great day in the outdoors as a ground pounder.

Tip 1 No matter what the gear used, or the bait for that matter, the key to catching fish from shore is to find structure and vegetation in the water. Fish follow pathways along and around structure. They will follow one type of structure to another.

Tip 2 Seldom will fish cross large expanses of open water. It makes them vulnerable to being eaten. If an angler eliminates the large expanse of open water, he cuts down the amount to be explored in search of the quarry.

Tip 3 One good choice is an area where two or more kinds of structure meet. This could be where weeds meet and a fallen tree or rocky area. Areas around rocky points, dam faces, or jetties can also have vegetation near by that will attract fish.

Other good locations can be where feeder streams or canals bring in warmer water, oxygenated water, and wash in insects from flooded areas upstream. Creek channels provide pathways between structures. Old creek channels are often used by fish when they move from weeds to brush or shallow water to deep water.

Tip 4 Deep water drop offs are popular with fish. It allows them the security of deep water and yet the opportunity to move up into the warmer water of the flats to feed.

Tip 5 More good locations along the shore are partially submerged trees or those that have fallen into the water. Stump fields, logs and broken tree branches that have fallen into the water will attract fish. Vegetation such as willows, cattails, weeds, and lily pads provide food, shelter and a place of safety to fish.

Tip 6 Bait can be a major factor in shore fishing. For smaller species, such as bluegill and crappie, live bait is best. The bait can be small minnows, and pieces of night crawler. The amino acids in live bait are an attractant to fish coming out of a long winter of minimal activity. They also will be feeding on zooplankton and insects that are found in or near vegetation.

Tip 7 For the larger predator fish, such as bass, an artificial lures are popular. When working a lure through and area it is important to work it through. Fan cast a dozen or so times. Retrieve the lure at different speeds and work it in different depths.

Tip 8 Be flexible and portable. If a given location is not producing in 15 minutes, it is time to try another one. Go where the fish go.

                                                    Don Gasaway - The Ground Pounder

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Something Good to Eat

Orange day lilies are found all over the Ozarks, and I don’t know much about the plant, which I am assuming was brought over from some other country many years ago. They are the tall orange flowers you see everywhere in June, growing up about 3 or 4 feet high out of ditches and around older homes. Most people aren’t all that happy about having them because once they get started you just can’t get rid of them. You have to dig up the bulbs, and you almost never get all of them. I have a bunch of them up here on Lightnin’ Ridge, and while they are pretty, they spread out and take over.

Now, I am looking at them a bit differently, thanks to my daughter Christy, who is a science and biology teacher and a summer naturalist for the State Park System. She told me that the buds which are about to become flowers are excellent eating. She told me to cut them just before they bloom, boil them for 3 to 5 minutes, drain the water off them, add butter and salt and pepper and eat them like you would eat asparagus. I didn’t do it, I told her mother to do it. But I picked them. The buds are four or five inches long and they are a yellow-green color. When you boil them for a while, the water turns brown, sort of like tea. I want to make sure everyone understands this…we aren’t talking about poke salad or cow pasley. They are delicious folks, better than asparagus. I am mad at my daughter for not telling me this sooner!

But she knew I would write about this, and people would try it and pretty soon there wouldn't be a bloomin’ day lily blooming in the whole country. I can see what might happen, because you could can them, or freeze them, and eat day-lilies all winter. They are exceptionally tasty.

I told folks about the day-lilies on my radio program Friday morning, which is broadcast over 107.7 f.m. from 8:30 to 9:00 from the Stockton Lake area, and many of the readers of this column in west-central Missouri are regular listeners. A lady called in and said that she also takes the flowers from day lilies, puts them in batter and fries them and they too are delicious. So I guess with this news, I have finally reached a point where this column is of some value. In June, there are enough day lilies to feed a bunch of us grizzled old veteran outdoorsmen, and they will go very well with fried fish. Only thing is, they are bound to be good for you, and most of us aren’t use to eating something good for us! But if you think about, they could be rolled in something and fried after they were boiled and that ought to make them even more edible, a little less healthy.

There are lots of good things to eat in the summer up here on Lightnin’ Ridge, even though the spring mushroom crop was a bust. Right now there are black raspberries ripening everywhere, and mulberries will come on soon. I can’t bring myself to eat the young rabbits which are bringing themselves to eat things out of my garden, but there are young squirrels everywhere. They say that shrimp will get expensive this year because of the oil spill in the gulf, but one of my cousins has been catching crawdads out of the river, and they are even better than shrimp. Young squirrels are very good cooked over coals on a grill, and big bluegills out of the pond are also excellent eating if you can’t afford shrimp. Pan-sized bluegill may not be big, but if you scale and clean them and remove the fins and tail and then cook them whole, you can pull the crispy meat off the bone and it only takes ten or twelve to make you happy. Green sunfish from the creek are similarly and equally good to eat.

It is good to live out in the country and feel so darned independent. If the whole world falls apart and there isn’t any electricity or gasoline, what do I care? As long as the masses can’t get out of the suburbs to come down here and steal my day lilies and bluegills and squirrels, I’ll do just fine!

We Ozarkians sprang from a generation of people who drank spring water, chopped firewood to keep us warm in the winter and knew where to build the outhouse so that you could open the windows on a hot night and not worry about the breeze that blew through the windows. No one ever noticed the heat of July and August because our bodies grew accustomed to it. And that’s why old timers on the farm could work in the garden all day long.

Technology came along when I was just a small boy, and my grandpa was ag’in it from the beginning. Grandpa said the time would come we would run out of gas, sure as the world, and no one would know how to hitch a buggy to a horse. He owned an old pick-up that had crank-up windows. I know that when everything else rusted away, those handles still cranked the windows up and down. Today we have electric windows in cars, and I remember a friend of mine owning a Buick made not more than 6 or 7 years back wherein all the electric window cables broke. To get it fixed he would have had to pay 1200 dollars to replace window motors even though only the cables were broke. Technology made it so that you had to replace the whole darn motor when the dinky little wire cable broke, even if the motors still worked fine. What kind of genius came up with that idea?

My old pickup had a switch key that started the motor and opened the doors and it worked great. You could make a new key for a dollar. Today’s new pickups do not have a key. You turn them on with a technological wonder that is plastic, and has a battery in it. If you lose it, it will cost 300 dollars to get a new one. Boy, have we got smarter!!!

We have a mess in the Gulf of Mexico, because of the technology to drill a well a mile beneath the floor of the ocean. We just don’t have the technology to stop the catastrophic leak when it breaks. The President, who is awfully upset about it all, has declared an end to drilling for oil down there in that deep water, so the companies that he is punishing will pick up and move to foreign waters, and we will all pay about twice as much for gas, and soon. I wish grandpa had taught me more about horses and buggies and how to build a really good outhouse. I think a time might come when we need to know more about that kind of technology. Thankfully, I am pretty good at cutting firewood and cooking squirrels.

I hear there are ways to make money out of that gulf oil spill if you can file a legitimate claim. I suspect they are going to have a quite a number of folks trying to get that money who might not deserve it. I am going to give it a try because my magazine may soon lose all it’s Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama shrimp boat subscribers. Somebody please send me the necessary forms, before a bunch of crooks get all that money.

My e-mail address is lightninridge@windstream.net and the mailing address is Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613. My website is www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com

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Reelfoot Lake

The earth shook, smoke belched up from underfoot, sulfur fumes permeated the air and the Mississippi River reversed course. “Mighty Mo” with waves as high as 20 feet flowed inland into a local cypress forest. That was the birth of Reelfoot Lake those violent days of December 1811 and January 1812.

When the settlers returned to the area from their safe havens further inland, they discovered the lake. It was subsequently named Reelfoot after a local Chickasaw chieftain from the area.

Many of the bald cypress trees that fell during those violent days are still beneath the water. Others stand upright as sentinels attracting crappie and other panfish to their “knees.”

Today, this northwest Tennessee lake is a veritable fish factory with some 50 plus species of fish. Most popular are: crappie, largemouth bass, yellow bass, bluegill (bream), and channel catfish. Of a secondary interest to anglers are: carp, gar, bowfin, shad and drum. In the fall and winter months, waterfowl hunters find an infinite variety of ducks and geese. Eagles follow the waterfowl in to stay at the lake for the winter and enjoy the mild temperatures and ample supply of fish on which to feed.

Reelfoot is located in Lake and Obion counties about 17 miles southwest of Union City. It is a shallow, fertile lake with an average depth of 5.2 feet. The deepest point is 18 feet deep. Thousands of fish enjoy the natural cover and dead vegetation which accelerates algae, bacteria, photo and zoo plankton growth that abounds in the lake. The cypress stumps, called knees, dot the lake as do the many fallen trees that lie like sleeping giants beneath the surface.

Beginning in March and continuing into the summer, the crappie, bream, bass and yellow bass action is best.

Ground pounders can fish from shore or from piers located around the lake. Some of these solid, roomy piers snake through the cypress stumps and trees to provide access to the water just outside the trees. It is an exciting place to fish since one never can be sure just what we will be catching.

Large numbers of forage fish come into the areas to feed and are followed by the predator fish. Pin-minnows in the lake are the right size and in large enough numbers to provide crappie with great forage.

The crappie usually move into shallow areas of the lake in early April, and then out gradually as the spawn ends, until they are in the deeper water stump areas. They are caught there until July.

My best luck with crappie came on jigs tipped with a small minnow or plastic tube jig. 1/32nd ounce or 1/80th ounce jigs worked best. Those Berkley Crappie Nibbles can be added as an additional inducement to the fish. I suspended then about 18 inches beneath a small float (bobber). I added a small split shot to help old the float upright. For the angler using plastic tube jigs one has to experiment in order to find the color the fish prefer on a specific day. They can be fussy sometimes.

Don Gasaway – The Ground Pounder

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River Power

Many years ago, working as a naturalist for the National Park Service on the Buffalo River, I would tell people at evening programs about the strength of the river, and how that strength multiplied with every inch of water gained during heavy rains. It had been something I learned at a young age, growing up on the Big Piney, camping on gravel bars since I was a youngster. And I would constantly pass on information which I hoped would perhaps someday save a life, but so many times, you knew you were talking to people who were in a world they knew nothing about, and they could not visualize the danger. The summer Buffalo looked so peaceful and tame.

It is very easy to not recognize any danger at all when the river is normal and the weather settled. A tent set up on a gravel bar with a nice campfire popping and crackling, the whisper of flowing water over a nearby shoal as the river goes lazily floating by. What danger? Gazing at a sky full of stars, listening to a whippoorwill calling nearby… who would worry. But twenty miles upstream in the middle of the night, a strong summer storm dumps three or four inches of water into the headwaters, and several feet of water turns the gentle river into a raging brown torrent in a matter of hours. If you are asleep, and you pulled a canoe up on that gravel bar and didn’t tie it, you may not hear the river take it away. You may not hear the hiss of your campfire coals as the current rises closer to your tent. And when you awaken, everything is fine until you realize that the dry low ground behind you is now a flowing channel that the rising river has claimed. And you are stranded on a shrinking island that once was a nice big gravel bar.

On the Buffalo, I saw it happen several times just like that. There were two or three different occasions when inexperienced floaters camped on a low gravel bar with a dry channel behind them, just as I described. No one ever drowned in such a situation that I remember, because a report would come in, and park rangers would head out in big johnboats with motors on them to rescue the campers. But some of those campers lost all their gear, and some were even found clinging to willow trees as the river rose around them, in an absolute panic.

The scariest situation I remember was a time when I was asked to go along because of the danger. A man and his two children were clinging to willow trees with only their upper bodies out of the water, and the water was so swift we couldn’t get the boat in to them without swamping it on those willows. We ran two big heavy ropes across the stream, got life jackets on them, and a park lifeguard and I carried the two children to safety on those ropes with that current pulling us under as we did. It was one of the scariest situations I have ever been in.

I have written before about the two ladies from Little Rock who tried their first float trip on the Buffalo as a storm hit the river, and one was trapped by her ankle between a submerged canoe which wrapped around a willow tree on a shoal as rising water threatened to drown her. After I wrote about that, one of the ladies involved sent a letter to me recalling in vivid detail that terrorizing day. We freed her foot as the river rose to her chin. I was just a young kid at the time, an old veteran Park Ranger by the name of Chuck Brooks directed that frenzied life-saving operation, by using hacksaws to cut and break apart the aluminum canoe.

All of us who have spent our lives on the Ozark rivers we love so much have always known how dangerous those gentle streams are when their waters swell and become unstoppable torrents of tremendous power. Finally, what I always dreaded might someday happen, came to pass in Arkansas last week, in the Ouachita mountains on two rivers I floated several decades ago. In those narrow valleys, the Caddo and the Little Missouri are such beautiful little rivers, almost too low to float in late summer, but with much more drop per mile than our southern Missouri streams.

The horror of it is too terrible to think of, the loss of twenty lives or more, campers who were taken by surprise in a tremendous flood. In the darkness, with inches of water in a tent awakening frantic campers, they step out into the darkness with a flashlight, and everywhere they shine the beam, there is flowing water. How do you remember where to go to find safety?

I look back and recall dozens and dozens of times I have been caught in heavy storms on the rivers I float, times in the night when there were rises of several feet between dusk and dawn. On the Kings River one spring, the Postlewaite brothers and I packed all our gear and two johnboats up high banks into a farmers field during the dark of night to escape a ten foot rise that no riverman in his right mind would try to navigate. On the Big Piney, I spent many a night in a cave somewhere high above the river, watching a raging storm end any chance I had of floating on at daybreak.

So I will say what I have said as long as I can remember in pages of newspapers and magazines I write for… Ozark rivers are not to be feared, but respected. Don’t take the slightest chance when dealing with flowing water which you do not have the experience to tackle. And when the rains swell the current to a certain point, none of us have the experience or the knowledge to not be in danger. If you are a grown man and want to risk your life in such a manner, it is your decision, but don’t put a youngster in danger. Leave a flooding, or rain-swollen river be, don’t take risks. And if you camp along any stream, camp reasonably high, with high ground behind you, which cannot render your camping- spot an island. When you are on the river or lake with a child, please keep a life-jacket, or some kind of quality flotation device on that child.

There are other things you might do… be someone special and make it so that there is no one who follows along behind you who would ever know you were there. If you leave trash along the river, or in any natural setting you relegate yourself to the lowest of humans, a miserable being who deserves very little in life. Someone who goes along in life flinging cans and plastic bottles along roadsides or river-banks runs the risk of having a life of little value. The earth may well benefit more from his passing than in his short existence.

Last week's pictures from Canada didn’t make it onto my website due to a technical problem, but they will be there this week. Take a look if you have a computer… the website is www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613 or e-mail lightninridge@windstream.net

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Land of Big Brownies

It was spring in Canada last week. There were male ruffed grouse drumming in the forests lining the lake. It is a beautiful place, another world entirely. And the fishing, barring a front of some kind that shuts everything down, is usually beyond describing. In the lake where our little cabin sits, there are more smallmouth above three pounds than any place I have ever seen, and in two or three days we caught more brownies between three and four pounds than I will catch in the Ozarks all year long.

The best thing is, they were hitting top-water lures that first week of June, with a vengeance. I fished a buzz-spin for two days, and though it is hard to believe this unless you see it, there were times when three of us would catch 10 or 12 bass in a fifteen-minute period, and all of them from 16 to 18 inches. Several times a day we would catch the real lunkers, 19-to 20-inch smallmouth weighing nearly 4 pounds or perhaps larger.

It is hard to be disappointed in a 4-pound smallmouth, which is fairly common in Canada lakes, but the 5-pound fish we were after never got to the boat. I am certain that I saw one hit my buzz spin a couple of times, but I didn't hook either fish. One of them showed me a tail that looked eight inches wide. I have never seen such a smallmouth as that one, but it never touched the hook. The bigger ones do that often... they are making beds in preparation for spawning, or actually in the act of spawning, and they seem to be just driving away an intruder when they boil the surface around a top-water lure. At such a time you always see the tail.

But an 18-inch smallmouth in Canada is a much different fish than an 18-inch Ozark river smallmouth because of the body mass, the heft that might make an 18-or 19-inch Canada brownie weigh what a 21-inch smallmouth would weigh in one of our rivers or lakes. When he is 18 inches long, a Canada smallmouth might be twice as old as an 18-inch fish from the Niangua or Gasconade or the Current or the Big Piney. If you want to experience a fight like nothing you have ever seen, catch one of them on a spinning reel with 6-pound line and a fairly light action rod.

Of course, you need casting gear to fish a big buzz-spin, or a full-sized Zara Spook, and you will land about one out of three bass which gets ahold of one. Even with a trailer hook, I had some huge bass throw my lure, again and again. They would sometimes come out of water two feet into the air or higher. It was something to experience, the best smallmouth fishing I have ever had in my entire life.

But as good as it was, there were disappointments last week. The crappie fishing that my fishing partner, Rich Abdoler had enjoyed three years ago was very poor. In the edge of the bays, where fat, hefty black crappie usually spawn amongst the reeds, there were none to be found. Rich caught two, and that was it. Maybe this week they will be there, but we aren't. Also, the great mushroom famine we experienced this spring in the Ozarks continued into Canada, as there were none there either, where there were plenty last year at this time. That was a disappointment for me, the morels we found last spring beneath pine tree stands along the lake were were big and delicious.

Still, the beauty, the solitude and peace found along a Canadian lake is worth more than words can express. You have to be there in the quiet of morning to listen to those drumming grouse, and see colors of a sky where the sun has not yet reached the horizon. You have to be there in the dimming light of day long after that same sun has set, watching a buzz-spin make bubbles along the glassy surface of a remote bay, and hearing the cries of loons around you, before you can truly understand what draws a man back again and again. God lingered here a little longer as he created it all, I suspect.

But it is a rugged place! If you stop on some huge granite point beneath a giant spruce for a shore lunch, and decide to take a hike up into the forest, you may not find a path. Penetrating that heavy growth beneath stands of high birch and great pines is a job. Inside it, there are moose and bear, and pine martens and fishers, little red squirrels not at all like ours and even a few timber wolves. We saw more deer than we ever have before; big red whitetails which I understand carry a brain worm that can spread to moose, and eventually kill them. In moose country, it is not so much a good thing to have lots of deer.

The loons are everywhere, and they have no little ones beside them yet. In time you will see two of them with most females, occasionally riding on their backs. There were however, baby mergansers. Dennis Whiteside, in another boat, found two American merganser hens with a dozen or more little ones, and he watched one group climb up on the mother's back as she carried them to safety, just as the loons do. I can't help but wonder why the mergansers have such large clutches and the loons only two
young. The answer of course is simple. The loons are hardier, live much longer, and survive well, while mergansers are short-lived, preyed upon more. An eagle will eat quite a few mergansers, and so will an occasional otter. Again, I am more certain of the greater mind which planned it all, making greater reproductive potential a balance for those creatures with lesser survivability.

Dennis Whiteside, an old friend and fishing partner of mind, caused me to think about something as we sat around in front of the cabin one day after a fish fry, watching three or four white pelicans and two dozen herring gulls make short work of the fish cleanings we threw out to them. He remarked that all large birds seem to be at peak of populations. He is right about that. The white pelicans, not to be confused with the brown pelicans now facing oil problems in the gulf, are like the cormorants, buzzards, blue herons, even eagles. All are at higher levels than ever before, and most of them over-populated. We watched those pelicans fly in and light, and they are one of the most graceful birds you have ever seen in flight. They ski on those big feet as they hit the water. And we noticed something not seen when they are so abundant in the Ozarks in late fall... the breeding birds develop a flap on top of the beak, like some kind of growth sticking up.

As we fished late one day, a beaver circled our boat, lifting his tail in a curl to slam it down on the water again and again, warning everything that we were intruders. He had a message to deliver... "Go home"! And we did. It is nice to be back in the Ozarks, where some good fishing is to be had, and we mean to have it. But it won't top what we just experienced, in that rugged, wild north country where the water looks like tea; boiling tea when a big smallmouth or northern pike decides to destroy a top-water lure.

See pictures from our trip on my website later this week, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com Write to me at Box 22,
Bolivar, Mo. 65613 or e-mail lightninridge@windstream.net.

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Terrestrials For Panfish

Terrestrials are effective bait for panfish even thought they are normally thought of as living their entire life on land. They include worms, grubs, grasshoppers and crickets. Grasshoppers and crickets are an important part of the fishing scene even if not well known.

Crickets/grasshoppers have a hard exoskeleton which is helpful in keeping them on a hook. They are plant eaters. As such they can be very destructive to agriculture.

Although usually thought of as good panfish bait, grasshoppers and crickets can also be used to catch bass and trout. Both insects can be purchased at bait shops or caught in the field.

Grasshoppers are sluggish and slow in the cool early morning hours. It is an easy task to collect them by hand and hold them in a glass jar with holes punched in the top. To keep them in the sluggish state, the jar can be periodically placed in an ice chest during the day.

They can be caught by walking through high grass or other vegetation waving a butterfly net in a figure eight pattern. A number of crickets, grasshoppers and other insects will be caught in the net. It does not take a lot of effort to catch enough for a day of fishing.

Still another way to catch grasshoppers is by two people holding a wool blanket up, facing into the wind. A third person runs through the grass toward the blanket. The insect’s legs become tangled in the blanket and can be picked them off of it.

Both crickets and grasshoppers can be caught at night by hand with the use of a flashlight. Again, they are usually more sluggish at night in the cooler temperatures. They can be spotted with the flashlight and picked up with a quick hand.

Storage of terrestrials requires room. There are some commercial bait keepers and all seem to work well. A home made keeper can be constructed from a two pound coffee can with a plastic lid.

A small hole is cut in the top, leaving a flap of plastic in place. When an insect is needed, one simply opens the flap and shakes the can until one appears. The flap is closed to keep others from getting out. A piece of tape can be placed over the flap to keep it closed. Other holes should be punched in the top to provide a good air flow.

Fresh damp grass can be placed inside to accommodate the insects. If kept in a cool area, the insects will last for several weeks. If one wants to keep them longer, freeze them. They can be unfrozen and used later. Obviously dead, they will still be soft and pliable making them stay on the hook and still be appealing to fish.

Hooking is simple. If a small wire hook is used, it is best to hook the insect through the collar area. Larger hooks require that it be impaled with the head of the insect toward the line end of the hook. Hooks in the 6, 8, or 10 size are preferred.

Grasshoppers are usually fished with split shot and a small bobber. This works well for panfish or trout. If fishing for catfish, perhaps a slip sinker rig is better.

In fishing insects it is important to keep the bait light and free from snags and weeds. Casting an un-weighted insect into clear water near structure will allow it to sink near to the bottom. If it gets on the bottom, chances are that it will become entangled and will be lost. It is advisable to look for shoreline areas that provide cover. Cast beyond the cover into the open water. Look also for slow water near structure to allow the bait to flow slowly.

Fishing with terrestrials is slow fishing. Allow bait to slowly settle. Then twitch very gingerly. Quick movement is unnatural for an insect in water and will spook fish.

Why not give terrestrial fishing a try this year.

Don Gasaway - The Ground Pounder

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Lunchroom Largemouth could have been world record

I recently returned from a short visit to northern Mexico and a great stay at Rancho Caracol, a world class quail and dove hunting destination.

On the way south to the lodge I made a pit stop and lunch break at a little cafe in a city in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. In a corner of the small lunchroom in a clear plexiglass cube more than 3 feet by 3 feet was a mounted largemouth black bass. The plastic box and the fish mount obviously were brand new.

Investments in such a box and professional fish mount in this part of the world are no trivial matters. Someone had invested a lot of money in this project, and just maybe he knew what he had.

The fish, mounted in an open-mouth "strike" pose, was of incredible proportions.

Mounted at an upward angle and twisting slightly to the left toward the diners, the fish's open mouth was wide enough to take in an American football. Its belly was as big as a soccer ball, and it was about 33 inches long.

Asking around, it turns out a fellow at the restaurant said he caught the fish late last year at Lake Guerrero, which is near Rancho Caracol. It weighed 22 pounds, maybe a little more, he said proudly.

If it's true, the fellow wasn't proud enough, despite the box display.

If it were an even 22 pounds of largemouth black bass, it would be the second heaviest bass ever recorded in the world. If the fish weighed more than 22-pounds, 4 ounces it would be a new world record.
We'll never know for sure because there it sits, dried out and clear coated and resting in a plastic box near the kitchen door in a small restaurant along a busy, dusty highway in northern Mexico.

To get a feel for the size of the fish, Google Mac Weakley's big bass and look at the dimensions of that fish. Mexico's Lunchroom Largemouth is its twin sister.

Incredible!

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Shore Fishing System For Largemouth Bass

All too often bass anglers seem to think that the only way bass have ever been caught is to "run and gun" on some lake. Not so. Early bass fishermen used cane poles and caught bass in small lakes and ponds. Their techniques are as good today as they were before bass boats.

The first thing to remember is that small waters do not always have small fish. Many a monster bass has come from an out of the way pond. A carefully combed couple of acres can be just as productive as running around on a large impoundment.

Bass are notorious for relating to structure and cover. It is important to take note of any wood, brush or weeds that can be seen.

Choose tackle that you would use in fishing any other bass water. A stout rod and line in the 15 to 20 pound test range are good. Even in the best areas there may be submerged stumps, timber and other debris. You don't have the luxury of being able to move to where the lure is caught to remove it. Accept the fact that you are going to loose some lures.

Some tricks of the trade for shore fishing are: 1) Avoid casting to spots from which you know it may be impossible to retrieve a lure. 2) Learn to slow down the retrieve and hop a surface lure back over submerged logs. 3) Learn to reel back to the edge of weeds or debris certain to catch a lure, then reach the rod high and give the lure an inshore flip through the air.

The best lure is one in which you have confidence. It can be a topwater plug or a spinnerbait with its single upturned hook that is concealed by a skirt. Anything that is virtually weedless is a good idea. Floater/diver lures are useful if there is a chance to dodge them around submerged objects. They can be cast to openings and, if you suspect there are submerged objects between you and the lure, ease off letting the lure rise to the surface. It can then be crawled past the obstacle and the retrieve resumed.

As you approach the water remember more shallow portions of a pond are more likely to hold aggressive bass. In addition, bass being dragged from deep water may spook fish that have been holding in shallow areas. It is important to keep moving along the shore until you have determined where the majority of bass are to be found.

Usually, the pond will have a small lip or flat that rims the entire body of water. It usually comes out from the bank and then drops off toward the middle. This is a good are on which to concentrate as it usually holds the cover and bass.

It is a good idea to begin by casting parallel to the shoreline. This insures maximum exposure for the lure. If a fish is hooked, it will not spook any fish holding in deeper water. After of couple of casts, try an angle to the bank in to cover the outer edge of the lip.

Finally, cast to the middle of the pond. Once this pattern is completed, then one can move down the shoreline a few feet and repeat it. The procedure can be repeated until the entire body of water has been explored.

Once a fish or two has been taken, concentrate on making casts in that area.

Bass fishing in ponds is great fun. Bass populations in such waters can be very fragile. It does not take long to change bass populations by keeping a lot of fish. Catch and release is very important in such small bodies of water. Protect the fishery for the future.

The Ground Pounder

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This Blog

Blog looks great, starting off with some interesting stuff. Joel, we must have crossed paths as kids, spent time in the Chicago area also and I remember the Victory Gardens of WWII, then to N.E. Missouri where the outdoors was an everyday wonder and classroom. More than that, it was a place to dream, to invent yourself and your passions. We not only didn't have iPods or computers, we didn't have electricity or indoor plumbing. We learned how to get along with each other, inside and outside the family and entertain ourselves plus make very short trips to the outdoor privy in the winter. Growing up on the farm was a lesson in learning how to entertain yourself in the middle of a pasture. What a wonderful experience.
Well I grew up, worked, married, had kids who had kids who had kids, retired and now my wife and I live on Lake of the Ozarks where we can entertain ourselves until our hearts are content.
What with all this contentment, I have a huge worry. Living on the lake creates the opportunity to see the best and worst in boating. Last evening, while fishing, I witnessed an adult, presumably the father, pulling two youngsters in a tube behind an I/O - NO OBSERVER! One fell out and then the other. After about 100 yards the driver realized his tube was empty and came back for the kids. Did I mention it was almost dark and the boat was running without lights.
So, my worry is how kids like this will survive to adulthood and what will they teach their kids if they do....... Darrell Taylor

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Ground Pounding

Since the age of 9, I have fished from the shore. It is called ground pounding as often it takes a lot of walking to find fish.

As a full time freelance outdoor writer I have the greatest job in the world. I get to fish when ever and wherever I desire. That is if I am not on someone elses property and they do not want me there.

In the weeks ahead, I hope to bring you some information about bank fishing and the places where it can be practiced.

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Back to the Future

By Joel Vance

Recently a friend visited with her six-year-old daughter who is diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.  Our grandkids, six, eight and 10, also were visiting.  The kids all went fishing in our pond.

  

It was as if the fish were cooperating in a memorable day for the little ones.  I was busy impaling bits of nightcrawlers and trying to avoid getting hooked by the wildly-swinging fishing lines.  Everyone was shrieking…except the mother who was unusually quiet.

Her daughter was too busy to be AD and all the kids were pretty much HD…or maybe they were just being kids.

We kept a half-dozen of the bigger bluegills and my friend asked, “How do you clean them.”  Never one to mince words, I said, “I bop ‘em in the head and filet them.”  She was even quieter and later, on reflection, I realized that she probably was appalled at my insensitivity and her daughter’s pre-adolescent bloodlust.  I just hope that she realized her daughter was s a kid being a kid, connecting, possibly for the first time with the elements of life which include death.

For a kid with ADHD, the outdoors quite possibly is far more agreeable than Ritalin or some other chemical mood magic.  “Attention deficit” means the kid has trouble staying focused.  The outdoors is a vast world of sensory delights and if ants don’t claim the kid for a long time, maybe butterflies will or squirrels…or fishing. 

The second part is “hyperactivity disorder,” meaning the kid is overly-full of energy that often is misdirected (many ADHD kids have problems with anger management).  I suspect the joy of discovery and the sensory overload of the outdoors bleeds off ADHD aggression. 

In Last Child in the Woods, writer Richard Louv explores the calming effects of outdoors activities on children with ADHD, an area scientists have only recently begun to research. He says that "nature therapy," as opposed to the many pharmaceutical fixes for hyperactivity, is "widely accessible, free of side effects, non-stigmatizing, and inexpensive."

Today’s child is electronically leashed to a television set or MP3 player or some other disconnect from the natural world.  Louv tells of a family ski trip where the kids wore headphones as they skied (as if downhill skiing were not already a disconnect from nature). 

Farm kids once belonged to nearly half the families in the country.  Now farm families are no more than two percent of the population.  Virtually everyone lives in cities or suburbs. 

I was born in Chicago.  But I explored vacant lots as if they were wilderness areas, played cowboys and Indians and watched the adults return to their rural roots with World War Two Victory gardens.  It’s possible to experience the outdoors even in the biggest cities—New York has Central Park and some cities, like Minneapolis or Seattle, are cheek by jowl with lakes or the ocean. 

The fact that parks and wildlife areas exist in most major cities is evidence that we realized historically that green is good for the soul.

On the other hand, millions of Americans live in developments that actively prohibit the kind of creative outdoor play that we enjoyed as kids—Louv talks about prohibitions against building treehouses or even climbing trees.

My friend Henry Domke. a retired doctor, is building an elaborate tree house in the woods at the edge of a native prairie restoration on his property.  “It’s something we’ve talked about since we were in college,” Henry says. 

For me as a Chicago kid summers brought a real trip to the outdoors, either to my father’s Missouri hard rock farm or to my mother’s small resort home town in Wisconsin.  Either way I was outdoors from dawn to dark and often later.   I saw farm animals mate, and I saw them butchered.

It was not a big deal for those who lived there and consequently it was not a big deal for me.  Today’s insulated city kid has no idea about blood and circling flies.  And neither do his parents.

In Chicago we didn’t have Little League or any of the other organized baseball programs.  We had a scuffed baseball and a couple of gloves and we tried to sting the other guy’s palm by throwing as hard as we could—called it “burnout.”

When it got too dark to see we chased fireflies.  In my mother’s Wisconsin resort town, we could hear a tiny Johnson outboard far out on the lake, far removed from today’s mega-horsepower bass boat engines.  Summer smelled like road tar.  On my father’s Missouri farm the stridulation of cicadas and the first tentative calls of a whippoorwill were the sounds of night. 

There are alternatives for the most city-bound.  The famed naturalist Jean Henry Fabre spent his entire professional life, more than half a century of his 87 years, studying insects in his back yard. 

And my friend Gale Lawrence, a Vermont naturalist, has a wonderful book called “The Indoor Naturalist” about the fascinating natural history of your house, from the origins of dust balls to everything you didn’t know about cobwebs.  Gale also has a book “A Field Guide to the Familiar” which teaches you (and your kids) to see, really see, what’s around us.

This is not a plea for a return to the 1940s but it is a plea for releasing our kids from the prison of modern homes into the outdoors where the real world exists.

-30-  

Joel Vance is the author of Grandma and the Buck Deer (softcover $15); Bobs, Brush and Brittanies (hardcover $25); Down Home Missouri (hardcover $25); and Autumn Shadows limited edition, signed $45).  Available from Cedar Glade Press, Box 1664, Jefferson City MO 65102.  Add $2/book for S/H.

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