The Big Girls are Dancing!!!

Dennis Whiteside, my long-time friend whom I have hunted and fished with since we our college days, sent me a message about ten days ago. It went on and on about how good the fishing was about to become, as he envisioned heavy-bodied, tail-walking bass trying to throw a top-water lure. Then he ended it with, “take my word for it, the big girls will dance this week.”

Some of us who fish with him had a good laugh out of it, accusing him of smoking some of those water weeds that grow along the river. But Dennis gets exuberant when conditions are right for great fishing, and he was right. He ought to know, he spends all of his time any more guiding fishermen on Ozark rivers in Missouri and Arkansas.

On the same day he had a pair of smallmouth fishermen wearing themselves out down in north Arkansas landing big smallmouth on buzz baits and surface poppers, Uncle Norten and I floated down the lower stretches of a Missouri stream. We were using topwater lures too. And I lost one of the best double-bladed buzz-baits I have, when a huge bass took it from the surface beneath a rock bluff in water that was 8 or 10 feet deep.

I don’t know for sure how big he was, but I saw him very well, and I thought I had him whipped. When you are using casting gear and fourteen-pound line, you don’t expect to have a bass break off, but I was too impatient, and when I got him next to my boat, he was just too close for my drag to work properly. He was a beauty, wide and green, maybe seven and a half pounds.

And maybe there was a nick in my line. Who knows… he took my buzz spin and splashed water in my face. It is a humiliating thing for a grizzled old veteran outdoorsman to endure.

A few minutes later Uncle Norten landed a bass better than five pounds, and I tied on another buzz-spin, this time a black one, with only one big blade. It was getting dark, and I told him we’d fish another fifteen minutes and go in. I was pretty doggone dejected.

Casting the opposite bank, where the water is shallower, and there were several big logs… I was thinking about how I never seem to land the big ones, and feeling sorry for myself. Suddenly there was a flash of white above a log, a commotion on the surface where my bladed bait was limping along, making bubble tracks on the surface, and it was gone.

You spend all your time fishing a topwater lure, looking for that strike from a big fish and it always seems to come when you least expect it, when you are thinking where you might ought to make your next cast. And right then, in the edge of the evening, while I was expecting it the least, one of the four biggest bass I have ever caught clobbered that buzz-spin with the ferocity of a wolf taking down a young deer. I knew there’d better not be a weak place in the line again, because I had to tighten the drag on my old Ambassadeur reel in order to get her out of those logs.

The old bass knew what to do, and I had to strain that rod hard to keep it from going down deep and hanging me up in that brushpile. When I got her out of that mess, there was open water between us, and she had no recourse but to try to throw the lure back at me by coming up out of the water on her tail. I wished Whiteside could have been there. Sure enough, “The big girl was dancing”.
You lose a lot of big bass when they come out of water and shake their head that way, well above the surface. When I saw that bass, my pulse jumped a little with her. I pulled her down as best I could and told my uncle that this time we’d use a net. And I tried to be patient, as she fought hard down deep, then came to the surface a second time.

The hook was solid in her lower jaw, and I was perhaps luckier than I was good. In the fading light, the picture wasn’t very clear, but we got one, as I lifted her high and marveled at that huge mouth and head. I think, that in the spring, when she would perhaps be better fed and full of eggs that bass would have maybe weighed nine pounds. She was 24 inches long, and that’s huge for an Ozark river. While she was not my biggest bass, she was the biggest I have ever taken on a topwater lure. Her tail was chopped off on top and shaped like a hooked bottle opener, her lower jaw jutted out too far, and she didn’t have much of a body, much too thin and long. That happens when a bass gets old. She was kind of an old lady, but she could still dance. Maybe next spring, she will still be there for another dance like the one last week. For sure, I will know her if I ever see her again.

I need a deer! If some of you bowhunters out there bag one toward the end of next week, we will process it for you free of charge. Joplin taxidermist Don Scott will put on a deer de-boning exhibitition at our Grizzled Old Outdoorsman’s Swapmeet on Saturday October 9, at 2 p.m. You’ll want to see this, if you are a deer hunter. Don will completely remove every bone in the carcass, and leave a complete, de-boned deer hanging, with all the meat intact and ready to be cut up and frozen, with no bones! It is hard to believe, but he swears he will do it, and teach you how to do it too.

Our swap meet, at the Brighton Assembly of God Church Gymnasium, 17 miles north of Springfield, just off Highway 13, will have about 50 tables filled with the following items… Old and new fishing equipment, lots of antique lures, antique guns, antique outdoor magazines and several antique outboard motors. There will be all kinds of artwork, woodcarvings and wooden gifts, canned goods, unique outdoor gifts, some boats and motors and much much more. If you want to reserve a table, or just bring a few items of your own to sell, you need to call me, or contact me somehow. We’ll open at 9 a.m. and stay until at least 3 p.m. It is free to the public. We still have about 10 tables available.

I will be there with all my books, signing them for readers of this column, and the proceeds from those book sales will go to buy coats and shoes for needy Ozark school kids this winter. I hope to meet many of you. The church will have a big dinner at mid-day for all who attend. And we want to recognize all the World War II veterans who attend. See my website for a map and more details about that day… www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com or call me at 417 777 5227. My e-mail address is lightninridge@windstream.net, mailing address is Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613.