Catfish Gumbo

143 Lb Catfish, New World Record Caught In Virginia!

2011-06-22T06:27:00.000-05:00

I've been saying for some time we should expect to eventually see a world-record blue catfish exceeding 150 pounds. We just got a step closer with a 143-pounder reported from Kerr Lake in Virginia. Check it out.

143 Lb Catfish, New World Record Caught In Virginia!

Sutton’s love for catfish is grown to seminars | Arkansas News

2011-06-19T10:08:00.000-05:00

My good friend and longtime outdoor writer Joe Mosby of Conway, Ark. just did a story on me and my love of catfishing. Check it out!

Sutton’s love for catfish is grown to seminars | Arkansas News

Giant Redear is One for the Record Books

2011-05-15T18:47:00.000-05:00

Holy smokes! Look at the size of this redear sunfish!

The measurements of this boss bream are astounding: 5.55 pounds, 16.75 inches long and a 19-inch girth. Those are pretty good stats for a largemouth bass, and this ain’t no bass. It ain’t no panfish either because there probably isn’t a pan big enough to hold it.

Robert Lawler of Lake Havasu City, Arizona caught the giant redear in Lake Havasu, Arizona, on May 2, 2011, and the Arizona Game and Fish Department has confirmed the fish as their new state record. If certified, sunfish also will outweigh the current International Game Fish Association all-tackle world record of 5 pounds, 7 ounces, set in 1998 by Amos Gray in South Carolina.

Redears are among my favorite fish to target. Looking at this huge specimen gives me a bad case of envy. Congratulations, Mr. Lawler.

(Photo courtesy of Arizona Game and Fish)

Pool-Noodle Catfishing

2011-04-27T07:58:00.000-05:00

I love jug fishing for catfish. Something about this type of fishing makes it especially fun. You release a flotilla of milk jugs or plastic soda bottles, with baited hooks and lines tied to each, then follow in a boat waiting for a big whiskerfish to bite. When one does, your jug will take on a life of its own, and the chase begins. This is a superb way to spend some time with family or friends. And it’s a good way to catch a mess of cats for the dinner table.

In recent years, jug-fishing enthusiasts have developed a new way to enjoy this pleasant sport. Instead of milk jugs or soda bottles, they make their floats from the long, hollow, closed-foam “noodles” kids play with in the swimming pool. These signal a strike better than regular jugs because when a fish takes your bait, the noodle stands up and waves around.

A while back, I had a chance to enjoy some of this “noodle” fishing while visiting Jim Duckworth and Charlie Campbell on the Tennessee portion of Kentucky Lake. Jim and Charlie baited 30 noodle rigs with night crawlers, and I accompanied them later to check for fish. Turns out, they caught plenty of channel cats—one on just about every rig they’d had floating in the lake. Whenever a catfish took a bait, a noodle would stand and wave before racing off, and we’d pursue the fish in Jim’s boat. We had a great time doing this, and had lots of “eaters” to take home when our jug fishing was done.

Everyone who fishes with jugs has their own special way of doing it, and Jim and Charlie are no exception to the rule. They’ve actually put together a great DVD on their techniques that you can purchase by visiting Jim’s website, www.jimduckworth.com.

Of course, being a catfish specialist myself, I have my own way of rigging pool noodles that works great for me. Here are the instructions.

First, cut one 5-foot noodle into three 20-inch floats. Drill a hole through each noodle (side to side) about four inches from one end. Make the hole large enough to accommodate a piece of plastic drinking straw or metal tubing as long as the noodle is wide. Run the straw or tubing through the hole. This serves as a protective sleeve that keeps your fishing line from cutting through the foam when a fish is on.

Next, cut a 4-foot piece of stout fishing line. Run it through the sleeve, and tie the line securely around the noodle. To the line’s lower end, tie a three-way swivel. To the swivel’s bottom eye, tie another piece of line six feet long. Add a hook and sinker to this. To the other eye of the swivel, tie a 2-foot leader line with a hook on the end. Rigged this way, you can fish two baits at different depths, which should increase your catch. If you’re “noodling” at night, add reflective tape around each noodle’s top so they shine when a flashlight beam hits them.

When the noodles aren’t in use, just wrap the line around each one and plant the barbs of the hooks in the foam to keep everything in place. You can place a dozen or more in a big plastic garbage bag for carrying. Then, when you get to the lake or river, all you have to do is unroll the lines, bait the hooks and drop the noodle rigs in the water. Good baits include night crawlers, minnows and chunk-style commercial baits.

One word of warning: noodle fishing is addictive. Try it when you’ll have time to go again and again as often as possible. You’re sure to have loads of fun.

Christmas Wish List

2010-12-07T17:55:00.012-06:00

Searching for the perfect Christmas gift to give a hunter, angler or other outdoors enthusiast? Literally hundreds of great new products have hit the marketplace just in time for the holidays. Here are some you’ll certainly want to consider when you start your shopping.

Bad Birds Book
Need a Christmas gift for an avid turkey hunter? You can’t go wrong getting them a copy of Jim Spencer’s just-released Bad Birds book, full of fun-to read stories about hunting the most stubborn, unpredictable game animal in the woods. Your loved one will laugh out loud while learning new ways to bag a gobbler as Spencer, one of the country’s most knowledgeable turkey hunters, lays bear the hard truths about pursuing America’s favorite big-game bird.

Bad Birds has 230 pages and is a 6x9 paperback just right for stuffing a stocking. Retail price is $15.99, plus $5 shipping. Send a check to Treble Hook Unlimited, P. O. Box 758, Calico Rock, AR 72519, or order online from www.treblehookunlimited.com.

Books by Keith Sutton
You'll find lots of great books by yours truly, too, if you visit www.catfishsutton.com. Some titles available include The Crappie Book, Fishing for Catfish, Hunting Arkansas, Fishing Arkansas and Duck Gumbo to Barbecued Coon: A Southern Game Cookbook. I'll betting someone you know would love to have one specially inscribed by the author.

Browning Camp Chair
I was at a fishing camp recently and the folks who make the Browning Camp Chair had brought a few with them for everyone to try. There were dozens of other chairs available, but when it came time for meals, everyone headed straight for the Camp Chairs first. They’re sooooo wonderfully comfortable, with a wide, sturdy build (great for heavier guys like me) and curved, padded armrests. They have great extras, too, like a powder-coated frame and a cup holder/pocket. Fold them flat for transport and storage, and just “pop” one open when you want to sit back and relax. Anyone who enjoys sitting outdoors in camp, at sporting events or even backyard barbeques will appreciate one of these under the tree. Retail: $79.99. Call 877-459-2825 or visit www.browningcamping.com.

ALPS OutdoorZ Big Bear Pack
I really love this great pack, and so will any outdoorsman. It can be used as a fanny pack, day pack or both. The fanny pack has a large, extendable day pack that expands out of the fanny pack to give an additional 1,900 cubic inches of space. When going on a short trek and you only need the capacity of the fanny pack, the expandable day pack section can stow away. You also can connect optional camera, binocular and turkey-call pockets to the front of the shoulder harness. The fanny pack has a large main compartment, two side pockets and a front pocket, giving the user plenty of space to organize gear. Comes with a padded, removable waist belt that has an easy access pocket to keep smaller items handy. Offered in Brushed Realtree AP HD fabric or Brushed Mossy Oak Break-Up Infinity. Retail: $59.99. Phone 800-344-2577 to order.

ThermoCELL Outdoor Lantern
When ThermoCELL bug-repellent products came out a few years ago, outdoorsmen who tried them, myself included, swore they’d never got outdoors without them again. Each operates on a single butane cartridge, which heats a mat releasing allethrin, a synthetic copy of a natural insecticide found in chrysanthemum flowers, creating a 15 x 15 foot "zone of protection." Each repellent mat provides up to four hours of protection and each butane cartridge provides up to 12 hours of operation.

The latest ThermoCELL product is their new Outdoor Lantern, which I tried out recently in hunting camp. Normally, mosquitoes would have swarmed all over me in the river-bottom area I was hunting, but I set the lantern beside me, turned it on and it was like the little bloodsuckers hit an invisible wall that kept them away from me. The lantern’s eight LED bulbs lit up our camp that night as well, and the fact that we didn’t have to fight the bugs allowed us to enjoy the camp experience much better. They’re great for the home deck or patio as well, so they’ll be appreciated by anyone in the family. Field & Stream magazine named ThermoCELL’s Outdoor Lantern the “Best of the Best” in their Essentials category. Just $29.99 retail at www.mosquitorepellent.com.

Work Sharp Knife & Tool Sharpener
A friend of mine who has one of these demonstrated how great it works by taking a super-dull pocketknife and putting a razor-sharp edge on it in seconds. After seeing this, I had to get one for myself, and I’m sure any sportsman or home handyman who receives one for Christmas would just as pleased with its performance as I am. The Work Sharp uses a flexible abrasive belt to quickly sharpen any type of knife (fillet knives, hunting knives, serrated blades and more) as well as scissors, lawn-mower blades, garden pruners, axes and other tools. Using it is simple, and it comes with a complete set of belts and precision sharpening guides. Retail: $69.95. Available online at www.worksharptools.com or call 800-597-6170 to find a retailer near you.

Cabela's Guidewear X300 Jacket, Parka and Bibs
I put my new Guidewear Jacket and Bibs to the test recently when a cold front swept through during a fishing trip, bringing with it a downpour of frigid rain. My fishing buddies and I had to sit in the boat and wait until the wind abated before we could safely cross the lake and return to the boat ramp, and although the rain came down in torrents, I stayed toasty warm and dry inside this new ultra tough rainwear. The Guidewear fabric is backed by a Gore-Tex membrane for waterproof, breathable protection and all-day comfort. The parka ($229.99-279.99), which has a fleece-lined collar, is extra long to keep you dry at the midsection and is available uninsulated or with Thinsulate. The jacket ($219.99-249.99) has the same features but in a classic, waist-length bomber style. I love the bibs ($199.99-239.99), which are easy to put on and take off thanks to the long front-entry zipper and half-leg zippers with hook-and-loop storm flaps. They have elastic suspenders with quick-release buckles. Any or all of these would make a much-appreciated gift for the outdoorsman on your list. Visit www.cabelas.com or call 800-237-4444.

Berkley TurboGlide Cordless Fillet Knife
My son and I caught a big mess of fish for the freezer in a remote backcountry camp last month, but it didn’t take long to fillet them using this absolutely wonderful tool. We didn’t have to worry there wasn’t an electric hookup because the TurboGlide Cordless Fillet Knife runs off a lightweight, rechargeable, lithium-ion battery that lasts a long time and allows the knife to be used anywhere you need it. The motor delivered high speed and torque to the 7.5-inch, stainless blades so they buzzed right through the dozens of fat fish we’d caught. And it all packs away in a handy zippered case with included folding fillet board and digital charger. You’ll be loved for giving this great gift. Retail: $99.99. Check it out, and find a retailer near you, at www.berkley-fishing.com.

Sharkfin Spinning Reel
The fact we had so many fish to clean is partly attributable to the new Sharkfin spinning reel I was using. The reel’s spool has shark-like fins, uniquely designed to minimize up to 80 percent of the friction on the line during the cast. This allowed me to cast a country mile, catching fish in shallow water where our boat couldn’t maneuver. During the retrieve, the “fins” catch and retain excess line or “loops“ that can create tangles, and freely releases them on the next cast. Two models are available, the FD 2000 for freshwater and inshore saltwater, and model FD 4000 for inshore and light offshore, either of which would make a great gift for the angler in your life. Retail: $119.99 and $149.99. Visit www.castaliaoutdoors.com or call 800-558-5541.

Columbia Blood and Guts Superlight Shooting Shirt
I’m always getting blood, mud and other stains on my hunting shirts. Not to worry any more because I wear this ultra-lightweight, long-sleeve shirt from Columbia that’s specifically engineered to protect against and release the stains and odors associated with upland hunting. It’s quick drying and, thanks to a hidden vent at center back, super cool wearing. When the afternoon heat kicks in, simply roll up the sleeves and fasten them with the buttons at upper arm to stay comfortable. Omni-Shade UPF 50 wards off the sun’s harmful rays, and a multi-functional chest pocket with exterior shell carriers will stash essentials. Available in gray, blaze orange and white for a retail price of $72.00. Visit www.columbia.com or call 800-622-6953.

Lew’s Rod & Reels
A lot of us aging anglers remember fondly the great Speed Stick rods and Speed Spool reels we used back in the good ol’ days for bass fishing. The good news for anglers everywhere is that Lew's is back. Not that the once highly popular fresh and inshore rod and reel brand was ever truly dead, but it certainly had faded from the spotlight in recent years. It's back now though and in a big way, with a new Lew's line consisting of four series of baitcast reels, two spinning reel series and four series of rods with the latest in features and materials. The new rod and reel combo I just tried out was, in a word, sweet. Your favorite bass angler will be very happy when they find one of these under the Christmas tree. For info, visit www.lews.com.

Guided Crappie-Fishing Trip
Still not sure what to buy? Give the gift everyone loves: a gift certificate. One of the most appreciated will be a certificate for a guided fishing trip, like those offered by my close friend and expert crappie guide Jerry Blake of Action Fishing Trips on Lake Greeson, Arkansas, one of the country’s top lakes for trophy-class crappie. I was on the water with Jerry in early December, and our party caught 45 slabs that produced six quarts of fillets for the fish fryer! It was a trip any angler would have loved. To get a gift certificate for your favorite angler, visit Jerry’s website at www.actionfishingtrips.com.

Happy holidays to all of you! Ho, ho, ho!

(Note: Complimentary samples of the products described in this blog were provided for evaluation by the mfrs. mentioned.)

Roosevelt Shotgun Brings Record-Setting $862,500

2010-10-14T12:07:00.007-05:00

In March, I reported on the sale of Nash Buckingham’s Bo-Whoop, the fabled 12-gauge HE Grade Super Fox shotgun once owned by the renowned author of Tattered Coat, De Shootinest Gent’man and other outdoor classics. At a March 15, 2010, auction, the gun brought a whopping $201,250, the third-highest auction record attained for an American shotgun.

Now, James D. Julia Auctions in Fairfield, Maine, the same auction company that sold Bo-Whoop, has established a new record with the sale of an even more famous Fox shotgun, a Fox “F” Grade, double-barrel 12-gauge owned by President Theodore Roosevelt that sold on October 5th for $862,500 (final price with premium), making it the most expensive American shotgun ever sold at auction. (The second highest American shotgun was an L.C. Smith Deluxe also sold by this firm, in March 2008, which realized $235,750.)

The Roosevelt shotgun has an intriguing history. Records indicate it was originally being made for display at the 1909 Grand American World Trapshooting Championship in Chicago, Illinois. The work order stated it was to be an F grade fitted with 30-inch barrels choked modified and full, with an automatic safety, a trigger pull of 5 pounds on the right and 6 pounds on the left, and a total weight of 7 pounds, 8 ounces. A notation on the order card said “This gun is for exhibition purposes and must be as perfect as skill can make it.”

The shotgun never made it to the Grand American, however. When that event took place, the 12-gauge was in Africa with Teddy Roosevelt.

In 1901, when President William McKinley was assassinated, Roosevelt became the U.S.’s 26th president at the age of 42, taking office at the youngest age of any U.S. president in history. During his almost eight years in office, he became the most popular president since Abraham Lincoln and one of history’s most noted conservationists and outdoorsmen. By 1908, however, he was tired of politics and public life. He declined to run for reelection and began making plans for a much-desired hunting safari in Africa with his son Kermit. This would become the most famous safari of the twentieth century, and the Fox shotgun would be part of it.

Some think Roosevelt’s wife Edith ordered the gun as a gift for her husband. That could be the case, but it seems more likely that someone at A.H. Fox Gun Company, probably president Ansley Fox, saw an opportunity for some excellent advertising if the gun accompanied Roosevelt on his highly publicized adventure. Whatever the case, the Fox was diverted from its intended use as an exhibition gun and presented to the former president. Afterwards, Roosevelt sent a thank-you note to Ansley Fox:

My dear Mr. Fox:

The double-barreled shotgun has come, and I really think it is the most beautiful gun I have ever seen. I am exceedingly proud of it. I am almost ashamed to take it to Africa and expose it to the rough usage it will receive. But now that I have it, I could not possibly make up my mind to leave it behind. I am extremely proud that I am to have such a beautiful bit of American workmanship with me.

Sincerely yours,
Theodore Roosevelt

Roosevelt left the office of president on March 4, 1909, and on the 23rd, he and Kermit steamed out of New York harbor. On April 21, they arrived in Mombasa, British East Africa, boarded a train and met their safari at Kapiti Plains.

For eleven months, with an entourage of 250 porters and guides, the Roosevelts traveled across British East Africa, into the Belgian Congo and back to the Nile, ending in Khartoum. During that time, they hunted for specimens for the Smithsonian Institution and the American Museum of Natural History. The group included scientists from the Smithsonian and was led by the legendary hunter-tracker R. J. Cunninghame. Famous big-game hunter and explorer Frederick Selous also joined them from time to time. All told, Roosevelt and his companions killed or trapped 11,397 animals, including 11 elephants, 20 rhinoceroses, 17 lions, 20 zebras, seven hippopotamuses, seven giraffes and six buffalos.

During the safari, Roosevelt wrote monthly essays for Scribner’s Magazine, dispatching the manuscripts from camp to Nairobi by runner. In one of these, published in October 1909, he said: “I had a Fox No. 12 shotgun; no better gun was ever made.”

The Fox Company had never used testimonial advertising to the extent some other American gunmakers did, but this was too good to pass up. The company capitalized on Roosevelt’s endorsement, seeing that the former president’s opinion on Fox guns was quoted in all the trade journals. Fox continued pounding the Roosevelt drum for years, even including the text of his letter to Ansley Fox in their 1915 catalog.

The articles Roosevelt wrote for Scribner’s formed much of the content in African Game Trails, Roosevelt’s straightforward chronicle of the adventure published in 1910. In it, he tells how the Fox shotgun was used for killing a wide variety of gamebirds desired by the expedition’s scientists, including “Egyptian geese, yellow-billed mallards, francolins, spurfowl and sand grouse …”

The gun proved to be “an exceptionally hard-hitting and close-shooting weapon …,” he wrote.

The shotgun also accompanied Roosevelt on his famous expedition through the Brazilian wilderness in 1914. And thanks to Roosevelt’s writings, it became one of the most famous firearms ever made.

The gun stayed in the Roosevelt family for three generations. In 1974, it was sold to a Fox gun collector named Tom Kidd. Kidd sold the gun to its next owner, who prefers to remain unnamed, in 2000. It was that owner who put the gun up for sale through James D. Julia.

At the October 5 auction, the much-anticipated lot opened with an absentee bid of $150,000 and moved steadily upward as four phone bidders sparred among themselves for the right to own the national treasure. A full house of well over 200 participants and onlookers cheered and clapped as the hammer fell and the gun sold to an unnamed private collector for a record-setting $862,500. A rolling murmur persisted for several minutes afterwards as spectators contemplated among themselves the history-making event they had just witnessed.

“The Fox gun becomes the most expensive American shotgun ever sold at auction and the second most expensive single firearm ever sold at auction,” said Wes Dillon with the firearms division of James D. Julia. (A rare Colt Walker pistol sold by Julia Auctions in 2008 is the most expensive at $920,000.) “Included with the lot inside the brass-bound, oak-and-leather hard case were a vintage Evinrude outboard motor tool/wrench thought to be from Roosevelt’s ‘River of Doubt’ South American expedition; an H&H marked turnscrew thought to be from the H&H Royal Double rifle, which also accompanied Roosevelt on the African safari; and remnants of linen pajamas thought to be Roosevelt’s and used as gun wraps.”

For more information, click this link to visit James D. Julia’s auction catalog pages. All gun photos in this article are courtesy of James D. Julia Auctioneers.

Redneck Wonders

2010-09-14T11:35:00.009-05:00

It began 2,200 years ago when Antipater of Sidon created the first list we know as “The Seven Wonders of the World.” Awesome marvels such as the Pyramids of Khufu, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Colossus of Rhodes were included.

In 2007, people worldwide cast 100 million votes to choose the “New Seven Wonders of the World”: Rome’s Colosseum, India’s Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, Jordan’s ancient city of Petra, the Inca ruins of Peru’s Machu Picchu, Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer statue and ancient Mexico’s Mayan city of Chichén Itzá.

Unfortunately, most of us can’t visit these faraway places. We need a closer-to-home version, a list of wonders here in the U.S. so breathtaking and so quirky, they invariably make visitors reach for their Primatene Mist.

Here you have it: The Seven Redneck Wonders of the World.

Hydro Glow Bridge

Rednecks like to leave their Christmas lights up year-round. Perhaps that was the inspiration for Clarksville, Virginia’s Hydro Glow Bridge, a fluorescent tribute to Southern ingenuity.

Clarksville officials wanted the Highway 59 bridge across Buggs Island Lake to serve as the city’s gateway, and someone came up with the idea of lighting it to accomplish that end. Light it they did, but in a most unusual way. Each bridge pier has four green Hydro Glow fishing lights on it—two underwater and two above—76 in all. When the lights were turned on in 2006, the city not only had a unique gateway, it had created a one-of-a-kind nightfishing attraction. The lights attract baitfish, which in turn attract largemouths, crappie, catfish and other gamefish. The gamefish attract anglers who are pumping millions of dollars into the local economy.

This one’s too pretty to miss. (Photo courtesy of www.clarksvilleva.com)

Coon Dog Cemetery

In 1937, Key Underwood sadly buried his faithful coon dog, Troop. They had hunted together more than 15 years. The burial spot was near a camp where coon hunters gathered to share hunting strategies, tell tall tales and compare coon hounds. Those comparisons usually began and ended with Troop, the best around.

Troop loved that camp, and Underwood decided he should spend eternity there. He buried the hound in a cotton-pick sack and marked the grave with a rock on which he had chiseled Troop’s name and the date.

From this hunter’s devotion to his dog was born the Key Underwood Coon Dog Memorial Cemetery, the only graveyard of its kind in the world. More than 185 coon dogs are now buried here seven miles west of Tuscumbia, Alabama. Visitors can stop and pay respects to some of the finest dogs that ever lived. Info: www.coondogcemetery.com.

Biggest Fly Rod And Reel

On June 12, 1999, Tiney Mitchell of Port Isabel, Texas, finished building the world’s largest fly fishing rod and reel. Recognized as a Guinness World’s Record, the rod is a whopping 71 feet long with a reel 4 feet in diameter. It can be seen at the end of Maxan St. in Port Isabel.

If only it were a giant cane pole instead.

The Big Texan

In 1960, the Big Texan Steak Ranch opened on Route 66 in Amarillo. Its Old West architecture and towering sign of a long-legged cowboy soon became major landmarks.
One evening, a hungry cowboy ventured in bragging he was so hungry he could “eat the whole darned cow.” Owner Bob Lee started cooking him steaks. When the cowpoke finally got full, he had consumed 4-1/2 pounds of beef. Lee vowed from that day forward the dinner would be free to anyone who could finish it in one hour.

Folks have been trying ever since—more than 42,000 at last count, including more than 7,000 who succeeded. Winners include an 11-year-old boy, a 69-year-old grandmother and champ Joey Chestnut who ate the entire meal in 8 minutes, 52 seconds!

The meal—shrimp cocktail, salad, baked potato, bread and 72-oz. steak— was originally $9.95. Today, challengers pay $72.00 for the experience. But there’s not a full-blooded redneck who can pass the Big Texan (now on I-40) without stopping in to try gulping down a gargantuan steak that inspires both fear and excitement. Info: www.bigtexan.com. (Photo by Kenny Braun)

Mississippi River Levees

You might say it’s the U.S. version of the Great Wall of China, but the Mississippi River levee system wasn’t built to stave off barbarian invasions. It was designed to protect nearby cities and farmlands from flooding.

Together, the 24- to 50-foot-high levees stretch over 3,500 miles, extending on the west bank from Allenville, Missouri, to Venice, Louisiana, and on the east bank from Hickman, Kentucky, to Venice. They run through portions of Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi and Tennessee. Building this levee system, the world’s largest, is recognized as one of the most incredible engineering feats in history. And much of it was done with mules. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)

Beer Can House

John Milkovisch, a retired railroad employee, started work on Houston, Texas’ Beer Can House in 1968. Sick of mowing the grass, he already had covered his yard with unique landscaping features made by inlaying thousands of marbles, rocks and metal pieces into concrete and redwood. With that completed, he turned to the house and began adding aluminum siding—aluminum beer can siding, that is. Over the next 18 years, the house disappeared under a cover of 50,000 flattened beer cans, a convenient medium considering John drank lots of beer. (“Whatever’s on special,” he always said.) He linked pull-tabs to make curtains that chimed in the wind. Cans were made into walls or sculpted into whirligigs.

The newly renovated Beer Can House can be seen at 222 Malone St. in Houston. (Photo courtesy of beercanhouse.org)

World’s Longest Fishing Pier

When the new Sunshine Skyway bridge was built over Florida’s Tampa Bay (connecting St. Petersburg with Sarasota), the original bridge was turned into fishing piers. The South Fishing Pier, 8,400 feet long, is the world’s longest fishing pier and has parking for 571 vehicles. The North Fishing Pier (3,360 feet) has parking for over 200 vehicles.

The piers are so long you can literally walk to offshore fishing for deep-water species. Common catches include grouper, king mackerel, snook, tarpon, sea bass, Spanish mackerel, cobia, sheepshead, red snapper and pompano. A man landed a 1,200-pound shark there a few years ago, the stuff of which legends are made.

Both piers are open 24/7 year-round. Info: http://skywaypiers.com.

High-Flying Carp

2010-08-22T19:25:00.007-05:00

To catch a grass carp, toss a salad. Throw in some cherry tomatoes, some lettuce, celery, pea pods, a bit of watercress, some duckweed, coontail, pondweed and muskgrass.

OK, so it’s not your regular salad, and chances are, you never figured on using vegetables for bait. Don’t worry; grass carp will like it, just the same.

These giant Asian minnows, also known as white amurs (Ctenopharyngodon idella), are vegetarians, you see. They shy away from “normal” baits like kids eyeing a plate of liver and onions. Cast some veggies their way, though, and they’ll rush in like a kitty to a can opener.

And why, you may ask, would you want to hook a grass carp in the first place? Because, my friend, these underrated ruffians often weigh 40 pounds and more. Specimens topping 110 are known, and grass carp of any size immediately go airborne when hooked.

Fish farmers wear catcher’s masks and pads when seining them, because they’re notorious net-jumpers. Battling one on rod and reel is like tussling with a tail-hooked tarpon. In fact, long sleek grass carp resemble tarpon, with big silvery scales and an upturned mouth. They’re not at all like common carp with their barbeled, vacuum-cleaner snouts.

Grass carp are mighty good eating, too. A platter of deep-fried strips won’t last long at a backyard fish fry. And chances are, there are lakes and ponds near your home with plentiful grass carp that could use a little thinning.

Most folks won’t complain if you thin them, either. In fact, some will say you’re doing the world a favor catching all you can and ridding our waters of this alien invader. The name “carp” still sends shivers down spines of the unknowing.

Grass carp were introduced into the U.S. in 1963 when the Bureau of Sport Fisheries brought 70 fish from Malaysia to the Fish Farming Experiment Station at Stuttgart, Arkansas. Amurs are native to larger east Asian rivers with Pacific drainages, including their namesake, the Amur River on the Chinese-Siberian border. But introductions have expanded their range to India, Europe, New Zealand and, according to some researchers, at least 40 U.S. states.

The experimental imports did what they were supposed to do—eat excessive aquatic vegetation—and by the early 1970s, the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission began using grass carp to control weeds in public waters. The amur’s mouth is toothless, but in the throat are two rows of large, comb-like teeth that grind the salad it eats. One carp can eat two to three times its weight daily and may gain 5 to 10 pounds a year.

Early grass-carp introductions were controversial from the get-go. Some claimed they were needed to control vegetation, providing a natural alternative to costly chemical and mechanical controls. Grass-carp opponents saw nothing “natural” about importing an Oriental fish and releasing it to become a 50-pound intruder gobbling up bass habitat.

The controversy continues. Some states allow stocking sterile fish produced in hatcheries; a few outlaw grass carp completely. Amurs offer a trouble-free, ongoing method of weed control when stocked at the conservative rates recommended by fisheries biologists. But once weeds are in check, biologists recommend reducing by at least 50 percent the number of grass carp in a pond or lake. That’s where fishermen come in.

Ken Perry, a fisheries program coordinator for the Missouri Department of Conservation, outlined a simple method for catching grass carp in an agency newsletter. First, he scatters two or three cups of fermented corn in shallow areas of the lake he's going to fish. "Fifty pounds of cracked corn cost next to nothing at a feed store," he says. "Fill a quart milk jug with cracked corn and add water a few days before fishing." The soured corn attracts carp to the fishing area.

Next, Perry employs his secret weapon—cherry tomatoes. Canned corn, earthworms and other baits work, too, but these also attract catfish and bream. With tomatoes, Perry says, you can target grass carp specifically.

Perry's fishing rig consists of a long, limber rod and reel combo spooled with light monofilament line to which is tied a single, heavy-wire No. 1 hook without a sinker. The reel is placed in free-spool so line plays out freely when a fish takes the bait. If there’s no bite in 30 minutes, Perry changes spots.

"Many lakes that need grass carp taken out are privately owned,” Perry says. “Often the owners will be delighted to get rid of the fish, but be sure to get permission first."

In waters where most weeds have been eliminated, amurs are especially easy to catch. They often feed at the surface and quickly rise to hooked bits of aquatic vegetation, vegetables, even French fries floating in the water. Warm months offer the best fishing; feeding activity slackens when water temperature falls below 57 degree F.

In Fishing for Buffalo, Rob Buffler says floating doughballs also take hungry grass carp. His recipe calls for mixing equal parts peanut butter, Rice Crispies and crushed cornflakes. “Place a grape-sized glob of this mixture and a green party marshmallow on a 2-inch square of white, sheer pantyhose,” says Buffler. “Stretch it tightly over the doughball and tie up the ends with green thread to make a ball. Roll the ball in green food coloring.” Thread a baitholder hook through the pantyhose material and cast the ball into waters where grass carp feed. With luck, a giant amur will rise and take the bait.

Grass carp may never become standard fare in the waters of America, but they’re widely available and offer great fun for anglers who like tackling “those other fish.” If you’re not embarassed by the thought of fishing with a tomato or French fries for bait, give amurs a try. Somewhere out there, a 100-pounder is lurking.

To contact Keith “Catfish” Sutton, email him at catfishdude@sbcglobal.net. Autographed copies of his books are available at www.catfishsutton.com.

Secret Formula Catfishing

2010-08-16T07:55:00.005-05:00

I’ll never forget The Great Stinkbait Explosion.

I was 12. My friend Bubba and I were experimenting with a new concoction of fish guts, moldy cheese and secret ingredients we swore on a blood oath we’d never reveal. We hoped to discover that which has always eluded catfishermen—the perfect, catch-’em-every-time stinkbait recipe.

Uncle Johnny loaned me an ill-fitting World War II gas mask to wear while preparing the brew. Bubba doled out the aged ingredients, then backed a safe distance away while I opened each and poured it into a gallon pickle jar. One container—an old paint can with moistened cheese scraps—was swollen like a pregnant teenager. When I broke the seal, a rush of mephitic fumes burped out and filled the gas mask. I filled the mask with that morning’s breakfast.

Bubba speculated it was the addition of my breakfast that caused the stinkbait mixture to explode later that night.

“Gastric acid,” he said. “That was the catalyst.”

As I reminisce on the scene after the explosion awoke us, I remember most the nauseating odor, the sting of the hickory switch my grandma used to skin my backside, and the piles of broken jelly jars in the shed where we hid the tightly sealed pickle jar so our catfish potion could age. Gases from the fermenting stinkbait pressurized the jar, causing it to explode.

As we scrubbed the shed, tears streaming down, Bubba and I absorbed the cardinal rule of stinkbait manufacturing: never tighten a lid on the mix.

Catfish love stinkbait like kids love candy. Every dedicated catfisherman has a favorite version. Secret recipes are passed down from generation to generation with explicit instructions never to reveal the contents. KFC’s secret blend of herbs and spices is more loosely guarded than some stinkbait formulas.

One cat man I know mixes his stinkbait with the solicitude of a French chef preparing a sumptuous bouillabaisse. Working in his hog barn, where the odors are less noticeable, he stirs together a pinch of this, a cup of that, a dollop of some secret additive. Then, like a connoisseur sampling the bouquet of an expensive wine, he lifts a cupful to his nose and inhales. His eyes water, his knees shake, and he proclaims, “Whew! That would gag a maggot. But it needs to be stronger.”

Catfishermen believe the worse it smells, the more cats it will catch. To make it so, they add some fetid ingredients to their potions, things like Limburger cheese, putrid fish, congealed blood and animal entrails. Catfish lick their whiskers when they smell the resulting concoctions.

To keep the coons from getting it, and, more importantly, to avoid unnecessary exposure to the toxic fumes, one of my catting buddies hides his homemade stinkbait in a container atop a neighbor’s barn. The poor neighbor believes wild animals are dying mysteriously on his property and has searched unsuccessfully for years, trying to locate the source of the terrible odors.

This catfisherman handles his bait like it’s radioactive waste. He won’t say what’s in it, but if a drop gets on his clothes, the garments must be burned. Still, he catches plenty of catfish with it, and his bank-fishing spot aren’t crowded when he’s there. No one can stand to fish near him.

Decades ago, many cat men used asafetida to catch cats. Also called stinking gum and devil’s dung, this plant resin works on catfish like catnip on cats. A cotton trotline was soaked in an asafetida solution, and when catfish rubbed against it, they got foul-hooked.

Some old-time recipes sound like chemistry experiments. Here’s one, for example, that requires some unusual ingredients: “To 1 pint pine tar oil (in a quart container), add 1 ounce each oil of sweet anise, oil of rhodium, banana oil, sassafras oil and tincture of asafetida. Finish filling the quart container with used motor oil. Stir. Paint hooks and about 1 inch of the line above the hook. Good for all kinds of catfish.”

I never tried this formula because I couldn’t find all the ingredients. I can tell you this, though: the old man who shared the recipe frequently caught huge catfish. He made me swear I wouldn’t tell anyone his secret ingredients as long as he was alive, but now that he’s passed on, I can share it and thus leave a written record of this fascinating aspect of our catfishing heritage. No other angling sport is so rich and multifaceted, and concocting special baits has roots going back more than a century.

If you’ve never tried making your own bait, but are encouraged to do so after reading this, just be sure you don’t forget the cardinal rule of stinkbait manufacturing: never tighten a lid on the mix!

Bon appétit!

Man-Eaters!

2010-07-29T20:06:00.008-05:00

Nasty, mean, killing things lurk everywhere in the jungles of South America. There are blackflies, for example, that can give you onchocerciasis—river blindness—caused by worms that get in your eyeballs; sandflies that transmit a leprosy-like disease called leishmaniasis; assassin bugs whose load of protozoa can kill you with a heart/brain malady known as Chagas' disease; and mosquitoes that carry dreaded illnesses such as malaria and yellow fever.

Large animals deal death in many ways as well. Twenty-foot anacondas squeeze the life from their prey; vipers such as the fer-de-lance and bushmaster inject deadly venom through inch-long fangs; electric eels deliver 600 volts of killing power; jaguars administer the coup-de-grace with a bite to the head; and catfish the size of great white sharks could simply swallow you whole if they desired.

Anglers visiting South America worry very little about these creatures, however. Instead, they worry about little fish called piranhas.

If you can believe the writings of former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, there is good reason to worry. In his 1914 book, Through the Brazilian Wilderness, Roosevelt first gave widespread publicity to the notion that piranhas are man-eaters.

“They are the most ferocious fish in the world,” he wrote. “Even the most formidable fish, the sharks or the barracudas, usually attack things smaller than themselves. But the piranhas habitually attack things much larger than themselves. They will snap a finger off a hand incautiously trailed in the water; they mutilate swimmers— in every river town in Paraguay there are men who have been thus mutilated; they will rend and devour alive any wounded man or beast; for blood in the water excites them to madness.”

While fishing on Venezuela’s Rio Paragua, I met many guides who exhibited the classic circular scars of piranha bites, but most admitted the bites occurred while handling piranhas. It was not unusual for one of these men to dive into the water to retrieve a lure hung on an underwater obstruction. They often bathed in the same waters where we caught piranhas on hook and line. They had no apparent fear of the fish some called “caribe capa-burro”—the cannibal that castrates donkeys.

One day, however, I witnessed an incident that exemplifies what can happen to careless anglers. We were using live piranhas as bait for payara. The species we used, the white piranha, seldom exceeds a pound; those we obtained weighed only a few ounces each. We caught them on hooks baited with bloody beef, then dropped them in a livewell. Our guide, Jesus Perez, thought it funny to reach into the livewell and shriek as if he had been attacked each time he prepared to bait our hooks.

Once, after a particularly blood-curdling yell, Jesus withdrew his hand from the bait tank, and we gazed, horrified, at a piranha that had engulfed his finger. The piranha was dead, however. It was all a big joke.

We ignored Jesus’ antics after that, but once while he was trying to coral an elusive piranha in the bait tank, he yanked his hand away and winced. I looked at him as if to say, “I’m not falling for it, Jesus.” Then I noticed blood on his right index finger. I never saw contact between Jesus and the fish. Yet in a split second, the piranha’s razor-blade teeth had removed his fingertip, including part of the fingernail.

Jesus had been bitten by piranhas on other occasions. On each forearm were scars from wounds he received while bathing in the Orinoco River as a boy. He did not fear the piranhas, he told us. They do not normally attack humans as is often believed. However, he continued, if one swims with piranhas his entire life, sooner or later he is bound to get nipped. And if a man is foolish enough to enter the water with a fresh wound on his body, the piranhas might leave nothing more than a skeleton when they finish with him.

In the Brazilian and Venezuelan waters I have fished, piranhas were amazingly abundant. They would immediately devour any fresh meat dropped into the water. I caught several species using beef or fish flesh for bait. And many, including some truly large specimens, were taken on crankbaits or the gigantic topwater lures we used to entice peacock bass. All were tough fighters, battling like bluegills on steroids.

The most fearsome specimen I examined was a black piranha. When I cast a big prop bait near the bank, this 5-pounder struck with unbridled fury, sending water high into the air. At first, I thought it was a peacock bass, a species known for its amazingly vicious strikes. The piranha fought long and hard, requiring several minutes to land.

The black is largest of all piranhas, weighing as much as 13 pounds. This struggling specimen had ebony sides, with a tinge of red on its belly—quite unspectacular except for its mouthful of wicked teeth. When I grabbed my line and lifted the fish, to avoid those razor-keen triangles, the piranha bit cleanly through the 3/0 treble hook impaled in its jaw and fell flapping in the bottom of the boat. Startled, I almost jumped in the river. My guide, however, reminded me there was only a single piranha in the boat. “In the river,” he said, “who knows how many there are.”

Seventeen species of piranhas live in South America’s rivers, lakes and lagoons, from the eastern slopes of the Andes through Colombia, Venezuela and the Guianas, south and eastward across the immense Amazon Basin, and into Bolivia, parts of Peru, Paraguay, Uruguay and northeastern Argentina. Their common name comes from the Tupi Indian dialect, in which “pira” means fish and “ranha” means tooth. Close relations include popular aquarium fish such as black and neon tetras, and gamefish such as payara, tigerfish and dorado.

The presence of blood generally is believed to stimulate the feeding frenzy of flesh-eating piranhas. However, evidence indicates sound may play a larger role in triggering attacks. Piranhas have highly developed auditory organs; sounds of splashing created by panicked victims draw them like iron filings to a magnet. Often, when we targeted piranhas, our guides would thrash the water with a fishing rod to bring them near. And more than once, I saw a huge peacock bass attacked by piranhas while in the midst of a wild struggle against a fishing rod. Sometimes only minor wounds were evident when the peacock was landed. But sometimes we reeled in little more than a still-breathing head. No doubt, many hapless animals struggling in the water are attacked and killed by piranhas, including, occasionally, humans.

One night in Manaus, Brazil, I enjoyed a sumptuous meal in one of the city’s finest restaurants. For the first course, I was presented a bowl of thin broth flavored with tiny chunks of fish. “What type of soup is this?” I inquired.

“Sopa de piranha,” the maitre d’ replied. “It is believed by our people to be an aphrodisiac.”

“If that is true,” I said, “then perhaps the piranha is not such a bad fish after all.”

“Indeed,” the man said, smiling. “Sometimes the piranha eats people; sometimes people eat piranhas. I am glad they did not eat you, so you might sit here and eat them.”

I could not have agreed more.

Monster Catfish! 130 Pounds

2010-07-23T12:57:00.009-05:00

New Missouri Record Probably A World Record

May 1804

A 55-foot keelboat and two smaller pirogues begin making their way up the Missouri River. On the larger craft, a single man among dozens stands out. He is tugging at a line pulled taut in the current. After a short battle, he slides a 10-pound catfish from the river to the boat.

“Nice kitty,” he says, as he lifts the beauty for the others to see. The fish is the color of pearls, unblemished. It gives a guttural purr as a smiling Silas Goodrich strokes its side.

“So you’ve caught another one, Private Goodrich?” calls a figure in the keelboat.

“Yes, Captain Clark,” the man replies. “And a fine one it is. Not the giant I was hoping for, but he put up a good fight.”

Goodrich is a member of the Corps of Discovery headed by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. They are here to explore the Missouri River at the behest of President Thomas Jefferson. And during the 28 months ahead, the crew often will dine on the bounty of catfish caught by Private Goodrich.

Returning to their camp near the Missouri's confluence with the Mississippi, one of the expedition leaders noted, “We were a little surprised at the apparent size of a catfish which the men had caught in our absence, although we had previously been accustomed to seeing 30-60 pound weights.”

That fish, a blue catfish, had these measurements:

Length: 51.25 inches
Width between the eyes: 13 inches
Circumference around the head just above the first fins: 45 inches
Weight: a whopping 130 pounds

Meriwether Lewis said he reliably heard of some catfish here weighing 175 to 200 pounds. But the 130-pounder is one of the biggest officially documented from the river for more than two centuries.

July 20, 2010

At 9:00 p.m., Greg Bernal of Florissant, Mo. and Janet Momphard from St. Charles launch a boat at Columbia Bottom Conservation Area in north St. Louis County, Mo. and begin an evening of catfishing near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. A silver carp makes a suicide leap into the boat as they’re motoring to their fishing spot. Bernal, knowing catfish relish carp flesh, cuts the fish into chunks he uses to bait their hooks.

A storm is approaching, and for safety’s sake, Bernal and Momphard decide they’ll stop fishing by 1:00 a.m. before it hits. But 15 minutes before the appointed deadline, Bernal‘s line tightens.

“There was no movement at first,” he says. “I didn’t even know it was a fish. He was hung up on the bottom.”

The fish soon works its way out, and the struggle between man and beast begins. Bernal finds the battle difficult. “But I had my footing on him,” he says.

Fifteen minutes pass before Bernal can pull the monster fish alongside the boat. It is then he and Momphard realize Bernal has hooked a behemoth.

“He’s got his almost 80-pounder on the wall, and I’m like, that’s much bigger,” Momphard said. “We lift a 125-pound generator all the time, and when we went to lift that thing up, I said this thing weighs close to the generator.”

They struggle for half an hour before finally sliding the huge blue catfish into the johnboat. It’s the biggest fish either of them has ever seen.

The next morning, they take their catch to the Missouri Department of Conservation’s (MDC’s) regional office in St. Charles. There, fisheries biologist Sarah Peper sets out to weigh and measure the fish. The blue cat is taken to a local feed store, which has the nearest state-certified weighing scale.

“When the weigh master started pushing the sliding weights up the scale, he got past 100 pounds and just kept going,” Peper remembers. “When the scale finally balanced out at 130 pounds, we were in shock. It was amazing.”

Official stats on Bernal’s blue cat:

Length: 57 inches
Girth: 45 inches
Weight: 130 pounds

Fisheries biologists estimate the fish’s age at 20 to 30 years.

The monster cat far outweighs the previous Missouri state record, a 103-pounder, also from the Missouri River, landed in 1991. Peper certifies Bernal’s catch as the new Missouri state-record blue catfish caught on pole and line.

The lunker also bests the 124-pound standing world-record blue cat. That fish, landed by Alton, Ill. angler Tim Pruitt in May 2005, was caught not far away in the Mississippi River near Alton. Peper completes the world-record application for Bernal to have notarized and submit to the International Game Fish Association, the organization responsible for declaring the fish’s official status.

“The fact that this fish, and the standing world-record blue catfish, were both caught near the same area goes to show the kind of world-class fishing we have in Missouri,” Peper notes. But to Bernal, it comes down to something more visceral.

“It’s an adrenaline rush,” he says. “Man, you hit a big fish down there, and he just starts rippin’ drag off ... It’s like, oh my gosh!”

Since 1992, when the MDC banned commercial catfishing on the Missouri, the river and its tributaries have produced several blue cats exceeding 100 pounds. As a result, experts tout the Missouri River in the Show-Me State as one of the country’s top hotspots for trophy-class blues.

While Bernal’s huge fish is indeed impressive—one of the biggest catfish documented in the Missouri River since the 130-pounder caught on the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1804—there’s a good chance even bigger catfish await anglers who fish the area near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi.

Nineteenth-century documents indicate blue cats weighing 150 to 200 pounds were then fairly common in our nation’s big rivers. And in a historical note recorded by William Heckman (1950) in Steamboating Sixty-Five Years on Missouri’s Rivers, we find this note: “Of interest to fisherman is the fact that the largest known fish ever caught in the Missouri River was taken just below Portland, Missouri. This fish, caught in 1866, was a blue channel cat [a blue catfish] and weighed 315 lb. It provided the biggest sensation of those days all through Chamois and Morrison Bottoms. Another ‘fish sensation’ was brought in about 1868 when two men, Sholten and New, brought into Hermann, Missouri, a blue channel cat that tipped the scales at 242 lb.”

Sooner or later, some savvy, strong catfishing fan in the right place at the right time with the right tackle will hook and land a blue catfish much heavier than Bernal’s 130-pounder. And those in-the-know would not be surprised if it happens in the Missouri or Mississippi rivers in Missouri where fishermen like Silas Goodrich and Greg Bernal have been catching giant catfish for more than 200 years.

Swamp Bassin'

2010-07-06T18:46:00.008-05:00

The little lake lies in the back of beyond, in the middle of a vast tract of swampland, several miles from the nearest town. Few people fish there.

Getting there isn’t easy. You must motor more than an hour from the nearest ramp, then walk 100 yards through wet, snake-infested woods. When you’re finally there, though, you’ll find an old cypress johnboat. No one knows who owns it any more, but ownership is not an issue in this lonely corner of the world. The boat is there for whoever comes along.

When last I fished there, I emptied the boat of water, then placed inside it my rod and reel, a sculling paddle and a small tacklebox holding a few lures. A spinnerbait was the first lure I cast, and as soon as it touched down by a big cypress, a bass nailed it. I wasn’t prepared. The fish shot away and did a loop-de-loop around a cypress knee. It mattered not that a 225-pound man held the end of the line opposite the bass. The fish, a 6- or 7-pounder, jumped, flipped its tail and was gone.

Bass in these backcountry waters are brawlers. They fight dirty and make their relatives in bigger, man-made lakes look like wimps.

Maybe it’s the extraordinary fertility of these bottomland hardwood swamps that make bass so healthy and strong. Every fish here seems to have extra stamina.

Maybe the confined living space, shallow water and dense cover are what make swamp bass so good at line-busting and throwing hooks. These fish know every inch of their territory and use that familiarity to discomfit their human antagonists.

Maybe it’s the beauty of swamps that causes these problems. When you’re fishing in the shade of 500-year-old cypresses, watching bright-yellow warblers flit through the foliage overhead, the serenity of it all can lull you into a state of total relaxation. Reflexes get sluggish, and consequently, lots of bass get the best of you.

It doesn’t matter, really. Swamp lakes serve up exceptionally good bass fishing, and if bottomland bass get the jump on us more often than usual, it’s a small price to pay for the privilege of being there.

I missed the first bass that day but caught several others. I landed one largemouth a tad over 6 pounds and several more 2- to 5-pounders. The lack of fishing pressure lets bass grow large in that remote swamp lake, and I’ve rarely fished there without taking at least one big bucketmouth.

I grew up in Arkansas’ Mississippi River Delta and cut my teeth on this brand of swamp fishing. Nowadays, I often fish man-made impoundments, too, but I still prefer fishing a small oxbow in the middle of a swamp. The bassing is extraordinary, and I value these waters for their beauty and serenity, too. There’s nothing prettier than sunrise on a backwater lake ringed by cypresses. And you’re never bothered by jet skis, fast-running boats or other distractions. When I get a bellyful of the modern world, I pack my tackle and head for the bottoms because I know I’ll find peace and quiet there.

Swamp Country
By definition, a swamp is a wetland featuring permanent inundation of large land areas by shallow bodies of water. Most swamps are associated with adjacent rivers or lakes. And unlike marshes, swamps include many woody plants such as cypress trees, tupelos, overcup oaks and button willows. The waters of a swamp are still or slow-moving, and often rich in tannins from decaying vegetation.

My home state of Arkansas encompasses some of the biggest swamps in the country, including the Big Woods area stretching along the White and Cache rivers, which includes hundreds of thousands of acres punctuated with scores of oxbow lakes, bayous and backwaters full of largemouth bass.

Swamps occur throughout much of our country, from New Jersey and Indiana to Texas and Florida. Many are protected as national wildlife refuges or wildlife management areas, such as Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia and Florida, Honey Island Swamp in Louisiana and Mingo Swamp in Missouri. Most serve up excellent fishing for largemouth bass. A call to your state fisheries agency should help you find a swamp you can explore and fish on your own.

Equipment and Techniques
Bank fishing and wading rarely are options in these densely vegetated, soft-bottomed waters. You need a boat to access prime bassing spots, and the lighter the boat, the better. You often must carry your craft to the water and finagle your way into and through tight cover. I prefer fishing from a 10- or 12-foot aluminum johnboat, but canoes work well, too. I’ve even fished out of rubber rafts and belly boats on occasion.

Brushy fishing conditions dictate using a rod slightly shorter than you probably use elsewhere; 5-1/2 feet is generally best. Use small tacklebox with maybe a dozen spinnerbaits, an assortment of plastic worms, and a couple of shallow-running crankbaits and topwater lures. If you can drive close to the bank, you may want to haul a trolling motor. If not, take a sculling paddle instead.

Start by working shoreline cover carefully, probing every nook in the brush and every likely log or cypress tree. Change lures and presentations until you find one bass like, starting the day with topwaters and spinnerbaits, then changing to bottom-bouncers like worms and crankbaits as the day progresses. If you’re fishing an oxbow, remember the outside bend of the lake is always a little deeper than the inside bend. This is important in summer when water temperatures sometimes reach the 90s. During midday, bass gather on the lake’s deeper side, lying in shadows of logs and cypress trees where conditions are more comfortable.

Cypress Fishing
Speaking of cypress trees, fishing around these tall swamp lovers often is the best way to nab a swamp bass. The wide, fluted base supports the tree in the wet soil. The spike-like knees are part of the root system, with each extensive system interlocking with those of other trees, forming mats of shallow roots and knees that reinforce one aother.

Think of the root system as a big raised doughnut surrounding the tree. The doughnut’s hole is a pocket of slightly deeper water adjacent the buttress. Moving outward, one encounters the doughnut itself, which extends 10 to 20 feet, sometimes more, away from the tree. Beyond the doughnut, one encounters flat, featureless bottom, unless another tree is nearby and the root systems interlock.

Cypress knees are part of the doughnut and may be the only surface feature indicating the doughnut’s breadth. But the doughnut may extend several feet beyond visible knees, providing underwater bass structure.

The biggest mistake most anglers make is fishing only the water nearest each tree—inside the doughnut hole. A well-placed cast here may entice a bass, no doubt. But don’t confine your fishing to this area. Bass often relate to underwater features on portions of the root system farther from the buttress—a knee with a hollow, for example, or a cluster of knees or perhaps a point of root growth extending toward deeper water. Bass also hold along the doughnut’s outer edges.

To fish a root system thoroughly, begin on one side of the tree, casting close to it for starters, then working progressively outward to cover the entire doughnut, particularly irregular features you can see or “feel.” When you’ve fished thoroughly from this angle, reposition your boat on the opposite side and do the same thing.

Button Willow Bass
Button willows are woody shrubs, 3 to 8 feet tall, growing in dense thickets in the shallows of many swamps. Bass often ambush prey from the interior of these thickets, and if you target these fish properly, you can hook some hawgs.

To catch button-willow bass, grab limbs and pull your boat into the thicket. This requires a narrow johnboat or canoe. Position it near a stump, log or other feature.

Casting is impossible, so use a long, heavy jigging pole with heavy line (30- to 50-pound braid) to bring fish quickly into the boat. Weedless lures such as plastic worms are best. Pull the lure is tight against the rod tip, then work the pole carefully through the brush until you can drop the lure into an opening.

When a fish strikes, set the hook and back the fish into the boat. You’ll lose many fish and lures before getting the hang of it. But be patient and you’ll soon learn to land a high percentage of big button-willow bass.

Conclusion
Fishing swamps isn’t for everyone. Bottomland anglers must contend with hordes of mosquitoes, the occasional cottonmouth or alligator, and stifling heat and humidity. When you need some peace and quiet, however, and the tug of a big bass on your line to make you happy, these wetland jewels are always worth a visit.

Frog Men

2010-06-21T10:11:00.007-05:00

So you have a hankering for a mess of fresh fried frog legs, huh? And considering the high price of frog legs in the grocery, you figure you’ll go out at night, prowl the swamps and bayous, and capture some bullfrogs yourself.

Well, if you don’t mind the feel of frog slime and swamp ooze between your digits, if the drone of a million skeeters fighting over the tender cuts of your body doesn’t drive you bonkers, if you don’t mind wandering around when the only other creatures operating are bats and cottonmouths, then maybe, just maybe, a witching hour safari for bullfrogs could be your ticket to happiness. Then again, you ought to read this before you decide.

Setting the Scene

From a bayou’s bank, a male bullfrog’s basso-profundo call echoes out. Brrr-rum. Brrr-rum. Brr-rum. The amphibian’s throat swells like a yellow balloon.

Near the far shore, a man squats in the bow of a johnboat. Pinpointing the sound, he shines a spotlight along the stream. When the light reflects two glowing, eyes, he motions to his partner who begins quietly rowing. The frog sits motionless, mesmerized by the light. When boat draws near, the front man lunges forward and seizes the bullfrog with his bare hands before it can leap away. The long-legged amphibian is admired in the light and added to a growing assemblage of his kinfolks in a wet tow-sack.

This scenario plays out thousands of times each summer. Frog hunting isn’t hugely popular, but it has special appeal to a hard-boiled corps of frog men (and some women) who sneer at darkness and discomfort for a chance at one of nature’s greatest delicacies—fresh frog legs.

This ain’t no sport for sissies. Venomous cottonmouths and man-eating alligators lurk in the darkness, it’s hotter than Hades outside, and when the night is over, there won’t be an inch of your skeeter-drilled hide that’s not drenched in mud, blood and sweat. Like a friend of mine says: “Only idiots go frog hunting. Real dumb idiots.”

Fine Eating, Great Fun

The creature the frogging fraternity finds so appealing is the bullfrog. This largest of North American frogs reaches a foot in length and may weigh more than a pound. Its mild-flavored hind legs are gourmet eating, and when you lay into a mess of delicious frog legs, the heat, mosquitoes, mud and snakes really don’t seem like much to endure.

On one of our many frogging excursions, my friend Lewis Peeler ran the outboard while I spotlighted the shore. Soon we saw the first frog’s glowing eyes. Lew swung us shoreward, idled the motor and positioned me in front of the bullfrog. I thought I heard the big croaker chuckle as the boat ground to a halt 10 feet away.

“We should’ve brought a gig,” I said. “My arms aren’t long enough to reach him.” Score: frogs 1, frog men 0.

Froggers use several methods to harvest bullfrogs. Some wade; others use a boat. Many froggers use long-handled, multi-pronged gigs to spear their catch. A few are skilled enough to hook frogs with a fishing fly or snippet of colored cloth dangled in front of the amphibian on a line. Some use bowfishing rigs to arrow the prey. Purists insist the only way to take bullfrogs is with bare hands; it’s more fun that way.

Lew and I are purists, and we’ve learned the approach is critical when hand-catching frogs. If the boat scrapes brush or a paddle groans against the gunwale, it alerts the frog, which will escape regardless of the light in its eyes. A sudden, head-on strike is recommended.

The amphibian’s body provides the best grip, but often as not, the frog jumps at the last second, and the frogger seizes the hopper by one slippery leg. A moment’s hesitation gives the frog the split second needed to escape. The frogger who falters, fails.

We found our second frog at eye level on an embankment. “This one’s mine,” I said, prematurely.

I held the light on the frog, and Lew moved us within grabbing distance. When the hopper and I were eyeball to eyeball, I made the snatch … and missed. The frog jumped over the boat and hit the water with a splash.

Lew stifled a laugh. “I guess I’ll have to show you how to catch ‘em,” he said. We have an unwritten rule that when one frog man misses, the other gets to grab.

We traded places and headed downstream where two booming males called from opposite banks. The boat scraped bottom 30 feet from one huge frog sitting on an open flat. “You hold the light on him and keep the motor idling,” Lewis said. “I’ll slip behind and catch him.”

“That frog’ll be long gone before you ever get close,” I said.

Lew likes a challenge, however, and quickly approached the frog’s blind side. Moving stealthily, he hovered over the frog with hands outstretched. Suddenly, he pounced.

The frog never had a chance. Lew came up grinning with the frog dangling from his hand. “Driver, find me another one,” he said.

The next bullfrog made some unexpected moves. There was barely room to squeeze through the trees to his stream-bank seat. Before Lewis could grab him, a branch scraped the aluminum boat, and the frog jumped—not into the water, but up the bank. Lew caught the frog with a flying tackle.

“That one almost got the best of you,” I said.

“Yeah, but it was fun;” he laughed. “And you’ve got to admit, that was a great catch. Let’s go find another one.”

We took 16 more bullfrogs that night. It was 1:00 a.m. when we finished dressing our catch. Lew put 36 jumbo frog legs in the refrigerator to soak overnight.

The next morning the aroma of breakfast cooking filled the air. Lew’s wife Sherry had prepared a meal fit for a king—succulent frog legs fried golden-brown, cat’s-head biscuits with milk gravy and scrambled eggs.

A meal like that makes every frogging trip worthwhile.

Hot Crappie

2010-06-10T07:06:00.006-05:00

When the weather gets hot, crappie fishing gets tough ... unless you know the secrets for summer success.

It was a typical summer day in Arkansas—fiery and humid with only an occasional breeze to bring relief. For several hours, bluegill fishing on the old river-run lake had been outstanding. But now, as the chuck-wills-widows started their evening roundelay, the bream fishing tapered off.

Plop. The bobber twisted and settled. No takers. Move to the next spot. Plop, twist, settle. Wait. Still nothing. We maneuvered our crickets in, over, under, through and around every piece of visible cover, but no amount of wheedling could rouse another strike.

I decided a last-ditch effort for bass was in order. A barn swallow skimmed the water’s surface as I tied the boat to a tall mid-lake snag. I’d seen two men sink a big cedar tree there just a couple of months earlier.

A bait-casting rod was put into play, and for the next 30 minutes, I plied the brushpile with a variety of lures. Nothing. Switching to an ultralight spinning combo, I tied on a tiny chartreuse tube jig, tipped it with a lively minnow and cast near the sunken tree. Maybe the big guys wouldn’t bite, but perhaps I could entice a couple of little ones.

The next half hour was unforgettable. Not for the glorious rose-and-amber sunset that capped the day. Not even for the river otter I saw playing across the lake. On the first cast, I hooked a pound-and-a-half crappie, and there were 20 thrashing in the ice chest within 30 minutes. None was a real “barn door,” but several rated at least a “Wow!”

This fishing trip, and others like it, has convinced me to pursue crappie during summer. Granted, catching these feisty panfish isn’t as easy in summer as during the spring spawn when crappie are concentrated in the shallows. But for the angler who knows where, when and how, the rewards of summer crappie fishing are many.

The first rule of summer crappie fishing is keying in on deeper-water areas outside the normal realm of shallow-water anglers. Despite the fact they’re often moving, that’s where most crappie hang out on a regular basis.

Concentrate your search in the 10- to 25-foot range. The clearer the water, the deeper you should look. Crappie are usually near woody cover along the edges of inundated stream channels, points and turns on weed edges, rock piles rising into well-oxygenated water, man-made fish attractors and other structure-oriented cover.

In waters with plentiful cover, the trick is finding the small percentage of it that holds fish. You may have to work hard to locate a concentration of crappie. Where cover is in short supply, a single sunken treetop may harbor dozens of slabs, but you must find that spot first.

Some deep-water crappie can be found using hit-and-miss tactics like drift-fishing and trolling. But if you want to increase your hooking time and decrease your looking time, buy a good sonar fish-finder. Electronic hardware is essential to find deep-water crappie consistently. Deep water can hide a lot.

For example, it’s one thing to know a river channel zigzags through a long narrow cove. It’s quite another to find a bend, ledge or some other nuance on the channel that will attract a school of crappie. Without sonar, you might never find such an area. But with a serious look at a bottom contour map and a quick check of prominent bottom changes with sonar, you could be catching slabs in minutes.

On lakes that stratify during summer, it’s even easier to narrow down the waters where crappie are found. Stratified lakes have a layer of cool, unoxygenated water on bottom and a layer of hot, oxygen-rich water on top. A layer of fairly cool, oxygen-rich water called the thermocline is sandwiched between the two. Regardless of whether the thermocline is 8 inches thick or 8 feet thick, that’s probably where you’ll find crappie.

The depth of the thermocline varies from lake to lake. To find it, keep an eye on your sonar while moving around the lake, and look for suspended fish. You’ll notice that most are about the same depth. That’s the thermocline. When fishing, start at that depth.

If you don’t have sonar, try drifting or trolling. Rig your poles with minnows and/or different color jigs set at different depths. Then use the wind or your trolling motor to drift over prospective crappie-holding areas. Make large zigzagging sweeps that take you past stump fields, weed edges and other types of cover in fairly deep water.

When you catch a crappie, change your rigs to conform to the fishes’ bait and depth preferences, and toss out a marker buoy to pinpoint the location. Summer crappie are likely to be congregated in a fairly small area, and drifting a few yards either way could mean getting out of the action.

A common mistake is staying in one place too long. In summer, if crappie are present and feeding, they’ll usually let you know right away. Contrary to popular belief, summer is not a period of sluggishness. A high metabolic rate means hot-weather crappie are frequently feeding, and heavy schooling creates competitive group activity. If you aren’t catching fish within 15 minutes, try another spot.

In murky or stained waters, summer crappie may feed during the bright light of midday. But on clear lakes, fishing edges of cover before dawn and after dusk usually brings the best summertime action. To avoid intense sunlight, crappie in transparent waters often shift the majority of their feeding activity to night.

Night fishermen create their own crappie delicatessens by placing strong lights in or over the water. The lights attract hordes of insects, the insects attract baitfish like shad and minnows, and when the baitfish start swarming around, it’s just a matter of time before crappie stop by for a late-night snack.

Almost any light will work. Some anglers hang propane lanterns over the water. Others prefer a 12-volt floating or sinking crappie light that shines through the water. Lights around boat docks, parks and bridges also attract fish.

Remember, you can’t just throw out a crappie light and start hauling them in. You must place your lights near structure and cover where crappie are likely to be feeding. And you must be patient long enough for the light to attract the insects, then the baitfish, then the crappie, a sequence that may take more than an hour. Prime nighttime fishing spots include underwater timbered islands, sunken brush piles near piers and docks, bridges and causeways over deep water, and drop-offs along underwater creek and river channels.

Lightweight, sensitive fishing equipment is a must for light-biting summer crappie. A good ultralight spinning outfit or graphite jigging pole works great, but try to find one with a soft, sensitive tip. This allows you to lift up slightly and watch for the slightest bend in the tip that indicates a fish has taken your bait. Watch your line for a slight twitch or slackening that signals a hit.

If you enjoy panfishing and haven’t fished for crappie during summer, I suggest you give it a try this year. Hot crappie aren’t hard to catch, they’re just a little harder to find. When you’ve zeroed in on a hot-weather slab hideout, likely as not you can stay in one place and catch enough to feed your family—maybe enough to feed the next-door neighbors, too. Summer days are crappie days, despite what you may hear.

The Big Ugly

2010-06-02T07:47:00.004-05:00

“Don’t judge folks by appearances alone,” my mother used to say. Such is my advice to anyone getting acquainted with the flathead catfish.

The flathead is a brute of a fish, muscular and stream-lined, but ugly by all accepted standards. Viewed head-on, it looks like it was pulled through an old-style washer machine wringer and then run through a trash compactor. The beady eyes are wide-set on the flattened cranium. Its thickened under-lip protrudes in a perpetual pout, worm-like barbels dangle from its chin and mouth, and its hide is the color and texture of a garden slug.

Looking at this fish, one feels instinctively that even others of its kind would find it repulsive. Such may be the case, for flatheads are inveterate loners.

An old river rat I knew dubbed the flathead “The Big Ugly.”

“Ugly as 40 miles of bad road, they are,” he told me once while skinning a 60-pounder hanging from a hay hook tied to a tree limb. “But there ain’t a fish made that’ll give you the rush you feel when a flathead’s on your line. Comparin’ ‘em with fiddlers [channel catfish] is like comparing chihuahuas and pit bulldogs. They may be kin folks, but there ain’t a fiddler swimmin’ could hold a candle to an ornery ol’ flathead when it comes to fightin’. Big Ugly is one tough customer.”

They are not a visible lot, but many anglers, like my old river-rat friend, are smitten with a passion for flathead fishing. Walk into a bait shop beside prime flathead waters, and you will see their faded photos tacked to the walls and doors, photos of leathery men grinning and grunting as they strain to hoist a 40-, 50- or 60-pound flat up before the camera, white-knuckled hands gripping the gill plates.

Were you to talk with the fishermen in those photos, they would tell you in their own words that flatheads possess an intrinsic mesmerism. Catch one, regardless of the method—on rod-and-reel, a trotline, a limbline or yanked from an underwater hidey-hole with your bare hands—and you become, forevermore, a flathead fan.

Today, in a time when more and more anglers are seeking greater thrills and bigger fish, the old-time catters are being joined by increasing numbers of fishermen who also seek the flathead. After decades of being overlooked, the flathead is now “in.”

Certainly, part of the flathead’s appeal stems from its immense size. Ten-, 20-, even 30-pounders are common, and although the all-tackle world-record from Elk City Reservoir in Kansas stands at 123 pounds, flatheads exceeding 139 pounds have been caught in recent times. In the fresh waters of North America, they are exceeded in size only by paddlefish, blue cats, white sturgeons and alligator gars.

Flatheads are widespread, too, another factor heightening their popularity. They inhabit waters from Minnesota south into Alabama, Texas and Mexico, and east to Pennsylvania and West Virginia. They also have been introduced in many waters west of the Rocky Mountains. Because they are common and widely distributed, flatheads offer freshwater anglers their best chance at catching a really big fish.

Best of all, the flathead catfish is an incomparable fighter. It is a bullish battler, long on sullen anger and short on hysteria. When one takes your bait, you may first think you have snagged a sunken log. But bury the hook and it will turn in a flash into a carbon copy of Mike Tyson reducing an underling to a spot of grease on the canvas. The unprepared angler may see his rod snapped in two like a strand of dry spaghetti, or stand in amazement after his favorite fishing combo has been yanked from his hands and deep-sixed.

Real leviathans, incomparable brawlers, widespread, abundant, good eating: flatheads, it seems, have all the qualities of a great sportfish.

Problem is, catching flatheads—big flatheads, at least—isn’t an everyday thing, even for those intimately familiar with their day-to-day habits. As one avid flathead angler so aptly put it, “Fishin’ for big flatheads is like trophy muskie fishing, only lonelier.” You may spend hundreds of fishless hours trying to pinpoint a single trophy fish. And as the hours pass, the doubts begin to grow, and you start wondering if it’s really worth the bother.

That’s why many anglers give up flathead fishing even before they’ve landed their first big fish: they don’t have enough patience. And without patience, you don’t stand a chance.

When you finally do land your first big flathead, you can take great pride in the fact that you’ve managed to triumph over one of freshwater fishing’s finest trophies. Catch your second, third, and fourth big flathead, and you enter a class of elite anglers. Only a handful of fishermen can catch the big ones consistently.

Ugly? No doubt about it. The flathead catfish is ugly to the bone, and no judging committee of a beauty contest would hesitate a moment before it.

Nevertheless, the flathead is widespread, abundant, excellent eating and one of the biggest, hardest-fighting, most challenging-to-catch fishes swimming in freshwater. Find a fish with these qualities, and who cares if it’s ugly?

Season of Peacocks

2010-05-20T12:32:00.006-05:00

Despite its brilliant colors, the 28-pound peacock bass is invisible in the coffee-colored water of Brazil’s Rio Negro. Its flanks are gilded with lustrous, golden scales slashed with bars of ebony. The crimson fins along its belly glow hot, like iron on a blacksmith’s forge.

Such a thing seems insensible — a camouflage of vivid hues. But in a world illuminated by dancing rays of Amazon sunlight, the fish’s metallic complexion is the perfect cloak.

The fish waits in ambush, hoping something edible will come near. And soon, something does — or so the huge fish thinks.

In a nearby boat, Bill Gassman of Indianola, Iowa, is enjoying the sixth day of his first Amazon adventure. Already on this trip, he has caught some big peacock bass, including some 18- and 19-pounders. But when he casts a brightly colored topwater plug near a long, sweeping sandbar off river’s main channel, he has no idea he’s about to do battle with the peacock of all peacocks.

The fish sees Gassman’s lure the instant it touches down and charges it like a cheetah after a gazelle. But unlike the explosive spectacle often seen when a peacock bass attacks, this strike hardly ripples the water.

“When the lure hit the water, it just disappeared,” said Gassman, the 44-year-old chief executive of an architectural millwork company. “The fish went straight to the bottom and started spooling my line.”

Gassman was uncertain of the fish’s size, but his experienced guide, Elvis Fonseca knew it was a giant. “Grande! Grande!” the guide shouted.

“Then the fish stuck its head out of the water, and I realized how big it was,” Gassman said.

It is, indeed, a gigantic peacock, and it fights gigantically. During the 12-minute skirmish that follows, Gassman struggles to keep the monster from spooling off all his line. The fish charges up and down the sandbar, pulling drag each time, but fortunately it stays free of entanglements. Gassman eventually gains the upper hand and lands the fish.

The Iowa angler (at right in the AnglersInn.com photo shown here), unaware he has just caught a world-record-class peacock, wants to continue fishing. But Fonseca urges him to return to their anchored mothership, the Captain Peacock, where the fish can be weighed on certified scales. The giant measures 37 inches long and has a girth of 25 inches. It tips the scales at 28 pounds, more than enough to beat the existing 27-pound International Game Fish Association all-tackle world record.

Gassman’s fish, a speckled peacock (Cichla temensis) caught on February 9 this year, still awaits official certification by IGFA, although there’s little doubt it should make the record book. Catching a record of this species, the largest of six varieties (blackstriped, blue, butterfly, Melaniae, orinoco and speckled) currently listed in IGFA’s World Record Game Fishes, is a coveted achievement, almost on a par with the 77-year-old largemouth record (22 pounds, 4.97 ounces), recently tied by Manabu Kurita on Japan’s Lake Biwa.

On a visit to Brazil in 2000, I was in the small airport at Barcelos, a fishing community on the Rio Negro. On the wall there was a photo of Gerald “Doc” Lawson holding the current 27-pound, world-record speckled peacock caught in the Rio Negro on December 4, 1994. Several experienced guides and outfitters were there as I looked at the picture of this incredible fish (photo at right), and all agreed it was a record unlikely to be broken.

As it turns out, the 2009-2010 fishing season produced not only Gassman’s pending all-tackle record, but other record peacocks as well, some of which have already been certified by IGFA.

While fly fishing in Brazil’s Manapolis, Rio Preto da Eva, on October 22, 2009, Jorge Massulo de Aguiar, of Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil, set a new 16-pound tippet record when he landed a 25-pound, 2-ounce speckled peacock. The previous IGFA record was a 19-pounder caught in November 1992 from Venezuela’s Rio Pasimoni.

Venezuelan angler Antonio Campa G. established a new 8-pound-line-class record with a 22-pound speckled peacock (IGFA photo at left) while fishing the Rio Inirida tributary in Colombia on January 26, 2010. That fish bested the 20-pound, 3-ounce IGFA record pulled from the Jatapa River, Amazonas, Brazil 18 years ago.

This season’s records weren’t restricted to the speckled species either. On January 28, 2010, while fishing Cano Bocon, Colombia, Alejandro Linares, of Medellin, Colombia, landed an 8-pound orinoco peacock (Cichla orinocensis) that established a new IGFA all-tackle record. The previous best was a 6-1/2-pounder caught from Venezuela’s Masparro Lake in October 2008.

And from the Rio Urubaxi, a tributary of the Negro, come reports that in mid-February, George Walters of Charlotte, North Carolina caught a potential all-tackle record butterfly peacock (Cichla ocellaris) weighing more than 16 pounds. That record is pending certification by IGFA. The current 12-pound, 9-ounce world record was caught January 6, 2000, by Antonio Campa G. in Venezuela’s Chiguao River.

I asked Larry Larsen, one of the world’s top experts on peacock bass and executive director of the Peacock Bass Association, why he thought so many long-standing peacock records were broken this season.

“There were a handful of 25- and 26-pounders taken this past year, as there usually are,” he said. “I think the unusual, extremely low water conditions in January and February were responsible for moving some of the giants, such as the 28-pounder, to places where they aren't normally accessible to the angler. Such drought conditions (which cause navigation problems) sometimes occur in April when most of the operators have finished their ‘seasons,’ and few anglers have a shot at the giants then because there aren't as many fishing. That said, I don't think there were more giants caught this past season than in a normal year.”

The bottom line is this: it may be tough finding them except during seasons of extremely low water, but giant peacock bass — maybe even more world records — are swimming right now in South America’s rivers and backwaters. The lucky angler who’s in the right place at the right time could establish another benchmark peacock fans will be aiming at for years to come.

To contact Keith Sutton, email him at catfishdude@sbcglobal.net. Autographed copies of his books on fishing and hunting are available at www.catfishsutton.com.

Redtail Rendezvous

2010-05-11T17:40:00.006-05:00

Rio Negro, Amazonas, Brazil

Fishing can be like a capricious lover. Just when you think she will satisfy all your desires, she rebuffs you for no obvious reason.

I am into my sixth and last day of fishing on Brazil’s Rio Negro when this thought pops into my head. I have fished five days, 18 hours a day. I have caught huge peacock bass, toothy piranhas, dangerous stingrays and several species of hard-fighting catfish. But the one fish I want to catch most, the redtail catfish, has managed to elude me.

Ten hours from now I must leave for home. I seriously wonder if I can catch a redtail before I must go.

Legend has it this catfish originated when a scarlet macaw was turned into a fish. Brazilians call it pirarara, the macaw fish. Americans know it as the redtail catfish.

It is aptly named in both cultures. The pirarara’s tail and fins glow with the vivid red hues of the scarlet macaw. The upper body has a rich olive or chocolate tone; the belly and flanks are creamy yellow.

Some people say catfish are not beautiful, but those people surely never encountered the breathtaking redtail.

Since I first saw a photograph of this fish, I have longed to catch one. And this trip to Brazil provides my first, and perhaps only, opportunity to do so. The species is said to be common here, but every tactic I have tried, ever hole I have fished, every bait I have presented has failed to produce a redtail. I am beginning to think it is not meant to be.

My guide José and I motor into a tributary to fish some deep holes found earlier while scouting. As we round a bend, we see a man standing in a long, slender dugout. He is holding a handline, and the water before him is boiling. For several minutes, he fights the fish he has hooked and finally he drags it into his boat. It is a redtail!

“Grandé!” José shouts. It is a big one,at least 60 pounds. As we pull alongside the man’s dugout, we see he already has caught a smaller redtail.

I cannot speak Portuguese, but José talks with the man who obviously is pleased with his catch. José tells him we, too, are hoping to catch a redtail, and the man motions to me to hand him my fishing pole. He replaces the cut-bait on my hook with a live piranha that clacks its sharp teeth like castanets. Then he casts the toothy bait right in the middle of some bushes next to the bank and hands the rod back to me.

“The pirarara is like the arara [macaw],” the jungle fisherman tells me as José translates. “It loves trees. That is where you must seek it.”

And so, having left the deep water where we thought the redtails lived, we now fish in the bushes edging the river.

The 4-inch piranha struggles, vibrating my line. Then, suddenly—wham!—my rod tip takes a nosedive. I rear back on the pole; the water beneath the bushes boils.

José quickly repositions the boat in deeper water. The fish must be brought away from the bushes and fought in more open water. But the fish is not persuaded to follow this plan. It surges deeper into the thicket, spinning rapidly as it goes. My line is wrapped around a dozen branches.

Not to fret. I’ve fished for catfish all my life and have been in this situation before. I lean back hard on the 7-foot rod and put pressure on the fish. Soon its head turns. Then, what I hoped would happen happens: I manage to drag the catfish clear of the bushes.

The fight now begins in earnest. I gain a few feet of line. The fish takes it back. I reel some more. The fish surges away.

Minutes pass. But finally I bring the fish close enough so José can net it.

As the sun sets on the last minute of my last day in Brazil, I land the redtail catfish about which I have dreamed so long.

Road Trip!

2010-04-20T07:31:00.011-05:00

When traveling here to there, a little fishing might be good for what ails you.

One of the most fun road trips I ever made was a jaunt from Arkansas to Wyoming. I had booked a week at a resort near Dubois, Wyoming. The round-trip distance from my home to the camp and back was about 3,000 miles. To break up the long drive, I decided I’d do some fishing along my route.

With nothing but a road map as my guide, a little rod and reel I kept in the back of my truck and a small tackle bag under the seat, I fished my way from the Ozarks to the Rockies and back. On the drive out, I caught largemouth bass in an Arkansas farm pond, big-river catfish with a fishing guide in Missouri, bluegills and bullheads from a pier at a Kansas state-park lake, and trout in a clear Colorado stream. The trip home was equally productive. I caught my first cutthroat trout in Wyoming, a mess of white bass in Oklahoma and two dozen crappie in a state wildlife agency lake in Arkansas.

Whether you travel in a little pickup truck like I did or a big motorhome with all the amenities of home, on a short trip or a cross-country run, alone or with family or friends, fishing can be a memorable part of your travel. The following tips will help you enjoy your angling road trip even more.

At-Home Preparation
Before leaving home, do some research and pick a few good fishing locales along your route. If you’re pulling a boat, you’ll have access to fishing hotspots all along your way. If not, choose lakes with fishing piers or other bank-fishing access, or perhaps a small river where you can stop and cast from a boat ramp or riverside park. A good place to start is the fisheries department in any state through which you plan to drive. Most agencies offer detailed information about fishing waters large and small on their Web sites. Links to all are posted on this U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Web site.

Road-Trip Combos
You probably don’t want a bunch of poles sticking out your windows or strapped to the luggage rack, and fortunately, this isn’t necessary. Many companies make great multi-piece or collapsible travel combos that fit easily under a seat and are ideal for road-trip fishing. Check ‘em out and get one.

The Essential Tackle Pack
Most road-trip anglers are opportunists, prepared to catch what’s biting. A few simple pieces of terminal tackle in a compact tackle box or bag will get the job done: some hooks (size 2, 6 and 2/0), various styles and sizes of sinkers (from small split shot to 1-oz. worm weights), an assortment of sliding floats and bobber stops, and a variety of all-purpose lures that will entice different fish. My favorites include small spinners, multipurpose crankbaits, small spoons and small to medium jigs.

Grocery Baits
Stop in a grocery store and you can quickly turn up several good fish baits, including chicken liver, Spam and hot dogs for catfish, bread and shrimp for bream, and corn and cheese for trout. Check local regulations for restrictions.

Don’t Forget Licenses
If you know for sure you will fish in a particular state, you might want to buy a fishing license on-line before you leave home. If your approach is going to be more random—picking fishing spots as you see them—then visit a license seller (mom-and-pop groceries, sporting goods stores or the local Wal-Mart) before you’re ready to fish. Most states offer inexpensive trip licenses for non-residents good for a few days or a week. Check local regulations as well to be sure you’re fishing by the book.

Pick a Pier
Many government agencies have built fishing piers that provide ideal locations to stop and fish when you’re road-weary. Anyone can enjoy fishing from a pier, including disabled anglers in wheelchairs. All docks built with federal dollars must be handicapped accessible. These are especially good places for fishing with youngsters, too. Carry a picnic lunch, outfit your children with life jackets and get ready for fun.

On The Water
Want to get on the water during your trip? Check with local boat docks and marinas and see if rental boats are available. Most businesses rent by the hour or the day, so you can stop for a brief outing or stay a while if the fish are really biting. You also might consider throwing a belly boat or waders in your gear. These allow you to get away from overgrown shores so you have better access to fish cover.

Blue Line Fishing
Fishing blue lines is a fun way to go. Be sure you have your fishing license, then just watch your road map for blue lines on the route ahead that indicate a river or stream crossing. Public access areas are available at many spots where you can cast a jig, spinner or other multi-species lure and see what’s biting. You never know what you’ll find on the end of your line.

Book A Guide
When you have some extra time and can stop and fish a half a day or more, consider hiring a fishing guide. Guides provide everything you need for fishing, and if the fish are biting, they’re sure to put you on them. An internet search will help you find them, or stop by state travel centers and look for brochures.

State Fish
Here’s a fun road-trip fishing game. Try to catch the official state fish in every state through which you travel. In Alabama, for example, you would try to catch a largemouth bass, the official freshwater state fish, or a tarpon, the state saltwater fish. In Michigan, you’d try for a brook trout, and in Nebraska, you’d cast a line for channel catfish. For a list of all state fish, check this Web site. Want to make the game even simpler? Just try to catch a different species in every state along your route.

Saltwater Spots
Don’t overlook saltwater fishing opportunities if your road trip takes you along or near the coast. Many cities and parks have long fishing piers where you can stop a while and target saltwater species ranging from sheepshead and Spanish mackerel to sharks and tarpon. Most piers also have bait shops and tackle stores nearby where you can drop in for fishing tips and info on what’s biting.

Loaner Tackle
Forgot your fishing tackle when you left home? Plan your fishing stop at a state or national park and drop in the office. Many parks encompassing good fishing waters have loaner tackle for park visitors. And more often than not, there’s no cost involved.

Say Cheese
Keep a camera handy to record your memorable moments while fishing on the road. If you’re fishing alone and have a camera with a self-timer function, you can set it on a tripod and snap a shot of yourself with your catch. Or have a companion do the shooting. If you plan to stop at a motel for the night and are shooting with a digital camera, you can hook up your laptop and e-mail photos of the big one that didn’t get away just hours after you caught it, a great way to stay in touch with family and friends while you’re away from home.

Good for What Ails You
One final tip: add some fishing time to road trips every chance you get. Not only is fishing fun, it’s a good way to relax and make the most out of every journey, no matter how long or how short. If everyone went fishing when traveling here to there, road rage would be a thing of the past.

Backcountry Crappie

2010-04-04T18:58:00.004-05:00

She lies in the back of beyond, an emerald-green jewel in the heart of an Arkansas swamp. Few people know her, and few of those know her with the intimacy she and I have shared.

When last I visited her, an alligator crossed her breadth and swam alongside the leaky wooden johnboat from which I fished, eyeballing me like a cat eyeballs a plump baby bird. Two bald eagles fished with me that day, carrying bluegills to a nestling high in a cypress tree. Wood ducks squealed as they raced overhead. Rain crows clucked, and peepers peeped. The staccato drumbeat of pileated woodpeckers chiseling for grubs echoed through the wilderness.

To visit the lady, I motored many miles down a great river to a point far from the nearest town. Tying my johnboat to oak steps placed years ago by some now forgotten individual, I clambered atop the steep river bank and followed a barely discernable path through a hundred yards of jungle to the lady’s edge. A screen of tupelos, cypress and buckbrush obstructed my vision, but I soon spotted the old wooden boat awash near shore. No one knows who owns it any more, but ownership is not an issue in this lonely corner of the world. The boat is there for whoever comes along.

I tipped the hand-hewn cypress craft to empty it of water, then placed inside it the cane pole and coffee can full of jigs I brought. I had no difficulty pushing my way to the outer boundary of the cypress trees using a pole cut from a nearby thicket. As I tied a squirrel-hair jig to my line, I saw a spritz of tiny shad erupt beside a willow bush, a sure sign that largemouth bass were hunting there. But I wasn’t after bass.

Dipping the jig into convoluted folds at the base of a hollow cypress, I found my quarry. Its subtle strike almost fooled me, but I saw the line go slack and set the hook. A brief battle ensued. The fish darted this way, then that, in the darkened recess, and I thought it might escape. This time, however, it was not to be. As the fish weakened, the springy cane pole slingshotted it from its hidey-hole, and I quickly swung it over the transom.

The big crappie glistened like a silver ingot. It weighed nearly 2 pounds, much larger than crappie I usually catch in heavily pressured man-made waters. I laid it in water that had seeped into the bottom of the boat and continued fishing.

Over the next several hours, I caught crappie after crappie after crappie. Some were larger than the first, including one barn-door that measured three lengths of a dollar bill. Most weighed a pound to a pound-and-a-half by my estimation, and I rarely fished five minutes without catching one.

The lady, this gorgeous little oxbow lake in the back of beyond, had once again blessed me with her bounty. That evening, before heading up the path leading back to my boat, I offered her a silent word of thanks.

Only rarely do I visit this isolated pool, and when I do, I go alone. A friend who introduced me to the lady nearly 25 years ago made me promise to never reveal her whereabouts. I will keep that promise because this is not a place where I want to see other people. The charm that draws me there is the charm of solitude and natural splendor. People do not belong there.

My friend goes there to fish for bass. I have not told him about the hundreds of huge crappie I’ve caught there, and I don’t intend to; he’s happy enough fishing for bass. The lack of fishing pressure lets the crappie grow large. I know few other lakes where they are so big and abundant, and those, too, are isolated waters that rarely have human visitors.

If I gave you some clues, and you so desired, you could find my hideaway and fish it yourself. I don’t intend to help you, however, so you’ll be better off finding your own hideaway where you can fish for crappie away from the crowds. All it takes is a little homework.

Begin your search on large tracts of public land such as national wildlife refuges, wildlife management areas and national forests. The key word here is large. Remote lakes by definition must be surrounded by large tracts of land where access by vehicle is difficult or impossible. Identify such spots, then write or call the agency in charge and determine how to obtain a map. Topographic maps are best, as they provide detailed information that will help you reach the body of water you choose to fish. Call local fisheries biologists and ask if this is a lake where good numbers of crappie are likely to be found.

White River National Wildlife Refuge in my home state of Arkansas encompasses more than 200 oxbow lakes. Only a few dozen have easy access; the rest rarely are visited by fishermen, and all harbor plentiful slab crappie. With a topo map, anyone can pinpoint these waters. Walk in with a belly boat and a minimum of tackle, and you can catch crappie on some waters that haven’t been fished in decades. The same situation exists on many large bottomland refuges throughout the country.

Two large national forests in Arkansas, the Ozark and Ouachita, cover millions of acres holding scores of seldom-fished crappie lakes. Some have roads to their edges, but the banks are steep and have no launch ramps, so the few people who fish them usually do so from shore. By sliding in a lightweight inflatable boat or canoe, I’ve fished remote hot spots loaded with jumbo crappie. Consult personnel on national forests in your area to find similar locales.

Proper timing may be required to reach some out-of-the-way crappie lakes. One oxbow I fish is surrounded by swampy ground in the backwoods of a 17,000-acre wildlife area. Walking in is not an option, but in spring, when local rivers flood, one can motor up a bayou to within a hundred yards of the lake and drag a boat to it. It’s back-breaking work, but the rewards make the effort worthwhile.

Some unfished crappie lakes lie in plain view with easy access. One I’ve often fished lies on public land beside one of the country’s busiest interstates. Thousands of people drive by it daily, yet I’ve never seen another person fishing there. With a belly boat and ultralight spinning outfit, it’s easy to fish around the lake’s beaver lodges and flooded tupelo trees where I sometimes catch 2-pound-plus crappie. Lakes such as this don’t offer the peacefulness many anglers seek, but provide a good alternative when there’s no time for a backcountry junket.

Crappie lakes devoid of people offer treasures not found in other places. To be on the water on a beautiful day, in a place untouched by human hands, a place where worries are forgotten and serenity reigns, a place where crappie grow as big as dinner plates and rush to take the offerings you lay before them: this is crappie fishing at its best.

Legendary Bo-Whoop Brings $201,250 At Auction

2010-03-19T08:41:00.002-05:00

I imagine Nash Buckingham was looking down from the heavenly hunting grounds this week and scratching his head in disbelief.

On Monday, March 15, Bo-Whoop, the fabled 12-gauge HE Grade Super Fox shotgun once owned by the renowned author of Tattered Coat, De Shootinest Gent’man and other outdoor classics, was sold by James D. Julia Auctions in Fairfield, Maine. The live audience started the bidding at $50,000, a price Buckingham no doubt would have found mind-boggling.

That was just the beginning. At just over $100,000, two motivated phone bidders took over the action and battled back and forth, each increasing the bid in increments of $5,000.

The hammer didn’t fall until the bidding reached a whopping $175,000. With the 15-percent buyer’s premium added, the total came to $201,250, the third-highest auction record attained for an American shotgun. The auction house reported only that the winner was a “business from down South.”

“A short chorus of Amazing Grace was sung just before the lot went to the block,” said Wes Dillon with the Firearms Division at James D. Julia.

“I once was lost, but now am found …”

Lost …

After a December 1, 1948, duck hunt near Clarendon, Arkansas, Buckingham and his friend Clifford Green were stopped and checked by game wardens. One of the wardens asked if he could examine the gun Buckingham had made famous in his stories, and Buckingham consented. Bo-Whoop apparently was laid against the fender of Green’s car afterward. The hunters didn’t notice it was missing until they had driven several miles away.

In the weeks that followed, an exhaustive search was conducted. But the gun wasn’t recovered. Buckingham never saw his beloved Bo-Whoop again.

Found …

No one knows for sure who actually found Bo-Whoop. But the shotgun resurfaced in the late 1950s or early 1960s when an unnamed man offered to sell it for $100 to the grandfather of the consignor, who hails from Georgia. After some haggling, the grandfather bought the gun, which had a broken stock, for $50.

The buyer put the shotgun in a closet where it remained until his death in 1991. It was then passed on to the consignor’s father, who also stored it away.

“In 2005, the father decided it was time to have the gun properly repaired,” said Dillon. “He took it to Jim Kelly of Darlington, SC who informed the father of the shotgun’s history, Nash Buckingham, and how famous both shotgun and man were. Kelly faithfully recreated the broken stock in about a year, and the shotgun went back into storage. In January 2009, the shotgun was handed down to the consignor who, now aware of the shotgun’s history and fame, decided to allow it to be sold to someone who will appreciate it for what it is and honor the memory of Nash Buckingham and the legend of Bo-Whoop.”

When reports started coming out that Bo-Whoop had been found, controversy swirled around the ownership of the gun. But Buckingham received a cash settlement from his insurance company for its loss, which apparently negated any claims of ownership by the writer’s descendants.

“… the gun has no question of title,” the auction company said in its catalog. “Because the insurance company settled, Nash's descendants no longer have any possible ownership. In regards to the insurance company (if it still is in existence) there is no practical way a claim could be made 60 years later, and, even if it was, they could only recover their original settlement (which was probably $500-$700) … James D. Julia will guarantee clear title to the buyer of the gun now and in the future.”

Perhaps we’ll learn more about the buyer of Bo-Whoop at a later date. But for now, the saga of the legendary shotgun has come to an end.

It is a classic story fitting of the man with whom it began, a man who loved guns and hunting and the outdoors, Theophilus Nash Buckingham, an author and conservationist from Tennessee who surely must be smiling down at the wonder of it all.

102-Pound Catfish!

2010-03-07T12:22:00.007-06:00

February 5, 2010, is a day Joe Ludtke, Jerry Cline and Josh Cline will never forget—especially Joe.

The father (Jerry) and his two sons wanted to try some cold-weather catfishing, so they hired catfishing guide Mike Mitchell to take them out on Alabama’s Wheeler Lake, a Tennessee River reservoir well-known for producing giant blue cats this season.

Mitchell is well-known as one of the country’s top catfish guides and tournament anglers. And he’s especially adept at putting his clients on huge winter blues. Hailing from Albertville, Ala., this young man has helped many clients catch their biggest fish ever, including Toni Treadway who caught a 98-pound blue while fishing with Mitchell on Wheeler Lake in January 2008. Before this cold February morning ended, Joe, Jerry and Josh would each catch their personal-best fish as well.

“We anchored on our second spot around 9:00 a.m.,” Joe Ludtke says, “and the fun began. The first rod dropped, and Dad landed a 30-pound blue. The second rod dropped, and I caught a 40-pounder. We had no more bites for 15 minutes, so we moved to our next spot. When the first rod dropped here, Josh caught his biggest fish ever, a whopping 66-pound blue cat. [Photo immediately above.] Amazingly, just a few minutes later, Dad fought and landed an even bigger fish, a 72-pound blue.” [Photo at left below.]

These guys are enjoying an extraordinary fishing trip already. But the best is yet to come.

When the bite slows, Mitchell moves the boat again, and it’s Joe’s turn to grab the next pole down. When he does, he immediately knows it’s a monster.

“It felt like I had just hooked into a car,” he says. “I have never felt something so big and so strong! I kept telling Mike, my dad and Josh, this is a giant.”

The fish fights valiantly, but after a 15-minute battle, Joe get the upper hand. He brings the gigantic catfish alongside the boat and Mitchell nets it. Mitchell and Josh struggle to lift the heavyweight over the transom, but finally succeed.

“After several minutes of extreme excitement, it’s time to weigh the fish,” Joe says. “Mike pulls out his 100-pound scale, and the scale reads FULL! I can't believe I’ve just caught a 100-pound fish. Mike then brings out his 110-pound scale, and the big blue weighs in at 102.52 pounds! [Photo top of story and below.] It was 54 inches long with a girth of 40 inches. We take several pictures and release the big catfish back into Wheeler. Our total for the day was eight blues for 420 pounds!”

“I really love fishing for trophy blue catfish in winter,” says Mitchell. “These fish feed heavily on winter-kill shad, gorging themselves until spring when they start thinking more of spawning. Wheeler Lake has an abundant supply of food for these big blues, so they thrive here.

“Wheeler offers a lot of diversity—shallow flats, aquatic vegetation, lots of main lake structure such as rocks and logs,” Mitchell continues. “All these characteristics and more are rolled up into a river situation with good current and oxygen supplies. Freshwater mussels, a big food source for catfish, thrive in these shallow, oxygen-rich environments, but the bigger cats feed primarily on shad and herring. Tennessee River impoundments like Wheeler are havens for these two types of baitfish.”

In winter, big blues become somewhat lethargic, and anglers must slow their presentation to catch them. But this is the time of year when bigger fish are likely to be caught.

“Generally speaking, five to eight fish in 8 hours is a good day,” says Mitchell, “but usually about 75 percent of the fish we catch exceed 40 pounds.”

Joe Ludtke now belongs to an elite fraternity consisting of just a few dozen people who have caught 100-pound-plus catfish in U.S. waters. And Mike Mitchell is one of the only guides who has ever put a client on a cat of such size.

To contact, Mitchell, phone 256-673-2250 or visit his website, www.tnriveroutfitters.net.

Want to terrific video of a 101-pound Wheeler Lake giant being caught and released? Check out this Fat Cat Outdoors video on YouTube.

Note: all photos in this blog were provided courtesy of Mike Mitchell.

Bo-Whoop Found, Up For Auction

2010-02-25T13:49:00.010-06:00

Back on October 1, 2009, I posted a blog about the mysterious disappearance of “Bo-Whoop,” a custom-made A.H. Fox 12-gauge magnum double-barrel owned and made famous by writer Nash Buckingham. My story asked the question, “Bo-Whoop, where are you?”

Now we know. Bo-Whoop has suddenly surfaced, and at a March 15-16, 2010, auction in Fairfield, Maine, James D. Julia Auctioneers will sell the renowned shotgun.

Many believe the high bid will be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and considering the incredible story of Bo-Whoop, a gun as prized as the sword of Excalibur and almost as mythical, I have no doubt that will be the case. I’ll even go out on a limb and say the price paid will be the highest ever for a shotgun sold at auction. (The previous high is believed to be $287,500 paid for an elaborate, handmade Parker A1S made for, but never delivered to, Czar Nicholas II of Russia in 1914.)

The story of Bo-Whoop begins back in the 1920s. Buckingham was a respected authority on shooting and hunting. In 1921, Western Cartridge Company president John Olin sent him an Askins-Sweeley (Fox) magnum 12-gauge to field-test the company’s new Super-X shotshells. Buckingham liked the gun so much, in 1926, he contacted Ad Roll at the A.H. Fox Gun Company in Philadelphia and commissioned a 12-gauge Super-Fox waterfowl gun for what Buckingham called “the tall ones.” He specified that the barrels be bored by renowned gun maker Bert Becker.

Becker crafted the gun to Buckingham’s specifications. It was constructed on a Fox frame with 32-inch barrels, which were overbored to deliver a 90-percent pattern of copper-coated 4s at 40 yards. The gun was chambered for 3-inch shells, had a straight-hand stock, a rubber recoil pad, ivory sights, and, at Buckingham’s order, no safety. It weighed just under 10 pounds.

Buckingham frequently wrote about this gun in his articles, and thus it became familiar to the vast readership of Buckingham, eventually making it one of the most famous shotguns in the world and certainly the most famous Fox shotgun ever built.

The gun’s unusual name came from Buckingham’s good friend Colonel Harold P. Sheldon. He called the shotgun Bo-Whoop because of its distinctive hollow report.

Buckingham was riding back to town with a man named Clifford Green following a December 1, 1948 duck hunt near Clarendon, Arkansas, when a pair of game wardens stopped the men and checked their licenses and ducks. Bo-Whoop was laid on the fender of Green’s car after one of the wardens looked at the gun, and Buckingham didn’t notice it was missing until they had driven several miles away. Despite an exhaustive search by game wardens, police and hunters, and ads placed with local newspapers and radio stations, Buckingham never saw the gun again.

Gun enthusiasts have speculated on the whereabouts of Bo-Whoop ever since. But now, instead of wondering what happened to the gun, we know. Here’s the story generously shared with me by J. Wesley Dillon with the Firearms Division at James D. Julia, who also provided the photographs of Bo-Whoop and Nash Buckingham illustrating this article.

“Bo-Whoop really wasn’t lost, just no one knew exactly where it was, that is until the late 1950s or early 1960s when, according to a notarized affidavit from the consignor, his grandfather purchased this shotgun with a broken stock from an unnamed man for $50 (the man was asking $100). The broken shotgun remained in his grandfather’s closet until his death in 1991 and was passed on to the consignor’s father. It remained in storage for the next 14 years.

“In 2005, the father decided it was time to have the gun properly repaired. He took it to Jim Kelly of Darlington, SC who informed the father of the shotgun’s history, Nash Buckingham, and how famous both shotgun and man were. Kelly faithfully recreated the broken stock in about a year, and the shotgun went back into storage. In January 2009, the shotgun was handed down to the consignor who, now aware of the shotgun’s history and fame, has decided to allow it to be sold to someone who will appreciate it for what it is and honor the memory of Nash Buckingham and the legend of Bo-Whoop.

“While Nash’s loss of Bo-Whoop was a considerable personal loss, at least it was not a financial loss; Buckingham received a cash settlement from his insurance company for its loss.”

The background material sent to me by Dillon goes on to describe how the shotgun to be auctioned was definitively proven to be Buckingham’s Bo-Whoop.

“After the time of loss, Nash incorrectly referenced the serial number of his lost gun as #31108. Bo-Whoop’s correct serial number is 31088, which is, of course, found on this gun. A search of the Fox records for SN 31108 discloses that that serial number belongs to an A-grade Fox 12 gauge with 30-inch barrels, nothing even close to a Super-Fox. Fox records for serial number 31088 conclusively describe our gun here and thus unquestionably lay to rest any question of authenticity. Given the proximity of the resurfacing of this venerable old shotgun, with its authentic markings and rock solid provenance and factory letter, there can be no doubt that what was once lost is now found. This, undoubtedly, is a once in a lifetime opportunity to own the most famous Fox shotgun in the world.”

The gun is described to be in “very good to fine” condition. The stock shows the obviously repaired break, but other than a few minor nicks and dings, Bo-Whoop has fared well during the 61 years since it was lost.

I wish I could travel to Maine for the auction of Bo-Whoop. Having written about the gun’s disappearance several times over the years, I would like to just gaze upon it for a few moments. To hold it in my hands, to swing it upon imaginary ducks in Buckingham’s “tall ones,” would be a breath-taking experience were it possible.

I am glad Bo-Whoop was found. We now know more about where the gun has been all these years. One of the great mysteries in firearms history has been solved.

But the shotgun’s appearance makes me melancholy as well. When I drive through the east Arkansas Delta where Bo-Whoop was lost, I no longer will be watching the ditches looking for the gun that really wasn’t there or imagining if it might be hanging on the walls of one of the shotgun shacks that still stand along the roads, reminders of days long gone when Buckingham hunted waterfowl in the river bottoms here. I’ll miss that for sure.

Cook Your Goose

2010-02-11T08:07:00.006-06:00

“You take them.”

“No, you take them.”

“But I took them last time.”

“That’s OK. Take them anyway.”

“I’d rather not.”

“But I insist.”

“I’ll be glad to take them if y’all don’t want ‘em.”

“Whaaat?”

We had just concluded a successful snow goose hunt in the east Arkansas Delta. Seven geese had fallen to our guns, and my hosts were quarreling over who should take them home. They seemed startled when I offered to take the handsome birds.

“Have you ever eaten a snow goose?” one man asked.

“If not, then let me warn you,” said the other. “Snake livers and boiled shoestrings would be infinitely more palatable.”

I acted ignorant and insisted on taking the birds off their hands. They seemed pleased, though a bit worried about my state of mind.

That night, I slow-cooked the breasts of two birds in a rich sour cream and mushroom gravy. They were fork-tender and as tasty as the finest rice-field mallard I’ve ever eaten. The legs, backs, wings and giblets flavored a delectable gumbo. The remaining birds were prepared in a variety of ways—roasted, grilled, braised, on the rotisserie. They were among the finest game entrées I’ve ever eaten.

Next time I hunted with my two friends, I let them wheedle me into taking 15 more geese. “My neighbor’s hogs will eat them,” I said.

I figure what they don’t know won’t hurt them.

A successful goose hunt provides the makings for some of the most delectable wild game meals you’ll ever eat. The dark, richly flavored meat of snow geese is superb when properly prepared. But if you listen to some hunters, you might wrongfully conclude that snow geese “aren’t fittin’ to eat.”

No doubt, poor field preparation accounts for some hunters’ dislike of geese. A goose’s body is superbly insulated with feathers and down. So after killing one, it’s a good idea to quickly gut and cool it so residual body heat doesn’t harm the quality of the meat. This should be done even during on the coldest hunting days. If you don’t believe it, gut a goose an hour after you kill it. Steam will rise from the body cavity! In warm weather, it’s also wise to pluck the feathers from the breast to promote quicker cooling.

Field dressing is simple. Wearing latex gloves you’ve tucked in a pocket, use a sharp knife to open the body cavity just below the end of the breast bone, then pull out the innards. If you like giblet gravy or gumbo, save the heart, gizzard and/or liver, storing them in a small zip-seal plastic bag. Keep the field-dressed birds in a cool place outside or, better yet, place them on ice in a large cooler. Pull the gloves off inside out and tuck in a pocket for proper disposal.

When the hunt is over, it’s time for plucking or skinning. Be aware, however, federal waterfowl regulations require hunters to leave the head or one feathered wing on each carcass until the bird reaches the “point of consumption,” usually your home.

When I plan to cook the birds using dry-heat methods like roasting, I pluck them. Wild geese, unlike their domestic cousins, have little body fat; the skin flavors the meat and keeps it moist during cooking. Large feathers are plucked from the body, then the bluish pin feathers and down are carefully removed.

If the geese will be prepared using a moist-heat method of cooking, they can be skinned. Part the feathers along the breastbone, slice the skin from neck to tail, then spread the feathered skin until meat on the breast and legs is exposed. Run a sharp knife along both sides of the breastbone to remove two thick fillets. Then remove the legs and add them to the plastic bag full of gumbo and gravy meat. Wings and back have little meat. Trim away bloodshot flesh, remove any visible shot pellets, and the bird is ready to cook or freeze.

White-fronted geese and Canadas can be field-dressed and prepared in exactly the same manner. Recipes for each are interchangeable, if you take into account the different sizes of the birds and vary cooking time accordingly.

A just-shot snow goose typically weighs 5.5 to 6 pounds, with females being slightly smaller than males. When plucked and prepared for cooking, each bird will yield 3 to 3.5 pounds of meat for the table, enough to serve two or three hungry hunters. Giant Canadas average 11 to 12 pounds each, Interior Canadas 7 to 9, with smaller races of the bird running 3 to 6 pounds. White-fronted geese average 5 to 6 pounds. The yield of meat is about half the live weight. When roasting, the recommended cooking time is 18 to 20 minutes per pound at 325 degrees.

Stick-To-Your Ribs Goose Stew

2 goose breast fillets
1/2 cup diced onion
1/2 cup sliced carrots
1 cup water
2 chicken bouillon cubes
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon thyme
6 medium potatoes, quartered
Parsley for garnish

Cut the breast meat into bite-sized pieces. Place in a slow cooker with the next six ingredients and cook on high two hours. Add potatoes, and cook another 1-1/2 hours. Garnish each serving with parsley. Serves 3 to 6.

Baked Goose Breast Fillets

Breast fillets from three snow geese
Salt, pepper
Flour
3 tablespoons butter or margarine
2 (10.5-oz) cans cream of mushroom soup
2 soup cans milk

Season fillets with salt and pepper, and roll in flour. Put butter or margarine into a skillet, and heat to frying temperature. Brown fillets on both sides. Place the fillets in a glass-covered casserole dish and bake 1 hour at 325 degrees.

Mix soup and milk, and pour over meat. Reduce heat to 275 degrees and cook 30 to 45 minutes or until breasts are done. Serves 3 to 4.

Roast Canada Goose

1 whole goose, ready for roasting
Juice of one lemon
Salt, black pepper, garlic salt to taste
2 green onions, whole
1 stalk celery with leaves
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 sprig fresh rosemary or thyme
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 cup Pinot Noir wine
1/2 cup Chardonnay wine

Rub goose with lemon juice and season. Place onions, celery, garlic and rosemary in cavity. Place in a deep Dutch oven along with oil. Roast uncovered in a preheated 400-degree oven for 15 minutes. Heat the wine in a saucepan (don’t boil) and add to the Dutch oven. Cover, reduce heat to 325 degrees and cook 18 minutes per pound of bird. Baste goose several times while cooking. Serves 3 to 6.

Saucy Sliced Goose

1 roasted goose breast, sliced into 1/8-inch thick slices
1/4 cup soy sauce
3/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

Mix soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce and garlic powder in a small bowl. Heat a skillet, add 1/4 cup of the sauce and enough goose slices to cover the bottom of the pan. Cook about 15 minutes uncovered. Repeat with remaining slices. Serve hot. Serves 3 to 4.

Snow Goose With Apple & Apricot Stuffing

1 snow goose, drawn and plucked
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
3 tablespoons bacon grease
1 cup chopped onion
1 tart apple, cored and diced
1 cup dried apricots, chopped
3 cups soft bread crumbs
3 bacon strips
1/2 cup melted butter
1/4 cup apple juice or apple cider
1 cup boiling water

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Sprinkle the goose with lemon juice, salt and pepper.

To make stuffing, place bacon grease in a large skillet. Sauté onion until tender. Stir in apple, apricots and bread crumbs. Stuff the goose with this mixture, and close the opening.

Place goose, breast side up, on a rack in a roasting pan. Drape bacon strips over the breast of the goose. Place goose in the oven, and baste the bird several times while cooking with a heated mixture of melted butter and apple juice or cider. Roast for 20 minutes per pound. At the end of the calculated cooking time, pour the cup of boiling water in the roaster, cover and cook 30 minutes more. Serves 2 to 3.

Grilled Marinated Goose Breasts

Boneless breast fillets from 2 to 4 geese
3 teaspoons grated onion
4 tablespoons grated carrots
2 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
1 teaspoon sage, crushed
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
2 cups white wine

Marinate the goose fillets overnight in a mixture of the remaining ingredients, turning occasionally. Remove the breasts and pat dry. Grill over medium heat 10 minutes per side, or until done to taste.

Goose Jerky

4 to 5 pounds boneless goose breasts
2 tablespoons teriyaki sauce
2 tablespoons black pepper
2 tablespoons garlic powder
2 tablespoons Tabasco sauce
1 tablespoon liquid smoke
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon meat tenderizer
1 tablespoon Mrs. Dash’s spicy seasoning
2 cans diced jalapenos

Cut meat into 1/4-inch strips and marinate overnight in a mixture of the remaining ingredients. Place meat strips in a dehydrator, or hang on a rack in a slow oven (150 degrees) with the door slightly ajar, until the meat is dry and bendable but will not break. Store in zip-seal plastic bags or jars.

A True Conservationist: William F. "Bill" Hailey 1930-2010

2010-01-26T13:14:00.002-06:00

Some of this country’s greatest conservationists are people who work tirelessly behind the scenes to protect the outdoor wonders so many of us take for granted. One such person was William F. “Bill” Hailey of Little Rock, Ark. who passed away this morning at the age of 79.

You probably never heard of Bill. In part, this is because he never sought recognition for anything he did. He worked diligently throughout his life to protect our wildlife resources, yet never stepped into the limelight. The things he’s done have had far-reaching, positive effects, however, and all of us who love the outdoors owe him a debt of gratitude for devoting himself endlessly to the conservation ethic.

On March 11, 1957, at the age of 26, Bill Hailey fulfilled a dream he’d had since he was very young of becoming a conservation agent for the Missouri Dept. of Conservation (MDC). He might have begun this career earlier except for a couple of things. First, he voluntarily joined the Marines during the Korean War and spent 14 months in active combat as a tank crewman in that country. Second, the MDC had a requirement in those days that conservation agent applicants must be between the ages of 25 and 33, and Bill wasn’t old enough to apply until a couple of years after he returned home from Korea. During the interim, he worked as a guard in a Missouri state penitentiary.

In 1957, however, Bill was one of eight men chosen to become conservation agents for the MDC. He was assigned to an 860-square-mile piece of Ozark Mountains territory and lived in the town of Potosi—an ideal location, he felt, because the area was laced with streams full of smallmouth bass. In his off-hours, Bill enjoyed fishing and canoeing.

Soon after, Bill met the former Goldie Lee Wilson, a young lady teaching eight grades of school children in a one-room schoolhouse in Berryman. They were wed on July 10, 1960 and never parted. They would have celebrated their 50th anniversary later this year.

Because Bill married a girl who lived in the same area in which he worked as a game warden, the MDC required him to move. So immediately after his marriage, he was reassigned to Carthage in Jasper County, Missouri. His salary that year, he says, was $3,780, and “We basically started with nothing.”

What Bill did possess was an intense passion for his job as conservation officer. He was enforcing game and fish laws in the field practically every day year-round. And to improve relations with local residents, he took on additional tasks. He wrote weekly newspaper columns about wildlife law enforcement issues for the Carthage Evening Press, the Joplin Globe, the Sarcoxie News and the Golden City Herald, and made regular appearances on local TV and radio programs. He also was a regular guest speaker at every civic club group in his assigned area, and later an active member (and president) of the Lion’s Club.

Bill’s work as a conservation agent opened up a world of interesting opportunities. He was part of a bird-banding team that spent weeks in Alberta, Canada, working with waterfowl, and was responsible for annual censuses of prairie chickens on Missouri’s virgin prairies. These tasks led to a lifelong love of birding, a passion he often indulged.

Bill later worked in Missouri’s Ripley and Ozark counties. Then, in 1981, he retired from his decades-long career with the MDC and moved to Little Rock, Arkansas where he became assistant chief of the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission (AGFC) Enforcement Division and head of the state’s new Boating Education program. Soon after he was promoted to Education Division chief where he helped launch the state’s fledgling Hunter Education program.

While Bill excelled in his work in education, wildlife law enforcement was what he loved doing most. When his friend David Herman became chief of AGFC’s Enforcement Division, Bill accepted Herman’s offer to come back to his former job as assistant chief of the division. During the months that followed, Bill continued as he always had—working diligently to ensure that wildlife laws were enforced fairly yet firmly. And through it all, from the time he became a conservation agent in 1957 until he retired almost 40 years later, he was guided by the principles of our nation’s great conservationists, including people such as Harold Alexander in Arkansas and Werner Nagel in Missouri who were among his many close friends.

In particular, Bill was a student of Aldo Leopold, one of the foremost conservationists of the 20th century, and he was constantly guided by the principles Leopold laid out in his Sand County Almanac, a book Bill made required reading for every cadet who went through the AGFC enforcement academy.

“Conservation is a state of harmony between man and land,” Leopold wrote. That principle guided Bill Hailey as he supervised, taught and mentored people of all stripes who joined the ranks of state wildlife agency employees.

During the years Bill worked at the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission and Missouri Department of Conservation, he was a respected leader who dedicated himself to working with a wide variety of conservation groups. He was a longtime member of the Wildlife Society (serving as president of both the Missouri and Arkansas chapters), served for many years on the board of directors of the Arkansas Audubon Society, was secretary/treasurer of the Law Enforcement section of the Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies for 10 years and a longtime member of the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators. In addition, he annually taught wildlife law enforcement to students of the national Wildlife Management Short Course at Colorado State University, he was long-time secretary for the Fraternal Order of Police, an active member of his church, and served as AGFC liaison to the Arkansas Office of Emergency Services.

Bill worked as assistant enforcement chief until 1993, when finally, after a career that spanned 36 years at two state wildlife agencies, he decided it was time to retire. Retirement didn’t suit him, however. A month after leaving the AGFC, he returned and started working part-time for the Wildlife Management Division, taking on a variety of tasks that included everything from managing fur-buyer records to answering questions from the public about wildlife and wildlife laws. During this period, too, he served as a mentor for many young employees, teaching them lessons about conservation and human nature that no doubt will serve them well throughout their careers. Never has there been a greater teacher of conservation and ethics than this gentleman who taught by example as well as by words.

Bill Hailey was one of my best friends, and I am fortunate to be one of those who learned from his example. I will never be able to emulate his life as a dedicated conservationist, but as a writer, the sentences I craft will always contain a measure of the things he taught me about conservation, ethics and service to others.

In writing this column, I had only one real goal: to be sure Bill is remembered for being the one thing he strived ever day to be—a true conservationist. After two full careers with two of the nation’s top wildlife agencies and years of dedication to scores of conservation groups and their causes, he deserves nothing less. He is one of the unsung heroes to whom we owe much more than we can ever repay.

A World of Bass

2010-01-15T08:47:00.003-06:00

When it was announced recently that a 22-pound, 4-ounce, world-record largemouth bass had been caught in Japan (photo courtesy of IGFA.org), a lot of U.S. bass anglers were puzzled. A friend of mine said what was on the minds of many: “A world-record bass in Japan? I didn’t even know they had bass in Japan.”

Here’s another bit of bass trivia unknown to many: largemouth bass have been exported to at least 61 countries. And many of these introductions began back in the nineteenth century.

Originally, largemouth bass were found only in the eastern United States, parts of southern Canada and perhaps parts of northern Mexico. But since the late 1800s, their range has expanded to include portions of every state in the U.S. except Alaska. Largemouths are now available to more U.S. anglers than any other species of fish.

According to FishBase.org, a worldwide web electronic publication full of interesting scientific data about fishes, Belgium and France were probably the first foreign countries where largemouths were stocked. Bass were exported to those countries in 1877. England got largemouths in 1879, Germany in 1888 and Italy in 1897.

The first South American fish were stocked in Brazil in the early 1900s. And more American bass were exported to Argentina, Bolivia and Colombia.

In 1907, the Philippines became the first Asian nation to get bass. Largemouths made it to Japan and Hong Kong in 1925, to Fiji in 1962 and to Korea in 1963.

Africa received its first stockings in 1928 when bass from the Netherlands were stocked in South Africa and bass from the U.S. were stocked in Kenya.

Hawaii received its first imports in 1897, 62 years before it became a U.S. state. Among the many island nations to receive largemouths were Cuba (1928), Puerto Rico (1946) and Madagascar (1951).

Soon, the countries where bass had been introduced were introducing bass to their neighbors. European countries started stocking other European countries. African nations stocked other African nations.

Fish from Germany, for example, were stocked in Poland, Finland, Denmark, Hungary and Austria. South African largemouths spread to Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho and Botswana.

And the U.S. continued exporting bass to countries around the world.

The trend continued throughout the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, with largemouths finding new homes in Panama, Spain, Cyprus, Russia and many more countries. In all, at least 61 countries have received exports of North America’s favorite sportfish.

Largemouths didn’t thrive everywhere they were stocked, and you may be surprised to learn they weren’t welcomed everywhere they did thrive either. Introduced bass have, in some places, affected populations of native fishes through predation, sometimes resulting in the decline or extinction of such species. In some lakes, introduced largemouths wiped out all the native fish that had previously existed.

Here’s another fact I found rather astounding. Largemouth bass are on the list of “100 of the World’s Worst Invasive Alien Species” created by the New Zealand based Invasive Species Specialist Group (ISSG), a branch of the World Conservation Union. According to the ISSG, alien invasion is second only to habitat loss as a cause of species endangerment and extinction. And the largemouth bass is among the worst alien invaders. Other species in the top 100 list include the feral pig, Indian mongoose, zebra mussel, house cat, gypsy moth, kudzu, black rat, European starling, fire ant, avian malaria, Asian tiger mosquito and common carp. I had no idea bass kept such company.

In some countries—Japan, for example—wars have been waged between bass fishermen who consider largemouths desirable and other groups who contend bass are alien nuisances that should be eliminated before they further damage fragile ecosystems. Ol’ Micropterus salmoides is no more highly regarded in some areas than snakehead fish are in American waters.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times about six years ago, Minuro Sato, the director of Japan's National Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Association, said, “Japanese bass fishing is a ‘dark fishing’ and cannot be called a sport. Bass anglers are very bad mannered — parking a car on a plowed field, interrupting traffic, cutting off lures if gotten caught in fishing nets. It is a lawless situation regarding a foreign fish.”

Those words express the feelings of many foreign nationals toward bass. Nevertheless, there still are many exotic destinations where an angler can try his hand at catching largemouths. These include Moncoutant, a fishing-oriented center in France, which encompasses 250 acres of bass waters; Lake Caspe, Spain, site of the 2004 European Bass Classic; lakes Odeleite, Beliche, Funcho and Santa Clara in southern Portugal; Midmar and Inanda Dams, South Africa; Darwendale Lake in Zimbabwe, which produced an 18-pound, 4-ounce largemouth in July 2004; Lake Ait Aadel in Morocco; Lucchetti and Guajataca reservoirs in Puerto Rico; and lakes Caliraya and Lumot in the Philippines.

And, of course, let’s don’t forget Japan’s Lake Biwa where, on July 2, 2009, Manabu Kurita caught a 22-pound, 4-ounce largemouth that tied George Perry’s 1932 all-tackle world record. In coming months, this lake in the Shiga Prefecture near Kyoto will no doubt be one of the world’s top destinations for bass anglers.

Largemouths may not be welcome introductions everywhere, but isn’t it interesting to know that the most popular sportfish in America can now be found not just in the eastern U.S., but throughout the world?

The Fun And Challenge Of Handgun Hunting

2009-12-11T07:18:00.005-06:00

The wooded bottoms along Dirty Creek in Muskogee County, Oklahoma, are full of squirrels. Bill Scherman of Muskogee has been hunting squirrels in these bottoms for years. But today, there’s a new twist to his hunt. Instead of hunting with a rifle or shotgun, Scherman hunts with a .22 handgun.

“I’m glad we don’t have to rely on what we kill for our supper,” Scherman says. “Otherwise, we might go hungry tonight.”

Scherman is one in a group of outdoor writers and natural resources professionals gathered in Muskogee at the invitation of Smith & Wesson to try handgun squirrel hunting. As the regional wildlife supervisor for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation in this area, it’s his job to help us find game.

“These bottoms are full of fox and gray squirrels,” he says with a sweep of his hand. “We usually look for fruit or nut-bearing trees along the logging roads, then sit and wait for the squirrels to come. Or we ease through the woods till we find them.”

The three in our party--Scherman, myself and Covey Bean, a writer from Oklahoma City--split up to hunt the Dirty Creek bottoms. Another group hunts a large pecan grove a few miles away.

Though I consider myself a competent pistol shooter and squirrel hunter, I figure this will be a difficult hunt. I haven’t shot a handgun in several months, and on top of that, a drizzling rain is falling. As it turns out, there are plenty of squirrels along Dirty Creek; I see 12 in two hours of hunting. They’re skittish, however, feeding on treetop leaf buds, not low-to-the-ground mulberries.

The handgun I’ve chosen to shoot is a top-of-the-line target pistol--a Smith & Wesson Model 41 .22-caliber autoloader outfitted with a Bushnell 1X handgun scope with an illuminated dot reticle. But fancy equipment can’t compensate for my lack of practice. Twice, I center the scope’s red dot on the head of a squirrel. Twice the squirrel escapes unscathed. My woodsmanship isn’t what it ought to be, either. The other 10 squirrels scamper away through the treetops before I’m close enough to try.

Scherman and Bean are better marksmen. When we rendezvous at our appointed meeting place, Covey has a gray squirrel dangling from his belt. Bill has two--a fox and a gray.

“I don’t know how the cowboys in the Old West did it with their handguns,” says Scherman. “Guess we wouldn’t go hungry, but it’s a challenging way to hunt.”

“It’s a good thing we aren’t cowboys,” says Bean. “If we had to face an outlaw for a shoot-out in the street, we might wake up dead. I count three squirrels, and I heard at least a dozen shots.”

“Must have been Sutton shooting,” Scherman says grinning.

The group in the orchard has better luck. Ken Jorgensen from Massachusetts reports nine in the bag for three hunters.

“These big pecan groves are ideal for this,” he says. “There’s no understory to contend with like you have in the woods, so you have more open shots. And the trees are full of fox squirrels. You couldn’t have asked for a better handgun hunting situation, though admittedly, we missed our share, too.”

“It’s fun, though” says Scherman. “And I intend to try it again. With some practice, I might actually be able to kill enough squirrels for a mess.”

Despite the enthusiasm of a small but devoted group of followers, hunting squirrels with a handgun remains a pretty esoteric business. Its satisfactions are great, but its practitioners are few.

Handgun hunting for other game, however, is a growing phenomena. More hunters are going afield with handguns every year, more states are allowing handguns to be used on big game, and better products are making it all feasible. If you’ve considered hunting with a handgun, now’s the time to accept the challenge.

Handgun hunting appeals to a variety of sportsmen. There’s the hunter who has taken all sorts of game with rifles and wants to try something new. It’s for blackpowder and archery hunters who can employ their stalking ability for a successful handgun hunt. Serious handgun shooters and competitors who are proficient on the range are applying their handgun skills in the woods and on the prairies.

There have been tremendous improvements in guns, ammo and optics in recent years. A little research and some hands-on experience can help you make the right choices.

The handgun of choice should be capable of accomplishing the task at hand but also one with which you’re comfortable and can develop adequate marksmanship skills. A .44-magnum revolver, for example, can deliver the accuracy and power needed to take deer, antelope, wild boar, or even elk. A .357 Magnum can be relied upon to take many game animals if the distance is reasonable and shot placement is precise. A friend of mine used a.41 Magnum on a couple animals last year and said he was very pleased with the performance. He noted it was more pleasant to shoot than some .44s and certainly did the job.

Twenty-two-caliber pistols and revolvers are ideal hunting handguns for squirrels, rabbits or other small game. Twenty-twos are fun to shoot, inexpensive and also make great practice firearms. You can put hundreds of rounds downrange for a few dollars while you learn sight alignment, trigger control and other basics.

Choosing proper ammo also is essential. There are many new and improved bullet designs marketed today. It used to be you made a choice between expansion or penetration, but that’s no longer the case. Today’s ammunition is better at providing both, and there’s a factory load for every quarry. Consult ammunition guides and other hunters for help in making a decision.

After equipment is chosen, the important work begins. The three most important things for a handgun hunter are practice, practice and more practice. Shooting a handgun accurately, especially at the distances many times needed in hunting situations, takes lots of practice. You must be good enough to hit your target when it counts.

Safety also should be stressed. There are four rules each handgun hunter always should follow: 1) Treat all firearms as if they are loaded; 2) Keep you finger off the trigger and outside the trigger guard until ready to shoot; 3) Don’t point at anything you’re not willing to shoot; and 4) Be certain of your target and beyond. These are rules that we can all live with.

Handgun hunting is a challenge worth pursuing. Cover the basics, develop your skills through practice and you’ll find the sense of accomplishment in a successful handgun hunt is well worth the effort and discipline.

Chain Reactions

2009-12-04T11:04:00.007-06:00

Chain pickerel don’t get very big. The world record weighed only 9 pounds, 6 ounces. Average fish in most waters seldom exceed 2.

Chains aren’t great table fish, either. Their flesh is sweet and firm, but the fillets are filled with tiny bones, requiring troublesome preparation for the frying pan.

Let me tell you why I love pickerel, nevertheless.

Picture a winter day with big snowflakes floating down. Not a sound do you hear except the sound of your paddle.

Curtains of icicles sparkle along lakeside bluffs. An eagle gazes down as you pass. Wood ducks flush up ahead.

The world is virgin white, with scattered beams of color. Cardinal red. Cedar green. Shadow blue. Winter swaddles you in contrasts.

Up ahead, a patch of emerald glimmers beneath the crystalline water. You cast a silver spoon beyond it and retrieve, watching the lure flash as it darts over the weed bed.

Suddenly, the flashing stops. You react quickly, setting the hook with a snap of the wrist. Fish on!

Your rod bends. Then the pickerel goes airborne like a little rocket. Three times it jumps before you land and release it.

Another cast, another pickerel, another fun battle--and so on it goes throughout the day.

Other fish bite in winter--crappie, saugers, blue cats, walleyes, even bass. But few bite best in winter.

Chain pickerel do. They’re like little polar bears. The colder it gets, the more active they become.

That’s why I love these little predators. Pickerel add spice to a winter day on the water. They warm me when I’m cold. They give me reason to be outdoors when lakes and streams are quiet, uncrowded and uniquely beautiful.

Pickerel range from east Texas north to the Great Lakes and from Maine to Florida, inhabiting a broad spectrum of waters, from small natural lakes and tiny creeks to sprawling man-made impoundments and big-river backwaters. They resemble barracudas. The body is long and slender. Needle-sharp teeth protrude from a prominent duck-billed snout. A dark vertical bar, like a teardrop, extends downward from the eye.

Their name derives from the pattern of iridescent green “chains” decorating the fish’s sides. Common nicknames include jack, jackfish, jack pike, green pike, chain pike and chainsides.

Weeds in quiet waters are tip-offs to pickerel hotspots. No matter what the season, pickerel usually will be in or near aquatic vegetation in water with little or no current. Plants they favor include coontail, cattails, bulrushes, button willows, elodea, hydrilla and water lilies. Pickerel also have a fondness for dark hollows in cypress and tupelo trees.

Hidden in cover, the pickerel lies poised for ambush. When dinner approaches, the predator darts from its lair, gripping the victim with its sharp teeth before turning it head-down and swallowing. The pickerel then swims back to the same hideaway, where it lies motionless until hunger, belligerence or territorial defense urges it out of cover to strike again.

Four- to 6-pound monofilament line on a 5- to 6-foot, medium-action spinning rod is ideal for chain pickerel--light enough so 1- to 2-pounders can strut their stuff, yet strong enough to tame the occasional trophy. Despite pickerel’s sharp teeth, wire leaders rarely are needed. Cut and retie when line gets frayed.

The best baits are fish or fish look-alikes. A weedless, silver spoon with a trailing pork rind is an old standard, but small spinners, chugger plugs, slim-minnow lures, jigs, streamers and even plastic worms will elicit strikes. Cast parallel to cover, reeling with a steady, medium-speed retrieve; or, when using topwaters, cast to pockets in weeds, let the lure sit until ripples subside, then twitch the lure again, continuing to the boat with a twitch-and-stop retrieve.

Live minnows allowed to swim naturally near cover sometimes take pickerel when artificials fail. Use a size 4 to 1 fine-wire hook, attach a split shot or two a foot above it and add a small bobber. Hook the minnow behind its dorsal fin, then work it in and around weed beds. Live frogs hooked through a back leg and allowed to swim across weed tops also are first-rate enticements.

When thick weeds hinder an angler’s use of more conventional fishing techniques, pickerel can be caught by “skittering.” To do this, you need a 10- to 12-foot cane pole, jig pole or fly rod and an equal length of line. A pork frog or strip of fish belly is affixed to a stout hook, and the bait is jerked, or skittered, across broad openings in weed patches. If pickerel are present, they’ll hit with frenzied, chomping charges.

Many prime pickerel waters are largely untapped, so individuals have an excellent chance to attain maximum size, especially in remote waters such as oxbows and bayous. The 9-pound, 6-ounce world record was caught near Homerville, Georgia way back in February 1961. But I’m betting even larger fish are lurking in some seldom-fished waters.

If you want to zero in on a trophy, remember these tips. First, big pickerel are inveterate loners found only in prime feeding stations, having driven away weaker competitors. Savvy anglers therefore focus on locales known to yield heavyweight chains.

Second, trophy pickerel prefer foods they’re accustomed to eating. Use lures and baits closely resembling the predominant baitfish in the body of water you’re fishing.

Third, trophy-class pickerel are reluctant to leave the dark sanctuary of their favored niche. Present your bait in or very near heavy cover and keep it there for the best chance of hooking a muscle-bound brute.

I suggest you give pickerel a try this winter. They’re common in many waters, and ounce for ounce, they distinguish themselves in battle as well as any bass. Best of all, they’re eager to strike right now, providing a sure way to knock the chill off a winter day.

Goliath!

2009-10-30T11:54:00.013-05:00

Back when I was a teenager fishing Arkansas farm ponds and rivers, I started keeping a list of fish I dreamed of catching someday. Call it my “Bucket List” if you will—a list of fish I want to catch before I “kick the bucket.”

In the 40 years since I started keeping this list, I’ve caught and crossed off many species, including the piranha, payara, peacock bass, white sturgeon, king salmon, paddlefish and saltwater species such as roosterfish, tuna, lingcod, sharks, halibut, cobia and dorado. Until recently, however, one species listed since day one has eluded me: the jewfish, or as it’s now known, the goliath grouper.

Imagine a steer-sized largemouth bass with mottled brown colors and you’ll know what this brute looks like. When I was young, I often saw photos of these big groupers in fishing books and magazines. All were similar—a jewfish hanging above a dock with a triumphant angler standing beside it. The angler always was puny by comparison, a fact that fueled my desire to catch these incredible giants.

In 1988, I had my first chance. A guide in Marco Island, Florida, motored me to a sunken wreck miles offshore, shoved a stand-up rod in my hand, baited the hook with a live pinfish and instructed me to lower it to the bottom 150 feet below.

“Jewfish live in the wreck,” he said. “They’ll come out, grab the bait and go right back inside. To catch one, you must keep it out of the wreck. Set the hook hard and reel like hell.”

This should be a cinch, I thought, looking at the winch-sized reel, thick mono line and broomstick rod I was using. But when the first fish struck, I was unprepared for its power. It slammed me against the transom so hard I had bruises for weeks. In an instant, the jewfish was back in the wreck and wouldn’t budge. Game over.

This happened 20 times that day. A fish struck. I held on for dear life. The fish swam back in the wreck. Game over.

I left Marco Island frustrated. I hooked some enormous jewfish, but they seemed impossible to catch. The species dropped a few places on my bucket list but remained there, nevertheless.

Fast forward to June 2009. My friend Mark Davis, host of Penn’s Big Water Adventures television show on the Outdoor Channel, posts photos on his Facebook page of a 700-pound jewfish, one of several monsters he caught while filming at Boca Grande in southwest Florida. I’m intrigued.

“How the hell did you manage to land them?” I ask.

“Let me set you up a trip and you can find out yourself,” he says.

Plans are laid. Wife Theresa and I will be in nearby Punta Gorda, Florida, for conference in October. Davis will attend, too. He arranges an October 6 outing with Captain Ryan Rowan (www.tarponcaptain.com), an experienced, 38-year-old North Port resident he describes as “one of the best guides I’ve ever shared a boat with.”

I encourage Theresa to accompany us, but having heard stories of my previous jewfish outing—long boat ride, heavy tackle, zero landings—she has reservations. “I don’t think I have a chance of landing one,” she says.

Davis says otherwise. “I promise you’ll catch the biggest fish you’ve ever seen,” he tells her. And although he was with me when I landed my biggest ever—a 7-1/2 foot, 250-pound-plus white sturgeon—he assures me I’ll have no trouble exceeding my big-fish mark, too.

“I guarantee it,” he says.

On the morning of October 6, Ryan Rowan motors Theresa, Mark and me to the goliath grouper hotspot where Mark caught his 700-pounder. The scene differs greatly from my Marco Island excursion. Instead of a wreck, Ryan takes us to a half-acre spread of wooden pilings, the remains of an old pier. Instead of 150 feet of water, we’ll fish 10- to 40- foot depths. And instead of traveling 20 miles offshore, we set up just 200 yards off a beautiful beach.

After I’m seated at the boat’s bow, Ryan runs a hook the size of a small anchor through the snout of a foot-long jack and explains the set-up.

“We’ve spent several years perfecting our technique for catching these big groupers,” he says. “They feed around the clock year-round, but we fish during slack tide because it’s easier then to position the boat beside the pilings where they live and feed. Mark will be in the tower maneuvering the boat. I’ll stay here and help you get your bait in the right spot. When a fish takes the bait, it’ll yank the rod down hard. Don’t set the hook or start reeling when that happens. Just hold on tight and Mark will back the boat out. That will hook the fish and pull it away from the pilings. When the fish is in open water, then you’ll start fighting it.”

Ryan tosses the bait beside a piling, I release it to the bottom, and, instantly, the rod nosedives.

“Hold on!” Mark and Ryan shout simultaneously. Mark revs the outboard and back we go.

I feel Ryan’s hands squeezing my shoulders. “Don’t want you going anywhere,” he says, smiling. A scene from Real TV flashes through my mind: an old dude snatched overboard while battling a monster fish. I reach back to be sure my knife is still on my belt.

When the boat is away from the pilings, Mark chortles. “Now, it’s up to you, Sutton. Reel it in.”

Easier said than done. The huge fish surges away, peeling line against the drag. But having the right tools for the job—a big Fin-Nor Santiago 50-wide reel, 80-pound-class Fin-Nor stand-up rod and 600-pound-test line—soon gains me the upper hand. I pull and reel, and inch by inch, the goliath grouper comes my way.

“I see color,” Mark shouts. Then there it is, the jewfish I’ve dreamed of catching more than four decades. This time, though, there will be no photograph of the angler standing on a dock beside his catch. These slow-growing giants, delicious on the table, were overexploited for years. Harvesting them in federal waters of the southeastern U.S. has been prohibited since 1990. I bring the fish alongside the boat, and while Ryan removes the hook, Theresa climbs into the tower and snaps some photos.

“A 200-pounder or thereabouts,” Ryan estimates. And with a flip of its tail, the goliath is gone.

Thirty minutes later, I bring a bigger grouper boatside, this one around 250 pounds. It, too, is released unharmed.

Theresa now takes a turn in the chair. The biggest fish she has caught is a 30-pound catfish. (“Jewfish bait,” Mark says.) But that’s about to change. She hooks up as soon as the bait hits bottom, and 10 minutes later, with hardly a struggle, she lands an 80-pound jewfish.

“Now it’s time to catch a big one,” Ryan says, grinning. Theresa looks puzzled but understands when Ryan drags a big stingray from the baitwell. He hooks the ray, tosses it by one of the pilings, then moves behind Theresa so he can grab her—“just in case.”

“I’m not sure I’m ready for this,” Theresa says just before the next fish strikes and lifts her from the chair. Ryan grimaces as he struggles to keep Theresa in the boat. The two strain against the rod as Mark backs away.

Theresa will never forget the 15-minute battle that follows. Nor will I. The 275-pound grouper puts up a hell of a fight, but it is no match for my determined wife.

I climb the tower and shoot photos as Theresa reaches out and touches the gentle giant, a fish more than twice her size and nearly 10 times larger than her biggest ever. That moment is a highlight of the day.

The day isn’t over yet, though. Theresa passes the rod, and soon I hook another grouper. I know immediately this fish is bigger than the others. Its power is incredible. I worry it might escape in the pilings, but somehow we pull it to open water.

Could this be my biggest fish ever? When it comes topside, I know it is. It’s 8 feet long and as big around as a grizzly. “450 pounds minimum,” Ryan proclaims.

By the time I subdue it, the jewfish has pulled the boat into the shallows. Ryan and I jump in the water with it, and Theresa and Mark shoot photos as we unhook the huge fish and release it. I am ecstatic when this truly goliath grouper swims powerfully away.

There are high fives all around. Ryan is obviously happy our half-day fishing trip had proven successful. Mark is happy he was able to plan and execute an unforgettable outing for us. Theresa and I are ecstatic because we’ve caught our biggest fish ever, an experience we'll always remember.

I’ve never been on a fishing trip I’ve enjoyed more. And if you have a strong desire to catch several 100- to 500-pound fish in a single day, I recommend you contact Ryan Rowan and book a trip with all haste. News about Rowan and the extraordinary Boca Grande goliath grouper fishery is spreading like wildfire. And with Rowan slated to appear in no less than five TV fishing shows in early 2010, I’m betting he’ll be booked up in no time.

As for me, I’m already planning another trip. My sons and I will fish with the incomparable Capt. Rowan next summer. I have no doubt they, too, will catch their biggest fish ever. And I want to be there to see the surprise, the grimaces and the smiles on their faces when it happens.

Planning A Boca Grande Fishing Trip

The waters around Boca Grande, Florida are home to an incredible variety of popular sportfish. Capt. Ryan Rowan regularly puts clients on 100- to 200-pound tarpons and heavyweight snook, redfish, cobia, speckled trout and other species. Goliath groupers weighing 100 to 500 pounds are common catches year-round, and much larger fish always are possible.

Huge sharks also roam these waters, as evidenced by two gigantic Boca Grande hammerheads landed with Rowan’s assistance: a 1,060-pounder caught earlier this year and the 1,280-pound, IGFA all-tackle world record caught in 2006.

For more information or to book a trip, visit Rowan’s website, www.tarponcaptain.com, or phone him at 941-706-5061.

For information on local accommodations, restaurants, attractions and more, contact the Charlotte Harbor Visitor and Convention Bureau, www.charlotteharbortravel.com, 800-652-6090.

Early-Season Squirrel Hunting

2009-10-19T09:00:00.005-05:00

For many sportsmen, the early weeks of squirrel season are a curtain-raiser for the late-autumn and winter game seasons to follow. Blue-ribbon hunting opportunities available within the next few weeks provide hunters an exciting way to pass the time before deer, waterfowl and other popular seasons get underway.

Early-season squirrels aren’t easy marks. During long hot spells, they may be almost totally inactive and seldom seen. Food is abundant now, therefore, squirrels are more likely to be scattered and sedentary, making it difficult to locate concentrations.

Despite the challenges encountered, though, early-season hunting conditions are more favorable than conditions encountered after the leaves have fallen. Squirrels are less wary during the season’s first few weeks, and there are plenty of young squirrels around. Leafy branches restrict the squirrel’s vision, allowing for closer, easier stalks, and because nuts are still clinging to branches, squirrels are moving more in the trees overhead, making them easier to see and hear. Bushytail fans who take advantage of these favorable circumstances enjoy some of the best squirrel-hunting action the year has to offer.

Scout for Food

Pinpointing food sources is one big key to successful early-season squirrel hunting. During the season’s first few weeks, if squirrels aren’t feeding, they’re probably not moving, and trying to locate inactive squirrels in a jungle of green foliage can be a lesson in frustration. Take the guesswork out of early-season hunting by determining what food items rate high on the squirrel’s menu during late summer and early autumn.

These foods vary, depending on where you hunt, so scout to determine what’s hot and what’s not. Look for blackberries, hawthorn berries, wild plums, grapes and wild cherries. Seeds and buds of maples, tulip poplars, hackberries and dogwoods are relished, along with corn and soybeans. Green mast is also eaten, and hunters should watch for nut-laden black walnut trees, hickories, beeches, pecans and oaks (especially white oaks). Squirrels move from one food source to another as different foods come in and go out, so be prepared to change your hunting pattern as the season progresses.

Be An Early Bird

Early-season hunting is primarily a morning sport. Later in the season, when the air is cooler, squirrels may feed throughout the day, with significant activity peaks near both dawn and dusk. Early on, however, evening feeding periods are usually shorter, and squirrels won’t be as active.

Concentrate your hunting efforts during the first three hours after dawn. Cooler temperatures this time of day make it more comfortable for squirrels and squirrel hunters alike. There’s also less likelihood of a heavy breeze springing up to spoil the hunt.

Good Things in Small Packages

Be flexible when selecting hunting areas. Large stretches of timber can be very productive for savvy hunters, but in country with a mix of small woodlots and big woods, you may do better working the smaller patches during the season’s first few weeks. Small tracts are often overlooked by other hunters, and though they may not hold large numbers of squirrels, the restricted environment makes bushytails easier to find. Move from one tract to another, taking care not to overhunt any single area.

One-On-One

Stalking is a technique ready-made for the early-season squirrel hunter. Squirrels aren’t as wary of hunters and leaves are still on the trees, allowing the hunter to approach more stealthily. Late in the season, when leaves have fallen, squirrels can be difficult to stalk, because they can see movement on the ground for longer distances.

As you move through the woods, watch the ground so you can ease forward with the least possible noise, and stop every 10 or 20 yards to carefully scan the trees before moving another few yards and repeating the process. Motion is what you need to look for. A shaking branch is the most common clue you’ll see, but you might see the squirrel itself as it runs on a limb.

Another trick is to hunt toward the sun. It sounds like stupid advice, but it’s much easier to spot movement in branches when those branches are silhouetted against the sun. The secret is to stand so that you have a tree trunk or clump of leaves shielding your eyes from the direct glare.

The single most important thing a squirrel stalker can learn is that patience is a golden virtue. Don’t get in a hurry because you won’t see many squirrels if you do. The slower you go, the better your chances are apt to be.

These techniques and tips aren’t the final answer to late-season squirrel hunting success. But if what you've been doing so far hasn’t produced the desired results, give them a try. Ol’ Bushytail’s brain may not be any bigger than a hickory nut, but he’s got plenty of smarts tucked away inside. To outwit him, you have to be better at playing his games than he is.

Keith Sutton is the author of numerous books on the outdoors. To order autographed copies, visit his website, www.catfishsutton.com.

Bo Whoop, Where Are You?

2009-10-01T10:15:00.003-05:00

Back in 2004, I wrote a story for ESPN Outdoors titled “Naming of the Gun.” The gist of the story was that folks nowadays seldom give names to their favorite hunting arms as they did in the past. Everyone has heard of Davy Crockett’s rifle Old Betsy. Daniel Boone dubbed his flintlock Old Tick-Licker. Buffalo Bill Cody shot a 48-caliber trapdoor Springfield rifle he called Lucretia Borgia.

I mentioned in my story that many other famous outdoorsmen named their firearms as well, including renowned outdoor writer and conservationist Nash Buckingham, whose 12-gauge-magnum double-barrel Bo Whoop may be the best-known gun in waterfowling history.

Buckingham was a respected authority on shooting and hunting. In 1921, Western Cartridge Company president John Olin sent him an Askins-Sweeley magnum 12-gauge to field test the company’s new Super-X shotshells. Buckingham liked the gun so much, in 1926, he contacted Ad Roll at the A.H. Fox Gun Company in Philadelphia and commissioned a 12-gauge Super-Fox waterfowl gun for what Buckingham called “the tall ones.” He specified that the barrels be bored by renowned gun maker Bert Becker.

In his book, A.H. Fox: The Finest Gun in the World, author Michael McIntosh says, “Becker built the gun himself from start to finish. According to Buckingham, in a letter written in the 1950s, it was Fox No. 31108—either a case of faulty memory or an instance when the same number got stamped on two guns (which happened a few times); the only work-order card for No. 31108 describes an A Grade 12-gauge with 30-inch barrels and a half-hand stock, shipped to Supplee Biddle Hardware Company in Philadelphia July 16, 1926—definitely not a Super-Fox.”

Whatever the number, Becker crafted the gun to Buckingham’s specifications. It was constructed on a Fox frame with 32-inch barrels, which were overbored to deliver a 90-percent pattern of copper-coated 4s at 40 yards. The gun was chambered for three-inch shells, had a straight-hand stock, a rubber recoil pad, and, at Buckingham’s order, no safety. It weighed just under 10 pounds.

The gun’s unusual name came from Buckingham’s good friend Colonel Harold P. Sheldon. He called the shotgun Bo Whoop because of its distinctive hollow report.

Buckingham was riding back to town with a man named Clifford Green following a December 1, 1948 duck hunt near Clarendon, Arkansas, when a pair of game wardens stopped the men and checked their licenses and ducks. Bo Whoop was laid on the fender of Green’s car after one of the wardens looked at the gun, and Buckingham didn’t notice it was missing until they had driven several miles away. Despite an exhaustive search by game wardens, police and hunters, and ads placed with local newspapers and radio stations, Buckingham never saw the gun again.

The whereabouts of Bo Whoop has been the stuff of legends ever since. And since my story appeared on ESPN Outdoors, I’ve received more than a dozen e-mails from folks who claim Bo Whoop was found. Unfortunately, I have been unable to verify any of these reports.

One said, “The gun turned up in a pawn shop two years ago and was quickly purchased. No names were given out.”

Another said, “I have Bo Whoop in my possession and would like to find a buyer.”

The rest were similar, but when the people who sent them were pressed for details, they could not or would not provide them. As best I can tell, the Bo Whoop’s whereabouts remains unknown, or if someone does have it, they’re not talking.

If the gun were to turn up, and its existence was verified, there’s little doubt it would create a stir in the gun world. Bo Whoop, perhaps the most famed shotgun ever, might be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I like to think, however, it’s still out there somewhere waiting to be found.

I often hunt and fish in the White River bottoms around Clarendon that Buckingham ennobled in his books. Each time I do, on the drive to and from the area, I wonder if I might be passing near the place where Bo Whoop now rests. I gaze at the windows of the old shotgun shacks and wonder if the gun might hang on one’s wall, the owner quite ignorant of the gun’s value. I watch the road ditches, too, and fancy Bo Whoop might still be laying in one covered in muck and grass, hidden away for more than half a century.

What a treasure it would be if one could find it.

Hunting Camp Pranks

2009-09-21T07:47:00.001-05:00

If you’re looking for pranks and practical jokes, a hunting camp is the place to go. Maybe that’s a faulty impression on my part, but it sure seems that way. I’ve never visited a camp that didn’t have a rubber snake in it.

The pranks run the gamut from salt in the sugar bowl and porcelain eggs in the refrigerator to hot pepper juice smeared on the mouthpiece of a dog man’s horn. Then there are more elaborate bits of monkey business that are long remembered in camp as masterpieces of tomfoolery. Here are a few of them.

Bad Glands
At an Alabama camp, everyone gathered to watch as the veteran hunter showed his greenhorn buddy how to dress out his first deer. The old hand gutted the whitetail, then opened the body cavity and showed his rookie friend the location of the tenderloins on each side of the backbone.

“See these here,” he said to the young tyro. “They’re glands, and you gotta remember to take ‘em out or they’ll spoil the rest of the meat. Put ‘em in a plastic bag so they won’t contaminate anything, then drop ‘em in this here cooler we keep special for the purpose.”

The naïve hunter had been tricked into giving away the choicest cuts of venison.

Attack Duck

Bennie, the camp cook, was always up later than the hunters in camp. After everyone went to bed, he would finish cleaning the kitchen, turn out the lights and make a trip to the toilet where he’d sit and read before turning in.

The noises Bennie made in the john late at night were a source of insomnia for some of the men, one of whom decided to play a prank. A wounded mallard retrieved by the man’s Lab was brought back to camp, and just before everyone retired that night—everyone but Bennie, that is—the bird was placed inside Bennie’s toilet with the lid down.

Bennie didn’t suspect a thing. When he sat on the can, the mad mallard struck like a snake. A blood-curdling scream shook the bunkhouse, followed by loud quacking and cussing.

Bennie has yet to exact his revenge, but to this day, everyone in camp examines their food closely before eating. Are those really raisins in that pie?

Shooting Blanks

Two pheasant hunters told a friend about a prank they pulled on their longtime hunting companion Joe. Seems they always loaded all of Joe’s shotshells for him, and for several years, they had given him shells filled with sawdust. Then they got to shoot Joe’s limit of birds.

“When a pheasant flushes,” one said, “I shoot about the same time as Joe. Then Joe runs out and grabs the bird and claims it. Of course, we know he hasn’t killed a single bird, but by the end of the day, he’s got most of them in his game bag.”

“But what happens when a pheasant goes down and Joe doesn’t shoot?” the friend asked.

“He always shoots,” one man replied as the other nodded in agreement. “A week after pheasant season is over, there isn’t a sawdust pile in the county more than a foot high.”

Early to Bed, Early to Rise

A good friend of mine went to bed early in turkey camp a few seasons back. Bad mistake. When he started snoring, his “friends” reset his alarm clock, his watch and the kitchen clock to 30 minutes before wake-up time. Then they turned out the lights, crawled in bed and waited for the alarm to go off. When it did, my friend jumped out of bed, got dressed, scarfed down some cereal and fussed at his campmates for being slow getting up. (They rose from bed and began dressing.) Then my friend left camp and went charging out onto the plantation on his four-wheeler at 10 p.m., thinking it was almost sun-up.

It was he, though, who had the last laugh. He didn’t return until late the next morning, when he brought in a fine gobbler. He also never said anything to anybody about where he went and what he did when he realized the sun wasn’t coming up when it should. This prevented his buddies from laughing at him, and as far as I know, they’re still waiting for retaliation.

The Backward Scope and Sweet Revenge

A hunter in an Arkansas deer camp—we’ll call him Pete—shot a Winchester .270 with a scope that looked the same either way. By that I mean it was the same size on each end, and aside from the click-screw being on the wrong side, you probably wouldn’t notice it was on the rifle backward

Sure enough, Pete didn’t notice. He rode to his stand as usual, in the back of a pickup with the other hunters, and when he got out, the other men bit their lips. Everybody was in on the joke except Pete.

There were no shots from Pete’s stand that morning. When the men picked him up at noon, he was shaking his head and grinning.

“Ever try to shoot a buck through a scope that made him look like a gnat?” he asked. All the hunters said no, they hadn’t, and that was all Pete said about it.

Eventually, Pete’s buddy Larry ‘fessed up, and there was much merriment made of the imagined spectacle of Pete peering the wrong way through his scope at a miniature buck. Pete took it well, laughing with everyone else. Larry walked on eggshells the rest of week, but nothing happened—not right away, anyhow.

When next year’s season opened, Pete was unusually jovial when everyone rode to their stands. He had checked his scope, he said, and found it to be pointing in the right direction. When Larry got off at his stand, Pete wished him a good hunt, and if he sounded a bit too jovial, no one noticed it right then.

A little after dawn, the hunter whose stand was closest to Larry’s was jolted awake by a booming rifle shot. A few seconds later, there was a second shot. Three more shots soon followed. The hunter was about to go investigate when he heard another series of five shots. The interval between volleys was roughly equal to the time required for a man to hurriedly slap a fresh clip in his rifle.

After the tenth shot, there was a long silence, then a thunderous oath. Larry’s buddy thought his friend must have flipped his gourd and hurried toward him. He found Larry leaning against a tree halfway up the slope from his stand.

“Come here! Come here!” Larry screamed hysterically. “You gotta see this.”

It was something to see all right. For starters, there was a mounted, eight-point deer head hanging from a nail on a tree. The head peered cautiously around another tree, looking downhill toward Larry’s stand. Behind the tree were two hay bales stacked one on the other; covering them was a tanned deer hide. From Larry’s stand at dawn, the whole thing must have looked like a big buck silhouetted against the sky.

“I saw this thing as soon as the sun rose,” Larry said. “It didn’t move, so at first, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. But later, I looked back and the buck was still there. He was looking right at me.

“I bet it took me five minutes to get my gun to my shoulder,” he continued. “I took careful aim and shot, and I couldn’t believe he didn’t go down. So I shot him again. I shot the whole clip out and then went through my spare clip. Still he didn’t go down.”

So Larry reloaded, he said, and then he started stalking the deer.

“I got halfway up the hill before I figured it out,” he said, handing the man a neatly printed note. “This was tacked to the back side of the tree.”

The note said: “Gotcha back, you scope-switching S.O.B.”

Deer Scent

And finally, a Minnesota prankster wasn’t really surprised when the cover scent he sprinkled onto his boots and around his deer stand turned out to be perfume. His camp buddies had gotten even for past pranks while he was sleeping the night before, pouring out the buck scent and replacing it with ladies’ fragrance.

To contact Keith “Catfish” Sutton, send an e-mail to catfishdude@sbcglobal.net. Autographed copies of his books are available at www.catfishsutton.com.

Barking Up Bushytails

2009-09-16T15:57:00.007-05:00

The woods are quiet. Jim Rhea cups an ear. “Listen,” he says.

In the distance, we hear a short bark, then another.

“He’s treed,” Jim tells us. “Let’s go.”

We find Jim’s black-and-white treeing cur, Limbgripper Ranger, reared up on an oak, gazing into the branches overhead. The dog barks again.

“Where is he, Ranger?” Jim asks. “Is there a squirrel up there?” Jim shakes a vine that curls up to the place the dog is looking, and a gray squirrel shoots up the side of the tree.

“Get him, boys!” Jim shouts.

My sons—four of them, ages 6 to 14—have been standing at the ready. Each shoulders his shotgun, trying to get the fleeing cat squirrel in his sights. But the squirrel is quick. It starts to timber, jumping from one tree to the next, before one youngster finally fires. The shot finds its mark, however. The squirrel plummets to the ground.

Ranger races to the fallen animal, gingerly picks it up and takes it to Jim.

“Which one of you guys killed this fine bushytail?” Jim asks.

“I did,” Shaun says, smiling.

“Then bring yourself over here, young man, so I can put it in your game bag. Ranger’ll have another one treed before you can say …”

Booorroo!

Ranger has already treed again. The boys are all grins. As we follow Jim through the woods to another squirrel, there’s a big ol’ smile on my face, too.

In the fraternity of treeing dog enthusiasts, Jim Rhea is legendary. He owns R & R Kennels in Wynne, Arkansas, where he raises and trains some of the world’s finest pedigree squirrel dogs. He’s well known in field-trial circuits. Dogs from his Limbgripper line (Limbgripper Buck, Limbgripper Danny, Limbgripper Jack, Limbgripper Ranger and others) have won every major award in the sport, including dozens of state, regional, U.S. and world championships. Limbgripper Ranger, the dog that treed squirrels for my sons, recently was inducted into the National Treeing Cur Association Hall of Fame. (The Limbgripper name, in case you haven’t figured it out, is a Southern colloquialism for squirrel.)

I’ve often hunted behind Jim and his dogs. I’ve come away amazed every time—amazed at the astounding treeing abilities of Jim’s dogs, and amazed at Jim’s ability to train so many dogs so well. It’s a sport Jim’s been immersed in since he was a child.

“My grandpa started me hunting squirrels with dogs when I was just six,” he relates. “And I enjoy it just as much now as I did then. When you’re working your dog, you don’t have to slip through the woods like do when you’re hunting turkeys or deer. You can talk to your buddies and enjoy yourself. If there’s anything more thrilling than watching a good squirrel dog operate, I’ve never done it.”

To many people, the words “cur” and “feist” equate to the word “mutt.” In the world of squirrel hunting, however, curs and feists are registered dogs of pure breeding. A well-trained dog may sell for thousands of dollars.

“Almost any canine, from a poodle to a German shepherd, can be taught to tree squirrels,” Jim says. “The best dogs, however, are those bred especially for this purpose. The mountain cur, black-mouthed cur, leopard cur, treeing cur, feist, treeing feist and mountain feist—all registered breeds—are some of the ones used by squirrel hunters.”

Jim starts working with dogs when they’re pups, giving them close daily contact almost from the time they are born. He starts training them before they’re weaned at eight weeks old.

“A dog can be trained a lot when he’s just a pup,” he says. “You don’t have to take him to the woods right away, but you can teach him to handle, to get in the truck and to obey basic commands like ‘No,’ ‘Come’ and ‘Sit.’ You should start shooting a gun around the dog at an early age, making a gunshot part of his everyday life, so he won’t be gun-shy. Getting a dog to handle well and knowing who you are before you take him hunting is important.”

Jim’s pups are usually four or five months old before he take them on their first hunt. He says your first task in field training is to get the dog interested in chasing a squirrel. He does this using squirrels caught in live traps.

“Let your pup smell the squirrel through the cage,” he notes. “Get him excited about it, then hold the puppy and turn the squirrel loose. Usually, if the pup has any ambition, it’ll run the squirrel up a tree.” Rhea notes that this kind of training develops the proper hunting instincts that drive the dog to find squirrels.

“Pups must know what it is you want them to do, what you want them to hunt,” says Jim. “If you don’t have a live trap, drive a puppy around when he’s young, and when you see a squirrel, turn him loose on it. Another good way to start them is to find someone who has a good squirrel dog, and take the pup along on a hunt where you’re killing squirrels; let it see what’s going on. If you shoot a squirrel, pick it up and tease the puppy with it. That gives him a desire to follow a squirrel’s scent.”

Work with your dog regularly, even if only a few minutes each day. Teach it that the proper response brings game and praise, and improper conduct brings a reprimand. With enough practice, the dog should eventually, and nearly always, do the right thing.

Jim points out that many good squirrel dog prospects are ruined by mistakes during training. “Never shoot squirrels your dog hasn’t treed,” he says. “If you see a squirrel running through the woods, don’t shoot it unless your dog trees it first. Don’t do any shooting out there, period, unless your dog trees.”

Hunters should also remember that a good hunting dog of any breed will chase almost anything that moves until it finds out what to hunt. The dog will be more fun to hunt with and will produce more squirrels for the gun once it knows which game is permitted and which is taboo.

“Don’t ever shoot any ‘off’ game while training your dog,” Rhea says. “If you want your dog to be a good squirrel dog, then you surely don’t want to shoot any rabbits; you don’t want to kill a deer or anything like that until he’s been trained to hunt squirrels only. After you get a dog trained, you may be able to shoot a rabbit in front of him without messing him up. But when you’re training one, he’s just like a kid. If you want to keep a kid from drinking, you shouldn’t take him to the beer joint with you.”

The last time we hunted together, Jim and I leaned against a tree, watching my boys search for a squirrel Ranger had treed. Jim looked at me and smiled a devilish smile.

“What are you grinning about?” I asked.

“I was just watching you and those boys,” he said. “Watching you guys have fun makes me happy.”

He turned then and headed for the oak where Ranger was treed.

“OK, boys, get ready,” he said. “I’m gonna shake this vine, and we’ll see what jumps out. Remember, safety first. Watch your gun barrels. Keep your safety on until you see the squirrel ...”

Hunting with Jim and his extraordinary dogs is a step beyond the ordinary. It's unforgettable. My sons will vouch for that.

Watch Your Wake, Nitwit!

2009-08-28T08:15:00.004-05:00

Boat wakes. There’s nothing in the world that will make one boater mad at another quicker than one of these long, frothy, V-shaped waves from the stern of a powerboat as it slices through the water. Better to steal another guy’s fishing hole, tell him his wife is ugly or put a ding in the door of his brand-new pick-em-up truck than to rock his world with a big dangerous boat wake. Case in point. (The names are changed to protect the not-so-innocent.)

Years ago, I was staying with some, let’s say’s, “rough-cut” friends on a houseboat they owned. The boat was anchored on a big river in a quiet, backcountry area far from the beaten path. We were using the houseboat as home base while we fished for the river’s big catfish, and everyone was having a good time until it happened.

We were eating dinner in the boat’s galley when suddenly a tsunami hit. The huge houseboat rolled up on one side, food and dishes crashed onto the floor, and two of my friends were thrown from their chairs. When the boat rolled back the other way, everything in the boat that wasn’t tied down fell to the floor. Lamps broke. Jars of food shattered. Furniture collapsed. Everyone on the boat was tossed about like rag dolls. A tidal wave could hardly have done more damage.

The two men who owned the boat—we’ll call them Bob and John—were infuriated, and rightfully so, because all this pandemonium had been caused by another boat passing on the river—a crew boat piloted by a, let’s say, “nitwit” employed by a U.S. government agency that was constructing a dam on the river downstream. Another party on a houseboat moored just upstream also felt the brunt of the crew boat’s wake. In addition to their boat being damaged, one got a big gash across his forehead and another received a broken wrist.

Despite the bedlam, Bob’s reaction was immediate. “Get your ass in the boat, John. We’re gonna run that son-of-a-bitch down and make him wish he’d never done that.” He rushed out the door to a johnboat tied astern, a shotgun in his hand. And off they went.

I didn’t go. It was pretty obvious there was going to be trouble. And trouble there was. An hour later they returned with Mr. Dumbass Boat Captain. His hands were tied behind his back with a piece of trotline cord, and he had a look on his face like a government contractor who’d just been taken hostage by Iraqi militants.

“We’ve already called his boss and told him they can have him back when they send someone out here and pay for all this damage,” Bob said rather nonchalantly. I was just relieved to see the guy alive. I figured they were going to tie trotline weights on his ankles and throw him in the river.

The incident was resolved peacefully later that day when a government official came out and wrote checks totaling more than $10,000 to the houseboat owners. Surprisingly, no one went to jail despite the kidnapping. And while the guys on the other houseboat were seriously hurt, no one died. That in itself was a miracle, and something the crew boat captain must be thankful for to this very day.

That’s an extreme example of what can happen when a boat throws a dangerous wake without regard for other boats in the vicinity. But I’ve also seen other frightening incidents—shouting matches, fist fights, capsizings and serious injuries—caused by boat operators who showed blatant disregard for their fellow boaters. Wakes can damage property and hurt people. They can make people angry, and they can bring the wrath of law enforcement.

With hundreds of thousands of boats expected to be on the water during the Labor Day holiday coming up, now is a good time to discuss the issue of boat wakes. The Boat Owners Association of The United States (BoatU.S.) recently looked into the problem by combing through insurance-claim case files, where swampings, broken teeth and back injuries are found.

“You avoid being the recipient of gestures from other skippers by using a little common sense and courtesy,” says BoatU.S. Director of Damage Avoidance Bob Adriance. “This means coming completely off plane when you enter a no wake zone or anywhere your wake could compromise the safety of other boats,” he adds.

Here are some additional tips from BoatU.S. to help prevent boat wake injuries to you and other boaters. Heeding them could save your life and the lives of others.

Slow early: Boat wakes travel distances, so slow down before you reach a slow-speed zone, not as you pass the marker.

Just a little slowing down isn't good enough: Upon entering a no-wake zone, some boaters react by only slowing the vessel slightly, and then plow through with the bow way up and stern dug down, actually increasing the wake. Come completely off plane.

Make her level: Without using trim tabs, a slowed vessel should be level in the water. With some smaller boats, shifting passengers around can help, as too much weight aft increases wake size.

Watch the shallows: Shallow water increases wake size.

Small boats aren't innocent: Wakes are not just a big boat issue; small vessels in the stern-down position can throw surprisingly large wakes.

When approaching a wake, slow down but don't stop: Motorboats are more stable when underway, so stopping could make things worse. Avoid taking a wake on the beam or head on. The best approach is at a slight angle. This will keep your passengers in your boat.

Take care of older crew: The BoatU.S. insurance claims files show that persons over the age of 50 have the most personal injuries, mostly as a result of being seated near the bow when the boat slams into a wake. It's best to seat passengers, especially older passengers, amidships.

Warn the crew: A simple “Hold-on. Boat wake” should do the trick, just as long as you shout the warning well before the wake arrives.

During the Labor Day holiday—make that, any time you are on the water—watch your wake. It’s the courteous, and safe, thing to do.

Scout Now For Opening-Day Doves

2009-08-20T17:39:00.006-05:00

“Heads up!” The muffled shout came from my right. I turned just in time to see a mourning dove speed down the fencerow, then drop low over the cut milo. Before I could raise my shotgun, Jimmy Peeler dropped the bird with a clean shot.

“Nice shot,” I called. Then Jimmy’s brother Lewis was yelling, pointing behind us. “Birds comin’ in.” Three doves blazed by like bantam kamikazes. When they were in front of me, I shouldered my shotgun and fired at the lead bird. It faltered as the load of No. 9s dusted its tail but kept flying. Not a perfect shot, but the bird fell 40 yards out. I ran to retrieve it.

Before I was back in position, someone called “Birds!” again. I dropped to a squat as five doves winged by out of range. Lewis was downed two. The rest skedaddled for safer air space.

Two veered my way. I shot twice and missed. Jimmy lowered the boom on one; the other hugged the ground as it rocketed out of the field. I pulled three shells from my second box and pushed them into the belly of my gun.

This all started with a phone call to Lewis to see if he and Jimmy wanted to get together for some September dove shooting. The season opened earlier that week, and while scouting, I had located a dove-hunting hotspot.

Before the season opens, it pays to scout your hunting area, looking for heavily-used flyways doves travel when moving from one activity area to another. Doves usually fly from night roosts to watering holes shortly after dawn, then quickly move to feeding areas where they stay until midday. They loaf at perching, watering or graveling sites near the feeding area for an hour or two around noon, then return to the feeding area for the remainder of the afternoon. Before going to roost, they stop to drink again. By determining the exact time and locale of these activities, you can ascertain the best place and time to hunt a particular site.

To determine dove patterns, drive slowly through a likely area, stopping occasionally to scan the countryside with binoculars. Scout before 9 a.m. or after 3 p.m. when birds are more likely to be moving. Watch for doves in the air and on the ground, then stop and scan the spot for 15 to 30 minutes. If more birds follow, you’ve found a potential hunting site.

Most aficionados hunt feeding areas, usually fields of harvested seed crops like milo, sunflowers, sorghum, corn or wheat. Additional scouting when you have zeroed in on such a field can improve your dove score tremendously.

Try to determine when doves enter and exit the field, and examine each locale thoroughly, looking for different types of “structure” to which doves orient. A dip in the perimeter timber of a field may be a well-used travel lane. Field corners may funnel doves in and out of a field. Open mid-field humps may be preferred feeding sites as they provide a better view of approaching danger. Doves often light on dead snags or power lines before landing or while loafing. Points, ditches, borders between stubble and plowed ground, fence and tree lines, tall trees, waterholes and other structure all serve as reference points for flying doves. If your scouting indicates numerous doves are flying near such spots, you’ve found a place to take your stand.

Shooting doves as they come to water also offers fast action. And last September while hunting a small farm pond, I got a taste of that action.

At dusk, doves started pouring in. Some streaked in 90-to-nothing from across the pond. Others blazed in behind us. As I swung on one, several more appeared, flaring as our guns boomed. For 10 minutes the action was non-stop, and then a short lull. I found, to my amazement, I’d gone through more than half a box of shells. The barrel of my shotgun was hot, my knees were weak, and in the midst of all that bedlam, I only downed two birds.

One might think such a striking gamebird would prefer sparkling, clear water, but doves generally drink at muddy ponds, seeps, mudholes, or stream banks. A farm pond, stretch of lakeside or river bank with a broad, open dirt or mud border is ideal, especially when near roosts or feeding areas. Doves circle swiftly, eye the waterhole for signs of danger, and then, if all looks safe, swing in to alight at the water’s edge.

I always scout for shallow ponds that have suffered a dry summer and have large areas of open earth around the remaining water. It’s easy for mourning doves to land here and easy for them to flush if there is danger, just what thirsty doves are looking for.

Another deciding influence is the availability of perching places. Doves like to water, then fly to a dead tree to preen before moving on. Others circle the watering area and perch to look for danger before fluttering down. If no dead snags are nearby, look for power or telephone lines passing close. A sure sign of a winning waterhole is a number of doves perched on nearby wires or dead trees.

When you’ve pinpointed a productive waterhole, watch for patterns as birds come and go. For example, one pond I’ve hunted many times is about 200 yards below a ridgetop highway. Running along the highway is a telephone line. Birds watering at this pond light on the wires before flying to the pond. As they fly down, they pass by a clump of bushes where I wait in ambush. Every bird passes within 25 or 30 yards, moving from left to right. That’s my best cross-shot swing.

Graveling sites are overlooked by many hunters, but these are also important to doves. Gravel roads, sand bars, gravel quarries and other graveling spots close to feeding, watering and roosting sites make an area more attractive to doves, and if your scouting reveals activity patterns, these areas, or locations near them, can provide alternative hunting sites during midday when doves aren’t feeding in fields.

Regardless of where you hunt, it’s important to continue scouting right up to the day you hunt. Doves activity patterns may change due to adverse weather conditions, changes in feeding-field conditions and other factors, especially early in the season. To have the best opening-day hunt possible, be prepared. Identify several potential hunting sites. Visit them often. Watch doves throughout the day. Determine when and where they’re flying.

Personnel in the game division of your state wildlife agency can provide information on public lands open to dove hunters, and details about specific tracts planted with grain crops attractive to doves. Most prime dove hunting lands are privately owned, however, and most sportsmen must turn toward private lands to meet their hunting needs. Always visit with the landowner prior to hunting or scouting, and continue with your activities only after you’ve been granted permission. Show respect for the landowner’s property while visiting, and be sure to express your thanks after the hunt by sharing game, sending a thank-you note and offering to assist with chores on the property. If you want private landowners to be your friends, be a friend to them.

Whether you choose to hunt them along an afternoon flyway, in a field where you can jump them from a rainy day meal, or by bagging them as they come in for water or gravel, doves can provide exciting shooting throughout the day. Thorough pre-hunt scouting increases the odds you’ll take some home—If you can hit them.

Cat Tales

2009-08-13T08:29:00.005-05:00

You don’t have to hang around a bunch of anglers very long before one thing becomes perfectly clear: there’s about as much bull as there is beef whenever fishermen start swapping stories. That’s fine, of course, unless you decide to swallow some. Then you better be sure which is which.

If your fishing buddies start telling tales about big catfish, be especially careful what you swallow. Catfish have inspired more than their share of campfire stories, most of which are long on exaggeration and short on documentation. Separating catfish facts from homespun fiction isn’t all that simple, and a gullible novice, hearing the proliferation of tales about giant cats, might be led to believe that all catfish are big as Hereford steers.

You’ve probably heard this one, for instance. A scuba diver is exploring the depths of Lake Hookahawg. Seems this fellow went down in the water, and when he surfaced, he had to be helped to the bank. His face was white as a catfish belly, and he was nearly paralyzed from fright.

His companions pressed him for information about the source of his distress, and when he finally calmed down enough to recount his experience, he told of seeing catfish the size of porpoises lurking in the inky blackness below, waiting to devour some unsuspecting human. I’ve never met this diver myself, but I’ve spoken to scores of people related to him, and each and every one will vouch for his honesty.

Whoppers like this (the stories, not the fish) didn’t start with our generation. In the 1600s, American Indians warned explorers Marquette and Joliet of a fierce beast that lived in the depths of the Mississippi River, waiting to devour unsuspecting river travelers. Imagine the surprise these Frenchmen must have felt when hefty catfish collided with their boats. In his journal, Marquette wrote, “We met from time to time these monstrous fish, which struck so violently against our canoes that we took them to be large trees, which threatened to upset us.”

Marquette didn’t hypothecate those canoe-whacking cats’ size, but as no less a river authority himself, Samuel Clemens, alias Mark Twain, reported two centuries later, “I have seen a Mississippi catfish that was more than six feet long and weighed 250 pounds, and if Marquette’s fish was a fellow to that one, he had a fair right to think the river’s roaring demon had come.”

Twain no doubt had the same two-yard-long catfish in mind when he wrote his classic Huckleberry Finn, for in that book, Huck and his companion Jim caught a cat that would have rivaled the one that unsettled Marquette and Joliet’s canoe. As Huck told it, he and his buddy Jim baited a big hook “with a skinned rabbit and set it and (caught) a catfish that was as big as a man, being six foot, two inches long, and weighed over 200 pounds. We couldn’t handle him, of course ... we just set there and watched him rip and tear around till he drowned ...”

Seems that even in Mark Twain’s day, folks appreciated a good cat tale.

Nineteenth century author Francis James Robinson spun one of the greatest catfish tales of all times when he wrote the story “Rance Bore-’em”. Bore’em was a braggard extroadinaire who would talk for hours, “awake, asleep, and maybe in a trance.” He was the hero of each and every tale he told, including this little ditty which ole Rance claimed was “fact, every word of it.”

“Were you speaking of fishing, sir? Well, gentlemen, I had some experience in the ‘art of hooking’ when I was in Texas, which I must tell you. Expecting to find large fish in the waters of the great state of Texas, as I passed through New Orleans, I had made to order some extra large hooks and a supply of lines, such as vessels use for anchoring! The place at which I stopped was near a large river, and the sport promised to be excellent; but it far exceeded my expectations, for we often had to send home for several yoke of oxen to pull out some of the fish we hung, and it was sometimes hard work at that!

“This is a fact, gentlemen, I could get twenty men to testify to--but this is nothing to one haul we made, which, if I hadn’t seen, no man on earth could have made me believe in a moment. We made up a party and prepared a large quantity of bait and provision for several days fishing. When we reached the banks of the river, we put in our hooks--those same big ones I had made in New Orleans--and I think there were ten of us fishing close together! All at once we had a bite, every hook was swallowed, and away we pulled, but couldn’t move whatever it was; so we carried our lines out and made them fast to a few small trees--I suppose none of them more than twenty feet in diameter--until we could get help. So we sent after and procured twenty yoke of oxen--hitched two yoke to each line, and with a long pull and a strong pull of men and oxen, up and out came one of the largest kind of Catfish--his mouth being at least ten feet across--out of him we made fifty barrels of oil, for which, in N. Orleans, we obtained thirty dollars each, thus making the pretty little sum of fifteen hundred dollars--a nice morning’s work, gentlemen. Ah! Texas is great--a glorious--a grand country to live in--everything grows in such plenty and profusion!”

Even the most trusting soul among us would feel justified in doubting the authenticity of these giant cat tales. But some of the true stories about catfish are equally amazing. Consider this one about brothers Bruce and Mackey Sayre of Little Rock, Arkansas.

It was May 1982. For two nights straight, Bruce and Mackey had been snagging catfish in the waters below David D. Terry Dam on the Arkansas River just downstream from Little Rock. The river was high, ideal for catching cats, and the brothers had been successful, landing several over 50 pounds. But according to Mackey, those 50-pounders didn’t hold a candle to some of the cats that got away.

“We were fishing with big river rods,” he says. “And we snagged into some huge catfish we couldn’t handle, even both of us together. The 50-pounders didn’t pull anything like these fish did.”

So on the third night of fishing, the Sayre brothers set a snagline--in essence, a long, unbaited trotline rigged with 10/0 treble hooks instead of bait hooks. “The line is tight enough so if a fish swims into it and a hook penetrates the skin, if the fish pulls, it’ll get stuck,” says Mackey.

And on that dark night, that’s exactly what happened. When Bruce and Mackey returned from dinner, a pair of 2-1/2-gallon jugs used to float the line were submerged. A fish was hooked.

Upon reaching the line, they knew immediately they had a monster. It was too large to land in their 14-foot flatbottom, so they cut the line, came ashore and pulled the fish to the bank, hand-over-hand.

“When I first saw the fish, I knew it went over 100 pounds,” says Mackey. “My knees started shaking, then my legs went clear out from under me. Bruce was even more excited.”

When weighed the next day, the 5-foot, 9-inch flathead pulled the scales to 139 pounds, 14 ounces. An all-tackle world-record, caught in Lake Lewisville, Texas the same year, weighed 91 pounds, 4 ounces. The current record weighed 123 pounds. Unfortunately, the Sayres’ flathead didn’t qualify as a record, because it wasn’t caught on a hand-held pole and line. It was one of the largest freshwater fish ever caught in North America, but it received little attention.

“We didn’t think a whole lot about it,” says Mackey, whose father was a commercial fisherman. “It was just a big fish to us. I’ve seen 200-pound alligator gars when I was little, and they didn’t mean anything.”

When I ask Mackey if he and Bruce realize they caught the largest flathead catfish recorded in modern times, he says, rather matter-of-factly, they did not. “Our flathead wasn’t as big as one my daddy and grandfather caught on a trotline,” he tells me. “They weren’t exactly sure how big it was, but they figured it weighed 160 or 175 pounds. I heard stories of that fish long before mine was caught. And I know another commercial fisherman who caught two bigger than ours. One was over six feet, but it was in poor shape, so he turned it loose.”

The Mark Twain stories don’t sound quite so “stretched” now, do they?

Mackey thinks someday someone will catch a flathead bigger than his and Bruce’s 139-pounder.

“And how do you think it will be done?” I ask.

“With scuba gear and a harpoon gun,” he replies.

Which reminds me: Did I tell you the one about the scuba diver in Lake Hookahawg?

'Bama Cat Smackdown!

2009-08-09T20:03:00.008-05:00

The temperature all week had been Africa-hot. By noon each day, the thermometer in “The Shoals” area of north Alabama was hovering around the century mark. We decided, therefore, to do our fishing early and get off the water before we melted.

The sun was just rising when we climbed into Mike Mitchell’s boat and headed onto Wheeler Lake. I’ve wanted to fish Wheeler, a Tennessee River reservoir, ever since I heard about William McKinley catching a 111-pound, world-record blue catfish here in 1996. Now I’d have my chance.

My wife Theresa and I were vacationing in the Muscle Shoals area for a week in July, and Mitchell, who lives in Albertville, Alabama, invited us to join him for some catfishing. We were eager to go because Mitchell’s reputation preceded him. He’s well-known as one of the country’s top catfish guides and tournament anglers. He and partner Sammy Mitchell won first place at the Cabela’s King Kat Tournament on nearby Pickwick and Wilson lakes in May 2008 with an impressive weight of 163.95 pounds. Their team also won big fish of the event with a 64.95-pound catfish.

On top of that, this young man has helped many clients catch their biggest fish ever, including Toni Treadway who caught a 98-pound blue while fishing with Mike on Wheeler Lake last January.

Mike sent me a photo of Treadway’s fish the day it was caught, along with a note to “Come fish with me sometime.” Now, after months of anticipation, it was actually going to happen—Theresa and I fishing with one of the world’s best cat men on one of the world’s best catfish lakes. Little did we realize what a memorable day it would turn out to be.

As soon as the boat was anchored, Mike and I baited four hooks with chunks of skipjack herring and released the baits to a hump underwater. Less than five minutes after we placed his Catfish Safari rods (www.catfishsafari.com) in rod holders, one of them went down hard.

Theresa, whose biggest fish before this day was a 23-pound redfish, was first up. And from the moment she started reeling, it was obvious this would be a new personal best. The fish pulled. Theresa reeled. The fish pulled harder. Theresa reeled harder. There was never any doubt about the outcome of this battle, however. My wife was gonna to lay a smackdown on this whiskerfish for sure. The look in her eyes told me so.

I wanted some photos of Theresa battling her big cat, so I grabbed my camera. Before I could start shooting, however, another pole went down. I reeled fast so the circle hook would catch in the fish’s jaw, and when the beast felt the hook’s sting, he darn near yanked the rod from my hands.

Theresa now had her fish close to the surface, and we could see it was a dandy. She gave a big heave, pulled the cat close, and Mike slipped a net under it and swung it in the boat. It was a beautiful female blue cat, sleek and muscular and not at all happy about its predicament. Before she settled down, she almost beat the sides out of the boat with her tail.

Mike now turned his attention to my fish, which I had miraculously managed to wrestle to the surface. It was even bigger than Theresa’s and not about to give up without a fight. The cat churned the water with its tail, drenching all of us as it thrashed about. Mike quickly netted it, however, and dragged it over the transom.

It was a big male catfish. His broad, swollen head—quite unlike the slender head of Theresa’s female cat—was covered with fresh abrasions. He was quite skinny, too, a sign he’d been in a spawning hole for days or weeks, refusing to feed while he guarded his eggs. Had it been some other time of year, when the fish had been feeding normally, it might have weighed 60 pounds or more. But in his emaciated state, the old cat tipped the scales to an even 46 pounds. Theresa’s fish, her biggest ever, weighed an even 30.

It was quite a double. Two fish, 76 pounds total. And the morning had just begun.

After snapping a few photos, and carefully releasing both cats, we rebaited the two poles and settled down to wait. But waiting would have to wait. Another rod took a nosedive. And once again, Theresa was up against brawler. This fish didn’t make it through Round 1 before my wife KOed it, though. She brought it boatside almost as quick as you can say it, and Mike netted the beautiful 26-pounder.

Much to my surprise, and Mike’s, Theresa grabbed the thrashing, still-green blue cat by the head and tail and held it high for a photo.

“It’s the second biggest fish I ever caught,” Theresa said smiling. “I want a good picture of me holding it so I can show everyone back home.”

At mid-morning, we drove to the Wilson Dam tailwater at Sheffield where we caught two more fat blues—a 24-pounder for Theresa and a 26-pounder for me. We stopped fishing around 11 a.m., before it was blazing hot out. But in the few hours we’d been on the water, we’d caught five catfish anyone could be proud of.

“I’m glad we stopped when we did,” Theresa said. “It means I beat you.”

“How do you figure that?” I asked. “I caught the biggest fish.”

“Yeah, but if we were fishing a tournament, I would have won,” she snapped back. “My three fish weighed a total of 80 pounds. Your two only weighed 72. I beat you by 8 pounds.”

I couldn’t argue that fact. But catching a 46-pound catfish, one of my nicest blues ever, was reward enough for me.

Besides, I know better than to argue with Theresa. I weigh 100 pounds more than she does, but I’ve seen her put a smackdown on some pretty sizeable fish and know she could probably lay me out, too.

I settled for big fish honors and left well enough alone.

North Alabama Trip Tips
Lakes Wheeler, Wilson and Pickwick on the Tennessee River near Muscle Shoals, Alabama, are among the best trophy catfish lakes in the country. For guided catfishing in this area, contact Mike Mitchell of SouthernCats Guide Service (256-673-2250, www.tnriveroutfitters.net).

“The Shoals” area ranks high as a vacation spot, too, and the wonderful staff at the Colbert County Tourism and Convention Bureau (800-344-0783, www.colbertcountytourism.org) will gladly assist you in planning visits to attractions such as Helen Keller’s childhood home, the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, Key Underwood’s Coondog Graveyard, the W.C. Handy Birthplace Museum, Tuscumbia’s scenic Spring Park with its waterfalls and fountains, and great local eateries such as Claunch Café, George’s Steakhouse and Frank’s Italian Restaurant.

Fishing's Newest Live Bait: The Black Salty

2009-08-05T09:29:00.006-05:00

Fishing lure manufacturers spend millions promoting new products. The number of new artificials produced each year is astounding.

Change doesn’t occur as fast in the live-bait market, however. Redesigning a piece of balsa or plastic is much simpler than redesigning a living creature. Consequently, “new and improved” natural baits are seen about as often as 5-pound crappie. That is to say, not very often.

It happens occasionally, though. Advances in bioengineering and aquaculture techniques make it possible to “manufacture” new, never-before-seen creatures, and some of these modernistic mutants are dinner in the eyes of hungry gamefish. Such is the case with the Black Salty, a sensational new live bait gaining fans nationwide.

The Black Salty is technically a goldfish, but this isn’t your garden-variety goldfish. The Black Salty is specially bred and pond-raised by I.F. Anderson Farms, a 50-year-old bait hatchery in Lonoke, Arkansas. Anderson biologists use a proprietary, patent-pending process that enables this freshwater baitfish to stay alive on the hook in saltwater for up to 1-1/2 hours. The fish also are selectively bred to achieve a gold/silver color, which serves well to mimic baitfish from freshwater shad to saltwater mullet.

Proven Fish-Catcher
The Black Salty has impressively proved its mettle on a wide variety of saltwater and freshwater gamefish.

When fishing inshore saltwater, the Black Salty is deadly on speckled trout, redfish, flounder, black drum, Spanish mackerel and many sharks. Black Saltys also account for all popular surface species, including king mackerel, cobia, dorado and bonito, along with red snapper, grouper, amberjack, tuna, tarpon and wahoo. In freshwater, the Black Salty has proven extremely effective for striped bass, hybrid stripers, largemouths and catfish.

“That,” says Anderson Farms owner Neal Anderson, “is just what we’ve managed to determine so far in our field-testing efforts. It’s safe to say if it eats fish, it’ll eat a Black Salty.”

Freshwater Testimony

Brad Wiegmann, a fishing guide on Arkansas’ Beaver Lake, started using Black Saltys when they first became available.

“I’ve used Black Saltys to catch every type of bass swimming in Beaver Lake, including largemouths, smallmouths, spotted bass, stripers, hybrid stripers and white bass,” Wiegmann says. “I rig them like shiners or shad, hooking them through the lower jaw and out through a nostril. You can fish them on a free line or balloon line, drag them behind planer boards or down-line them. They’re great summer baits because they stay alive in the hottest temperatures and live even when dropped into cool, deep water. Black Saltys work great in winter, too, even when the water temperature falls below 50 degrees.

“Black Saltys have many positive attributes,” Wiegmann continues. “I like the fact you can have them delivered straight to your front door. No longer do I have to go out and catch bait before or during a guided fishing trip. Black Saltys also are easy to keep alive. I hold them for days in a 6-gallon aerated bait bucket.”

Great In Saltwater, Too

Saltwater fishing expert Larry Bozka of Seabrook, Texas, has used Black Saltys to catch the full gamut of saltwater species. “From a standpoint of conservation (relieving pressure on locally harvested bait species) to plain-out fish-catching ability, I have been thrilled with the results,” he says. “There are no magic bullets when fish are not feeding or conditions are very poor. That said, and based on experience, I will put the Black Salty up against any traditional live bait on the market in fresh or salt water with all due confidence.”

Black Saltys are available in three sizes. The inshore-size baitfish are 2-1/2 to 3 inches long, with approximately 30 fish to a pound. Offshore Black Saltys measure 4 to 4-1/2 inches, with roughly 15 fish per pound. Magnum, or XL, Black Saltys are 6 to 7-1/2 inches long, with about 10 fish per pound. All are available through a growing network of retail bait dealers or can be ordered via Federal Express overnight shipping (Tuesday and Friday deliveries) by calling 1-877-GO-SALTY (467-2589). Five pounds of inshore-size (12-1/2 dozen baits) or 5 pounds of offshore-size (6-1/4 dozen) can be purchased for around $85, shipping included.

Everything else you might want to know about Black Saltys, including fishing and handling tips, is available by logging on to www.blacksalty.com.

Crickets, Corona Bottles And Electric-Blue Perch

2009-07-31T10:34:00.003-05:00

I felt like a criminal, darting from the Mexican shadows and grabbing unsuspecting passers-by. It was the only way, however, to fulfill the urge growing within me.

I had discovered a few hours earlier that Rio Grande perch inhabit Mexico’s Lake Guerrero where I had come to bass fish. These beautiful and unusual fish aren’t considered trophies by most folks, but being an ardent fan of such offbeat fare, I was immediately excited at the prospect of catching one. Unfortunately, I had nothing with which to tempt them, nor any tackle small enough to even hook one. One of the local guides offered solutions to both problems.

“Catch some creekets beneath the street lights tonight,” he said. “And I will find you some leetle hooks.”

So there I was, stuffing crickets into an empty Corona bottle at midnight in the Mexican desert. I hoped none of the visiting bass anglers would notice me and start asking questions. Fortunately, none did.

At dawn I was sitting at lakeside, baiting one of two bream hooks the guide had given me. I stripped line from my bass reel and flipped the cricket out. It sank slowly, enticingly, then wham, a fish was on.

It fought much like a large bluegill, spinning round and round in tight little circles, then darting off in a broad-sided run. “Scrappy” is a good description. But a 16-ounce fish has little chance against a 250-pound man with greed in his heart, and soon I had it on the bank.

The colors were even more amazing than I remembered from photos I’d seen. The entire bluish-green body—the sides, the head, the tail, the fins—was speckled with hundreds of turquoise spots that glowed with electric-blue intensity. The fins were long and flowing. The forehead had a curious hump, as if the fish had been whacked with a baseball bat in a cartoon episode. (This, I learned later, is a characteristic of male Rio Grandes.)

I had 20 crickets in my beer bottle, and within an hour I caught 20 Rio Grandes. “Guinea perch,” one of the bass anglers called them. “Because they’re speckled like the feathers of guinea fowl.” Other nicknames include Texas cichlid, Texas bluespot and blue-spotted perch. To my Mexican guide, they were “mojarra de Norte.” He took them home for his family to eat, proclaiming them “the best eating feesh in the lake.”

Although they superficially resemble the sunfishes, Rio Grande perch (Cichlasoma cyanoguttatum) are actually members of the cichlid family. About 600 cichlids occur worldwide, including a number of popular aquarium fishes such as oscars and Jack Dempseys. A few species are native to Asia, but most of these tropical freshwater fishes are found in Central and South America and Africa. The Rio Grande perch is the only cichlid native to the United States.

Rio Grandes cannot survive temperatures below 48 degrees F, which greatly narrows their range. They were originally restricted to the Nueces and Rio Grande river systems in southern Texas and several small to large rivers in northeastern Mexico. The Fish Cultural Station, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, brought them to the Guadalupe River basin at San Marcos, Texas in 1928 and released them into waters on the Edwards Plateau (central Texas) between 1928 and 1941. They now occur sporadically throughout the southern third of Texas and are common in spring-fed areas of the Rio Grande, San Marcos, Guadalupe, Comal, Llano and San Antonio rivers. Town Lake in downtown Austin is at the northernmost edge of their range.

Because they occur in warm waters and spring-fed areas where water temperature fluctuations are not great, Rio Grandes are active year-round. They feed primarily on insects, crayfish, small fish and fish eggs. Numerous strong, cutting teeth are set in the small mouth, and they commonly school to attack the nests of black bass and bluegills, seizing the spawn or the fry.

Adults will reproduce several times annually, and although a pair might hatch no more than 5,000 offspring in one spawn, almost all the young survive. They frequently overpopulate impoundments and small rivers, becoming stunted when food supplies get short. Texas authorities have poisoned many stream sections in attempts to destroy populations, but these panfish are extremely tenacious and keep reappearing.

In most waters, Rio Grande perch 5- to 6-inches long are average size. Where food and space are plentiful, however, they grow to substantial size. Perch of 1 pound are extremely common in Lake Guerrero and many other waters, and individuals weighing 2 pounds and more are not at all rare.

Surface plugs, spoons, spinnerbaits and spinner-fly combinations tempt the large ones, especially when worked slowly over and around weedy cover. Rio Grande perch also relish a wide variety of live baits, including worms, small minnows and crickets. Present these at mid-depths in shallow water beneath a small bobber on a No. 4 to 8 long-shanked hook. Add a small split shot to carry the bait down. Carry needle-nose pliers or hemostats to remove hooks; bites from the Rio Grandes’ sharp teeth are nasty.

Ultralight tackle compounds the fun of catching Rio Grandes, but they aren’t the least bit wary and will strike almost anything that moves. Sometimes several will attack at once, moving in like a pack of miniature wolves. They fight long and hard, and though they don’t leap, many claim they easily outclass black bass and trout for strength and stubborn determination.

Oddly, most books dealing with American sport fishes don’t even mention the Rio Grande perch. Although this unusual fish has few fans, it is beautiful, very game and very good eating. It deserves much more attention from roving anglers than it has ever received.

On this point, my bass fishing buddies on Lake Guerrero agreed. They scoffed at first, but after watching me land several scrappy Rio Grandes, they joined me for some Mexican panfishing fun. Bass fishing was slow, but the electric-blue panfish provided fish-a-minute action.

That night, the Mexicans laughed at all the gringos stuffing crickets in Corona bottles.

Biggest of Them All

2009-07-23T19:26:00.009-05:00

My fingers ached. My muscles burned. Sweat scalded my eyes. I could barely turn the reel handle.

I felt like David standing before Goliath. Could I defeat this giant? Or would it defeat me?

For fifteen minutes I fought the enormous fish in the cold, swift water of Oregon’s Columbia River. Nothing prepared me for its astounding power. At first, I simply held on, gripping the rod with both hands and watching helplessly as yard after yard of line stripped from the reel. I thought the fish might spool me or yank the rod from my hands, but gradually, with one turn of the reel handle then another, I began to gain ground. Pull, crank. Pull, crank. I set my back into it, and reeled for all I was worth.

There was no shortage of encouragement. Three friends—Louis McMinds, Matt Foster and Mark Davis—cheered me on from the confines of Louis’ jet boat. Louis, who has battled such giants hundreds of times before, offered instruction.

“Keep your line tight at all times,” he said. “The hook is barbless, and if you give him slack, he’ll be gone.”

It seemed to me I was destined for failure. Now matter how hard I pulled, the fish pulled harder. When I reeled in five yards of line, the giant took ten. It was a battle of give and take, and my out-of-shape body took a beating. I was ready to pass the rod.

“Maybe we should untie from the anchor and follow him,” Louis said, nonchalantly.

“You mean ...”

“Yeah, we’re still anchored, Sutton.”

Mark and Matt laughed while Louis loosed the rope connecting boat to anchor. With adrenaline blurring my senses, I had failed to notice we were still tied up. I was battling not only the fish, but the strong current as well.

Thoughts of the Philistines aiding Goliath crossed my mind, but with the boat floating free, I had no time to contemplate revenge. The fish no longer took line. It was coming in.

Suddenly, a huge round nose broke above the water.

“There he is!” Louis shouted.

On the underside of the enormous snout was a Hitler’s mustache of barbels and a protruding vacuum-cleaner mouth big enough to suck up softballs. The eyes seemed small and useless on a creature so large. Seven feet of him now floated beside us, every inch covered with thick bony armor.

But the fish was not done. With a flip of its tail, it drenched us and dove back into the Columbia’s frigid waters. There was another short run, another spasm of reeling, then once again the fish surfaced. This time he was mine.

“Around seven feet, 200 pounds,” Louis estimated as he brought the fish close to unhook it. “Not bad for your first sturgeon, huh?”

It was—still is—the biggest fish I’ve caught in 45 years fishing fresh and saltwater. But Goliath it was not. White sturgeons are known to reach 18 feet and almost a ton. By comparison, mine was a midget.

White sturgeon grow larger than any fish in North America’s inland waters. The current world record is a 468-pounder caught at Benicia, California, on July 9, 1983, by Joey Pallotta, but much larger specimens have been verified. In 1912, a giant measuring 12.5 feet long and weighing 1,285 pounds was captured in the Columbia when it became tangled in a gill-net. A 1,500-pound specimen was caught and photographed in the Snake River near Payette, Idaho, in 1911. An even larger sturgeon, a 2,000-pound Oregon fish, was reportedly mounted for exhibition at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893.

Sturgeons much larger than Pallotta’s record fall to Columbia River anglers every year, but catch-and-release regulations aimed at protecting depleted sturgeon stocks make it unlikely his record will be broken anywhere in the fish’s range. Potential record-breakers can’t be removed from the water and weighed, so it’s difficult to determine their true size.

White sturgeons roam Pacific Coast waters from central California to Alaska. Like salmon, they are anadramous, living part of their lives in the ocean and ascending large rivers to spawn in freshwater. The primary reproductive waters are British Columbia’s Fraser River system; the Columbia-Snake River system in Washington, Oregon and Idaho; and the Sacramento-San Joaquin river system in California. Seventeen white sturgeon populations are landlocked due to dam construction. The Kootenai River population in Idaho and Montana is naturally isolated and was listed as endangered in 1994.

The lower Columbia River, below Bonneville Dam near Portland, Oregon, harbors North America’s densest population of great white sturgeons. During my one-day fishing trip, I saw several 7- to 8-footers brought in by other anglers. One leviathan subdued by a nearby fisherman stretched 10 feet long and surely weighed 600 pounds.

We also saw many huge sturgeon leaping around us. They launched when least expected, often flying completely out of the water and landing with a massive splash. Biologists aren’t sure why they do this. Some say it helps rid them of parasitic lampreys. To me, it looked like play—gentle giants testing the air.

Our host, Louis McMinds of Troutdale, Oregon, started fishing for the Columbia’s giant sturgeon in the early 1950s. Back then, he and his father secured their boat to an engine-block on the river’s bottom. Now most area anglers use the E-Z Puller anchor system designed and marketed by McMinds. This simple tool allows quick release from your anchor when a sturgeon strikes. Fight your fish, then return to the brightly colored buoy and retie at the same spot where you started. When it’s time to leave, the E-Z Puller permits hands-off anchor hoisting using the boat for power. Such a rig is essential for safety when anchoring in the Columbia’s treacherous waters.

McMinds exhibits an intense passion for giant sturgeon. He fishes year-round on the Columbia, usually alone, and often videotapes his battles with river Goliaths. He catches 50 to 60 fish over 6 feet each year, and once caught thirteen 7- to 10-footers in a single day. One of his extraordinary videos shows him subduing a 13-footer that weighed nearly half a ton.

“I love catching these big fish,” McMinds says. “They’re extremely powerful and love to jump and thrash. A big one can take 200 yards of line out in a heartbeat, and they may not stop. This isn’t trout fishing. I’m out here to catch giants, fish that may weigh as much as a trophy marlin.

“Good heavy tackle is a must,” McMinds continues. “I use 100-pound-test line, big Penn level-wind reels and heavy, 7-foot G. Loomis rods. I have favorite holes I’ve been fishing for years, but I never put a hook in the water until I see fish on my electronics, and that’s an absolute.”

Single-point barbless hooks are required by law. McMinds prefers 12/0, weighted with 32- to 64-ounce cannonball sinkers above a short leader attached to a ball-bearing swivel. Sturgeons feed on bottom, using their four barbels, or whiskers, to pinpoint food. So keeping your rig down is important.

“To catch the big ones, you need big baits,” says McMinds. “I like to use a whole American shad, but sometimes the current is so fast I can’t get away with it, so I use just a piece. And when smelt are in the river, those are preferred baits for many anglers targeting big sturgeon.”

With the boat anchored and bait set, the wait begins. McMinds places the rods in holders and watches for a bite. When a light tap leads to a serious rod-tip dip and the line starts to move off, that’s the signal that whitey has sucked up the bait. With an upward sweep, he lays steel to him and hangs on.

“When the fish takes off, you better be prepared to go with him,” McMinds cautionns. “If he runs and you’re not set up, he’s gone. I untie a quick-release knot on the anchor rope, then just float down and follow the fish.

“Sometimes you wonder who’s got who,” he says, laughing. “You never know for sure what’s gonna happen. I commonly have fish on for 30 minutes to an hour, sometimes much more.”

When hooked, many of these behemoths rocket into the air, leaving the water like a Polaris missile, twisting to one side and crashing back in the river with a resounding splash. Not all of them do these marlin-on-steroids impersonations, but it happens often enough to keep things interesting, and it usually happens with sturgeons exceeding 6 feet.

As we ended our day on the beautiful Columbia, Louis McMinds offered an apology.

“I really hate you didn’t catch a big one,” he said. “You came a long way, and I was hoping you’d land a nice one.”

Imagine that. I caught my biggest fish ever—200 pounds, 7 feet long—and my host was apologizing. That happens only when you’re fishing for great white sturgeons.

Some day I’ll return, looking for Goliath.

Columbia River Trip Tips

• May and June, when the Columbia river shad runs are in full swing, serve up some of the year’s best hook-and-release fishing for sturgeons over 6 feet. Fishing for giant sturgeon continues to be good July through September as well.

• For detailed fishing regulations and license information, contact the Oregon Dept. of Fish & Wildlife, 503-872-5268, or the Washington Dept. of Fish & Wildlife, 360-902-2200. Or check out their websites: www.dfw.state.or.us or www.wdfw.wa.gov.

• For info on the E-Z Puller anchor system, visit www.ezmarine.com.

Future Fisherman Foundation Names New Executive Director

2009-07-20T17:59:00.000-05:00

ORLANDO, Fla. (July 15, 2009)--At the ICAST Show today, Keith Sutton of Alexander, Arkansas was introduced as the new executive director of the Future Fisherman Foundation. A former executive with the Boy Scouts of America and past president of the Southeastern Outdoor Press Association, Sutton has worked 30 years as a free-lance writer, photographer, editor and lecturer, and served 19 years as editor of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s award-winning conservation magazine Arkansas Wildlife. He has written eleven books, including “The Crappie Book,” “Fishing for Catfish,” “Fishing Arkansas” and “Pro Tactics: Catfish.”

“I’ve been a fisherman all my life and have six sons who are fishermen,” Sutton said. “I believe sharing the joys of angling is a key way to develop life-long appreciation of the outdoors in our children. And I have seen the leadership the Future Fisherman Foundation and its partners have shown in this area by helping teachers, state fisheries departments, youth agencies and others reach out to children through innovative programs such as Hooked On Fishing Not On Drugs and Physh Ed.

“As executive director, I’ll work with the guidance of the Foundation’s board of directors to perpetuate and strengthen these and other key programs by developing partnerships with businesses, agencies and organizations that want to be part of the foundation’s education and outreach efforts,” Sutton continued. “I encourage people to contact me if they would like to get involved, and look forward to working with folks throughout the country to make fishing a part of every child’s life experience.”

“Future Fisherman Foundation is extremely excited to have Keith on board,” said board chair Kerry Campbell. “Keith’s experience with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and working as an advisor on the Arkansas Hooked On Fishing Not On Drugs committee, along with his outstanding communications skills, is just what we need. Teresa Rodriguez, our Director of Education, has a love and knowledge for working with our educators. Working in conjunction with these groups, she has been developing plans to make all our programs more efficient. Keith will be key in assisting Teresa in engaging industry members to support and partner with our current programs. Teresa and Keith are a perfect complement to one another.”

Sutton replaces Anne Danielski who resigned after two years with the Foundation. Anne’s contribution to the organization’s Physh Ed and Boys and Girls Club programs was instrumental in expanding the reach of these educational angling programs. Her dedication to connecting youth with the outdoors through activities such as fishing and boating will be remembered by program and industry partners. The Foundation Board and staff thank her for her contributions and wish her all the best in her new endeavors.

Sutton will work from an office in his home just outside Little Rock, Arkansas. To contact him, phone (703) 402-3623. For additional information on the Future Fisherman Foundation, visit www.futurefisherman.org.

Darkside Catfishing

2009-07-13T07:41:00.005-05:00

An owl’s hoot echoed through the night air when I felt the first gentle tap on my line.

“Here, son,” I said, handing the pole to 12-year-old Josh. “I think a big catfish is fixing to take it.”

Josh tensed with anticipation.

“Don’t get in a hurry,” I said. “Wait till he starts swimming away.”

“I feel him yanking it,” Josh said. “He feels like he’s got it.”

Suddenly, the fish surged away, putting a stiff bend in the rod. There was no doubt now the fish was on. It twisted and turned as Josh grimaced and cranked.

After a brief but exciting tussle, the fish came in, resigned to its fate and croaking softly. It was a nice channel cat, 5 pounds of muscle and mouth, and before we left the lake, it would be joined by nine more of its whiskered brethren. For Josh, this was a little like heaven.

I’ve been fishing for catfish since I was big enough to hold a cane pole. Now I have six sons who share my enjoyment of the sport. When possible, we make our catfishing forays at night. That’s when cats bite best, and a nightfishing junket is far more memorable for the boys than a daytime outing.

If your idea of a fun summer outing is sitting around the motor home sipping sodas and watching TV, then nighttime catfishing is probably not for you. But if you don’t mind a snake dropping in for a visit now and then; if you don’t mind reeking of shad guts and limburger stinkbait; if the hummingbird drone of a million mosquitoes fighting over the tender cuts of your face doesn’t drive you bonkers; if you’re not repulsed by the feel of catfish slime and bottom ooze between your digits; then, maybe, just maybe, a witching hour safari for cats is your ticket to happiness.

A catfishing adventure is the best of all ways to scratch your fishing itch. You’re almost sure to catch a few fish for the frying pan, and there’s always a good chance you’ll hook a big flathead or blue cat that outweighs any fish you’ve ever caught.

Be Prepared

Mosquitoes are night creatures, too, so insect repellent is a must (on you, but never your bait). You’ll need a good lantern, and if you’re bank fishing, a lawn chair and some rod holders. Pick a body of water where catfish are abundant (your state fisheries department can recommend some), and carry plenty of bait. Good all-around choices include baitfish (minnows, shad or sunfish), night crawlers, crawfish, catalpa worms and stinkbaits.

Tackle Tips

Simple tackle is best for darkside catting. Most anglers use a medium-action rod-and-reel combo to better reach offshore fishing spots. Six- to 15-pound line and size 1 to 2/0 hooks are OK for the small “eating-size” catfish most folks are after.

When fishing for cats 20 pounds and up (100-pounders are possible in some waters), use a long rod, 7 feet at least, for more hook-setting and fighting power. Those constructed with graphite/fiberglass composites offer strength, sensitivity, flexibility and moderate pricing. Bait-casting reels are toughest and provide more power for cranking in big fish. Look for a solid frame, tough gears and smooth casting, plus enough line capacity for the conditions you fish. The best for night fishing also feature a “clicker” mechanism that gives an audible signal when line is pulled from the reel, thus indicating that a catfish is taking your bait.

Use big needle-sharp hooks for big fish—8/0 or better, with heavy wire construction that won’t bend. For big-cat bait, use fish and nothing but fish. My favorite is a thick chunk of shad, herring or other oily baitfish for blue and channel catfish, and a lively sunfish or bullhead for big flatheads.

Tactics

Fish on bottom, using a sinker heavy enough to carry your bait down. Or use a bobber to float the bait slightly above bottom.

Don’t get antsy; let the bait sit several minutes before moving it. Like kids after fresh-baked cookies, cats smell their treats then track them down.

You can fish from a boat or from shore, as you prefer.

A boat offers more mobility. Bank-bound anglers are limited in the choice of fishing areas. Anglers in boats aren’t. If you’ve been fishing in one spot for a while, and the fishing is unproductive or the bite stops, you can move quickly to another spot. Your range is limited only by the size of your fuel tank.

Unfortunately, boating at night can be hazardous. For that reason, most catfishermen do their night fishing from shore. A campfire is built, the rigs are baited and cast, and the rods are propped on forked sticks or placed in holders. The participants sit and sip coffee while they shoot the breeze. A cat probably will bite sooner or later, and the action starts. But if not, it’s an enjoyable outing anyway. The camaraderie makes it worthwhile.

If the action part of the outing is as important as the aesthetics, be sure to pick a bank fishing site within casting distance of prime catfishing areas. This might be a clearing on shore near the outside bend of a river, a spot under a shady tree beside a farm pond levee or a gravel bar adjacent a deep hole on a small stream. The best areas have flat, brush-free banks where casting is easy, and you don’t have to worry about ticks and snakes crawling up your britches legs.

Place your fishing combo in a rod holder properly set in the ground, put the reel in free-spool, flip on your bait clicker and relax until the action starts. This technique is excellent when targeting trophy catfish that tend to roam in search of prey at night.

As Different as Night and Day

Some folks say you can catch as many catfish during the day as you can at night. And maybe some folks do. I’m not one of them.

My best catch ever came on a dark, moonless night in spring while fishing from a Mississippi River sandbar. In just four hours, a friend and I caught more than 150 catfish—mostly flatheads, a few blues and channels, several over 20 pounds. I’ve had 100 cat nights more times than I can remember.

I catch lots of catfish in the day, too, and nowadays, I must admit, most of my fishing is done when the sun is up. But my best daytime excursions have never equaled my best night-fishing trips.

I still fish at night when time permits. The number of catfish I catch doesn’t really matter, though. I fish at night for reasons that have nothing to do with mathematics.

I go to listen to the whip-poor-wills and owls. I go to smell the freshness of the night air. I go to feel a cool twilight breeze rustling my hair. I go to see the heavens ablaze with countless stars.

Mostly, I go to relax and enjoy some time with friends and family. If we catch a mess of catfish now and then, that’s a bonus. If we don’t, none of us really cares. What’s important is the companionship an after-hours catfishing excursion provides.

The Bass and I

2009-06-14T18:28:00.001-05:00

The Bass was my Moby Dick. Like Captain Ahab in Herman Melville’s classic, I was obsessed by her. I was determined to take her, no matter what the cost.

The story begins in my seventeenth year. Like many teenage boys, I was bitten by the bass fishing bug. Bluegills, crappie and bullheads no longer satisfied my youthful desires. Bigger fish were needed. Powerful fish. “Meaningful” fish. And so, I started stalking the local farm ponds for largemouth bass.

I caught a 4-pounder in Pieri’s Pond, but during dozens of visits, nothing larger turned up. Flentje’s Pond had a big one or two. Indeed, I caught a pair one day—a 5-pounder, and one just under 6. But that was the cream of the crop. I widened the scope of my search for a real hawg, a largemouth over 7 pounds, and started asking around about big bass honeyholes.

One day I struck paydirt. One of the elderly statesman who frequented the pool hall told me about a huge bass he’d hung and lost in Pitts’ Pond. “She was a hawg all right. Eight or 10 pounds if she was an ounce. Exploded on my Lucky 13, then wrapped me in a tree and busted me off. Nearly broke my heart when I heard my line snap. She was quite a fish.”

That afternoon I visited the pond for the first time. It didn’t look much different from the dozens of other ponds in the area. The surface area was a couple of acres perhaps, and the water held plenty of standing snags and inundated timber.

On the south end near the levee, a shallow flat broke off into deep water. A big oak, victim of a lightning strike, had toppled off the bank and into the water on the dropoff. That was where I first hooked The Bass.

My favorite lure—a battle-scarred, red-and-yellow Lucky 13—didn’t work. The Bass was wise to that. A purple Jelly Worm, however, almost proved her undoing. I dangled it in her treetop, and she couldn’t resist. The Bass grabbed the lure as it fell, and raced away. When I saw my line moving off, I set the hook and felt solid resistance.

The Bass fought hard, but she never showed herself. The battle had persisted for a minute or so when she did a loop-de-loop ‘round a sunken limb and snapped my line. There was no doubt, however, she was huge. I couldn’t get her out of my mind.

I fished for her every afternoon during the next week, but The Bass refused all offerings. I tried every color of plastic worm imaginable, but they proved untantalizing. Live minnows hooked just right and dangled beneath a bobber couldn’t beguile her. Live crawdads and salamanders didn’t work, nor spinners, jigs, slush baits and eels. The Bass, it seemed, could not be tempted.

Then, on day eight, she struck again. A Crippled Minnow topwater proved irresistible. As it wobbled across the surface, The Bass rose, and I saw her for the first time. Her mouth was as big as a cereal bowl, and when she snatched the lure, I set the hook firmly in her jaw. For a moment, it seemed I might have her. She jumped twice, shaking her massive head like a bulldog shakes a rat, but I kept her out of the treetop. Then, suddenly, she darted to the left and wrapped me on a stump. The line snapped.

We fought several times in the following months, but The Bass won every skirmish. I fished at the pond daily, if only for an hour or so, ignoring all other fish. I wanted her, and her alone. And so I cast to the treetop, time and time again, thousands upon thousands of casts with dozens of lures and baits.

I don’t know the name of the lure I finally caught her on. It was a little chugger, red and white, with a single treble hook on one end. My uncle gave it to me and told me how to work it. “Cast it out, and wiggle it just a little,” he said. “Then let it sit. It’s caught many a big bass for me. Maybe it’ll work for you.”

I cast to the treetop and wiggled the plug. Ripples spread as the lure settled. I let it sit, and watched.

The Bass rose slowly, in clear view beneath the tea-colored water, and inhaled the lure. I was ready. I set the hook as she turned her head back down, and we began our final battle.

She tried the same trick she’d worked on me time and time again—a rush for the tangle of branches in the treetop. But I was prepared for that. I had respooled my reel with 25-pound-test mono so I could hoss her away from her hideout, and hoss her away I did. I waded into the water and made my way down the bank until I had The Bass in open water. She protested, but it was all for nought.

I remember thinking, this is it, this time I’ve got her. Then there she was, lying in the shallows at my feet. The Bass was mine.

Thinking back on it now, she must have weighed at least 10 pounds. But fish like that have a way of growing in our memories. There’s no doubt, however, she was the biggest bass I’ve ever caught, the biggest I’ll ever catch more than likely.

I can’t say for sure how heavy she was, though. Without lifting her, I removed the hook from The Bass’s jaw. Then I turned her head toward the treetop and watched her swim away.

I still have the rod and reel I caught her on, and that red-and-white chugger that proved her undoing. Best of all, I still have the memories.

Call me Ishmael.

Cook the Bait and Let's Eat!

2009-06-08T19:41:00.009-05:00

Some folks love eating crawfish; others can’t bring themselves to taste something that looks so much like a bug. It’s been that way for centuries.

Consider this passage from Wild Sports in the Far West, written by Frederick Gerstaecker, a German adventurer, who arrived in Arkansas in 1837 for a five-year visit. In this book about his travels, he describes catching and cooking crawfish on the bank of an Arkansas river.

“The lucky fisherman excited my curiosity,” he said. “I went to see what he was catching, and could hardly believe my eyes when I found that they were crawfish. So long was it since I had tasted them, that they made my mouth water; I soon got my fish-hook to work, and in the course of half an hour Uhl and I with two of the boys had caught half a pailful. The old lady looked at us with astonishment as we seized a saucepan, put in the crawfish with a little salt, filled it up with water, and set it on the fire; they had always thought them only fit for bait. The crawfish soon began to show their red noses, and, when done, we set to work on them. The meal itself was no slight treat, but our enjoyment was much heightened by watching the countenances of the Americans, expressive half of merriment, half of disgust, for they had never dreamt that people could eat such nasty animals with such zeal.”

Among my own experiences eating crawfish, one in particular stands out. My son Josh and I joined our friend Jim Spencer for “the spring crawfish run,” as Jim calls it, in the bottomlands along Arkansas’s lower White River. After motoring a few miles downstream in a johnboat, we tied the craft to some old cypress steps on the river bank, then made our way up and walked to a small oxbow off the beaten path. A bit of water still flowed through the runouts connecting the river and oxbow lake, but in a day or so, as the water continued falling, the connection between river and lake would be severed.

Only days before, the woods around the lake had been inundated beneath 12 to 18 inches of water. As the White River dropped, however, the water was pulled out, leaving behind wet, muddy, leaf-strewn ground. But even now, with the water gone, the ground was hard to see, for thousands upon thousands of crayfish covered the damp earth. You couldn’t step without mashing them beneath your feet—huge rusty-red crustaceans with pincers like Maine lobsters.

“Look, Dad!” Josh screamed in excitement. “They’re everywhere! There must be a million of them!”

We had toted a 100-quart cooler to the lake’s edge, and each of us carried a wire fish basket in which to place our catch. Walking through the woods, we gathered crawfish—adozen here, a dozen there—and when our basket was full, we returned to the cooler and dumped the catch in. Little yelps emanated from the collection crew whenever a crawfish found its mark with those big pincers, but in less than an hour, the cooler was overflowing.

“This is the best of two worlds,” Jim said. “We’ve got catfish bait and dinner, too, all in one cooler.”

The catfish liked the crawfish almost as much as we did. That night, fishing with crawfish tails in the runout between river and lake, each of us caught a dozen or more cats, and before the sun rose, the three of us had polished off more than ten pounds of spicy fresh-boiled crawfish apiece. I decided then and there that catfish, crawdads and bottomland rivers form a minor trinity.

I suppose there are still some folks who think crawfish are only good for fish bait and have yet to discover they’ve been feeding the bait to the wrong party. But experience tells me these folks are in the minority. If you’re as fond of mudbugs as I a,, here are some of my favorite recipes you really ought to try.

Crawfish Étouffée
1/2 cup butter
1/3 cup flour
1 cup chopped onions
1 cup chopped green pepper
1 cup chopped celery
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 pound peeled crawfish tails
2 cups chicken broth
1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Cooked rice
Melt the butter in a large heavy pot. Add flour, and stir over medium-low heat until roux is caramel-colored (20 to 30 minutes). Stir constantly.
Add onion, green pepper, celery and garlic. Cook until tender-crisp, three to four minutes. Stir in remaining ingredients, except rice, and simmer 20 minutes. Serve over cooked rice.

Beans & Mudbugs
1 pound dried pinto beans
1 pound cured ham, diced
1 pound fresh uncooked crawfish tails, peeled
1 large onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 pound smoked sausage, cut in bite-sized pieces
3/4 cup uncooked long-grain rice
Hot sauce to taste
Put beans, ham and crawfish in a crockpot with water to cover, and cook for 8 to 10 hours. In a Dutch oven, sauté the onion, garlic and smoked sausage. When the onions are translucent, transfer the bean mixture from the crockpot to the Dutch oven. Add the rice and simmer until rice is tender.

Cajun Crawfish Boil
25 to 30 pounds live crawfish
2 boxes salt
6 bags crab/crawfish boil
1 small bottle liquid crab boil
6 ears corn, broken in half
6 medium onions, peeled
10 small red potatoes
2 whole garlic cloves
2 lemons, cut in half
4 whole onions
1/3 cup cayenne pepper
Make sure your boiling pot is large enough to hold all the crawfish and enough water to cover them at least two inches. Fill the pot with water. Add everything except crawfish, and bring to a boil. Add crawfish to the pot, let the water come back to a full boil, cover, and allow to boil five to seven minutes. Turn off the fire. Let stand with lid on for 15 to 20 minutes. Drain crawfish and dump onto a newpaper-covered table. Chow down.

Crawfish Pasta
1 pound pasta (your favorite kind)
1 stick butter
3/4 cup chopped green onion
1 pound peeled crawfish tails, pre-cooked
1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning
1 pint half and half or light cream
Precook the pasta. Mix the remaining ingredients in a saucepan and heat until thickened, about 10 minutes. Serve the sauce over the pasta.

Crawfish Creole
2 pounds peeled crawfish tails
1-1/2 cups tomato sauce
1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste
1 can diced tomatoes/green chilies
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium bell pepper, chopped
2 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning
Cooked rice
Combine all ingredients except crawfish and simmer until vegetables are tender. Add crawfish and simmer 15 minutes. Serve over cooked white rice.

Crawfish Chili
2 pounds lean ground beef
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon soy sauce
3 tablespoons chili powder
1 cup dry white wine
1 teaspoon lime juice
2 pounds peeled crawfish tails
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon cayenne
1 tablespoon dried parsley
1 (8-ounce) can tomato sauce
1 cup water
1 cup chopped onions
Brown the beef in a skillet. Combine the remaining ingredients with the meat in a large pot, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer, covered, for 1 to 2 hours.

Cane Mutiny

2009-06-04T08:46:00.005-05:00

At most sporting-goods stores, you can buy all sorts of fancy fishing poles made from all sorts of modern man-made materials. Choose from boron, graphite, fiberglass or composites; long poles, short poles or in-between poles. Some are so tough you can tie a knot in one without breaking it. Some are so sensitive you probably could detect a gnat landing on the tip. Some are so expensive a glance at the price-tag will cause distress.

Next time you visit a tackle shop, ask if you can buy a regular, old-fashioned cane pole. You remember cane poles, don’t you? You know, the kind you used to catch bluegills in farm ponds; those long, slender pieces of bamboo you spread around your boat when trolling for crappie; that flexible, whippy-tipped piece of river-bottom cane you cut and dried yourself and used to snatch shade perch out of the crick when you were a kid.

It’s getting harder to find a retailer who sells cane poles these days. But despite the popularity of high-tech fishing gear, cane poles still find favor with many anglers. Cane poles are sensitive but have all the backbone you need to whip a feisty catfish or bass. Their extra length allows you to fish out-of-the-way hot spots without disturbing fish and provides extra reach for bank fishermen. Best of all, you can still cut and dry your own, a nostalgic adventure that adds an extra measure of fun to the fishing experience, especially for kids. Somehow it’s nice to know you don’t need a lot of expensive gear to catch a mess of fish.

Cane grows in the understory of many bottomland hardwood forests. There are two primary types of native cane: giant cane and switch cane. Giant cane reaches a maximum height of about 30 feet, with an average of 15-20 feet. In 1778, botanist William Bartram recorded giant cane poles in Alabama’s Tombigbee River bottoms 30 to 40 feet high and three to four inches in diameter. Most poles found today rarely exceed two inches in diameter. The maximum height of switch cane is about 10 feet, with a diameter up to about one inch. Both types make excellent fishing poles.

Before cutting poles, obtain permission from the landowner. Then stick a compass in your pocket. Traveling in a canebrake is like walking through a forest of side-by-side fishing poles, and since everything looks the same in all directions, a tract of cane is a likely place in which to get lost. In some brakes, there are 40,000 cane poles per acre, so it shouldn’t be difficult to find a pole that meets your needs.

A saw or a sharp machete is better than an ax for cutting cane. Select green canes of the proper length and diameter. A pole that’s too long or too thick will be unwieldy and heavy, tiring your arm while fishing. A pole that’s too short and skinny could break if you hook a real fighter. Most anglers prefer those an inch to inch-and-a-half in diameter at the butt and 10 to 15 feet long.

Cut each cane at the base, then trim all leaves and stems close to the cane. Leave as much of the slender tip as possible, taking care not to damage it.

At home, saw through the bottom of a joint to square the butt end. Done properly, the butt will be “capped” with the piece of wood that divides the joint; the hollow space inside the cane won’t be visible. Run your hand along the pole and smooth any rough edges you feel with sandpaper or a knife.

Straight canes make the best fishing poles, but unless cured properly, the poles develop a natural bend at the tip when drying. To prevent this, hang the poles upright instead of laying them. Tie cord to each tip, and secure the end to barn rafters or a tree limb so the poles hang vertically slightly above the ground. Curing is complete when the poles take on a tannish hue, a process that usually takes several weeks to a couple of months. (Don’t dry the poles quickly in the hot sun or they’ll split and crack.) Some anglers varnish their cured poles or rub them with tung oil for extra durability.

Before fishing, test each pole by grasping it near the butt and whipping the tip back and forth. If there are any cracks or breaks that weren’t evident before, they’ll show up now, allowing you to cull inferior specimens. The best poles are whippy yet straight near the tip, with a solid inflexible butt.

Some anglers make the mistake of tying line only to the pole’s end. If the tip breaks, the fish escapes. It’s better to run line along the whole length, starting just above the “handle,” where you’ll hold the pole. Tie the line here, then wrap a piece of electrical or duct tape around the tie to secure it. Tape the line at several evenly spaced points along the pole, then wrap several feet around the tip and tie the line off, leaving a length of line beyond the tip that’s a foot or two longer than the length of the pole. When the line is rigged with terminal tackle, you can adjust the length by wrapping or unwrapping it at the tip. Use an overhand knot to tie it off.

A cane pole is great for fishing bream beds in spring. With a 10- to 15-foot model, you can keep your distance to avoid spooking the fish. Rig with a small Carlisle (cricket) hook, a split shot and a small cork, then work shallow-water cover. With a long cane pole, this can be done from the bank or a boat, as you prefer.

Cane poles are inexpensive, so they’re popular with crappie anglers who enjoy “spider trolling.” On waters where it’s legal, it’s not uncommon to see a johnboat with a dozen or more poles set around the transom, lending the appearance of a large spider crossing the water. That’s where the sport gets its unusual name.

The poles, rigged with jigs or live minnows, are secured in rod holders attached to the bow and transom. The angler then drifts or trolls, passing near underwater structure where crappie are likely to be. The poles are usually rigged at different depths until crappie are found. Then each is set at the depth where fish are feeding.

If it’s bass you’re after, try “doodlesocking” with a cane pole. Tie a surface lure to a two- or three-foot section of 20-pound line. Then work the lure around log piles, flooded brush, rip-rap and other cover. The best lures are noisy ones like poppers and propeller plugs. And you want to make as much noise with them as you can. Run the lure back and forth around the same piece of cover several times. You want to make the bass mad enough to blast out of its hole and smack your lure. Strikes are violent. The fishing is extraordinary.

How long has it been since you fished with a cane pole? Try one again this season and go back to a form of fishing where expensive rods and reels take a back seat to nature’s free and simple “bamboo.” Cane poling is a sport no one ever outgrows.

What To Do If You Get Skunked

2009-05-25T10:12:00.003-05:00

The great naturalist and writer, Ernest Thompson Seton, once maintained that the striped skunk was the proper emblem of America. “It is, first of all, peculiar to this continent,” he wrote. “It has stars on its head and stripes on its body. It is an ideal citizen; minds its own business, harms no one, and is habitually inoffensive, as long as it is left alone; but it will face any one or any number when aroused. It has a wonderful natural ability to take the offensive; and no man ever yet came to grips with a Skunk without being sadly sorry for it afterward.”

Seton’s logic was sound, but it’s doubtful skunks will ever earn status as our national emblem. They’re handsome animals, no doubt. And they possess all the fine characteristics Seton attributed to them. But try as we might, most of us can’t get past their malodorous nature. Mention “skunk” and our brain manufactures the sickening, clings-to-your-nostrils stench of truck-flattened road kitty. When my sons were young, they called them, quite appropriately, “stunks.”

Skunks stink so predators won’t eat them. What makes them stink is a yellow oil composed of chemical compounds called thiols. Thiols also are responsible for the odors of decomposing flesh and fecal matter. Most animals have a deep-seated repulsion to thiols, a gift of evolution that keeps them from eating things that will make them ill.

The skunk’s liquid secretion is stored in two walnut-sized glands with nipple-like openings just outside the anus. When alarmed or attacked, a skunk can eject this secretion up to 10 feet. At high concentrations, the spray causes nausea and retching. If it gets in the eyes, it acts like tear gas.

Even at low concentrations, skunk juice has a very foul odor. Seton described it as “... a mixture of strong ammonia, essence of garlic, burning sulphur, a volume of sewer gas, a vitriol spray, a dash of perfume musk, all mixed together and intensified a thousand times.” He probably didn’t know it, but the human nose can detect skunk spray thiols at about 10 parts per billion.

Skunks are the most common and best-known members of the weasel family. Four different kinds—striped, spotted, hognose and hooded—inhabit North America. Two occur throughout the South—the striped skunk, which is fairly abundant, and the spotted skunk, which is relatively scarce. Hooded and hognose skunks live primarily in the desert Southwest.

The stench of these skunks is an ever-present hazard to the outdoorsman, and although no one has ever died of it, a great many people have thought they were about to. As with seasickness, most victims regret the news that they will survive.

Fortunately, skunks usually warn you before spraying. They often stamp their front feet. The tail snaps up in warning. They may arch their back, or, in the case of spotted skunks, do a handstand. Problem is, when you see the warning signs, you’re vulnerable. They can get you if you are behind them, and they can get you if they are facing you. You’re never in a safe position unless you’re at least 50 yards away.

If you’re caught off guard and sprayed, or if a family pet gets doused, you’ll want to know immediately how to get rid of the smell. A garden hose is impotent, soap is utterly useless, and tomato juice is nothing but a quaint old wives’ tail that has left many people with skunk-sprayed dogs that not only stink but are pink.

Enter Paul Krebaum, a chemist at Molex, Inc. in Lisle, Illinois. This ingenious individual is credited with developing the first real home remedy for skunk spray. Krebaum’s formula is winning over converts who thought the only viable antidote was the passage of time.

A few years ago, Krebaum was studying thiols, the stinky chemicals in skunk spray, in his lab. Using basic chemistry knowledge, he figured out a way to get rid of the foul odor by changing the thiols into other compounds. The trick was oxidation—getting oxygen molecules to bond with thiols and change them into things that didn’t smell bad at all. To do that, he made a solution of hydrogen peroxide and sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) that did the trick quite well. The solution threw off oxygen like a dog shakes off water, and some of that oxygen grabbed onto the thiols and neutralized them.

When a cat owned by one of Krebaum’s colleagues got sprayed by a skunk, Krebaum recommended a variation of the formula he used for getting rid of thiols in the lab. He told his friend to combine these ingredients and apply the resulting mixture to the pet’s fur:

▪ 1 quart of 3 percent hydrogen peroxide
▪ 1/4 cup of baking soda
▪ 1 teaspoon of liquid soap

The stuff worked like magic, and the next day, every trace of skunk odor was gone from the cat. In October 1993, Chemical and Engineering News published Krebaum’s formula.

If you try the formula, be sure to always mix and store the solution in a large, open container. Never use a closed container as it might explode. The mixture will bubble because of the chemical interaction between the baking soda and the hydrogen peroxide. Use the entire mixture while it is still bubbling. Wearing rubber gloves, apply the solution, work it into lather, and leave it on for 30 minutes. The soap breaks up the oils in skunk spray and allows the other ingredients in the solution to do their stuff. The solution should be rinsed off with tap water.

Krebaum briefly considered patenting his formula, but quickly abandoned the idea. The solution is essentially a chemical engine for churning out oxygen, and all that oxygen refuses to be bottled.

“Once you mix the hydrogen peroxide with the baking soda, it is no longer stable,” Krebaum said in an interview with a Chicago Tribune reporter. “You can’t store it in a bottle, because it would explode from all the oxygen. It wasn’t worth trying to get a patent on it because I couldn’t put it in a bottle. So I figured, why not make this a free-gift-to-humanity type deal.”

The best remedy, of course, is don’t get skunked in the first place. But if you do, Paul Krebaum is likely to become a hero in your watery eyes.

Girls Gone Gigging

2009-05-14T08:43:00.005-05:00

Frog gigging is not the kind of sport you would expect to find many women participating in. It takes place at night along swamps, ditch banks, ponds and marshes. Snakes are ever-present, including venomous cottonmouths. And those who take part know they’ll go home in the wee hours of the morning muddy from head to toe, drenched in sweat, covered with mosquito bites and totally exhausted.

You can probably understand my surprise then when twin sisters Susan Coffman Whittenburg and Shawn Coffman Smithof Lonoke, Arkansas, invited my wife Theresa and I to join them for a night of frog gigging. These two thirty-something ladies work for Easter Seals in Stuttgart, Arkansas. It’s not hard to imagine them doing what they do every day—working in a classroom with children. But frog gigging? You’d never guess this intriguing sport is one of their favorite pastimes.

I figured there was no way in the world I’d convince Theresa to go along, but she jumped at the chance, as did her friend Debbie Smith, also of Lonoke. Two more friends, Chris and Karri Smith also joined us. And so it was that two men and five crazy women headed out into the darkness of an April night to see if they could bag the makings for a frog-leg dinner.

In Arkansas, frog season starts on April 15 each year and runs through December 31. The fact that the season opener coincides with tax day each year may be just a coincidence, but I like to think the Game & Fish Commission starts it then so all of us who must pay taxes that day will have a way to blow off steam and have some fun after the check to Uncle Sam hits the mail.

The creature Arkansas frog hunters find so appealing is the bullfrog, the largest and most widespread frog in North America. Found in wetland habitats throughout the Natural State, this amphibian sometimes measures a foot long and weighs more than 3 pounds. It is a voracious feeder. Using its long, sticky tongue, an adult bullfrog snatches up anything that comes within zapping distance. On one frogging foray, I captured a big bullfrog with a large swollen belly. Opening its stomach, I found a good-sized water snake. I’ve also found mice, small fish and even other frogs that had been swallowed. Other diet items include insects, worms, crawfish and even baby birds fallen from the nest. If bullfrogs weighed 100 pounds, our pets and children wouldn’t be safe near water.

Fortunately, bullfrogs don’t weigh 100 pounds, and it’s people who eat frogs rather than the other way around. All froggers will tell you fried frog legs are among the most delicious of all wild foods. And when you think about a mess of those scrumptious frog legs cooked golden-brown in a skillet, the heat, mosquitoes, mud and snakes really don’t seem like much to endure.

Several methods are used to harvest bullfrogs. Most frog hunters use long-handled, multi-pronged gigs that allow them to spear wary frogs that often are sitting, ready to jump, many feet away on the bank of a pond or ditch. More nimble individuals often catch frogs with their bare hands, and still others use archery bowfishing tackle to hunt their quarry. Some froggers hunt from boats, some slosh through the water in hip boots or waders, and some simply walk the banks. All use either a headlight or spotlight that is shined along the shore to illuminate the frog’s eyes and reveal its position. The frog hunter then moves stealthily into position before gigging, grabbing or shooting the frog.

Whatever method is used, the Arkansas frog hunter must have a current fishing license to legally take frogs, even though a frog isn’t a fish, and one hunts rather than fishes for frogs. The daily limit is 18 frogs per person, and the possession limit is 36. Many times, however, it is very difficult for even one member of a frogging party to get their limit, a fact our motley crew of froggers was about to learn.

We chose to do our frog hunting along several miles of brushy, water-filled ditches beside rural roads east of Little Rock. While five ladies had come along, four of them chose to be spotlighters instead of actual frog-catchers. Theresa and Debbie shone million-candle-power lights out each side window of the truck, and Shawn and Karri illuminated the scene further with lights shone from the pickup bed. Susan alone was daring enough to don her waders and get down and dirty with the bullfrogs.

Which was probably for the best as it turns out, because we had gone only a few yards when Chris’ light illuminated the long, thick body of a big cottonmouth that was also hunting for a frog dinner. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he exclaimed. “Don’t want to get too close to that guy.”

Susan took a couple of steps back, scrunched up her face and shivered. “Man, I hate snakes,” she said. But undaunted, she continued down the ditch bank, shining her headlight into every bit of brush as she watched for shining frog eyes.

It didn’t take long to find them. A short way down the ditch, a big ol’ hopper was sitting on the opposite bank, and when Susan’s light hit him, his eyes flashed golden. Everyone shined their lights on the frog while Susan got in position, reached out with her long gig and struck. Her aim was true.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” she shouted as she swung the huge frog back so Chris could take it off the gig. “Let’s go get another one.”

Continuing on, we listened for frog song as we shined the banks. Often you can find bullfrogs just by hearing them. The male’s call is a deep, loud “jug-o-rum, jug-o-rum.” On this night, though, the frogs weren’t singing, and we had to find them by sight alone. This was made difficult by the thick cover in the ditches, but Shawn, from her perch in the bed of the pickup, proved very adept at spotting bullfrogs even when they were practically hidden from view.

Unfortunately for us, most of the frogs were on the opposite side of the deep ditches, too far away to gig, or they spooked at our approach and jumped before we could get them. We saw dozens, but only had a chance at a few. Chris made a phenomenal stab at one, however, pushing his gig through the middle of a brushy treetop and nailing a big frog 20 feet away on the far side.

“Look at the chicken legs on that one,” Susan said with a look of hunger in her eyes. “Don’t you just love frogging?”

Everyone agreed they did, including Theresa and Karri who were on their first frog hunt ever. And while we didn’t go home with a lot of frogs to show for our efforts, when we got back to Susan and Shawn’s house at one in the morning, our entire crew was already talking about doing it all again.

The next night, Shawn and Susan did. And without all the greenhorns around to spook the frogs, they brought home a dozen nice hoppers with legs the size of chickens. I can just imagine the great stories they told the kids at Easter Seals the next day.

More Wild Eats

2009-05-06T08:54:00.017-05:00

In my last post, I talked about foraging for wild plant foods. It’s important to use caution when using parts of plants you are unfamiliar with because many are poisonous or can cause digestive upset. But if you learn how to identify many commonly available wild eats, you can enjoy delicious and healthy meals free from nature’s larder. Here are some tips that might come in handy on your next foraging trip.

Nature’s Vitamins
The hips, or fruits, of wild roses contain up to 24 times as much vitamin C as oranges. They’re also rich in Vitamin E and B-complex vitamins. Collect them year-round for use in a variety of ways. Dried or fresh hips can be boiled 10 minutes to make a healthful tea that’s tasty when sweetened. Raw hips can be made into jelly, wine, syrup or even just a side dish of cooked fruit.

Shake Them ‘Simmons Down
Unripe persimmons are among nature’s most bitter and unpalatable foods, yet when fully ripe, these orange fruits are very tasty. To get the best ones, shake a persimmon tree after the first frost. Only the ripe ones will fall to the ground.

Coffee Substitutes
Few wild plants make good substitutes for coffee, but some were used by early American settlers in this way. These include beech nuts, the root of chicory, the seeds of the Kentucky coffee tree and honey locust, dandelion roots and berries of the horse gentian. One should bear in mind, however, that all of these make very inferior substitutes for real coffee, and caution should be used in trying them.

The Use-It-All Cattail
The cattail, which grows in shallow waters throughout the U.S., is one of the woodsman’s most useful plants. In spring, young sprouts can be boiled and eaten or pickled in vinegar. The tuberous root can be eaten raw or boiled or can be dried, peeled and ground into flour. Root fibers can be used to make string. The cigar-like seed head can be boiled and eaten like corn on the cob when still green.

Nature’s Tea
Tea can be made by steeping leaves or roots of many plants in hot water. Some have medicinal properties but most are used simply because they taste good.
▪ Sassafras: Tea made by steeping the aromatic roots in hot water has long been used as a spring tonic. One of nature’s most flavorful drinks.
▪ Wild strawberry: Tea made from leaves is exceptionally high in Vitamin C.
▪ Blackberry and dewberry: Leaves can be steeped to make an excellent tea.
▪ Bee balm, or Oswego tea: Leaves of this wild mint make an invigorating tea supposed to induce sleep.
▪ Sweet goldenrod: The anise-scented leaves can be used fresh or dried to make a healthful tea.

Taters
Many wild plants have starchy roots, corms or tubers that can be boiled, fried or baked as potato substitutes.
▪ Yellow pond lily: This aquatic plant’s large root was an important food for eastern Indian tribes.
▪ Spring beauty or fairy spud: The marble-sized corms of this little flower have a nut-like flavor and are excellent when boiled or used in stews.
▪ Arrowhead: Dig tubers from the mud with your toes and collect them as they float to the surface. Cook like potatoes.
▪ Jerusalem artichoke: The tubers of this plant, which is naturalized in parts of the U.S., make an excellent potato substitute and can be eaten raw, pickled or sliced into a salad.

Wild Chocolate
The American basswood or linden tree ranges throughout much of central and eastern North America. A very good chocolate substitute can be made from a paste of its ground fruits and flowers. Attempts once were made to market this product, but they failed because the paste is quick to decompose.

Nature’s Spices
Many wild plants have parts that can be prepared to make excellent substitutes for various herbs and spices. For example, unopened buds of the familiar redbud tree flavor foods in the same way as capers. The dried and powdered rhizome of the sweet flag has a spicy flavor and was once used as a substitute for ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg. The seed pods of shepherd’s purse can be used as a peppery seasoning, and the fresh or dried root is a ginger substitute. The dried and powdered fruit of spicebush can be used in place of allspice. And the pungent seeds of peppergrass are used, not surprisingly, as a pepper substitute.

Wild Chewing Gum
Before the chewing gums we know today were widely available, people often enjoyed chewing the hardened pitch or resin of trees such as the sugar pine, ponderosa pine, white pine, white spruce, western larch, red fir and sweetgum.

Hickory Milk
Nuts of shagbark hickories were a staple for many North American Indians. The nuts were pounded into a mash and boiled in water, causing a white, oily liquid to separate from the broth. This liquid, called hickory milk, was said to be as sweet and rich as a fresh cream and was used in cooking cornbread, hominy grits, soups and other foods.

Eating Acorns
Ever wonder why people don’t eat acorns? The main reason is because acorns contain bitter, unhealthful tannin. The nuts can be freed of tannin, however, by boiling in several changes of water until the water ceases to turn brown. The shelled nuts then can be roasted or dried and eaten as is or ground into flour.

Wild Eats

2009-05-02T09:23:00.012-05:00

My friend Bill Hailey and I recently went out to enjoy a day of wildlife watching in east Arkansas. Our plans quickly changed, however, when I found freshly sprouting pokeweed on a woodland edge. Most folks consider pokeweed nothing more than its name suggests: just a weed. The dark purple berries, root and purplish-stemmed, fully grown plants are poisonous. But when pokeweed first sprouts in spring, the tender green shoots can be gathered and eaten.

“Good gracious, look at this!” I told Bill when I found the patch of greens. “Poke sallet everywhere!”

In case you’ve never tried it, let me tell you about poke salad, or “poke sallet,” as we call it in the South. When it comes to greens, none can compare to poke sallet’s wonderful taste. I love spinach, turnip greens, mustard, kale and collards. But I’ll take poke sallet over these any day. It has a distinctive mild flavor that makes it one of the most commonly gathered wild foods wherever it is found.

Bill and I hadn’t come to this spot intending to do any wild-foods foraging, so I had nothing to put the poke in if I picked it. The case off a pillow in my car provided an excellent container, however, and I started stuffing it with nearly a bushel of tender, green poke sprouts.

While I was thus occupied, Bill found another delicious wild food: a morel mushroom!

“See if you can find more while I finish picking the poke sallet,” I said, excitedly. “If you can find a dozen or so, we’ll have one heck of a meal.”

As luck would have it, the morels must have just started sprouting. Bill couldn’t find any more. But I found yet another useful plant: sassafras! Many knee-high sprouts were scattered around the woods, and I quickly pulled up a couple dozen. When steeped in hot water, sassafras roots make a delicious tea that tastes somewhat like root beer. You also can dry and grind the young leaves to make filé powder, a famous ingredient of Louisiana gumbos.

While we didn’t gather them, we found other wild edibles as well, including spring beauties, which have bulbs with a delicious nutlike flavor; wild onions, which can be eaten fresh or used to season other foods; mayapples, which produce a summer fruit that can be used fresh, frozen or canned; and wild violets, the flowers of which are delicious and high in vitamin C. After nibbling a few, Bill proclaimed the latter “pretty darn good.”

My interest in wild-food foraging started when I was in college in the 1970s. I was as poor as a church mouse then and lived by myself for a while in a little one-room shack in northeast Arkansas. Being a full-time student with no parents to help, I rarely had enough money to make ends meet.

That was a difficult time. I often rode a bike to my job 25 miles away because I couldn’t afford the 35-cent-per-gallon cost of gasoline! When it was cold outside, I slept in a sleeping bag or stood by a campfire in the yard because there often was no propane to heat the shack. The roof of the shack leaked like a sieve, so rainy nights were horrible. Without air conditioning, summers were pretty bad, too. I had running water, thank goodness, but no electricity.

Despite the fact I often was cold, hot or wet, however, I never went hungry. Mealtimes were the bright spots in each day. I had plenty to eat. And almost all my food came straight from nature’s larder.

When time permitted, I hunted, fished and trapped. In fact, trapping accounting for much of my winter income. I sold the furs of the raccoons, possums, muskrats and beavers I caught, and the meat from these animals provided many meals. In spring and summer, I fished for bass, crappie, catfish, bream and other fish, and caught frogs, crawfish, turtles, rattlesnakes and other delectable critters. “Catch and release” wasn’t part of my vocabulary then; this was “catch and eat” exclusively. In fall and winter, I also dined on squirrels, rabbits, doves, quail, deer and other game killed while hunting.

Most vegetables in my diet came from a half-acre garden where I grew everything from tomatoes and squash to sweet potatoes and onions. What I couldn’t eat immediately, I canned or stored for later use. But a large percentage of the vegetables and fruits I ate, and ingredients for drinks such as tea, were gathered from the wild. Spring favorites included poke, wild asparagus, chickweed, chicory, chives, dandelion, day lily, elderberry flowers, lamb’s quarters, chanterelle and morel mushrooms, purslane, sassafras and violets. In summer, I had blackberries, huckleberries, wild strawberries, mayapples, mulberries, papaws, sumac, sweet goldenrod and watercress. Fall favorites included persimmons, hickory nuts, walnuts, wild rose hips and wood sorrel.

I was fortunate to have several wonderful teachers who taught me how to identify and cook many excellent wild food plants. One of these was a kind lady named Billy Joe Tatum who lived in a spectacularly situated Ozark Mountain home called “Wildflower.” A mutual friend in college introduced Billy and me, and I remember with great fondness sitting on her porch near the community of Possum Trot and listening as she described how to use the variety of edible and medicinal plants she gathered from the woods surrounding her home. Many of these were hanging to dry in the rafters of her kitchen. Others were kept in sealed glass jars, in a freezer or were freshly harvested and still in baskets she used for that purpose. Between puffs on her corn-cob pipe, she would describe in detail the ways to identify and use each plant.

“The flowers of elderberries can be dipped in batter and fried to make excellent fritters,” she might say. Or, “The roots of chicory can be dried, roasted and ground to make a coffee substitute.” She taught me how to make tea from a variety of wild plants, how to season foods with wild ginger, peppergrass and wild mustard seeds, how to recognize tender young greens such as pokeweed, milkweed and sorrel, and much more. At the end of each visit, we shared a buffet meal at her table that included many of the wild foods she had just taught us about, along with other specialties chez Tatum such as coon, crawdads, possum or groundhog.

In 1976, the same year I met Billy, her book Billy Joe Tatum’s Wild Foods Cookbook & Field Guide was published. Like her mentor Euell Gibbons, she became a well-known celebrity, making numerous appearances on television and at speaking engagements nationwide. Invitations to enjoy a meal at her home were much sought after by fellow Arkansas notables like Gov. Bill Clinton and Winthrop Rockefeller Jr. But she always welcomed me into her home each time I dropped in for a visit, and always taught me something new about wild foods when I was there. A signed copy of her book, which still is considered a classic of the genre, has a place of honor in my library and is dog-eared from years of use.

Another of my teachers was Larry Lowman, a naturalist at Village Creek State Park near Wynne, Arkansas, where I worked during my college years. Larry was a botanist with a keen interest in edible and medicinal plants. Each day throughout my first year as seasonal interpreter, he took me into the park’s woods and fields to teach me about the bounties of nature one could harvest each season. The lessons were intended to provide me knowledge of wild-foods foraging I could share with park visitors. But Larry also was an excellent cook, and the meals he whipped up from the things we gathered showed me just how delicious wild plant foods can be. Because these foods were plentiful and free for the taking, they proved a real blessing to a college boy trying to make it through each day. When served on the side with the abundance of fish and game I brought home, they provided full-course meals that were both satisfying and healthy.

My foraging forays are much less frequent now, but my family still eats game and fish year-round, supplemented with occasional sides of poke sallet, morels, asparagus and other wild favorites. We sometimes make jelly or desserts from wild fruits such as muscadines and blackberries. And I still love a cup of hot sassafras tea now and then.

I don’t have to rely on wild foods to keep my belly full any more. But it’s nice knowing if times get tough, I can still keep my family well fed from nature’s larder. With a little study, you can, too. Courses on wild plant identification are offered at many colleges, parks and other venues. Many excellent field guides to edible and medicinal plants also are available, and if you’re lucky, you might find a foraging enthusiast who will teach you the ropes the way Billy and Larry taught me. Foraging for wild foods offers many rewards, both in learning and in the wild-food hunting itself. And perhaps the greatest reward comes in cooking the new and interesting finds you have made.

After Bill and I returned home, I picked the stems off all the poke shoots, and my wife Theresa cooked up a huge pot of fresh greens. I pounded the sassafras roots with a meat mallet to loosen the bark, peeled them and steeped them in hot water to make a delicious tea. The one morel wasn’t enough for even one serving, but sliced and fried in butter, it made a great topping for the butter-broiled crappie fillets I cooked for an entrée.

That was a meal fit for a king, and it didn’t cost a dime.

In my next post, some tips on using a variety of edible plants. And please be reminded that autographed copies of my wild game cookbook, Duck Gumbo to Barbecued Coon, can be purchased by visiting www.catfishsutton.com.

5 Southern Hotspots You Really Must Fish Before You Die

2009-04-20T18:18:00.007-05:00

Catfish, crappie, trout, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass—if these fish are among those you love to catch, listen up. Before you kick the bucket and go to that great fishing hole in the sky, you’ll want to plan a trip to these extraordinary Southern hotspots where you can get a real taste of heaven on earth. On these waters, the catching is as good as the fishing.

Huck’s River

If the fish of your dreams sports long whiskers and baby-smooth skin, then the Mighty Mississippi, which produced a 200-pound catfish for Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, surely must be on your “go-before-you-die” list. No body of water in North America has this river’s potential for producing supersize catfish, and Twain’s books aren’t the only source of evidence. For example, a 103-pound blue cat weighed in on Day 1 of a recent Memphis, Tennessee, tournament was not heavy enough to take big-fish honors. A 108-pounder caught during Day 2 claimed that title. And even these giants don’t truly exemplify possibilities here.

More than a dozen blues over the century mark have been hoisted from the Father of Waters’ muddy depths during the past decade, including two all-tackle world records, a 116.75-pounder caught in West Memphis, Arkansas and a 124-pound Alton, Illinois cat. Huge flatheads and channel cats swim here, too, and there are tons of them. Catching 150 to 300 pounds of catfish daily (or nightly) isn’t unusual.

There’s plenty of great fishing water on this 2,300-mile-long river, but the best of the best for trophy whiskerfish is from Alton to points south, with the Memphis area topping the list of hawg producers. For info, contact Mississippi River Guide Service (901-383-8674, www.bigcatfish.com) or the Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce (901-543-3500, www.memphischamber.com).

The Crappie Capital

Alabama has two capitals: one in Montgomery, where politicians hang out, and another near the town of Centre, where anglers come to dangle minnows or jigs for America’s favorite panfish—Weiss Lake, a fertile Alabama Power reservoir on the Coosa River. Widely hailed as the “Crappie Capital of the World,” Weiss has been a hotbed for slabs since impoundment in 1961, luring anglers from throughout the country who pump tens of millions of dollars into local economies each year. At full pool, the lake covers 30,200 acres, and those acres of water cover stump flats, timber, creek channels and other cover and structure bristling with white crappie and black crappie often weighing 2 pounds or more, just what the doctor ordered for some of the best panfishing you can ever hope to experience.

Like crappie lakes everywhere, Weiss gets the most attention from anglers during spring’s spawn. To ignore the the lake’s papermouths the rest of the year is to commit an error in judgment, though. Crappie bite year-round, and thanks to intensified management efforts in recent years, crappie enthusiasts often catch limits. Contact Cherokee County Chamber of Commerce (256-927-8455, www.cherokee-chamber.org) or the Pittstop in Gaylesville (256-422-3787) for more information.

Trout Angler’s Paradise

Paradise in the Ozarks. That’s how many describe Arkansas’ upper White River, a crystal-clear stream coursing through some of the world’s most scenic trout-fishing country. Some say it’s America’s best trout river by number and size of fish it produces, and there’s no lack of variety either. Millions of rainbows are stocked annually, and at times, nearly every cast garners a 9- to 16-inch fish. Brook trout reach almost unheard-of sizes, and there’s no better brown-trout fishing anywhere. Three- to 5-pounders are common, and several world records have been caught here, some pushing 40 pounds. Beautiful cutthroats also add to the diversity.

Two popular sections are the 8-mile-long Beaver Dam tailwater near Eureka Springs and the Bull Shoals tailwater, a 100-mile stretch from Bull Shoals Dam to near Mountain View. Some stretches are ideal for wading and fly fishing. But for a real taste of local flavor, try a float-fishing excursion in one of the long, lean johnboats for which the river is famous. Resorts are everywhere, each staffed by knowledgeable guides. The Arkansas Dept. of Parks and Tourism (800-NATURAL, www.arkansas.com) has everything for planning your visit.

Bronzeback Kingdom

Write this down, smallmouth-bass anglers. Before you die, you must visit the famed waters of Dale Hollow Lake at least twice. Go first in winter and sample a local specialty known as float-and-fly fishing, a hair-jig and bobber angling method made famous by Dale Hollow regulars. You probably won’t catch huge numbers of bronzebacks, but on good days, the quality is mind-blowing. Imagine snow in your face and smallmouths over 6 pounds on back-to-back casts. It happens often here.

Go next in summer and experience the nighttime action that maintains this Tennessee/Kentucky lake’s reputation as “The Smallmouth Capital of the World.” Chunking a jig-and-pig over coontail grass points after dark could get your arm dislocated. And it certainly will awaken you to the potential of this 27,200-acre Corps of Engineers reservoir that produced the 11-pound, 15-ounce, world-record smallmouth in 1955. Over the years, Dale Hollow has churned out more record-class smallmouths than any other lake or stream in the world. Contact the Clay County, Tennessee, Chamber of Commerce (931-243-3338, www.dalehollowlake.org) for info.

Bassing Bonanza

No other public bass lake on the planet has generated more positive ink over the past two years than 67,000-acre Lake Amistad on the Texas/Mexico border near Del Rio, Texas. Two words explain it: big bass. Scads of them. This is not a body of water known for producing largemouths over 10 pounds every day, although it does so with impressive regularity. (The lake record caught December 28, 2005 weighed 15.68 pounds.) What put Amistad on the map is a bountiful population of 4- to 7-pound bruisers so easy to fool a monkey could probably catch one. One visit here and you’ll find yourself thinking there’s no reason to travel to Mexico to experience fish-a-minute bass action.

Amistad is chock-full of prime bass habitat that includes abundant hydrilla, hundreds of points, coves, flooded brush, timber, rocky shorelines, inlets, submerged ledges, boulders and dropoffs. And because the weather is warm here nine months of the year, this clear, blue lake can be fished when other prime waters have little to offer. If you’re among the millions of bass lovers in the U.S., this “Lake of Friendship” should definitely be on your list of must-visit hotspots. For more information, contact the Del Rio Chamber of Commerce (800-889-8149, www.drchamber.com).