Outdoorsmanism… and how to teach it!

Alex is seven years old, and Ryan is nine. They are my grandsons, and that’s about all they have in common that I can see. The older boy has blonde curls, the younger one is a red-head, making me think they might share the genetics of the Scotch-Irish side of my family, from which my mother descends. But they get along fairly well, and none of my mother’s family ever did if I remember right.

I sometimes think I need to teach them about the outdoors, how to hunt and fish, track Indians and skin grizzlies. But truthfully, I don’t know where to start. Both boys are still fairly small, and sheltered to a point that they never have fallen out of a tree, or been bitten by a pet coon. I don’t even think they ever got real good and muddy. Their mother, who is my daughter, is the reason for that. Even as a little girl, she spent all her time studying, and eventually she became a doctor. And while she can tell you all about ameeba’s and hydrofilectic shock and auto-immune therapy, she hasn’t got the slightest idea how to tell a twelve-gauge from a twenty-two. She wouldn’t know a persimmon from a possum grape! Knowing that, I feel it is my duty to try to guide those little grandsons of mine toward the path of outdoorsmanism.

So I snuck them away from home just this past weekend by telling her we were going to pick up walnuts. It wasn’t a lie… we did for awhile. We must have filled up a whole five-gallon bucket! And then I brought out the .22 rifle for a little target practice. It scared Alex half to death and Ryan, biting his fingernails, asked if he could go play on the computer.  I gave them the old talk about how any Dablemont worth his salt had kilt his first squirrel before he was ten years old, and how if a man meant to be self-sufficient he had to know how to bring home his own supper, just in case some day the world is taken over by left-wing liberals, hamburger soars to 20 dollars a pound, and McDonalds doesn’t have anything but a vegetarian menu.

We made a target out of a cardboard box by drawing a squirrel on it. I made the squirrel look a little too realistic, so they both felt sorry for the squirrel. They preferred to shoot at a bullseye target so I drew one of those too. And then we talked about safety, and how a .22 rifle works and how there is no recoil. Recoil is what had Alex worried. That little boy has watched way to dam-much TV! Then he wanted ear-plugs, because his mama had already told him about how loud noises can cause hearing loss. I said “heck Alex, this ain’t no darned artillery range!” And then he puckered up and so I went in and found a couple of pairs of old ear plugs.

“Do you want to shoot first Ryan?” I asked.

“HUH”? he said. 

“Take those darned earplugs out until we get ready to shoot.” I said.  They both looked at me and said “HUH?” in unison.

To make a long story short, they are both too short-armed to hold my Ruger .22 properly, and they missed the target badly. Alex ran down to look at where he hit, and started to cry when he couldn’t find a hole anywhere in that 3-foot by 3-foot box. His grandmother came out and made me quit yelling at him, and held him on her lap and tried to explain that even grandpa had missed when he was a little boy. (Frankly I don’t remember missing anything quite that badly.)

So I went down to rearrange the box against the stump and put a hole in the bullseye with the point of a bullet I had in my pocket, and we let Alex shoot again. He missed most of the back yard, but that hole he found in the target made him happy. He thought he done it. Ryan did a little better, he hit the box twice, not more than two feet from the bullseye. Then I showed them a little bit about form… how you bend forward at the waist, you close one eye, you hold the stock firmly against the shoulder and squeeze the trigger gently. I drilled that squirrel right in the eye I had drawn in with a black magic marker, and Alex cried again because I hit the squirrel.

I got out a little Stevens-Marksman rifle I own, a tiny little .22 made a hundred and five years ago. It is a very small and light hammer-gun, and it fit them better. Both boys shot it and missed the target a lot less than before. Alex didn’t cry this time, and so as a reward we went out under a big white oak to pretend we were hunting squirrels and see how we would go about doing it when we did actually go squirrel hunting. We took the rifle, unloaded. Alex sat there peering into the branches and got all excited when he thought he saw one.

So sometime this fall, we are going to go hunt squirrels. The boys won’t shoot of course. They’ll tag along, and I will kill a squirrel and show them how to skin and clean one, and I am sure Alex will cry again. But he has to learn that squirrels are not pets and they are evil and must be eaten or they will eat little bird’s eggs in the spring and we won’t have any bluebirds and goldfinches or cardinals.

Then eventually, as they grow older, I will have to teach him that rabbits and turkeys are evil too. But that is a long way down the line. The way my daughter is raising these two little boys, they may not shoot their first deer until they are 40. Then and only then, can I brag about how good I taught ‘em.

Please make plans to join me down at Bull Shoals Dam on Saturday, October 22. I will be there finishing a pair of wooden johnboats, giving away magazines and signing and selling my books. And there will be swap-meet folks joining me with hand-made fishing lures, hand-made turkey calls, hand-made fishing rods, antique outboard motors, old outdoor magazines, and all sorts of outdoor stuff of interest, probably 20 or so tables filled with outdoor items, many of them antiques.

We are doing this in conjunction with an annual event the Arkansas State Parks people put on called a Dutch Oven Cook-Off, in which a number of folks are cooking all sorts of things in Dutch ovens. You can sample the cooking, and learn how to do it yourself. It will all take place on the east end of Bull Shoals lake, at a big park pavilion nestled in huge oak trees overlooking Bull Shoals Lake. On the west end of the dam, there is a huge visitor center you will want to see, and I have been telling folks that since it will be right in the middle of the brightest of the fall colors, you ought to think about staying a couple of days and seeing everything in the area. Bull Shoals is back to normal, and there’s good fishing to be found there. Below the dam, the White River is full of rainbow trout, and you might think of hiring a guide for a half-day to take you trout fishing.

But I recommend that you get down into the National Forest south of Mountain Home, and see that country where Sylamore Creek flows, where Blanchard Springs Caverns are found. Take a tour of those caverns… spectacular! You might even want to go see the Buffalo River if you have never been there, float it if you have an extra day. Anyhow, come by and visit with us on October 22, and enjoy yourself at this big cook off and swap meet and johnboat building. I have hundreds of old outdoor magazines of all types I will be giving away that day to whomever wants them. The State Park number is 870-445-3629 if you need more info.

My website is www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com. E-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net, or write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo.65613

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Defective Dove Hunting

Dennis Whiteside shows the big bass he caught on on his birthday, before releasing it.

 Three doves winged in over the sunflower field where Rich and I were hidden amongst the stalks. I fired twice and they just kept going. At that time I had shot 8 shells without dropping a bird.

“Looks like I would get lucky just once,” I muttered.

“Maybe your best chance would be a dove that is just UN-lucky…” Rich thought to himself. I knew what he was thinking. He didn’t have to say it!

For one thing, those 20-gauge shells were bought on sale about ten years ago. Old shells lose their power. I am sure of that, though it hasn’t been proven. And for another thing, I had a defective shotgun.

My old friend Rich Abdoler had owned it since his boyhood, one of two model-50 Winchester automatics, and he knew I wanted one of those badly, so he sold me the one he least wanted. I figure he knew something about the guns inability to shoot straight, and took advantage of me. I am thinking about legal action, partly because the shotgun has a bound up poly-choke, one of those bulging chokes on the end of the barrel that you twist to adjust, from open to fully choked. It was stuck on full choke that evening, and the last thing you want while hunting doves is a full-choke barrel, and you couldn’t adjust it with a four-foot pipe wrench.

So you can understand why, by the time the evening was over, a top-flight experienced shotgunner like me had only killed two doves with 12 or 14 shells.

And honestly, one time I killed ten doves with ten shells, a long time ago when I was younger and not under so much pressure and had a really good shotgun.

So you shouldn’t be thinking I am just a lousy shot.

    I did have a pretty good dove dinner, if there is such a thing. Rich killed 8 doves that evening and gave me his. He was using a twelve gauge, because he was out of twenty gauge shells, having shot all he had the evening before at that very spot, taking a limit before sunset. So the doves I shot at were extremely wary, unlike the easy ones he had found the day before.

    I may never shoot that poorly again, and I doubt that I ever have before, and while it is extremely embarrassing for a grizzled old outdoorsman like me to admit to such an evening, you can see how journalistic integrity would compel me to report the bad outings with the good. I have always felt that honesty is the best policy when there is a witness.
  
You see some strange things when you are outdoors. That evening Rich and I watched three different doves light on standing sunflower stalks and peck away at the seed heads. Neither of us had ever seen that before. Doves are not known to perch and feed, as other birds do. They are ground feeders, and you have to have grain on the ground in fairly open areas to attract them. We saw three of them break the rules. But then again, I have spent enough time outdoors to not be surprised at anything I see. You can never say ‘never’ or ‘always’ about wild creatures.

Wildlife that doesn’t adapt at all seems to have trouble surviving in the changing outdoorsmen have created.

    My friend Rich Abdoler has been a Corps of Engineers Ranger on Truman Lake for many, many years, and he says this year there were seven fatalities on the lake. One of them was a man who died in an ATV accident. He says that the biggest resource problem they have on the 115,000 acres of public land around the lake relates to the illegal use of ATV’s, and the erosion and disturbance it creates. Men are becoming too lazy and overweight to walk, and ATV’s are the answer for a modern-day generation that wants to enjoy the outdoors without any effort. But you are nothing close to a hunter or an outdoorsman if you spend your time in the woods on the seat a motorized vehicle. Every year, there are thousands of people who die or are seriously injured on ATV’s. And you can never really see the woods as it is on one of those. But then again, there is a difference in being a hunter and a shooter. Today’s generation is losing track of the difference.

On that 108-degree day we had back in the early part of August, I floated the river with writer Jim Spencer and his wife Jill Easton. I wrote about that trip and mentioned that a very large bass had made a pass at my buzz-bait that day right near my boat. The bass was close, and I saw his tail as he rolled across the surface. So as it happens, I was on the river last week with my good friend Dennis Whiteside, paddling him down the river on his birthday. When we neared that spot, I told him about the big bass I had missed and eased him to within casting distance of that spot, where some big snags and a log rested in deep shaded water. I’ll be darn if he didn’t cast a white buzz-spin in to the exact spot and that big bass nailed it. He fought him awhile and landed him, we took photos of it and released it. It was a real beauty, and I will never pass that spot again without fishing it well. That big bass will get even bigger! You can see a picture of it on my website, that address given at the end of my column.

On Friday and Saturday afternoon, September 23 and 24, Sondra Matlock Gray and I will be at the Hammons Walnut Festival at Stockton Missouri handing out free copies of the outdoor magazine we produce. It is quite an event; if you have never been there you should come and see it. Then our big outdoorsman’s swap meet will be on October 22, at Bull Shoals State Park in north Arkansas, and it is in conjunction with an annual event they have known as the Dutch Oven Cooking Competition. Last year we drew about 1500 people to our swap meet, but they expect 2000 people to come to that Dutch Oven meeting, so we may have a big crowd. If you have outdoor items or gear to sell, you should attend this as a “vendor”. You can reserve space close to where I will be building my wooden johnboat, just by contacting Tabitha Stockdale at the Bull Shoals Visitor Center, phone 870-445-3629. Or you can e-mail her at tabitha.stockdale@arkansas.gov. Do that early so that all the spaces won’t be reserved already.

    If you want more information, you can write me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613 or e-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net. You can see recent photos from our Canada trip, or that big bass from last week’s trip, on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors. blogspot.com





  

  

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High Heat and Tall Tales

Jim Spencer shows off an excellent smallmouth! Photo by Jill Easton

Summer rivers often require pulling a canoe. Photo by Jill Easton

The heat didn’t ruin the beauty of the river in summer, and if you tried to stay in the shade, it wasn’t so bad. About mid-afternoon, it was 108 degrees, and I’m sure I have never been on the water fishing anywhere when it was that hot.

The fish weren’t tearing it up. I think most of them were reacting to the effect of warming water, and perhaps seeking deeper places to stay cool, wishing they had a cold watermelon! Fish love cold watermelon on a hot day.

Nonetheless, Jim was casting a small spinner-type lure he normally uses for trout, and he hooked into two or three hard-fighting smallmouth which were getting up close to two pounds. He’d land the fish, then release them quickly so they wouldn’t die of heat stroke.

Every now and then we’d beach my 19-foot square-sterned canoe on a gravel bar where there was a nice, cool, deep current and a chance to catch a fish, and we would wade out up to our armpits and cast to the other side. It didn’t work, for some reason; maybe the fish could smell us. In heat like that you sweat a lot, even in the water. I think maybe, in that river, we had an easier time of it that day than other folks in the Ozarks.

As I mentioned in my last column, outdoor writer and book author Jim Spencer and his wife Jill Easton, also an outdoor writer, spent a couple of days at my place last week when the heat was so awful. They were on their way to a trapper’s convention, as Jim still traps on the lower White River and has written a book on trapping.

When outdoor writers get together, they get outdoors somehow, so we went to the river and fished. The Niangua is one of my favorite rivers, though certain sections of it have been ruined by canoe rental companies who just pack it with people, and the refuse and waste that comes with great numbers of people, a number of them with drugs or too much alcohol. But there are places on this great smallmouth stream where the chaos and capsize crowd doesn’t go. That’s where I go. Only a few years ago, the biggest smallmouth I ever caught in an Ozark river, came from the place we fished last week.

I told Jim and Jill the story about that big fish, which I released, and showed them where I figured he still lives. When two outdoor writers are together, one can’t tell a fishing story the other doesn’t try to top. Jim held up that little brown hairy jig with a spinner on it and said, “See that lure? I caught a trout down on the White River not far from my house that would likely be able to eat any smallmouth in this river in one gulp.”

I listened, and though I hate to admit it, I think the story was probably true. Jim said it was a brown trout, and he figured it was a little better than 30 pounds. He was fishing with light action spinning gear and four pound line, after the stocking-sized rainbows that go 14 or 15 inches and rarely larger. The monster brown lay in deep water, and took the little spinner when it passed too close. Spencer was by himself, with a small net, and he kept the fish on for an hour.

“There was four different times I had that big trout up beside the boat, wallerin’ on top of my net, and all four times the net was too small to get him into it. The fourth time he gave a surge and the line broke. All I would have needed to land him was a big net, but who carries a net that big… who expects to ever catch a fish like that?

Big brown trout lurk in the White River, where they spawn in the middle of winter. There are a number of them in the fifteen- to twenty-pound class, and who knows how many that are larger. The biggest landed so far was 39 pounds.

About that time, Jill hooked a scrappy bluegill and hoisted it in. On those small spinners they were catching bluegill and green sunfish right and left, some big enough to put on a platter and make a nice fish fry.

On shallow places below the shoals, where you could see the gravel two or three feet below us, there were dozens and dozens of big black fish, slowly, slowly moving upstream. You could have gigged a hundred of them during the day, drum from two to eight pounds. I have never seen so many drum. Since they sometimes hit small lures, I am surprised we didn’t catch one or two. If you could have drifted a nightcrawler down along those gravel shoals and held it there awhile, I think you could have caught several.

But drum are not prized. The meat is white, and good, but the fish has such a large spine and rib cage that you have to have a big one just to get a filet of any significance. Nevertheless, no one complains about the fight they put up, as they are real scrappers. Before the day was over, we must have seen several hundred of them, a sight I never witnessed before.

We paddled upstream for hours, a couple of miles or better, than turned and headed back, well into the afternoon. I kept using a big buzz-bait, sure that I would hook a hefty bass that Jill could get a good picture of. Just before we reached my pickup, along a deep quiet bank with lots of logs, a monstrous largemouth bass followed the topwater lure and boiled at it right beside the boat. My jaw fell open as I saw his broad side and tail sweep across the surface. I am not exaggerating when I say he would have weighed seven or eight pounds.

Jim heard the eruption of water and turned to see the commotion on the surface beside the boat. “How big was that one?” he asked.

I just told him it was way too big to get in the net! But at least he didn’t break my line.

Last winter in early January, a friend and I floated an Ozark river hunting ducks when it was eight degrees at dawn. All day long the temperature never rose above twelve or fifteen. I have floated the rivers for years and years and years, beginning when I was just a small boy. In all that time, I never floated when it was that cold or when it was as hot as it was last week. But when it is hot, it is easy to cope with. You just get in the water, and stay wet all day. In that extreme cold, you are in real danger. With hip boots and heavy clothing, you are so bundled up you might not get out if you went in. Hypothermia is a killer that comes on you when you don’t know it is there. But what a day it was for duck hunting, mallards were everywhere. The only trouble is, I was so cold I couldn’t shoot worth a darn.

In 108 degrees, it is easy to cast, easy to paddle and easy to swim. Still, I think I will be happy when the cooling weather makes the fish hungry. In October and November, April and May, I won’t complain about a thing. If I should, somebody remind me about what July and early August was like. At my age, I might forget.

Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613 and e-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net.

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Observations From My porch

How to spend a very hot day and never complain about the temperature.

I sat on my screened porch this morning early, when it was at least as cool as it is going to get. A squirrel made a hole in the screen last winter, coming in to get at a bag of birdseed I had setting on a table. And a raccoon made a bigger hole last summer so he could get into a bag of corn cobs leftover from roastin’ ears I should have thrown out in the back lawn. So I am going to have to fix some places, when it cools down. I said that in February too… “I am going to fix that screen when spring gets here.”

As I get older, a lot more things go undone. You know what the problem is? When it is too hot, you can’t work, and when it is too cold, you can’t work! When it is just right, you remember how hot it was or how cold it was, and you take that time to go hunting or fishing rather than work, knowing those perfect days for hunting and fishing are all too few. That’s the way it ought to be. What harm does a hole or two in the screened porch do? If I just leave the screen door open, the coon won’t make the hole any bigger, he’ll use the door. And why worry about constantly mowing. My back lawn has a lot of wildflowers in it most all summer if I don’t mow, and there are baby rabbits in there, and more food for the birds if I don’t mess with it.

If you mow all the time, you have nothing but grass. If you don’t, there is variety and diversity, more wildlife and more birds. Dozens of species of birds live in the trees and shrubs behind my screened porch. One I saw this week was an indigo bunting and his mate. The female is very drab, but that male is a bright metallic blue, a tiny little guy whose color makes him stand out. I seldom see the bigger rain crows, also known as yellow-billed cuckoos. They are shy, and hard to see, because they actually see you and hide behind large branches. Their call is loud and raucous, a diminishing cluck, cluck, cluck, which old timers said would foretell the coming of a rain. Every morning and evening I hear them, and true to the legend, a rain always comes….within a couple of months. It happens every time I hear them.

Rain crows have had a feast this summer because they are one of the very few birds that will eat fuzzy, hairy caterpillars, and a huge crop of walnut caterpillars descended upon us in June. They stripped the leaves from walnuts and hickories and pecans, and some of the big trees in my lawn are nearly leafless. It won’t kill them unless it happens a couple of years in a row, and then it might. But nature doesn’t work that way usually, as things of mass destruction and aggravation, like those darned noisy cicadas, usually come in cycles. The numbers of walnut caterpillars across the Ozarks this year were unbelievable. They are gone now only because they changed into little brown moths with rusty-red colored collars, a little better than an inch long, and for the past week you could see them by the millions beneath lights at convenience stores. They have short lives; they just lay eggs under leaves and then die.

Sitting on my porch, I notice leaves on redbud and mulberry trees turning yellow, probably as a result of dry weather and heat. I watched a few yellow leaves drift down off the mulberry tree, giving just a little hint of the coming of fall, now only a few weeks away. Another hint is the maturing acorns on the branches of a giant white oak tree that grows nearby to shade my porch. That’s good news; we need a good white oak acorn crop for wildlife species of all kinds.

The heat is awful, and I suspect I should keep an eye on my pond, which I made years ago on this high ridge to give water to wildlife, a home for some fish and bullfrogs, and a cooling relief for my Labradors. As the water drops, the mud around it is an indication of all the visitors; raccoons and skunks, a fox and a bobcat, and several turkeys and deer. Because of the dry hot summer, we will see some deer dying in the Ozarks due to blue-tongue… also known as epizootic hemorrhagic disease. Deer which die from that awful affliction come to water to die, more of them in August and early September. Some years are worse than others, and I think this year will be one of those.

I still don’t know what the wild turkey hatch is going to be in this area. I haven’t seen many poults, but late-hatching turkeys are hard to see until late summer and early fall. The quail seem to be non-existent this summer, up here on Lightnin’ Ridge. In past summers, as I sat on my porch early in the morning and late in the evening, I have heard four or five bobwhite roosters whistling. This summer I have heard only one, and I heard him only one morning. What a shame that this Ozarks country will have fewer and fewer quail, until someday, I think we will have none at all.
Tomorrow, early in the morning, I will be on the river. An old friend of mine, outdoor writer Jim Spencer, will be here to visit, and we are going to float the Nianqua River and catch some bass on topwater lures. Another old friend, river guide Dennis Whiteside, reports that bass are clobbering the buzz-baits we love to use, if you know the water to fish. You have to seek out shady, deeper water with a little current to catch bass, but from now into September, buzz-bait fishing should be excellent for those who know what they are doing.

Jim Spencer and I began writing about the outdoors when we were just kids, back in the sixties. Looking through old magazines a few weeks back, I found an article he had written when he was 14 years old for Harding’s magazine, now known as Fur, Fish and Game. It was a trapping article, and he was paid for it.

Like me, Jim has always lived in the woods, his home now is at the edge of the national forest down in Arkansas, off in the middle of nowhere. We both obtained wildlife management degrees the same year, mine from Missouri University, his from Louisiana State University. About the same time, we began writing for Outdoor Life and Field and Stream magazines.

Not long ago, I found a book produced years back entitled, “The Best of Outdoor Life… the Greatest Hunting, Fishing and Survival Stories from America’s Favorite Sportsman’s Magazine.” In it were articles Jim and I wrote in the early 1970’s, and with our stories were others written by Zane Grey, Jack O’Conner, Archibald Rutledge and a list of famous writers who were old men when we were born, or long since gone. It made me realize that we are the last of a dying breed.

I don’t think the world will miss us when we are gone. That’s why we are going fishing tomorrow, with Zane Grey and Archibald Rutledge and Isaac Walton. It is going to be a great deal cooler, standing out in that current under a shade tree, than it is on my porch. If anyone needs us just… well, heck, nobody ever has needed us. I keep forgetting that!

My mailing address is Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613. See www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com
Posted by Sondra Gray at 8/01/2011

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The Little Jones Boy

The two little boys were only 7 years old. Cousins, they had spent a day at their grandparent’s place in the country, and had wandered off down to the river, where they were forbidden to go. Their mothers had been distraught, threatening to never let them visit their grandparents again. Both had received a spanking, and they were pouting about the harsh discipline meted out. After all, their fathers had been there fishing only the week before, and the river sounded like great fun.

That evening they were sitting on the porch with their grandpa, and he was sympathetic. “Nothing seems fair when you’re seven years old,” he said, “and subject to the whims of cruel mothers set on keeping you from having fun.”

He had their full attention that warm summer night, as the sun began to set and they were all three enjoying a glass of lemonade Grandma had brought them. “I reckon it’s all because of that little Jones boy, years back, that they is so doggone mean to you two,” he said, “but I reckon we can’t speak of that, it's too awful to remember and I promised I wouldn’t tell you little guys that story. It was a bad, bad thing…best forgotten and too bad to talk of.”

It wasn’t quiet long. The two wanted to know who the little Jones boy was. Grandpa could tell that much, he reckoned. “Cute little guy… lived down the road apiece, but mean as a pet Billy goat. Course I can’t say anymore about him, cause nobody talks about it nowadays… reckon he’d be nigh onto a growed man now if he’d just not been so determined not to mind his ma.”

“Was that a whippoorwill I heard,” the old man took out his pipe, and seemed to want to change the subject. The two little boys wouldn’t hear of it. “Tell us about the little Jones boy,” they said, nearly in unison.

“No, no, boys,” the grandpa shook his head as he filled the bowl of his pipe. “It’s a story you don’t want to hear and yore mothers would skin me alive if I told you about that little Jones boy and the awful thing what happened to him.”

With an interest heightened by his hesitancy, the two begged him to tell them the story. “Please grandpa,” said one, “we won’t tell nobody.”

As the urging continued, the old man lit his pipe in the fading light of evening, swatted a fly with his fly swatter, and gave in. “Well, all right, I’ll tell you, but you’ve got to always keep this a secret between the three of us. Cause I may be the only man what knowed what happened to that little Jones boy.”

The old man sent a puff of sweet-smelling pipe tobacco smoke into the air, and took a deep breath, the two little boys’ attention riveted on him. “I reckon I was just a young man back then, when the little Jones boy up and disappeared. He was bad to just ignore his grandma and his ma, and folks thought for a while he just wandered off into the woods and might wander on back when he got good and hungry. Some folks said maybe he went off down to the river and got drowned or ate by a giant alligator snappin’ turtle or something, but his ma had told him never to go to the river, and she said he was sure to stay away from there, bein’ the kind of good kid he was.”

He drew a puff from his tobacco, noting he had the two boys in undivided awe; their mouths open with anxiety. “Only I never did figger he was a good kid. Mean as a snake, I’d say, bad to lie and sneak off, not mind his ma and kick old dogs and throw rocks at the chickens and that kind of thing.”

The old man continued as dusk settled and the sun left a blood red sky to the west, “So as I remember, that’s when I went down and set me a trotline for catfish in that big deep scary hole of water down there where you boys was just a couple days ago. And I baited it with big old worms and some shade peerch I had caught from the creek.”

With his two grandsons sitting on the wooden floor of the old porch before him, the old man shifted in his rocking chair and put his foot up beneath him, the way that old-timers do. The boys were totally enthralled with the forbidden story.

“Well sir, I tell ya,” the old man puffed on his pipe and listened as a screech owl wailed from the woods across the gravel road before the old farmhouse. “When I went back in the middle of the night, dark and scary as it was, I figgered I’d have me a big ol’ catfish. But I went out there in my ol’ boat and that line was hung up down deep on the bottom pulled back in under a big rock bluff.”

The screech owl wailed again, and the western sky began to dim as the old man continued. “I couldn’t pull that line up at all, so I just strips off my overalls and my boots, and I grabs my flashlight, and I dives into that clear deep river to see if I can unhang that hung-up trotline.”

Dramatically, he took his pipe out of his mouth and shook his head. “Don’t know if I should tell the rest of it,” he said quietly, looking at the floor beneath his rocking chair in mock anguish. The boys, beside themselves with excitement, urged him to continue the story, as they were now on their feet beside the rocking chair, hair standing up on the backs of their necks as the screech owl gave forth its eerie cry again.

“Well boys, you got to remember that its natures way to rid the world of the weak and the stupid,” he said, “when a kid won’t obey his mother, its like a little duck that gets off away from his brood and gets ate up by a big ol’ bass or a fawn that won’t stay hid, and gets ate up by a wolf…”

The little boys knew something awful must be coming. “Go on Grandpa,” one urged.

“Well I swum down into the deep dark water with my flashlight, an’ there he was, a humongous ol’ catfish the size of a full growed Hereford bull. A good axe-han’les distance it was between them beady little horrible eyes…”

Well boys I hates to tell it, I hates to remember it, but there ain’t no way to forget what I saw… there sticking out of his big ol' ugly mouth, full of jagged old teeth…”

The old man’s voice was just a whisper now, as he glanced over his shoulder as if afraid of what might be behind him… “Stickin’ out of his big ol’ ugly mouth was that little Jones boys leg!”

Years later when the two boys were much older, their mothers commented on how they never went near the river again when they were small. Sometimes it takes a grandpa to help raise little boys.

You can see this grandpa’s website at www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com or write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613. The e-mail address is lightninridge@windstream.net

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The Rescue

Larry Dablemont paddles the first official "float" of the new johnboat

Last November, I drifted slowly down a river in my johnboat, with a blind attached to the bow; limbs of sycamore and oak to hide me and the boat as I floated down the river. It was getting cold. I figured there would be mallards on the river, but there weren’t many.

As I looked downriver, trying to make out the movement of a flock of ducks, three wood ducks flushed from some brush alongside me, only twenty or so yards away. I dropped my paddle and picked up my shotgun in time to drop the last one of the three. A beautiful drake wood duck in front got clean away, but the other two were hens, and the last one folded cleanly and fell to the river downstream from me.

That night, I admired what a beautiful creature she was, and cleaned her, cutting out the two sides of meat lying to each side of the breastbone. The meat was dark, and red. I soaked it in milk overnight, and the next evening I cross-cut the two breasts into a total of 8 little steaks about an inch and a half wide, wrapped each in a small piece of bacon, sprinkled some special seasoning and garlic on them, and put them on a wooden skewer, with a slice of onion and green pepper between each piece of meat. In about fifteen minutes over a hot flaming grill, the meat was cooked, and it was delicious.

If you are a vegetarian, that is fine with me, but I am not. I like wild game, and I would not hunt anything unless I prepared the meat and ate it. That makes me a predator. You would think I would sympathize with other predators.

That brings me to only a few days ago, when I drove a couple of miles down the road that takes me from this wooded ridgetop where I live, and started to pull out on a two-lane highway, just beside a bridge over the river. As I stopped there, I saw another wood duck hen fly along before me, only a few feet from my hood, and right above her was a sharp-shinned hawk, death on wings.

The hawk nailed the woodie in flight, and drove her to the highway shoulder pinning her with its talons, and trying to rip away her neck with its sharp curved beak. I just stopped my pickup in the middle of the highway, jumped out and ran toward the scene of the crime, and rescued the squealing wood duck by threatening to make a football out of the hawk. It tried to carry the hen away, but he wasn’t quite as heavy as she was, and the hawk couldn’t get airborne.

Freed from the iron grasp, the hen waddled out into the highway as if stunned, the feathers on her back askew, her mouth open, squawking as only a hen wood duck does, a sound like no other on marshes or rivers. There had been no traffic, but I looked up to see a couple of oncoming vehicles now stopped, drivers frowning, not understanding the urgency of the situation. I got back in my pickup and the hen took to flight over the bridge, and was nailed again by the hawk. The feathers flew from her back when he hit her and knocked her to the bridge-top pavement.

What could I do? I jumped out again, screaming threats at the hawk, and the wounded wood duck dived over the side toward the river as the hawk retreated. I don’t know what happened to her, but I gave her a chance. Drivers in both lanes now were stopped, yelling something out their windows, hopefully directed toward that villainous hawk. If they were talking to me, I hope they are ashamed of themselves. After all no one should be in such a hurry so early in the morning, and patience is a virtue!

Reflecting on it later, I felt bad about what I did. Not so much about stopping traffic, but for not realizing the hawk had more right to take a wood duck for a meal than I do, because he was merely being what God created him to be. It isn’t his fault that he looks wicked and mean. Actually, I too have sharp toenails and little beady eyes. Certainly his plumage makes him more beautiful than I, and his graceful, swift and powerful flight is spectacular. When I am chasing rabbits out of my garden, there ain’t nothin' swift or graceful about it.

If the hawk had shot the wood duck with a shotgun, and cleaned her and cooked the meat, I would have less of a problem watching it. But the attack of the sharp-shinned hawk is swift, savage and heartless. In his talons, the duck would not die quickly; she would be partly eaten before her heart stopped beating. Maybe it is that part of it which makes it hard to watch, difficult for us to accept. Nature is perfect in its functions, but brutal at times.

I am a naturalist, trained and existing that way since boyhood, and I know what happens in the woods because I have always lived there and worked there. It doesn’t bother me to watch a hawk kill a rat, because I don’t care much for rats. I can hardly stand to see a little fawn or a baby rabbit killed and eaten by anything, even though I know the great Creator made it to be that way, and I need to accept it.

In the reality of it, there is nothing more brutal or savage than man. Man has this little streak of evil that wild creatures do not have. He is destructive, gluttonous and barbaric at times, and yet in most all of us, there is a ton of goodness, and compassion and sympathy. I see my friends and neighbors showing love and generosity constantly, and find it more often than not in complete strangers. But men are not part of nature any more. Neither am I. That poor hawk may have gone hungry that day, when God meant him to eat, to serve his purpose in nature thinning out the weak and sick, feeding his youngsters just as we must feed ours.

But if you were in one of those vehicles behind me, He meant for you to be a little more patient when somebody is trying to save a wood duck!!

What a great day we had at Bull Shoals State Park in north Arkansas, last Saturday, building an old time White River johnboat. A big crowd turned out and it was fun. We took the boat down to the lake and gave folks a boat ride and it didn’t leak a drop. Now we don’t know what to do with it. If you know someone in need of a 20-foot wooden johnboat like they made almost a hundred years ago, contact me. And you can see photos of the event, and the finished boat, on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com

My publishing company has a facebook page now. You can find it under Lightnin’ Ridge, if you know the way to do that facebook stuff. The ladies who work for me, Sondra and Dorothy and Diane, take care of facebook and websites and computer stuff. I am a grizzled old veteran outdoorsman, and I ain’t never gonna get involved in such technical, modern nonsense. There’s fish to catch, rivers to float, wilderness to explore and computers are evil, to my way of thinking… like them darned hawks.
Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613. Or e-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net. E-mails aren’t evil, I don’t suppose.

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Hot Summer, Cool Stream

If you have the ambition to get away from the air conditioning and get your body acclimated to summer, find an isolated section of river where canoe rental people do not operate, and plan a two- or three-day trip in the middle of the week with a friend who is inclined not to complain much about sleeping in a tent and having wet feet.

By doing so, you can actually get off away from the world’s problems. Float downstream and find a gravel bar or sand bar to camp on, where there is some shade of course. In the cool of the evening, find a deep shoal and wade out up to your waist above it or below it and cast a topwater minnow or a little popper of some kind with a spincasting outfit or maybe even a fly-rod. There will be bass waiting to jump all over that lure, I’ve seen it happen! When it gets dark, push your boat or canoe out into a big eddy fed by that river current, where there’s some deep water and rocks, and fish without lights, letting your eyes become accustom to the night. Cast a jitterbug toward the bank with a casting reel and a stronger line, and work it steadily across the surface.

If there’s a big bass anywhere close, he will jump all over that jitterbug. This time of year, the rock bank towards the upper end of the eddy where the current feeds it will hold the smallmouth, but the lower sections of a big deep hole, on the opposite bank where there might be logs and limbs, are where you will find river largemouth, and they can’t pass up a jitterbug either.

If the eddy is good and deep and has a bluff, chances are there’s a big flathead catfish, or several, maybe up to 25 or 35 pounds. I have caught a few catfish from small Ozark rivers that exceeded 40 pounds. Flatheads can be caught on trotlines set deep, across the eddy and baited with LIVE bait, like chubs or sunfish, or even small suckers. There are channel catfish in many streams too, and they will take nightcrawlers or dead bait, even chicken livers. It takes a lot of work to set and bait a trotline, and it involves some danger, as you can get entangled or hooked and pulled under by a weighted line. Have two sheathed knives on your belt to cut yourself free if you need to. If you set trotlines and run them in that deep water, DO NOT DO IT FROM A SMALL CANOE, USE ONLY A VERY STABLE CRAFT. I would never ever trotline from a seventeen-foot double end canoe! Actually, I wouldn’t even float the river in one.

I know it is hot, but I am tired of staying inside. I have fishing to do, and I have missed it. I don’t know that it was as hot when I was a youngster, fishing up and down the Big Piney River in July and August. There was no reason to hole up in the house, because we didn’t have air conditioning, and maybe everyone could stand the heat better because of that fact. What man has done to make life easier for himself has gone a long way toward destroying himself. Just think about that, there are so many areas where we have created monsters… not knowing it at the time. Maybe computers and televisions and some medicines fall into that category. I think everyone sees what alcohol and drugs have done.

Maybe air conditioning has us in a destructive grip as much as anything else. None of us would choose to live without it, but I know that men who lived without it stayed outside more and could take the summer much, much better. Of course our ancestors were tougher… they had to be.

We fished all through July and August, and as a teen-ager guiding float fishermen, we never let a 95-degree day never stop a daylong fishing trip. My clients would show up and we would start very early in the morning, when it was cooler. But we would float the river all day at times, always catching fish, even in the middle of the day. Of course, the river was more shaded then, because landowners hadn’t started clearing the banks of shade trees as much back then. There were a lot fewer cattle. The river had much more water in those times, and it was much cleaner. Shady gravel bars offered great places to stop and relax, and swim in a cool river current for a little while. Then it was back to fishing, casting to whatever shaded bank there was, where the water had a little current and a little depth.

It is a tragedy that so many of deep holes of water are filled in, and Ozark rivers drying up more and more. So many of the gravel bars now are covered with cow manure. It doesn’t have to be that way, as government programs pay for watering-devices up away from the river, and for fencing the cattle away from the stream, for setting aside strips of land which can be placed in grasses and planted in trees which support wildlife. Numbers of landowners have joined those efforts, and the results are amazing. But you have to pay for the work first, and then through the agricultural department, you are reimbursed for your efforts. Some landowners just don’t want to do it, and care little for our streams. But there are far more of them who would indeed join that effort if they just had the money to put up for the initial fencing, watering and planting. Of course, we have a state conservation department which has millions of millions of dollars they could use toward that purpose, and since they federal government would give it back to them, why wouldn’t they, as a CONSERVATION agency, want to see our rivers preserved? It could be done so easily, but it isn’t.

One landowner Bryant Creek, with some eroding banks along the river become worse each year, ask the Missouri Department of Conservation to come in and help him fix the problem. Two of the agency’s people showed up at his request, looked at the long stretch of eroding bank and said they could fix it for $18,000 dollars!

There is no money to help save our rivers…but we are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to stock elk, and a million dollars to finance a study to see if we have enough black bears in Missouri for a hunting season.

If the MDC would commit to a program of putting up the initial money to repair and fence off buffer strips along the streams which are so much treasures in the Ozarks, they would get it all back in little time, from the federal government. And all by myself, I could sign up dozens of landowners on our best streams who would be ready to make the change. Operating on nearly 200 million a year which we all give them, and wasting large chunks of that, the MDC will never spend a penny on such a rivers projects. I keep hoping that some private group like the Smallmouth Alliance, or Ozark Paddlers, or maybe even the Nature Conservancy, would just tackle one pilot project along one of our rivers to show what could be done. If you would like to see how this works, we will run a magazine article in the Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Journal’s September issue, showing and telling what one river bottom owner has done with that government program, and why he says it has paid him big results… why he urges other landowners to do the same.

My website is www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com, and you can e-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net. Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, MO. 65613

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No Icebergs for this Titanic

   LEBANON, MO - I wouldn't exactly say this trip was a luxury cruise like those on the long running television show "The Love Boat." Nor, would I consider it a complete catastrophie like the one experienced during the famous movie "The Perfect Storm."


   Instead, our day upon the beautiful Niangua River proved to be one filled with adventure, moments of excitement and plenty of laughter.

   Our vessel, the oddly named Niangua Titanic," must have appeared a bit strange to many of the canoeist and kayakers occupying this portion of the river. Fortunately, there were no icebergs floating on the Niangua River this day.

   With two slightly overweight outdoor writers perched in the front half, the relatively short jon boat seemed to be a bit front-heavy as it headed down the river. I can best describe this as trying to carry an otherwise empty and flimsy paper plate with two loaded quarter-pound hamburgers sitting on the outside edge.

   Due to the interesting weight distribution and his location in the back of the boat, a much smaller veteran river guide Chuck Anderson of Lebanon rode considerably higher in the water. To outsiders, it likely appeared he was steering this unusual craft from high above the poop deck.

   "I've never paddled a boat with this much weight in the front," he said in an almost apologetic manner as we spun in circles through the first riffle. "It might take me a little while to get the hang of it."

   Outdoor Guide magazine editor Bobby Whitehead occupied the middle of the boat, while I was precariously perched just inches above the waterline on the bow. I'd like the think that some folks on the river may have confused me with Leonardo DeCaprio and his famous "I'm the King of the World" scene in the "Titanic" movie.

   "One bright point is that you have an excellent view of the river ahead," Whitehead jokingly told our 20-year-old guide. "You are sitting much higher in the boat than either of us."

   Fortunately, the river was clear, relatively calm and running at about normal level. It wasn't long before Captain Chuck regained his composure and had our boat almost fully under control.

   This exceptionally scenic stretch of the river just outside Bennett Spring, the famous Missouri trout park, is loaded with smallmouth bass and goggle-eye, as well as rainbow and brown trout. We were all anxious to test our skill at landing a few of these fish.

   "I always seem to have my best success using a simple marabou jig," said Captain Chuck. "This little lure will catch just about everything in this river."

   Rummaging through my limited tacklebox, I soon discovered a lack of marabou jigs. However, I did have an ample supply of C.W. Wilson's Crappie Rockets (www.crappierocket.com). Though these particular lures were not made from marabou, past experiences have proven the hair and tinsel jigs to be excellent fish producers.

   Soon, I was casting my lure to various likely spots along the river. And, it was almost like these fish had never seen this particular lure. Soon, I was enjoying one of my best float trips ever on a Missouri stream.

   After my third smallmouth in as many casts, Whitehead commented that these lures might also need to be called "Smallmouth Rockets."

   This little lure also produced numerous feisty rainbow trout and several goggle-eye. Nearly every stretch of calm fishing water seemed to produce fish.

   The others in the boat, too, were enjoying excellent fishing. Whitehead was using a small inline spinner and Captain Chuck stuck with his known fish-producing marabou jig.

   Though most of the action came while fishing from the boat, we would occasionally pull over to a gravel bar and fish both ends of a riffle. Here, too, we seemed to enjoy good fishing success.

   Even with the occasional spurt of excitement caused by riding out another riffle, our short day on the water seemed to end too quickly. The best part about ending our float was the One-Eyed Willy's concession stand situated on the gravel bar where we pulled out. Here, we enjoyed some delicious hamburgers, brats and other snacks following our float trip.

   Missouri offers many excellent rivers and streams ideal for floating. However, the Niangua River would certainly rate among the state's finest. Here, anglers and canoe enthusiasts will find plenty of outfitters, lodging and campgrounds to fill their needs.

   This particular float trip was hosted by fine folks from Lebanon Tourism and One-Eyed Willy's Campground and Canoe Rental. Numerous other similar facilities can be found all along this stretch of river.

   Folks wanting to learn more about floating the Niangua River or wishing to arrange for canoes, rafts or other watercraft can contact One-Eyed Willy's at 417-993-2628 or Lebanon Tourism at 866-LEBANON.

   It has been several years since I last floated a Missouri stream. This particular trip was so enjoyable you can be assured I'll be returning soon.

   But, float trips are not the only reason to visit this fabulous community. Here, there are more still great sites and attractions. For one, Lebanon is considered the gateway to fabulous Bennett Spring State Park. This is one of the most scenic and popular trout fishing areas in the entire state.

   Along with great trout fishing, the park offers fine dining, exceptional lodging as well as a modern campground with all the amenities.

   Lebanon also offers numerous fine restaurants including Dowd's Catfish and BBQ Restaurant, Napoli's Italian Restaurant, Andy's 417 Restaurant and Ollie's Ozark BBQ. Among the countless other attractions in Lebanon include the Lebanon I-44 Speedway, the Shepard of the Hills Outlet (world's largest Case Knifes outlet), the Heartland Antique Mall, the Route 66 Museum and Research Center.

   With all this and much more, it should come as no surprise that Lebanon was named to Outdoor Life's "Top 200 Towns for Sportsmen" for the third consecutive year.

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LAKE MURPHYSBORO FOR GREAT EATING FISH

Sitting on the dock fishing, one soon begins to talk with fellow anglers. I was surprised at the number of fishermen who are seeking fish to take home to eat.

Some anglers want fish for their family fish fry and do not need to catch and release all that they acquire. Some anglers just want some peace and quiet and a few fish for supper. Lake Murphysboro in southern Illinois is just the ticket for the angler in search of eating good fish.

As the clean waters warm during the summer, the catfish and bluegill fishing does the same. This 145-acre impoundment is located in a state park of the same name can be found about 1.5 miles west of the town of Murphysboro, Illinois in Jackson County. Camping, boat rent6al and access ramps are readily available. The 10-horsepower limit on marine engines helps to maintain a tranquility on found on the more popular nearby Kinkaid Lake. There are no pleasure boaters with whom to compete.

To reach the park travel Illinois Route 149 west of Murphysboro, turn north on Murphysboro Lake Road or Lake Access Road and follow the signs to the park.

The park’s hardwoods provide a shaded shoreline for the enjoyment of all on a hot summer day. Docks allow anglers to fish further away from the shoreline in comfort. Picnic tables are spread throughout the area and often find their way to the shore area.

Those wanting to fish without a boat can plant their lawn chair on one of the docks or along the shore and enjoy a relaxed atmosphere. Fishing pressure is not heavy during the week and only moderately so on the weekend. Holidays are another story. Trying to fish with all the family picnics going on can be a bit of a problem.

The numerous brush plies, submerged timber, rocks, drop offs and dead falls are home to an excellent population of bass, redear sunfish, bluegill, catfish and crappie. Fish attractors are strategically placed within casting distance of the docks. They are easily located by looking for a steel post sticking out of the water.

For the shore angler, the area from the concession parking ramp west all the way up to the disabled pier is a good bet. Another popular location for finding fish is in the far northeast part of the lake where there are numerous brush piles. Fly fishing anglers catch many bluegills from the well manicured shoreline.

The dam area and the small boat dock will also produce fish.

Weedy areas provide good cover for the lake’s sizable bluegill population during the summer months. Find the clear pockets in the vegetation and drop a worm impaled below a float for instant action. Bluegill and their cousin the redear sunfish tend to hold in water 6 to 8 feet in depth. Both will take worms, wax worms and crickets. The fish will be near the bottom. A popular rig is a small wire hook with a piece of nightcrawler impaled upon it. The weight of the bait allows the light line to sink to the bottom. If a float is to be used, the slip bobber is probably a good choice. One the depth of the fish is located, the slip bobber allows the angler to fish the same depth with each cast.

Good numbers of crappie can be found during the summer in water ranging between 12 and 18 feet. The area around the old concession stand area is a good place to start. The popular jig and minnow combo is a good idea. It tends to out produce the jig alone. Small minnows are preferred by locals.

In August the catfish tend to congregate along he dam and rip rap areas. Nightcrawlers and cut shad are the best baits. Other catfish locations are on drop offs in the north and east necks of the lake.

Don Gasaway - The Ground Pounder

http://www.dongasaway.wordpress.com/

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Old Boats, Old Times

Norten and Larry in the canoe he used to guide float fishermen for more than forty years.

 We’ve picked up the lumber for the White River johnboat we are building this weekend. The yellow pine log, cut at the Arkansawyer sawmill near Yellville, came from the watershed of the White River, and the boards are 21 feet long, 16 inches wide. What a boat that will be when we finish it! I am hoping for cooler weather next Saturday, there on the White River, where once upon a time there were nothing but wooden johnboats.

Rick Eastwold, the owner of Bull Shoals Marina, at Lakeview, Arkansas, says he has found a submerged White River wooden johnboat in Bull Shoals Lake that is about 60 feet deep when the lake is at normal stage. It may be nearly 100 years old, probably there when the lake filled in the early 1950’s. Because it has been underwater for all these years it should be fairly well preserved, but he is trying to figure out how to bring it to the surface without damaging it in anyway. I told him when he does that, I want to be there watching.

I am not sure what we will do with the johnboat we are building, but perhaps someone will want it for a museum or something of that sort. If you want to join us, we will be there, at the east end of Bull Shoals Dam at the State Park Pavilion, under big oak trees looking out over the lake, all day long this coming Saturday. There will be food and soft drinks, iced sassafras tea, and a couple or three old river guides who once paddled wooden johnboats down the White River for float fishermen from all over the world.

Today the White River is known for trout fishing, and right now they tell me the trout fishing is great because there are six generators running, keeping the river full. Usually this time of year there are low water conditions which makes trout fishing tougher. Fly-fishermen love the low water stages of course, but those who want to cast, or have a shot at the big brown trout on the river below the dam, like to see plenty of flow. Bull Shoals is very, very high right now, and they would be running more than six generators if they could, but the flooding on the Missouri demands that water be held in Ozark reservoirs as much as possible to keep the lower White and the Arkansas River from pouring so much water into the Mississippi.

Those who fish Bull Shoals Lake itself say the high water is great for future fishing, and if you know how to fish the lake now, you can catch plenty of bass, walleye and white bass. Some big walleye are now found in the White below the dam because they were emptied into the river with the huge releases of water necessary a month or so back. A guide at Gaston’s resort caught a big walleye recently on a night crawler right near the boat dock there, and the walleye had a 12-inch trout sticking out of it’s gullet. The trout in turn, had a hook and line in its jaw, so they theorize that the walleye took the trout from some fisherman who was fighting it on light tackle. That fisherman must have had some story to tell.

That guide I talked to said he has never seen so many walleye in the White below the dam as there are now. Norfork and Bull Shoals lakes, once known for bass and crappie and catfish, are becoming known now for some of the best walleye fishing in the Midwest. And there’s news this week of a new Missouri record striper taken recently by a Bull Shoals fisherman who had never caught a striper in his life… a sixty-pound-plus whopper.

Saturday, we’ll take time out from building that johnboat to listen to fish stories, and maybe tell a few. There will be pork sandwiches and baked beans, and potato chips and dessert, and cold soft drinks, even iced sassafras tea. I don’t know how many folks will be there selling paddles and old fishing lures, and wood-carvings of fish and wildlife, but there will be several. If you want to come and sell something relating to the old days in the outdoors, we have room, just call me and let me know what you want to sell. And if you have built a wooden johnboat, we’d love for you to bring it and show it off. We will also be giving away free issues of the Lightnin’ Ridge magazines, and I will be selling and signing my books. There’s a big visitor center-museum on the west side of the dam you want to be sure and visit too.

If you know any old timers who guided fishermen on any rivers in wooden johnboats, we would sure like to have them at this upcoming event as honored guests. We are bringing lots of old photos of those days that I think people will enjoy seeing, plus old magazines and posters from the 20’s to the 50’s. One fellow who will be there hand carves old wooden lures like the ones from those days, duplicates of the Heddon Lucky 13, the Bass-Orenos and others.

I am hoping my Uncle Norten might be able to come. My uncle guided his first trip in 1934 for 50 cents a day. For years thereafter he paddled wooden johnboats for fly-fishermen. Casting gear began to come on in the 1940’s, but you had to cast pretty good-sized lures to use those old reels and braided line. Uncle Norten guided fishermen every year of his life on rivers of the Ozarks except for the two years he was overseas during the war. That makes a total of 74 years of guiding through 2010. Who do you know that did something they made a living at for that period of time? I moved to Harrison, Arkansas in 1973, and Norten lived at Rogers at that time. We got together and took fishermen on trips on the War Eagle, the Kings, the Illinois, the Buffalo and Crooked Creek in north Arkansas until the late 1980’s when I moved back to Missouri. Uncle Norten moved up here in 2003, and we started guiding together again on the Niangua and Gasconade.

We used 19 foot square-sterned Grumman canoes, and sometimes were on the river for two or three days at a time, with camping gear and four fisherman between us. He guided on a regular basis for a dozen different fishermen who went fishing with no one else. Today they are all gone, and Norten survives them with great memories. The canoe Norten used was one he bought in the 1960’s, and he took his last trip in it last year on the Niangua.

Last week his wife and brother sold that old canoe, against his wishes. I tried to buy it and give it back to my Uncle, but to no avail. The new owner will never know the history and memories that old canoe holds. I seriously doubt if there is a river-boat or canoe anywhere that put so many miles of river behind it. We talked about those memories the other evening as my Uncle smoked a cigar and relived the old days, with tears welling up in his eyes. An era has ended. Another old guide will lift a paddle no more! He may well have been the last of them… except for me.

For information on this coming Saturday’s johnboat building day, call me at 417 777 5227 or email me at lightninridge@windstream.net. Information can also be found on my website, www.larrydablemont outdoors.blogspot.com

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DROPSHOTTING BLUEGILLS

Dropshotting, the popular bass fishing technique, is a variation on an old crappie technique. It is an effective technique for those days when the sun is high and the fish have lockjaw.

Bluegill anglers like to pursue “lunker gills” during the warm summer months and find them in the many ponds and lakes of the area. Lakes such as Crab Orchard Lake, Devils Kitchen, Little Grassy and Lake of Egypt are the best-known bluegill holes. But, there are other ponds in the Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge as well as city lakes spread throughout southern Illinois. Where there is water there are bluegills.

Dropshotting is a finesse presentation that is also known as controlled depth fishing.

It is particularly effective with light line regardless the type of rod and reel combination. For flooded brush fishing a long rod with four to 6 pound line is recommended. In jigging situations from boats stationed over a brush pile shorter rods can be effective.

Rig the line by tying a Palomar knot in the line, about 18 inches from the end, with a very long tag end. The Palomar knot is tied as follows: Double the line and form a loop three to four inches in length. Pass the end of the loop through the hook’s eye. Hold the standing line between thumb and finger, grasp loop with free hand and form a simple overhand knot. Pass the hook through the loop and draw line while guiding loop over top of eyelet. Pull the tag end of the line to tighten the knot snugly. Do not trim the tag end.

To the end of the line (on the tag end) attach a sinker. This can be a split shot sinker, but remember to tie a small overhand knot to the very end. It helps to keep the sinker from slipping off the end when caught in brush or rocks.

A piece of nightcrawler is threaded onto the hook. When the line is dropped into the water the worm and hook float above the sinker. Thus as the rod tip is moved, the action is applied to the bait not the sinker.

This rig can be cast, jigged or drifted. The key is to not move quickly. The idea is to wiggle the bait, not jerk it. Cast it out and let the bait sink. Watch the line float, twitch it and watch it float. Give it a shake occasionally which will cause the worm to twitch.

Bluegills relate to vertical structure such as sticks, trees and other vegetation in the water. On hot, sunny days they will seek out areas shaded from overhead light. This can be under docks, or a tree hanging over the water.

Fishing for these members of the sunfish family is a great way to introduce children to the sport as well as provide some tasty eating for the family table.

Don Gasaway - The Ground Pounder

http://www.dongasaway.wordpress.com/

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Boats Galor

I have heard that the boating industry has been having a difficult time over the past few years. Probably that has a lot to do with the price of gasoline. But think for a minute about how many boats there are out there on inland waters across the country and in Canada. If you want a boat today, and want a bargain, you can find one. There are a ton of pre-owned boats for sale.

I only owned two fiberglass bass-boats in my life and that was a long time ago - they weren’t anything like today’s bass tournament boats. Both were very small, but that was thirty some years ago. Have you ever heard of a Kenzie-Kraft boat? It was a great fishing boat, made by a company in Oklahoma, but again, it was small enough to maneuver into flooded backwaters and heavy timber, and easily handled by a foot control trolling motor. I had a 70 horsepower motor on it, and that is the biggest motor I ever used.

I decided about thirty years ago that I wanted a lake boat that I could use for all the things I did, and I started using aluminum lake boats through the Lowe Boat Company in Lebanon that were capable of anything. I put a deck on the front of them, with a trolling motor and seat for fishing, which I could remove quickly when I wanted to use that same boat for duck hunting. Because I was an outdoor writer, I got special discounted writer’s prices, and usually sold the boats every two years and replaced it with another improved model, so therefore, I never had any money invested I couldn’t get back fairly easily.

But the idea of a boat for any type of outdoor activity, from bass and crappie fishing to trotlining and duck hunting, stayed with me. About ten years ago I started using War-Eagle boats which are all camouflaged, and I don’t ever worry about getting mine scratched up a little. It does a great job of putting me in a situation to fish for anything, or use it for hunting in any season. Because of that versatility, I can do more outdoors with my boats than those who own the metal-flake fiberglass bass boats can do, and for far, far less money. That may be the reason that today’s bass-tournament boats could fade away someday, to be completely replaced by metal. Cost, weight, versatility, and a fading popularity of fishing tournaments all play a part in that.

When the brightly colored metal-flake fiberglass bass boats began to come out, I lived in Arkansas, near Bull Shoals Lake, and I remember seeing those bright new boats sitting in front of mobile homes and small houses where a family did without a lot of things, or lived on government assistance. I knew a fellow who financed one of them with a 50-horsepower motor, and he had never owned a pick-up in his life that was worth more than a thousand dollars. It was something to see him pulling that bright new bass boat to the lake every Sunday with an old clunker needing a muffler, with rust spots on the fenders.

Those bass boats from twenty years or so back are still found all over the Ozarks, some sitting in a barn or a pasture with weeds growing up around them, and truthfully, though they aren’t very shiny any more, they still are just as good on the water as they ever were, if there’s a good motor with them. If you go out and look, you can find some of those bass-boats that aren’t much different in style from the new ones, for only a few hundred dollars. With some work, you can make them look really good again, and some of them have motors that can be repaired fairly easily as well.

Less than 75 years back, they were making little 4- or 5- foot aluminum V-bottom boats that were not very fancy at all. You could power one out on the lake with an 8 horsepower motor and go really fast, (at least for that time) find a good place to catch crappie, and feel like you were the luckiest fisherman in the world. There are thousands of them sitting around today in the Midwest, on old rusty trailers with flat tires. With aluminum prices as they are, they may be worth quite a bit at metal salvage places.

In Canada though, those little aluminum boats are still valuable, because outfitters can secure them to the pontoons of airplane and fly them out to little remote no-name lakes, and have a boat everywhere they want to take fishermen. Last August we visited several small lakes like that in Ontario, always with a little 9-horse motor you could carry around in the plane, and run all day on a gallon of gas. There was always great fishing, just because some old aluminum boat was there waiting, perhaps not used in months, but always dependable. I paddled two or three of them around fishing for bass and walleye and northerns, in waters where no big bright fiberglass bass boat will ever be able to go. Canada, and northern waters in states like Minnesota and Wisconsin, are not very good places for fiberglass boats because those lakes have rocks everywhere, just below the surface, and rocky reefs which appear out of nowhere in the middle of lakes so wide you may only be able to see one shore. Fishermen who come to Canada in the southern bass-boats sometimes don’t know what to expect, and over the past twenty years, thousands of fiberglass boats have been ruined on those rocks which northern lakes are famous for.

If the economy ever gets so bad no one can afford to buy a new boat, those of us who fish and hunt have little to worry about, there are enough good sound boats sitting around which haven’t been used in years which will do the job. They are not so pretty, but I learned years ago that it isn’t “pretty” that catches fish. The uglier my boat, the less I have to worry about it when I tie it up on the shore to hunt deer, or turkey, or run a trapline. The drabber it is, the more likely I am to be able to hide it when I am hunting ducks and geese. And it hasn’t depreciated much. I am thinking that the future of hunting and fishing boats made of fiberglass is not good. I believe if common sense prevails, fishing boats of the future will be made of metal.

I am looking forward to building the wooden johnboat down at Bull Shoals State Park in Arkansas in a couple of weeks, remember that we are looking for folks who want to come and sell old time fishing gear, or items which relate to the outdoors, like quilts or carvings, canned goods, paddles, old magazines, art, etc. See my website for details about that day-long event on July 9, at www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot. com http://www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com

I would like to thank everyone who sent messages of condolences to our family over the death of my father. We received e-mails and cards in overwhelming numbers, and they will be kept and treasured. Thanks to you all for and outpouring of prayers and sympathy. E-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net or write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613.

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FLY FISHING FOR CATFISH

Fly fishing for catfish is a pro-active type of fishing as opposed to the more passive type of fishing we normally associate with this species. One cannot set back and wait for the fish to get the scent of a nightcrawler, cheese or dip bait. The fly fishing angler goes where the fish are and puts the bait on their nose.

The lower one third of a river is the favorite waters for this type of fishing. The size and aggressiveness of catfish tends to be less as one goes upstream.

The water to the lower areas tends to spread out and back up into the shallows. There is more wood in this section of a river and there are some flats available.

A popular staple of the fly fishing sport is a Number 8 rod. Attach a reel spooled with 27 pound Dacron backing, a fly line that is a standard weight forward one with a ten foot sinking section and you have a catfishing machine. The tippet is a fish deceiver. It is two foot of six-pound test monofilament line.

For lures, flys that imitate minnows work most effectively. Flys with eyes are probably best. These are often called streamer type lures. For color, light blue and white with some flash to them are a good choice. The idea is to imitate shad and goldeneye baitfish.

On the water look for shallow water of six foot or less near two to three foot deep water. It is not productive to fish deeper than ten foot. The fish are usually feeding up on a sand or gravel bar. Most often the early morning hours are the most productive with late evening being a second choice. In very clear water you can try the daylight hours. Some anglers will use a slip bobber to locate feeding fish.

The angler casts downstream and allows the line to drift across the bar as he makes a slow jerk retrieve. This action allows the current to swing the fly in a semicircle. The rod is used to bring it back to the edge of the deeper water or main channel.

You have to let the fish see the fly. Bump it off his nose.

Catfishing is a situational type of angling. There really is no perfect all purpose catfishing tackle. Always take multiple rods when going out on the river. What rod to use is dependant upon the area and water conditions. The fly rod approach is a very satisfying way to catch Mr. Whiskers.

Don Gasaway – The Ground Pounder

www.dongasaway.wordpress.com

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Looking Backwards, Through Tears

Dad shooting pool back in the day

Paddling a boat in later years

The author shown here with his dad

 This will be a difficult column to write. On Father’s Day, my dad, Farrel Dablemont, passed away peacefully, with his family around him. He was 84 years old and had suffered for several years with Parkinson’s disease. He had been spared the tremors which go with that dreaded disease, but for the past year, walking had become very difficult. I am comforted by knowing that he is walking just fine now, the man who stood so tall and strong when I was a kid, who taught me little by little, over many years, the things a boy should know about living right.

My dad had many friends and family who have preceded him in death, and personally I believe that somewhere, wherever heaven is, there is a great reunion going on this week. And while there may indeed be streets of gold and great mansions in that place, I have a feeling there are also beautiful rivers and woodlands and wild ducks, and turkeys and fish. Dad wasn’t much of a fan of golden streets; he liked woodland paths with wildflowers in the spring and fall colors and a good tracking snow in the winter. He loved to float rivers, and while in my boyhood we were confined to the Big Piney and the Gasconade, as I grew up we explored many others, like the Buffalo, the Kings and the War Eagle in Arkansas, and one of his favorites, that we first saw in 1971, Crooked Creek.
 
We got to fish together one last time a little more than a year ago, before it became too difficult for him. That was quite a day, as we caught smallmouth and Kentucky bass and largemouth by the dozens in a stream not far from here. 

His disease had taken the smile from his face, but he was smiling inside that day, and we talked then about how blessed he considered himself to be, with the very greatest of friends and a family blessed, I believe, because of the good life he had led.

He and my mother had moved up next to me in northern Polk County ten years ago, but dad lived most of his life over around Houston. His last twenty years of work, he drove a school bus for the Houston School District, and was so proud of that job and all the friends he made there. But of course you remember, if you read much of what I wrote, that he and my grandfather bought the pool hall in Houston when I was eleven years old, and I went to work there, from age eleven to the age of 16. I couldn’t wait ‘til school was out so I could head for my important job at the pool hall, where all my friends were, old men in their 60’s and 70’s we come to call the front bench regulars. What an education it was, the basis for a book I wrote a few years back, entitled “The Front Bench Regulars”.
 
On weekends, dad and I floated the river in one of the wooden johnboats he built, to fish for goggle-eye and green sunfish and smallmouth, or we set trotlines for huge flathead catfish up to forty pounds or so. We hunted ducks on the Piney out of those same johnboats, and in time I started guiding city fishermen on the river in those boats of his. Dad was proud to have built so many of those johnboats, and he perfected a johnboat with a plywood bottom in the late 60’s. In his lifetime, he must have built close to 110 boats. And we hunted rabbits and squirrels and caught bullfrogs and trapped a little and did everything you could think of that Ozark outdoor fathers did with their sons.
 
Dad had a close friend who was a blessing to our family, by the name of Charlie Hartman, one of the finest men I ever knew or ever will know. Charlie and dad were very close, and when I was young we hunted quail with Charlie because he raised and trained the very finest bird dogs in the Ozarks. And thinking back on it, I believe I developed the values I have today not only from what my dad taught me to be right and wrong, but from watching the men who were close friends of his, men who were the best examples a boy could have. His sense of humor, and quickness to laugh hard and long, were shared by those men, and spread to me at an early age. How could I not be happy? I was the luckiest kid in the world.
 
We went to country churches, we had big family get-togethers in the summer and fall, and I grew up. I never smoked or drank alcohol because dad forbade it, and made it plain that he set rules and I would follow them. I follow the same rules today, and have watched many of the boys from my youth ruin their lives with tobacco, alcohol and drugs which I never felt a need for. I had a dad who kept me too busy for that.
 
My dad looked at himself as a common man without much education, who loved to study the bible and tried to improve himself all through life in every way he could. He didn’t figure he did enough with his life, and he always regretted that. But he never knew the full extent of his influence, his teaching. He never knew fully the admiration people had for him, not for being some perfect person, but for being someone who loved other people, who wanted to do good things for those around him, and tried to correct his mistakes when he made them.
 
Today I am remembering the river as it was in early summer, when as a boy I floated with dad, casting a shimmy fly into swirling green pockets where goggle-eye and smallmouth waited in the depths. I remember the smell of the river just after sunrise, the sound of a paddle dipping quietly into the water, the singing of birds, the quiet roar of an upcoming shoal. Those days, long in the past, live with me still. I am not sorry they cannot be again, I am thankful we had them, and I still have them to savor and remember. And I believe, as strongly as I believe in the Creator that made those wondrous places and days, that there will be a time dad and I will be there again, floating a river more beautiful than any we ever saw, in one of those wooden johnboats.
 
But for now, I will go on doing the best I can here, with grandsons to teach what dad taught me. And there are many more stories to write about those good days when my dad was tall and strong, and I was young. There is so much I remember and so much to tell. I’ll finish a book someday that tells it all, when I get a chance to write it.
 
For those who knew my dad and would like to attend his funeral, the visitation will be at Pitts funeral home in Bolivar, 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursday evening, June 23rd. One funeral service will be at the Mt. Olive Baptist church north of Bolivar at 11:00 a.m. Friday, June the 24th.  A second service will be held that afternoon at 3:30, at the Ozark Baptist Church a few miles east of Houston, Mo. where dad will be laid to rest, only a few miles from the Big Piney River he loved so much.

In the pool hall one summer evening, only yesterday it seems, I told Ol’ Bill I just couldn’t wait for duck season. He grew somber and said, “Don’t wish your life away boy… someday those treasured times you look forward to now will be treasured days you remember. When you get to be my age you will look backwards much more often than you look forward.”

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