PLANER BOARDS FOR GROUND POUNDERS

Sometimes the use of tackle designed for one kind of fishing can be adapted to another. For years anglers trolling big waters have used planer boards to get their lure out of the prop wash and into undisturbed water. Now shore anglers are also using them to position a lure or bait.

Shore angler have frequently experienced problems getting a bait or lure into that spot behind a piece of structure. Fish in a river or creek relate to structure. Many anglers cast to the spot just upstream and allow the lure to drift toward the spot desired. More often than not, it just misses. The end result is more casting that can ultimately spook fish.

Planer boards area pair of rectangular shaped boards, keel weighted to float on edge as they track through the water. They come in a variety of sizes, the smaller being best for river fishing. The lead edge is cut on an anger to steer it away from the angler as it is pulled through the water.

As the shore angler is not moving and the water is, the roles are reversed for the boards. The board comes labeled as to which side of the boat it should be deployed. The angler just needs to think of the shore as a side of a boat and deploy the board from the shore in the same manner.

Water pressure created by the flow of water past the shore is the same as that which is created by the boat moving past the water on a large river or lake. It runs the planer board to the side away from the shore.

The board is designed to pull away from the angler. The appropriate board is used according to whether the water is flowing past the angler from left to right or the reverse.

The only other piece of equipment needed is a sliding release lanyard or clip. The board is trailed out into the water until it is in the desired position. Then the sliding line release is clipped and the fishing line slipped into the clip. The line is free spooled out along with the lanyard to point where the lure is in the desired position. The amount of line released from the reel to the clip will determine the horizontal location of the lure.

As a fish strikes, the line releases from the clip and the battle between angler and fish begins just as it would on any other occasion.

Planer boards help spread lures such as crankbaits in horizontal patterns. Because crankbaits run at predetermined depths, they help to create a vertical pattern. Crankbaits are not the only lures that work well with planer boards. Spoons, spinners, dodger/fly combos and just about any other type of lure can be worked with these boards.

With a live bait presentation that is meant to be positioned on or near the bottom, a Lindy bottom bouncing rig is a good idea. Rigged with a night crawler, for instance, fish will still get hooked and many times the board helps to set the hook.

Hook sharpness is essential with boards. The angler does not have the sensitivity in feeling the bite he might otherwise experience due to the drag of the board. The angler should keep steady pressure so that the hook stays in position. It also helps to use a wider gap in the hook's business end.

Many anglers prefer the large line capacity of the bait casting reel as well as its smooth drag. They like to be able to feed line to a power diving fish or one that is making tracks for the swift current of some rivers.

Generally a longer rod is preferred with boards. The longer, stiffer rod can handle the resistance created by the board setting the hook and fighting a fish. As with most river fishing an abrasion resistant line is a good idea.

Planer boards are an excellent addition to the tackle of the shore angler. Its use is a bit more complicated than just casting to a spot on the water but allows one to be a bit more systematic in covering all of the structure areas and placing a bait or lure.

                                                  Don Gasaway - The Ground Pounder

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RIVER BASSIN IS DIFFERENT

The water levels have finally receded in the rivers of Illinois. Seemed like the spring floods would go on forever. But ground pounders rejoice. You can now get back on the bank and do your thing.

River fishing is really a kind of hunting for "fishy water". To be successful in finding bass the river angler must know how to read the river conditions.

Water conditions and structure available are important to the river bass angler. Heavy current and lack of structure generally means no fish. Bass just don't have the energy to fight a swift current for more than a few minutes. To overcome fast water conditions bass will stay behind some structure in the slack water and wait for the current to wash food to them.

The environment on big rivers is forever changing. Every flood rearranges the bottom structure by changing deep channels, and washing in new obstacles. Unless you fished a certain area recently, you may never have fished it as it exists today.

That is not to say there are no honey holes. Honey holes are usually where the water slows or stops temporarily. These can be areas such as eddies behind snags, below sandbars or following a cut in the river bank.

Along the shoreline, look for areas where shade is cast on the water. This can be a tree overhanging or a ma made structure. Areas around old boats or other junk attract bass. Wooden structures and brush piles are especially good locations.

Unlike lakes and ponds water temperatures do not vary much with rivers. Because bass are cold blooded, they react differently in the cool water of a river than in the ever changing water temperatures of more still water. In warm water, bass cannot remain active for long periods of time without undergoing stress. They are inactive for periods of time and then feed in short "feeding frenzies". In rivers the flowing and mixing action of current oxygenates the water and allows the bass to feed for more extended periods, even on the hottest days of summer.

Water clarity is important in river fishing. Seldom is the water really "clear". Subtle presentations seldom are the choice for such waters. Big, bright, noisy lures seem to do better.

Big bass in rivers like to take advantage of wounded baitfish or unfortunate creatures that fall into the river. They hit them fast and hard in order to beat the competition before they are washed away in the current. Lures such as jointed minnows, buzzbaits and a rubber frog are effective. Anglers on some river systems seem to prefer crankbaits and ringworms. For the ground pounder, the every popular minnow is good bait. Just hook the minnow through the back and "live line" it.

For those using plastic worms, it is probably a good idea to work them more slowly. One just keeps the slack out of the line and works the line over the bottom with a slow retrieve. Be a “line watcher.” Set the hook when anything unusual happens to the line. Many of the pick ups will be subtle.

Plastic worms work well when exploring sand bars. Bass will move back and forth over submerged sandbars. Patience is the key to fishing sand bars. It is a good idea to visit such places several times during a day. One may catch several fish in a few minutes and then nothing. Thirty minutes later, you can catch several more and then again nothing.

Most bass anglers seem to prefer 6 to 6 ½ foot medium action rods with bait cast reels. For river fishing one can experiment to find what works best in the river conditions most likely encountered.

It is no secret that lakes and impoundments are a bit crowded on the weekends. Switch to rivers to alleviate the problem. Most ground pounders live but a few minutes away from a lake or pond. We tend to concentrate on such water and ignore river bass. Rivers have improved in water quality. Most now contain bass. Now is the time to try bass fishing in the river.

                                                   Don Gasaway – The Ground Pounder

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State Record Bank Fisherman

Columnist Larry Dablemont with stripers from Norfork Lake. 

These two were records... At least for him..A little short of 58 pounds though.

I don’t know all the details to this yet, but hope to find out more soon. The story is that a fisherman down on Bull Shoals Lake was fishing from the bank with regular fishing line and a spin-casting reel with a plastic worm for bait and he hooked a 58-pound Missouri state record striper. There are those who might be skeptical. I have seen stripers half that size take all the line off a reel from someone in an anchored boat, and I never ever heard of a striper being caught on a plastic worm. However, knowing as I do that no one can be trusted to be more honest and upright than a bank fisherman, I am inclined to believe the whole story. I just think the FBI should investigate…


Would you like to know more about the striped bass in the Ozarks? Well, I dug up something I wrote about 15 or 20 years ago. Things have indeed changed. They have already reported 60-pound plus stripers in Arkansas’ Beaver Lake. Here is my run-down on the striper, from many years back…..


“He's a prisoner, held behind steel and concrete barriers far from his native haunts. But Morone Saxatalis has adapted well to the Ozarks. And why not? He's the biggest fish in the pond.


Morone Saxatalis; known in these parts as striped bass or striper, wasn't even thought of when the Corps of Engineers began damming rivers a few decades ago. And there was a time, shortly after he was unleashed in the region, when fishermen feared that he would wreak havoc on other game fish. But he didn't. He's made the best of his imprisonment to become the hardest fighter an Ozark angler can tie into. And the biggest ones are surely yet to be caught.


The stripers' story began in 1941, when the famed Santee-Cooper reservoir system was constructed in South Carolina. The freshwater rivers there flowed into the Atlantic, and the dams which sealed them off trapped thousands of migrating stripers.


For centuries upon centuries, striped bass had lived in the Atlantic, migrating into freshwater streams to spawn each spring, then finding their ways back into the ocean.


In the late 1800s, stripers were transplanted off the Pacific coast, and they took hold and thrived, again using freshwater streams to spawn, then moving back into the ocean.


I suppose most biologists assumed that stripers couldn't survive unless they returned to the salt water. But those fish trapped inside the Santee-Cooper reservoirs thrived and reproduced, surprising everyone. In the '50s, stripers were transported to North Carolina and Virginia.


About that time it was determined that the “rockfish” (another name for saltwater stripers) were growing about twice as fast in freshwater reservoirs as they were in the ocean. After two years of growth in the Santee-Cooper system, the stripers were nearly 20 inches long, and a fatter fish despite their imprisonment. It became obvious that stripers were not wiping out crappie and bass, but gorging themselves on shad. Why go back to the ocean?


As the years passed, stripers were stocked throughout the southeastern states. But it was apparent they would not spawn everywhere with the degree of success they enjoyed in Santee-Cooper.


It was thought that even where stripers would not spawn they could be propagated in hatcheries and released in such large numbers that the natural spawn would not be necessary. That became a possibility in 1965; when biologists learned to induce hatchery spawning by a hormone injection. A five-pound striper would yield 50,000 eggs. Twenty- to 30-pound females would yield up to two million.


With the idea that stripers would probably always have to be stocked, they were introduced into most of the midwest states in the 1960s. Missouri released the fish into Lake of the Ozarks in 1967. Arkansas stocked stripers in Norfork, Ouachita, Beaver Lake, and the Arkansas River. Initially they stocked Bull Shoals as well, but discontinued that when it was feared that stripers would prey upon the trout stocked there annually.


Even though the Bull Shoals stocking ended, for the past five or six years fish initially stocked have been caught, weighing from 30 to 45 pounds.


Many 40-pound stripers have been taken in southern and midwestern waters, with Beaver, Ouachita, and Bull Shoals surrendering their share. Over in Oklahoma, the 46-pound state record was taken on an Arkansas River Impoundment, Kerr Reservoir, at the mouth of the Illinois River tributary.


But the largest landlocked striper taken to date was a 59-pound, twelve-ounce fish caught in 1977 from the Colorado River in Arizona. In 1981, a saltwater striper was landed off the coast of New York that weighed 76 pounds. Off the coast of North Carolina, a commercial fisherman netted a 125-pound striper. So who knows how big the fish can get? Fisheries biologists won't venture a guess, but the chances of a 60-pound striper being taken in the Ozarks someday seem pretty good.”


…..Yes, that’s what I wrote, way back then. Now there’s a 58-pound fish taken on a plastic worm by a bank fisherman? I have to find out more about this…maybe he hit that plastic worm because he was choking on a trout or something of that sort. Maybe he was too close to dead to fight really hard!


lightninridge@ windstream.net and I’ll let you know where there might be one close to you. You can see the new one on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors. blogspot.com this week. Or you can write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613 and I can send information on it. We did a scientific poll of 12 of our readers, and all of them said it was the best outdoor magazine ever, so that pretty much is conclusive evidence. I notice the political polls give an error ratio of plus or minus so many percent. We don’t know how to do that. I am pretty sure we’re 100 percent certain that our magazine is the best one ever.

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A SYSTEM FOR POND 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 impoundment 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.

Early in the year, after a week of stable weather, a dam will warm quickly and the bass will become active. Usually the northern end of a pond warms first as does any area that is more shallow.

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 choice 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. The lure can be crawled past the obstacle and the retrieve resumed.

As you approach the water remember that it is not necessary to begin with a cast to the center. The more shallow portions of the dam waters are more likely to hold aggressive bass. In addition, the bass being dragged from deep water may spook fish

that have been holding in the more 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 water 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 the lure is in that lip area for the maximum period of time. In addition, if a fish is hooked, this will assure that it will not spook any fish holding in deeper water. After of couple of casts, work at an angle to the bank in an attempt 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 covered.

Once a fish or two has been taken, observe what type of cast worked best and then concentrate on making casts in that area.

Bass fishing in ponds is great fun. However it is important to remember the resource. The bass populations in such bodies of water can be very fragile. It does not take long to change bass populations by keeping a lot of fish. Catch and release are very important in such small bodies of water.

                                                       DonGasaway - The Ground Pounder

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NIGHT LIGHTS

The warm early summer day is ending. The bright orange sun slowly begins sinking to the earth. It’s been a long, hectic day at work and I step outside to begin winding down. I love watching sunsets and sunrises.


A lone whip-poor-will calls from the nearby woods testing the silence and is answered by another down in the valley. Tall fluffy clouds gather on the horizon. The bottom layer lights up in varying shades of pink and orange like a painter mixing colors on his palette. Frogs begin their night time chorus and bats are diving for insects in the fading night sky.

As the darkness slowly settles I see it. A tiny twinkling orb. First one and then another until suddenly the summer night is bombarded by a myriad of twinkling lights. I sit down on the front porch to watch the performance.

Gazing at the slowly pulsating lights, I travel back 50 years to grandma and grandpa’s farm. As the adults sit around talking, we kids ran about capturing these jewel green sparks that pierced the dark and put them in Mason jars with holes punched in the lids. It was a magical time racing about filling your jar. Our eyes twinkled as much as the stars and laughter pierced the silent night. I wonder how many other adults are outside like me right now and feel the stirring pleasures of childhood.

My mind also wanders to a special time one summer at our cabin. An approaching storm was playing music on our wind chimes awakening me from a deep sleep. The alarm clock by the bed told my sleepy head it was 2:30 a.m. as my feet hit the floor to go check out what was happening. I walked through the dark cabin and looked out the windows into the night. The blinking lights of fireflies were everywhere. This night though, they seemed much bigger than normal tiny fireflies. It was almost as if the window I was looking out was a big magnifying glass and I was seeing the insects much bigger than they really are.

I stood there in wide-eyed amazement as I watched them. They were high in the trees, they were down by the creek, they were up by the road, they were way down in the valley. How could I see them that far away? Maybe the sky was just darker than usual that night causing their lights to shine brighter. Maybe they were brighter because they were really trying hard to impress their lady friends. At the time I didn’t really care what the answer was, I was just enjoying the show.

As the storm approached closer, lightning lit up the dark sky. It wasn’t streaks of lightning though, it was more like burst of light. It was like there were now gigantic lightning bugs joining in with the smaller one’s to add to this special night.

I don’t know how long I sit there watching but eventually the rains came, the lights went out, and I went back to bed. I lay there listening to the rain on the roof and grateful the storm had woke me. I drifted off to sleep thinking of fireflies.

The neighbor’s dog barks and my wandering mind takes me back to my front porch again. I’m thinking how I took a nail and punched holes in the lid and put them on jars for my kids. I hope they too have good memories of summer nights and twinkling lights. Grandkids are now learning to enjoy this age-old mysterious performance but instead of jars they use plastic firefly houses. Kids need fireflies more than they need television and computers and so do adults.

As if saying goodnight, the tiny sparks blinked off one by one. I get up from the porch and head for the garage. I’m looking for a 50-year old Mason jar with holes in the lid.

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The Fish That Makes A Noise

Outdoor writer Keith Sutton, one of the grizzled old outdoor veterans from down in Arkansas who really does what he writes about, sent me a story for the Lightnin’ Ridge outdoor magazine about the drum, a fish that no one is proud to catch, putting it in the same class as carp or gar. And he points out that there is no reason the fish should be looked upon in a bad light, as it has a very white meat, and is good to eat, without any bones at all when filleted properly.

He is right about that. There is no reason that drum should not be looked upon as a desirable game fish, it is a native fish that fights like a tiger, and will readily hit jigs and crank baits. They stay in deeper water, and feed on the bottom. They aren’t a topwater type of fish. Sutton writes about summer nights on waters in Arkansas, hearing the strange drumming sound coming from the water, beneath the boat, which gives the fish its name.

I ask him if that didn’t come from those large “pearls” which are found inside the fish’s throat. Sutton points out those round, white, shiny (when polished) bones, are actually called “otoliths” and are found in most all of our fish, except in other fish they are tiny, sometimes no bigger than a grain of rice. And they are part of the ear structure inside fish. We don’t often think of fish having ears, but technically they do.

“The otoliths from a large drum may be marble-sized,” writes Sutton. “Old timers called them ‘lucky bones,’ and Native Americans actually used them for trade like ‘wampum’. Scientists can take a cross section of an otolith from any fish and look at the rings in it (just like rings on a tree) to age the fish.”

“The sound they make has nothing to do with those otooliths,” he continues, “It comes from the male freshwater drum, croaking away as part of its mating ritual. A unique set of muscles contract around the fish’s swim bladder, causing the air-filled organ to boom like a balloon rubbed with the fingertips. Fisheries scientists speculate that female drum, ready to spawn, swim toward the males they hear calling from a distance.”

“In the south, drum are also called ‘gaspergou’, a name which obviously comes from Cajun fishermen, meaning ‘to break’ and ‘shellfish’. Drum eat lots of snails and mussels, which may be why that name originated. Some of the gaspergou’s common names, besides drum,—are thunderpumper, croaker and bubbler—all derived from this exercise of voice. James Gowanloch commented in Fish and Fishing in Louisiana, ‘The members of this family are peculiarly able to produce quite vigorous sounds, so vigorous indeed that a school of Drums, swimming past an anchored boat, can awaken a sound sleeper.’ On Lake Winnebago, Wisconsin, the noise produced by big drum in June resembles ‘a motorcycle gang racing in the distance,’ said one fisheries biologist there.”

Sutton’s full story on freshwater drum can be read in the August-September issue of the Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Journal. He is quite a writer, one of the best in the whole country. He has a BS degree in wildlife management, and spent 19 years working in the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s Information and Education Division, and still lives down not far from the Arkansas River west of Little Rock. During those years in the AG&FC, he worked with Jim Spencer, another outdoor writer with a degree in wildlife management who now is retired and lives out in the woods near the lower White river where the southeastern Ozarks is absolutely beautiful. You couldn’t work with Jim Spencer all those years and not learn a lot about the field of outdoor writing, and Sutton certainly knows what he is doing. He has several books out, one on crappie fishing and one on catfishing that would be of particular interest to readers of this column. You can find out about those and other books on his website, www.catfishsutton.com, or by writing to him at 15601 Mountain Drive, Alexander, Arkansas, 72002.

If we can arrange another outdoorsman’s swap meet in the late summer or early fall like we did last year, I would like to arrange for Sutton and Spencer and another old-time Ozarks outdoor writer, Monte Burch, to all be there to meet with our readers and sign their books. The three of them put together more knowledge on the outdoors and hunting and fishing than any three writers I know in the Midwest, maybe the whole country. It would be quite an event.

But I am not through talking about the drum, which is a fish found in most Ozark waters to some extent, and it seems their populations are growing. The fish may be looked upon by some as undesirable, just because they have their mouths on the bottom, like the carp. But again, they are a native fish, and did you realize these fish can grow to weights in excess of fifty pounds? Bass, walleye and crappie can’t come close to that. I have heard that drum may have once grown to weights of nearly 200 pounds, according to bones found in archaeological sites.

It isn’t unusual at all to see them up to ten pounds in our streams and lakes, and when you catch one that large, you have a fight on your hands. They stay deep and last long, and you had better have your drag set right when you hook a large one on light tackle. My uncle and I were fishing for early spring walleye on the Sac River years ago with a jig and minnow when I hooked a 15-pound drum. I was convinced it was a giant walleye until I finally saw it after a 15-minute struggle.

I sat back and looked at that drum so disappointed until my uncle reminded me that few people complain about hooking and landing a 15-pound fish. I got to thinking about it, and he was right. I took the fish home and filleted it, and grilled those large chunks of white meat and they were delicious. But one thing you will notice about a drum is that they do not have nearly as much meat on the body as you would think. A ten- pound walleye does give you a great deal more meat than a ten-pound drum. Sutton’s article made me realize that while a drum never will make me as happy as a fat crappie or a hefty walleye, no fisherman should ever look at one as a trash fish.

The August-September issue of our Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Journal will be ready in about a week, and it has some great stories besides Keith’s. Jim Spencer wrote a hilarious account of some of his past frogging trips, and we reprinted a humorous old article from back in the 1930’s about a city slicker hiring a fishing guide. You can read about dove-hunting, teal hunting, a fishing trip on the Gasconade river in late summer, and an account of the last passenger pigeon, Martha, which died in the Cincinnati zoo in September of 1914, almost 96 years ago. Colonel Calhoun Hedgerow wrote with much disdain and contempt about one of my favorite pastimes… noodling catfish. It may be his last column, as there ain’t a noodler in the country he can whip, or outrun!

You can order your copy from us at LROJ, Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613, for only 5 dollars, including the postage. You can see the cover soon on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com E-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net.

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Ground Pounders and Groundbait

With the expansion of match type fishing to American shore fishing, many of the techniques from Europe have been incorporated by our anglers. The use of groundbait is one of those innovations.

Match fishing in Europe is competitive fishing in which anglers have to stay within a short distance of a stake on the shoreline and fish for a specified length of time. The idea is to catch pounds of fish regardless of species. The total weight of the basket of fish determines the winner.

Groundbait is a specially-prepared mix of bread crumbs, flour, cornmeal, sugar, spice and other compounds that will cloud the water. The idea is to attract fish to a specific area and then get them into a feeding frenzy. The groundbait does not satisfy them. Into the clouded water, the angler drops a worm or maggot on a small hook. The result is a strike from the frustrated fish.

Since very light hooks, line and bait are used, the angler also needs a delicate balsa wood float or bobber. Cane poles are used in long lengths because they are very sensitive.

Sensitivity is necessary as often very small fish are caught. The small hooks are easily removed form all fish with no harm to them. Quick and efficient hook removal makes for more time for fishing.

Shore anglers have all but abandoned the large American bobber of years gone by. In its place has been substituted the euro-style balsawood floats and small American floats of similar style made of plastic or Styrofoam. These floats can detect a bite because they are so sensitive to light pressure. They come in a variety of sizes and shapes according to the situation in which they might be used.

A float used on a windy day is different from one used on a calm one. One used in a fast flowing river is different from one used in a pond or lake. Choosing the right float has become as important as choosing a bait.

The use of groundbait has found respectability. In the past “chummers” were looked at with disdain by many anglers. The basic difference is the chummer tended to use garbage baits while the groundbait used biologically sound formulas that do not pollute the water.

Use of maggots and other worm-like baits have been used in the past by panfishermen. But, now they are used by anglers in search of all sorts of different species.

Ground pounders have adopted the match fishing dip net with a long handle. The use of such long handle nets allow the angler using light line to land larger fish without breaking the line.

Shore anglers respect all species of fish and have adopted a respect for all fish having their place in the angling scene. That is an ethic that came over from Europe with the groundbait and match style fishing tackle.

                                                      DonGasaway - The Ground Pounder

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The Good Ol’ Days Continue…

Both of my sisters married Arkansas country boys, and I ended up with two of the finest brothers-in-law that I could have asked for. I don’t know if I could have done a better job of picking husbands for the two of them. One of the two became a highway patrolman. Billy Chadwick grew up at Witt Springs, Arkansas in the high mountains just to the north of the Buffalo River headwaters, some of the Ozarks prettiest country.

Just a couple of years or so younger than me, he began his work for the Missouri Highway Patrol in the Springfield area, and I lived in north Arkansas at the time. We fished and hunted together in both states, when he had days off. Back in the early days, we hunted wild turkeys when there weren’t nearly as many of them, and learned how to hunt them together in our early twenties.

He was always someone quick to laugh, to enjoy the humor of situations involving hunting and fishing. I played a lot of jokes on him back then. We were hunting in Texas County probably 25 years ago, and he killed a nice gobbler that had practically run from ridge to another. It was the most anxious gobbler I can remember. But it wasn’t killed; apparently it was just stunned. We were walking back to the pick-up with that gobbler across his shoulder and his yellow tag around it’s leg when it came alive, and started spurring him. Billy dropped the gobbler and it took off running as if it weren’t even hurt. Thankfully he still had a shell in his gun and he shot it running hard at 35 yards. I can still see that yellow tag flashing on that leg, and often wondered what some hunter might have thought if he called up that gobbler on some other day and found someone’s tag on it’s leg.

Of course I took the opportunity to really act angry, throwing my hat down and kicking a nearby stump. Billy was puzzled by why was I so upset? “If you would have let him go,” I said, “I could have called him back again!”

Once when he was a young trooper, I saw him along the side of highway 65 south of Ozark Missouri, with a violator sitting in his car. I pulled in behind him and walked up to his window, and he told me in a serious tone to just get in the back seat and wait for a minute. I climbed in and proceeded to tell him I had been speeding that morning and wanted to turn myself in. Still attentive to writing a warning ticket for that young man in the front seat, Billy never cracked a smile; he just told me he would take care of me when he finished. That kid in the front seat gave me a sideways glance that assured me he thought I was crazy. These many years later, I am sure he is still telling that story.

My dad recalls the time when Billy was a young patrolman and he came home to hunt ducks on the Big Piney. He and dad floated the river behind a blind on the old johnboat, jump-shooting ducks. A lone mallard came flying up the river at perfect range, and Billy shot twice and missed. As the mallard passed by, dad picked up his shotgun and fired twice, also failing to pull a feather. Dad recalls how Billy reloaded his shotgun, declaring in a very serious tone, “If that duck would have had a gun, he would have got both of us!”

I was looking back through all my photos recently to find pictures of Billy when he hunted and fished with me all over the Midwest. His hair was thick and brown then, but white now, perhaps because of the strain of a difficult job. Billy became a highway patrol Captain about ten or fifteen years ago for troop G, with headquarters in Willow Springs. During that time, four highway patrolmen were killed in his troop, and anyone could see what a toll that took on him.

This past week, he retired, and hopefully the hunting and fishing we did in our younger years can continue now that the awesome responsibility of that job has ended. We had some times…. and hopefully there are many more to come, and some more great photos. You’ll read about some of them in this column in years to come. Now it won’t hurt his reputation if folks learn that he married into that Dablemont bunch.

Billy Chadwick was an inspiration to me because of his ability to always stay calm and collected, and to think rationally in situations where I always was prone to lose my cool and let emotions and a quick temper cause me to do the wrong thing more often than not. While I was trying to teach him how to hunt and fish, I think I might have been the one who learned the most.

In Law Enforcement, as in any other field of professional people, there are some bad apples. In the Ozarks, it is difficult to find a police force or a sheriff’s department, where there aren’t people who shouldn’t be there. Corruption is easy to see around us, sometimes it is harder to see the men who are doing things right, because they have a low profile.

The reason that corruption in law enforcement is not a bigger problem than it is, is because of honest men who have the integrity to do what I right. Long before Billy, I knew men in highway patrol who were like that. He was another one like those, and there are more like him because of the influence he had. Thank God for men like that, who risk their life to help and protect innocent people, making the things we believe in work. Thank God for any man who says, “I will do what is right, regardless of the consequences”. Doing what is right is seldom doing what is easiest.

I mention that because this past month, the Missouri Department of Conservation paid out about a million dollars of our taxpayer money to a conservation agent who did the right thing, and reported another agent who was breaking the law. He was fired for doing it, and he sued the Department. His name was Kyle Carroll. The agent he reported, Roger Wolken had conducted and illegal search in an attempt to implicate someone and he is still working for the MDC, now promoted to a supervisor. What right is there in that?

Carroll could have been reinstated as a result of winning the lawsuit, but he chose to keep the present position he has as a state highway patrolman. Because of the MDC power, I doubt if one word of this will be seen on TV. or found in the pages of the large city newspapers. Is it newsworthy, nearly a million dollars we all paid because of several corrupt MDC employees?

I will write more about this next week, and try to give some facts you will not see anywhere else. I’ll give the exact figures, and the names of some of the other employees involved, three of whom have resigned.

My website is www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com and my e-mail address is lightninridge@windstream.com. Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613

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