REDFIN'S OUTDOOR JOURNAL

Pfeffernusse

2010-12-11T14:01:00.001-08:00

This is the Wetzel Family German Christmas cookie. As is typical with German foods, it is very laborious. I usually get anywhere from 180 to 220 cookies from one batch. I remember my grandmother Wetzel and my mother making them a day before Christmas and letting them dry overnight before cooking them Christmas morning. The aroma throughout the house was amazing!

I have some drying on the table now and will make another batch in a couple of hours and cook them all tomorrow then ship them out to my son, daughter, mother, sister and brother.

Merry Christmas to all!

Recipe:
8 eggs
4 cups of sugar
Mix in electric mixer for 45-minutes until graininess is near gone.

While the eggs and sugar are mixing, combine
2 Tbls of ground cloves
2 Tbls of ground cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
in one small bowl or dish

Also combine the zest of two small lemons and the juice of one small lemon
in a small bowl or dish.

When the sugar and egg mixture is ready, continue mixing the lemon zest and juice into the mixture then add the spices a little at a time and mix until well blended.

Turn mixer off and scrape mixture from both beaters into mixture with a small spatula.

Now, 7-8 cups of flour will be hand mixed (folded) into the mixture 1/3 to 1/2 cup at a time with a sturdy wooden spoon. Once the mixture becomes stiff (about 45 minutes of spoon mixing), scrape it out onto a floured smooth surface and continue to hand-knead the dough. Separate 1/3 of the dough from the master wad and continue to hand-knead with floured hands. Flour a wooden rolling pin and roll the 1/3 out flat to 1/2-3/4 inch thick. The top surface must be smooth. Dust the top surface with a very little flour and using a special cookie cutter (3" long, 1" diameter on one end and 1-1/2" in diameter at the other end) cut each cookie using the 1" dia. end then invert the cutter and smack the opposite end of the cutter onto a wax paper covered cookie sheet (the top surface of the rolled dough cookie should be down against the wax paper). Leave about 3/4 to 1" space between cookies until the sheet is full and continue this until the entire batch has been cut - 180-200 cookies depending on the rolled thickness. These should sit and dry for 10-12 hours.

Cooking the pffefernusse: remove each cookie from the wax paper and place them on a cookie sheet (no wax paper) with the "wet" spot up. Bake in an oven at 300-degrees for 18-20 minutes. You can then add 2-4 drops of Captain Morgan spiced rum to the top knot while it is still hot for additional flavor.

Jody Mikles Ranch Style Beans

2010-08-22T11:10:00.000-07:00

1-lb. hamburger
1-1/2 white onions, chopped
1 can green chiles (4-oz. can)
3 cans Ranch Style beans (26-oz can)
1 bottle KC Masterpiece Bar-B-Q sauce (28-oz bottle)
1 cup brown sugar
1 cooked smoked sausage, chopped (1-lb. pkg)
3 Hot Links, chopped

Dice the onion and fry with the hamburger in a skillet, drain well. Put mixture in a crock pot and mix in the green chiles, add the beans, bar-b-q sauce and brown sugar, stirring well. Cook on high for about 30-minutes while cooking the sausage and hot links in the skillet. Chop the cooked sausage and hot links and mix in with the beans and continue cooking on low for about 3-4 hours. Stir twice per hour. If you like it a little hot, mix in a can of Rotel mild when you add the sausage and hot links.

The Glompf Maker

2010-01-29T14:23:00.000-08:00

The Navy needed my expertise badly.
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I was going at least 15 miles per hour on my bicycle when I turned off Second Street and onto the Fairgrounds Road.The bike lost a little traction in the loose gravel that always collected there, almost causing me to fall. The sun was just beginning to come up behind the tree line. I had to get to the lake before the sun came over the trees. I pedaled that bike for all I was worth, the wind whistling past my ears.

I leaped from my bike when I got to the lake and jumped the low sagging fence to run the last 50-yards to my favorite early morning spot on the earthen dam of Crystal Lake. I turned to face the rising sun to the east, my breath laboring. I smiled as the sun glowed orange through the tall oak trees on the other side of the lake. I loved the job my uncle Fred had given me to do an hour each day before school started. It would be hard to find a better job than this one.

My Uncle Fred was a building contractor and he was good at it, the best. He built homes, apartments, garages, and his shop. Every morning before school I would get up, wash, get dressed, eat breakfast, ride my bike to uncle Fred’s shop, make small talk with him and his carpenters, pick up an old coffee can full of bent nails and rusted hardware, and ride out to Crystal Lake to watch the sun rise. I was the happiest boy alive back then.

By the time I had finished high school, my uncle Fred had taught me a lot about building things. He even certified me as an official Glompf Maker. I was so proud! Wow, a Glompf Maker! He said Glompf Makers aren’t made overnight. It took a lot of special training to become one.

When I joined the Navy in 1966, they asked me if I had any special skills other than walking and talking. I proudly showed them my Glompf Maker Certificate my uncle Fred had presented to me. They were really impressed. They didn’t know what a Glompf Maker was but they were sure the Navy needed one. They said they had plenty of tax dollars to spend, so they created a new rate just for me. E-4 Glompf Maker. I was really proud and I knew my uncle Fred would be proud, too.

My first assignment was aboard a destroyer escort ship stationed on the West Coast of the United States. The sailors called destroyers “tin cans” because when the waves got really rough, those destroyers bobbed around on the water like a bunch of tin cans.

I got right into my job once aboard. Everyday I would get up, shave, shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, walk down into the deepest, darkest depths of that tin can, make small talk with the boilermakers and boatswainmates there, pick up a few parts, then return to the main deck where I would lean on the hand rail and gaze out across the huge ocean and smile. It was hard to find a better job than this. I was so happy for the first eight months.

Then I became sad. You see, I had been into every deep and dark depth of that small ship and knew it inside and out. What I needed was a larger ship. That was it, a much bigger ship than this one! So I went to the commander of the destroyer and told him that I dearly loved the little ship and because things were perfectly ship-shape and given I was the only Glompf Maker the Navy had, a larger ship would need my services more. He agreed and arranged my transfer to a larger ship.

Wow and wow again! I couldn’t believe how lucky I was. Thanks to the training my uncle Fred had given me and the commendable work I had done aboard the destroyer, I was promoted to chief, E-7 Glompf Maker and put on a battleship. The sailors called it a “battle-wagon” because that ship carried such huge guns only a wagon could carry such a load. I was so lucky and excited!

I got right into my job once aboard. Everyday I would get up, shave, shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, walk down into the deepest, darkest depths of that battle-wagon, make small talk with the boilermakers and boatswainmates there, pick up a few parts, then return to the main deck where I would lean on the hand rail and gaze out across the huge ocean and smile. It was hard to find a better job than this. I was so happy for about fifteen months.

Then I became sad. You see, I had been into every deep and dark depth of that battle-wagon and knew it inside and out. What I needed was an even larger ship. That was it, a much, much bigger ship than this one! So I went to the captain of the battleship and told him that I dearly loved that ship and because things were perfectly ship-shape and given I was the only Glompf Maker the Navy had, a much larger ship would need my services more. He agreed and arranged my transfer to an even larger ship.

Hot darn and golly gee! They transferred me to an aircraft carrier, the biggest ship in the Navy. I couldn’t believe my ears and eyes. I was pinching myself to make sure it wasn’t a dream. It hurt! The sailors called the aircraft carrier a “bird farm” because she had so many jets on her it looked like a bunch of birds all grouped together in one place. I was a hog in hog heaven! The captain even promoted me to warrant officer, WO4 Glompf Maker.

I got right into my job once aboard. Everyday I would get up, shave, shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, walk down into the deepest, darkest depths of that aircraft carrier, make small talk with the boilermakers and boatswainmates there, pick up a few parts, then return to the main deck where I would lean on the hand rail and gaze out across the huge ocean and smile. It was hard to find a better job than this. I was so happy for about thirty months.

Then I became sad again. Something was wrong and I had to get it straightened out so I went to the executive officer of the aircraft carrier. I told him I loved that bird farm but I felt there needed to be more Glompf Makers because of all the ships that the Navy had and I couldn’t do the job alone. They would need a boss to train them, someone who knew all about Glompf Making. He agreed but he told me he would have to call Washington D.C. and discuss it with the admiral there.

When the executive officer called the admiral and told him about me, the Navy’s only Glompf Maker, the admiral only had one question. What does a Glompf Maker do? You see, that’s why he was an admiral. They ask all the right questions before making a decision. The executive officer told the admiral he would find out what a Glompf Maker does.

The next morning, I got up, shaved, showered, got dressed, ate breakfast, went down into the deepest, darkest depths of that aircraft carrier, made small talk with the boilermakers and boatswainmates there, and picked up a few old parts. I didn’t know the executive officer was following me around. I was a dedicated Glompf Maker and didn’t let anything stand in my way.

I returned to the main deck that morning and I suppose what I did next was the downfall of the Glompf Maker rating in the Navy. As I had done for so many years when I worked for my uncle Fred carrying coffee cans of old parts out to Crystal Lake every morning, I lifted that can of old parts up and over the hand rail and dropped it into the ocean. I always did enjoy the sound it made when it hit the water.

“Glompf!”

Monster Mountain Muskies

2009-10-06T02:27:00.000-07:00

It took 42 years to re-set the muskellunge record in the Mountain State, a near fifty pounder caught while fishing for trout.
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Three jointed 10-inch lures were digging in again after an abrupt turn at nearly 4 miles per hour. My attention was drawn momentarily toward the bow to watch for those pesky water and jet skiers that inhabit this narrow, doglegged muskie lake. All clear. I looked back just in time to see my partner lunge for the center rod which was bucking hard under a vicious blow. The bait alarm maintained a steady, high-pitched buzzzzzzzzzzz as line left the reel. I glanced quickly at the depth finder to see we were over the main river channel in 40-feet of water, so I knew we weren't fouled on the bottom. I throttled back to idle so my partner could remove the wedged rod from its holder. Definitely a fish and a big one at that!

Line continued to leave the reel, only slower now. "Giant fish," he announced excitedly while raising the rod in a feeble attempt to slow the determined monster. I quickly cleared the second rod and stashed it away. Then, while clearing the third rod another gigantic fish pounded the lure at boatside. "FISH ON!" I screamed, trying to keep my 275-pounds inside the boat as the rod began to wrap around its hull.

I woke up drenched in sweat, trying to regain my senses. My wife was propped up on her side of the bed, wide-eyed. "You gotta quit writing about these muskies," she scolded. "You're scaring the be-Jesus out of me almost every night!" She was near tears and I apologized for the third night in a row. I tried to go back to sleep as I lay there wondering if it was possible for these muskies to drive us to twin beds. I shuddered to think about that, the final step before entering the doghouse. If only those West Virginia fishing buddies would stop sending me pictures, maybe I could get some much needed sleep.

These same friends are confident that it won't be long before the muskellunge standard is re-set once again, a potential 50-pound plus muskie is very realistic provided the youngest muskie reservoir in the state continues on its current trend. Jim Moore, once president of the West Virginia Muskie Club, caught and released the first ever 50" fish in West Virginia from Stonewall Jackson Reservoir. Picture is included directly below.

Stonewall Jackson Reservoir is the newest and largest of three Mountain State muskie impoundments conveniently located along the I-79 corridor. The other two reservoirs with outstanding potential are Burnsville just south of Stonewall Jackson and Stonecoal Reservoir which lies just north of Stonewall Jackson. Stonecoal is home to the state record muskellunge, a Chautaugua strain fish (Lake Chautaugua, New York).

Walter Hall caught a Stonecoal Chautaugua muskie that hit the 40-pound mark back in the 1980's (picture included below right). He was trout fishing at the time the big fish took his bait. Fortunately, he had help in landing the lunker.

Stonecoal also produced another huge fish to Larry Spencer of Charleston (above left) with a very nifty fifty inch fish that weighed just shy of 40-pounds. He was actually fishing for muskie on Stonecoal when the big bruiser took his lure. Both of these Stonecoal Chautaugua strain fish were caught in the mid-1980's - evidence that possibly much larger fish may well exist in that winter period trout stocked lake. Many of the lakes in West Virginia are stocked with trout as well as tiger muskie (cross between a pure muskie and a northern pike).

But the feat of all feats was performed by John Lowther (below) and his son, Michael (left), as they trolled Stonewall Jackson one hot summer day. Within an hour and a half of one another, they both caught 51-inch, 40-pound fish. John was able to release his fish but Michael's was hooked too deeply to revive. They were high-speed trolling big Wiley lures in the prop wash when they caught these two fish. They probably didn't have more than 30-feet of line out. John was the Muskies, Inc. Masters national release champion two years running (1985 and 1986) as well as a life member and son Michael just happened to find time in his busy schedule of classes and baseball at West Virginia University to fish with his dad that day. John has never used a net to land a muskie.

Chris Burdette of Morgantown, WV was not going to be left out. Normally a creek and river muskie fisherman, Chris decided to try his luck on Stonewall Jackson and came away with a magnificent high 40-inch fish that was pushing 35-36 pounds. He released his fish (above) as he most usually does.

So, you would like a chance at the trophy muskie and a potential new state record? Load up and head down I-79 to the Mountain Monster muskie trifecta.

Debbie's First Deer

2009-10-04T15:20:00.000-07:00

First time deer hunters have all the luck going for them.
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Seasoned hunters like my brother Phil and his wife's brother, Carroll, have deer hunted many years in east central Illinois, but the deer season of 1988 was forecast to be especially good. It was dry and there had been a better than average harvest of corn and soybeans. They were seeing a lot of deer that fall when Debbie, Phil's wife, decided she wanted to participate.

Debbie Kendall Wetzel was raised on a farm near our hometown of Marshall, Illinois, and her brothers considered deer hunting a religion. This hunt would be her first. She wouldn't have gun technology on her side, either. Illinois deer hunters are required by law to use shotgun or muzzle-loader firearms because that state is flat and wide-open farm country. Center fire rifles are not allowed for obvious safety reasons. Debbie's choice for a gun that season was a single shot 20-gauge shotgun. It was light, easy to carry, and as she found out during target practices, it was easy to shoot. She used a makeshift gun range at a cabin they owned in a wooded area near Clarksville to hone her shooting skills.

Being seasoned deer hunters themselves, Phil and Carroll knew what buck fever could do to a good hunter, let alone a first-time hunter like Debbie. She became an accurate shot using that shotgun, though, grouping 100-yard five shot patterns inside a ten-inch diameter. They were all satisfied it would be good enough. Now it was all up to Debbie and her nerves.

Opening day of the Illinois deer season had arrived and was uneventful for Debbie that opening morning. The temperature that November day fluttered near 45 degrees. While they were all back at the cabin enjoying some lunch, Carroll glanced out the window and saw a monster buck working through the dense woods several hundred feet behind the cabin. Grabbing his gun and calling to Debbie, they jumped into their jeep and drove out the road along a bottom to hopefully cut the deer off. Carroll had a good idea where the buck was going and dropped Debbie off halfway through the bottom. She climbed the hill to take a stand where she could watch either side. Carroll turned the jeep around, drove back to the cabin and bailed out when he thought he was behind the deer.

Carroll had begun stalking the deer toward debbie when he heard dogs barking as they picked up the deer's scent. Carroll knew his chances of getting a shot at the big deer were gone. Debbie was on the stand watching when she heard the dogs barking as well. She was thinking the dogs would spook the buck and neither she nor Carroll would get a chance for a shot. Then she heard brush breaking in front of her. The dogs were still off in the distance. The massive rack was the first thing she saw when the heavy buck appeard about fifty yards to her front, looking back toward the barking dogs.

She raised her little single shot 20-gauge and pointed it toward the buck. It turned and trotted into an opening unbelievably close to Debbie and looked back once more. It never saw Debbie when she fired her single shot 20-gauge. She immediately lost sight of the monster buck during the recoil. Debbie ran to where she had last seen the buck. Nothing. The dogs had quit barking, probably because of the gunshot they heard from Debbie's direction. She looked again and saw horns sticking above the low brush just over the hill. She ran down the hill to find the monster buck dead. Back up the hill she ran to find Carroll. Carroll arrived and asked her if she had done the shooting he had heard.

Debbie was shaking like a leaf but smiling like a coon in a corn patch, from ear to ear. She pointed to where the deer lay and Carroll went berserk when he saw its size and massive rack. He went back to the cabin to get Phil to help field-dress the deer. When they opened the deer, they checked to see where the slug had gone. It had taken the bottom of the buck's heart off and the buck had run less than fifty yards from where it had stood when Debbie shot it.

It took all three of them to load the corn and bean fed buck into the back of Phil's pick-up truck. They took it to the check-in station where it was weighed. The field-dressed weight of the buck was 250-pounds. An official check of its enormous rack showed 16 measurable points. However, it would have to be considered a non-typical rack because the 3 small points on each brow tine gave the rack a palmated appearance. The rack on Debbie's first deer scored 188 points Boone and Crockett after the proper drying period.

The River of Plenty Fat Elk

2009-10-04T08:30:00.000-07:00

My favorite river of all time will also become my final resting place one day.
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I fell in love with this river in the summer of 1975 when I caught my very first muskellunge from it. Since that day I've witnessed many strange and interesting muskie happenings on that same river - duck eatings, mid-air shad chomps, rocket launchings, snout pokings, log jumping, boat rammings and plain ole sunbathings. It seemed only natural for this fish to do being the King and all.

The Shawnee indians of that region called the river tis-chil-waugh or river of plenty fat elk. To the Miami indians of the Kanawha and Ohio River basins, it was know as the Walnut River. The Elk River, as it is officially known, winds south out of the mountains in Pocahontas County, West Virginia to its confluence with the Kanawha River at the state capitol of Charleston. Great walnut and sycamore trees can still be seen along this river but not in the numbers that existed prior to the premier logging days of the late 1800's and early 1900's.

The Elk River has a common mountain origin in the high country of Pocahontas County with several other well known rivers and streams - the Greenbrier, the Gauley, the Tygarts Valley, the Cheat, the Little Kanawha, the Buchannon and the West Fork of the Monongahela River. Five of these rivers contain native populations of Esox ohiensis but to the early folks resident to the Elk River, this water wolf was known as blue pike for the bluish coloration it had along its back. The Elk River or Muskie River as I think of it, has a long history which is good because a long history produces long muskellunge.

The Elk River is 172 miles long from source to confluence. It is formed from two short streams, Old Field Fork and Big Spring Fork at a 3,665 foot elevation. These two streams join near Slatyfork - very near the Cranberry Wilderness area - before the waters disappear underground for several miles thru a maze of caverns and reappears on the surface. The river drops an average of 18-feet per mile in elevation on its journey to the Kanawha River at Charleston.

Sutton Dam was completed on the Elk River by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers for flood control purposes in 1961. It is 101 miles above the confluence with the Great Kanawha River and it effectively decimated what blue pike population there was at that time. The Elk above Centralia, WV was about as far as the blue pike ranged. The last report of one being caught was around 1980 near Gassaway, WV below Sutton Dam by a very reputable muskie fisherman. While some may still exist in the upper reaches of Elk above Sutton Lake, I doubt any fisherman who catches one accidentally would recognize it as such. Even at flood stage, the river there ran mostly clear which certainly helped maintain the bluish coloration of the muskellunge. In the book Tale of the Elk by W.E.R. Byrne, there are several references made to this blue pike.

Reference to the pike of this river was also found in a small journal of the West Virginia Iron Mining and Manufacturing Company published in Richmond, VA on March 15, 1837 praising "the land along the Elk" as well as the pike which "measure from four to five feet in length and weighing from 30 to 40 pounds." However, I consider W.E.R. Byrne's book as the bible of the Elk. He began writing the stories for the West Virginia Wildlife publication as well as the Braxton Democrat newspaper between 1927 and 1931. The author then arranged the stories in order and they were reprinted in the Braxton Democrat in Sutton in 1933.

After so much reading about the Elk and the little fishing I had done to that point, I felt strangely attached to this country and this river. I sensed I had been cheated in life and born a hundred years too late. I could practically visualize Bill Byrne's adventures up and down the Elk River. For the eleven years I was located there I had visited only a few of the places mentioned by Mr. Byrne but one stretch of water had become my ultimate and intimate attraction - the Sugar Creek eddy below Gassaway. I don't know if it was the larger muskies in that pool that attracted me or the want to stay somewhat connected with civilization on the one side and wilderness on the other. I would either spend the entire day in that eddy or it was the start of many floats trips I would make down to Strange Creek.

It saddened me to leave that part of the world. I wanted my children to grow up there but work was scarce and a decision was made to relocate to another state. I've always kept that little piece of time in my pocket knowing I would one day return to the place where I belong to never leave it again. Maybe that somehow atones for not being the good finisher God expected.

Privvy to Perry's Pranks

2009-09-17T02:27:00.000-07:00

He always had a knack for driving a point home and it usually stuck with you for a long time.
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I drove over to his place one Friday evening after I got off work so we could fish the following morning. It was about a 2-hour trip and when I got there he was just starting supper, so I sat at his kitchen table eating some shelled peanuts he had sitting out and catching up on recent news. The peanuts tasted bland and somewhat stale but listening to Perry Adams' latest fishing reports took my mind off my stomach.

I had never fished the Hughes River or its north and south forks that he was so familiar with. It wasn't known for exceptionally large fish but had better than average numbers of mid-to-upper thirty inch fish. That isn't to say it didn't contain a few fish larger than 40-inches but they were as scarce as a desert water hole. Perry had been doing some exploration around the Arnold Creek area, a small tributary of Middle Island Creek near West Union, West Virginia in Doddridge County. I figured he had been doing some ginsenging over in that country and got an itch to fish it. He was like that, able to trot off in some other direction when the fish weren't biting or whenever he just got a notion.

He must have got the idea I was hungry when the bowl of peanuts disappeared. He refilled it from a baggie he had in one of the cabinets. I couldn't remember that he had eaten any and I was quite embarrassed and told him I was sorry for eating all of his peanuts. "Don't be," he answered. "Ever since I got all my teeth pulled and fitted for dentures I haven't been able to eat them - I just suck all the chocolate off them and save the nut."

Muskie fishing the next morning was about as stale as those peanuts. We caught about 5 sub-legals between us and raised a fish of about 38-inches. The water color on the Hughes was different than what I was use to - it reminded me of Wabigoon Lake in western Ontario.

Perry was quite the innovator. There wasn't much he couldn't fix, temporary or permanent. I think he could tell if something were about to break and he'd "fix" it before it had a chance to quit working. He told me how he saved a cabin full of deer hunters from starving to death one cold wintry evening.

Seems he and a group of his deer hunting cronies had packed up and headed out to a cabin in the mountains of Ritchie County for opening weekend of bucks only season. He said those guys were know more for their card playin' and drinkin' than deer hunting and they brought enough liquor and cigars with them to prove it. They spent the night before opening day playing cards, blowing smoke, popping tops and rattling ice around in their glasses.

None of them got more than maybe three hours of sleep before the first rays of dawn were creeping across the treetops. They all had managed to somehow get up and move around, and after a heavy breakfast of biscuits and gravy, each went his own way to their favorite deer stand. Perry stayed back to tidy up the cabin before heading out to his stand. He was more of a stalker than a stander and he'd take advantage of the standers' positions to push some deer off a few points.

Perry said that when he returned to the cabin to fix lunch, everyone of those guys were there mumbling and cussing about the cold and lousy the hunting was. Never saw a deer, they all claimed. Perry was hoping at least one of them would fill his tag so they would have some camp meat for a couple of meals but while they all admitted to seeing a lot of deer tracks, not even a doe was spotted.

Perry said he hunted thru the gear and found a paper bag, then he hustled outside and disappeared for about 10 minutes. When he returned, the paper bag was almost to the bursting point from him blowing air into it. He went directly to the kitchen and sat that bag on the counter and retrieved several pots and pans from the cabinets. He managed to scrape up some canned vegetables and soup then mixed them together with some water into one big pan. A couple of the hunters strayed over to the kitchen door to see what he was doing.

Once the mixture started boiling, Perry grabbed the paper sack from the counter, opened one end of it to form a funnel, tipped it bottom up and tapped the bottom with his other hand as if pouring something into the mixture from it, then closed the bag and sat it back on the counter top. He began stirring the pot with a wooden ladle when one of the hunters strolled over to the counter and reached for the paper bag to see what was in it. Perry immediately grabbed the bag to prevent him from looking.

"What ya got in the bag, Perry?" asked the hunter.

"You mean this here bag?" Perry replied. "Well," he loudly stated so all could hear, "thanks to Mother Nature and myself and no thanks to the stinkin' bunch of deer hunters we all are, we're fortunately not going to starve to death." He continued stirring the pot.

"Yeah, but what's in the bag?" the hunter asked again.

Perry tapped on the bag with the ladle, "It seems we're camped out right in the middle of one of the biggest deer herds in three counties and can't any of us even see one. But it's been testified greatly here this afternnon that an even larger bunch of deer tracks exist right outside our front door, so I hurried out there to get some before the flavor is gone."

He stirred some more and after a minute of silence, spoke again. "You see, boys, it ain't very often I get to fix my famous deer track soup recipe." He continued to stir and a few snickers were heard.

Perry was like that - always having the final say and a dramatic way of getting a point made.

Muskielectricity 101

2009-09-14T17:01:00.000-07:00

About the time you think it can't happen to you, the screwdriver grazes the positive wire that you forgot to disconnect from its source.
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I was standing under the I-79 bridge that crosses Elk River a few miles south of Sutton, West Virginia, mindlessly casting a magnum Arbogast Mudbug upcurrent and reeling it back, hoping a nice walleye or smallmouth would accept the fake morsel. It was somewhere around the 10,000th cast when the lure stopped suddenly in its shakes, throbbed for a microsecond, then continued on its course. Water boiled to the surface before the lure finally came into view and I lifted it for another cast.

I thought at the time that it must have snagged momentarily on an unseen rock jutting up from the bottom. I had selected this particular spot, a visibly snag-free section of river, because I was tired of losing lures to the many sunken logs and rootballs of other more fishy looking places. I made another cast and on the ensuing retrieve through the same area, the lure stopped suddenly. I gently hauled back fearing another lure eating snag but it pulled back and circled out toward deeper water before surfacing.

I had hooked my first ever muskellunge. I eventually landed that fish, a 36-1/2 inch specimen using a standard pistol-grip bass rod and small baitcast reel. The landing wasn't beautiful and the lure extraction was even uglier. I knew absolutely nothing about handling something that had a tooth filled mouth. Yes, I kept the very first muskie I ever caught, more out of curiosity than need.

I became even more curious of muskie after that first capture and as a consequence received some rather shocking experiences. For example, I've never really gotten comfortable with the boat-side strike. This is cognate to tracing electrical circuits without shutting down the power source. Chances are on one of the many probes, your heart is going to jump into your throat, pound the ever-living daylights out of your Adams apple then retreat to your stomach before returning to its proper place.

You know you're fishing for muskie. You know a strike could come at anytime during the retrieve. You know every muscle in your body is tensed, waiting for that surge of current lurking there. Then the screwdriver slips, the fish comes out of nowhere and zaps you at boatside. After the initial shock you've recovered nicely, heart racing around as it is, your body hair standing erect and pupils dialated to the point of eruption. It's a rush you've fully expected but never really get use to. Basic Muskielectricity 101.

Disconnect the power source before probing? But I'm a knowledgeable muskielectrician - I've had many a day without the slip of a screwdriver. Besides, I live for the adventure and the boatside strike is a healthy shot of adreneline that brings us all back to our addiction for muskie fishing.

Unfamiliar water. We've all had our own personal experiences with alien water. If you've ever fished Wabigoon Lake near Dryden, Ontario, Canada, you know of which I write and can appreciate this. Even before your boat leaves the shoreline, your body hair is erect again and your skin is turned to goose flesh. You hope any damage that will be inflicted from some unmarked rock reef in the middle of what appears to be an obstructionless lake is done to your aluminum boat hull before it gets to the lower unit of your motor. You grit your teeth the entire day fully expecting the mother-of-all reefs to grind along the bottom of your boat before picking its teeth with your lower unit. I'm more comfortable with not seeing the ice cubes in my Brandy Alexander. I'm not very comfortable motoring around in muskie water of the same opaqueness.

You've read about the huge muskellunge that inhabit this particular water and you want a cut of the action. What you haven't heard much about is the amount of damage incurred by numerous boats that also pry these same waters. But you crank the big motor up anyway and head down the center of the lake watching the shorelines for likely looking lairs of lunker 'lunge. You're thinking about how you really crack yourself up sometimes with statements like you just made when you're suddenly in three inches of water 800-yards from the nearest shoreline and your motor sounds like the Ukranian National Spoon Band rendering of Life in the Fast Lane. Ah, Basic Muskielectricity 101.

It's not everyday that we get the opportunity of being jolted by some muskie electricity and I'm fairly confident that many other hair-tingling moments exist out there in muskiedom that keep the fisherman pumped up and his dentist busy capping teeth. One thing is for certain the next time I decide to challenge the unknown; metal solder takes up way less packing space than fiberglass repair materials.

The Man

2009-09-14T14:16:00.000-07:00

remembering Gil Hamm, Founder of Muskies, Inc.
_______________

"We're mad as Hell," the spokesman said,
"Know it or not, you're making us dead!
Our lives are spent hiding out, you see,
From the King of the North, the mighty musky!"

Ancestors of this, the northern pike,
Were perfectly content with fishermen the like
Of which kept their catch no matter the size
Reducing the musky, thus the northern's demise.

The pike was considered a nuisance, you know,
As their wide population continued to grow
Without check and balance from their enemy
Their lives were spared from the mighty musky.

Years would pass and records did fall
As muskies were hunted and killed by all.
The pike were relaxed and applauded with fins
At favors these hunters performed for them.

Then he came, a man with vision and many a dream,
Not a fisher or hunter but a human supreme.
"Big muskies," he clamored, "are in rapid decline
And we are the reason for it all this time."

He studied and traveled and spoke of it well
And fishing folks listened to what he did tell.
His deeds were of honor and his labor of love
And his following grew like a storm above.

Now pike everywhere are sure of one thing
That fishers of musky are beginning to sing
The laurels of capture and the return to be free
That haunts you, pike northern, and not again me!
______________________

A tribute to Gil Hamm may he rest in peace.

Eastern Sturgeon, Mud Marlin, Shin Bones and Ribs

2009-09-13T11:17:00.000-07:00

They kept me in stitches with their humor while I kept them in stitches with my suave moves.
_____________________

We had just finished muskie fishing a short pool of water on the Elk River in central West Virginia and stowed our gear for the tricky descent into the mile long Frametown pool. I was on the electric troll motor at the bow and Matt was in the rear pedestal seat of my 16-foot flat-bottomed boat. It was a snaky thin channel of deep water that bent around to the right of the shallow shoal we couldn’t otherwise navigate. Quickly entering the chute, I adjusted the motor to full speed to make the immediate 90-degree right turn. The bow easily made the turn but the stern was broadside to the current and being shoved bankward. I felt the port side of the boat elevate but I couldn’t afford a peek backwards in order to stay focused on the left bend ahead of us, so I stepped to the left to force it back down with my weight. I heard a “whoosh’, then a sickening “thud” before I heard Matt grunt and fall to the floor of the boat. I quickly raised the troll motor and bailed out of the boat to the bank in front of me and pulled the bow up onto the bank.

Matt was holding his rib cage and moaning loudly. I looked back behind the boat to see the culprit responsible. A 2” thick willow limb hung out over the channel just enough to become caught under the rolled gunwale of the boat. Matt had shifted his weight to the starboard side to avoid the other willow limbs and when I shifted my 275-pounds to the left, the cocked willow limb shot free and caught Matt across the rib cage. After about 5 minutes he got his breath back to normal and though still hurting, he continued the float trip with me. “Can’t very well turn around and go back up current, can we?” he stated.

Matt Fleshman was the athletic type. At six feet and two hundred twenty pounds it was a very safe bet. He was raised on Elk River and grew up hunting and fishing the same area. He would fish anywhere and under any circumstances but by the time I was finished with him over the next six years he would be happy to be shed of me.

Matt’s usual running mate, Tim Daubenspeck was also the athletic type. He could clinch Granny Smith apples between his teeth while reeling in 5-lb. smallmouth bass. Tim was also raised on Elk River but I sometimes wonder if the water didn’t affect him somehow. Matt and Tim had been friends for most of their lives and together, they were somewhat comical to say the least. My very first outing with them is probably my most memorable.

We entered a muskie fishing tournament one weekend. Matt and Dauby were more familiar with the lower Elk River than I was and they knew of a couple good fish that stayed in one particular hole of water near Cobb Station. We would be using my boat and I suddenly had thoughts about the three of us fishing out of a 16-foot flat bottomed boat. It would be crowded, yes, but it was the gross weight that had me concerned. The three of us totaled nearly 650-pounds. Add the weight of two 12-volt batteries, a foot controlled electric motor, a 48-quart cooler full of food and drinks and three tackle boxes loaded to the hilt with tackle not counting the 6 rods and reels we’d have on-board and you have the proverbial ten-pounds of horse manure in a five-pound sack.

The real kicker, I was finally told, was we’d be fishing one of the deeper holes of water on Elk River that contained one of the more treacherous stretches of shoal water to be found anywhere. We were an accident waiting to happen.

The first day of the tournament was a bust muskie-wise. We had taken along our light action equipment just for that purpose so we could fish for walleye and smallmouth that stayed in the shoal waters at the end of our float trip. We had one good thing in our favor, though, for the second and last day - neither Matt or Tim had ever caught a muskie.

That last day of the tourney, we fished down almost to the end of the last good muskie water without seeing a fish. We were all on edge because we knew the chances of catching a muskie let alone seeing one after this was nil. We were using buzz baits, a safety pin type spinner that runs across the surface of the water, imitating a baby duck, many of which inhabited the same areas as the muskie. It was Dauby that came up with the perfect description of a buzz bait as it came across the top of the water - "The bass think it's a baby bassboat and they're trying to kill it before it grows up!"

I was running the electric motor per usual when I saw a brush pile along the bank that would be ideal cover for a muskie. My cast landed well short of the target and I sped up the retrieve so I could make another more accurate cast. But Matt was able to get a cast off and against the brush pile and the ensuing explosion it received signaled muskie!

The fish missed the lure on that eruption but Matt kept a steady retrieve and an all too familiar form took shape immediately behind his lure. A good muskie, possibly over 40-inches. The fish dogged the lure all the way to the boat without striking, so Matt stopped reeling on a short line and kept pulling the lure with his rod around the back of the boat.

"The rudder!" I thought immediately. Then I remembered I had covered that stainless steel protrusion with camo tape to kill the glare. Matt continued to lead the fish around the rudder and I watched it disappear from sight behind the boat, then Matt's buzz bait came into view on the opposite side and the muskie cruised up along beside it and sort of half slurped at it when Matt set the hook and the water blew skyward. Dauby screamed, "FISH ON!" and I pulled the trolling motor out of the water to keep the fish from tangling the line there. Then I grabbed the big net, extended the handle and got ready.

By then the fish had circled back around the rear of the boat again avoiding the rudder, turned right and swam forward along side the boat. I shoved the net into the water and billowed it. The fish kept coming and I shoved the net forward to meet it. The fish swam right into the net, no fuss, no bother. Dauby helped me lift the net by the rim as we set the fish down on the center bench seat. The struggle lasted all of 15 seconds. The fish lay there without a flip or a flop as we waited for it to go berserk at any time. It never came.

Dauby announced sarcastically, "Nice fight." We nosed the boat up onto the bank and measured the fish. I was over forty inches and it did win the tournament, so along with catching his first ever muskie, he won some tournament prizes as well. But the trip didn't end there. While uneventful concerning muskie it was quite eventful concerning a particular smallmouth bass that Dauby had managed to tease into striking his buzz bait.

He had a hunger pang stike him, so out of the cooler came an apple. He was just getting ready to take a bite when he spied an ideal spot to cast to. He clinched the apple between his teeth and fired a cast toward some over-hanging willows along the bank. His buzz bait crash landed in a willow limb and hung down over the limb onto the water. Dauby tried flipping it over the limb but he only managed to tangle it worse. He pulled and shook and shook and pulled, the limb wildly waving then smacking the water, wave then smack! Finally his line came free from the limb but it had tangled around the spinner blade shaft and as he reeled it in to the boat, it would make a wild, erratic loop under the water then back up on top, then back down and loop back up, essentially cork-screwing it's way back to the boat when the water suddenly caved-in under the bait causing Dauby to nearly bite his apple in two.

"PHFISHNN!" he managed to bellow through that apple. The big smallmouth managed to jump clear of the water twice before settling in and make a line peeling run down river. We managed to land that fish, tangled line and all. It was 22-inches long and weighed close to 6 pounds. How that bass ever got a dead-bead on the erratic moving lure, I'll never know.

Matt and Tim are known for their abilities to improvise when the targeted fish aren't co-operating. It's at these times when they fish for eastern sturgeon and mud marlin. Now before you go to "hogwashin'" and "bullcarpin'" this story, let me explain further. Tim Daubenspeck is highly intelligent considering the human species and a well respected outdoorsman who has a keen knack for making a silk purse out of a sow's ear. That is, he has the unique ability to take the oh-so ordinary things in life and turn them into the most exotic objects known to mankind.

This eastern sturgeon is nothing but a long-nosed gar that frequents, like its cousin the carp-looking mud marlin, most every known body of water east and west of the Mississippi. They both provide more sporting action than you can ever want and they are relatively easy targets as well. So, on most float trips, they will eventually stop at the bottom of a shoal and catch crayfish to use for bait.

They free line, with no weight, the live crayfish downstream with the current and eventually an eastern sturgeon or a mud marlin will pick it up and run with it. Now if it's a gar, you have to let them run a long way before they stop to swallow the bait and that was the case for Matt on on trip when a canoe with husband and wife came downstream through the shoal.

They traded "howdy's" and "howyadoin's" while Matt was waiting on a particular gar to begin his second run so he could set the hook. The lady was in the bow of the canoe as it slowed somewhat and the gar decides it's time to leave. Matt set the hook and the gar rocketed out of the water like a Trident sub missle not 5-feet way from the lady in the bow of the canoe. The gar hit the water about the same time the lady screams and the canoe tips over, spilling its occupants into the river. Had Matt timed the hook-set a little better, that gar could have possibly landed in the canoe and Elk River would have experienced another waste spill.

That was the first of many of Matt's incidents while fishing with me. One warm spring day, we decided to hit the Kanawha River at Charleston for some walleye and sauger fishing. Matt handled to bow rope as I back the boat in to float it off the trailer. Once clear, I put the truck in drive and was headed up the ramp when I saw Matt thru my rear view mirror running out into the water after the boat. The bow rope had broken. Then I saw him go under water and come up to grab the boat at the last instance before the river current would have taken it downstream.

He had hit an underwater rock with his shin and went down, got footing and came back up to grab the boat. The air temp was probably in the high 40's that day and the water wasn't much warmer, I'm sure. I put the boat back on the trailer while Matt climbed inside the truck to turn the heater on high. He walked with a limp for a week. It wasn't too long after that we planned a trip up to Burnsville Reservoir to fish for muskie.

We put in at a ramp close to the dam with the intention of fishing a couple of near-by coves and wound up motoring clear to the upper end to fish the standing timber. We no sooner arrived and we heard thunder. We looked at one another and he said something to the effect of "Wetzel, this better not hurt." Just how quickly can a 20 hp motor get a 16-foot boat back to the ramp 5 miles away? Try a full blown sleet storm on for size. By the time we arrived at the ramp, I could hardly release my grip from around the motor tiller and Matt was too cold to care. He volunteered to go get the trucj and trailer and back it down so I could load the boat. That in itself took about 10-minutes since the windshield was layered in ice and he had to chip away at it with a stick.

He told me if my employer hadn't transferred me to Texas when they did, he'd be dead. Dauby wasn't immune either. He leaned back one day in the pedestal seat in my boat when it snapped in two and dumped him back against the motor. He cut his hand pretty bad and we had to cut short another fishing trip. I'm fairly positive that the seat pedestal was considerably weakened from the willow branch incident.

The first thing I did when I got to Texas was sell that boat. I heard all Texans carry guns and wasn't going to chance getting shot over an accident with one during a fishing trip.

The Secret Lure

2009-09-08T16:10:00.000-07:00

Fool me once, shame on you; get a picture of it, shame on me.
__________________

The perfect cast. Fly casters throughout the world seek it. My response was a broad smile as the streamer settled unerringly on an inconspicuous ribbon of moving water that wrapped around a concrete slab the size of a small car. One corner of the eight-inch thick slab lay out of the water against the undercut hillside, almost as though a giant hand had wedged it deep into the channel of the creek before pushing it back to rest against the bank. Instinctively I hunkered down in anticipation of what would come.

Raising the rod tip slightly kept my lure in the current and drifting toward its intended target; a deep washout at the downstream end of the slab created from the current that hugged its hardpan shore. My quarry lay in that watery cave and I had badly misjudged its response.

The cave dweller, a big smallmouth, caught me off-guard as it charged out from under the upstream end of its hideout and inhaled the offering. I snapped the rod to my left, lifting the line from the water and setting the size 6 hook solidly into the denizen. The bass bolted instantly downstream and into the quieter water of the washout before catapulting itself into the treetops. It was all I could do to get the fish on the reel as it zigzagged from bank to bank before I slid it into the shallows and brought it to bay.

She was a typical clear water smallmouth, red-eyed with interspersed dark to light to lighter brown vertical bars precisely spaced on golden canvas scales, her ventral spackled stone gray. I smiled, admiring the muscular twenty-inch fish before returning it to deeper water. The smile turned to a squint of curiosity as I watched the sportful bass race headlong back into its concrete vault, wondering why it hadn't used that tactic while still on the hook.

For a boy of twelve, that isolated stream in east central Illinois allowed a freedom that couldn't be found within the confines of a boat on some crowded lake. It offered a limitless correspondence with nature, allowing its curious habitue the opportunity to drift with the currents of wind and water as well.

I had long retreated from that Shangri-La sixteen years past, emerging as a college graduate and a military veteran to enter my first real job in West Virginia. Much to my delight, though, that rural location prospered with wood and water, bringing a fresh harmony into my life.

Having been previously familiar with catching river bass, I became fascinated with catching walleye from a river while casting for trout. Speculating that bigger, noisier lures might appeal to the larger bass and walleye, I changed tactics and re-located a mile downstream on Elk River to an eddy of water that contained several mid-river logjams. There I stationed myself along the bank to hopefully pry a bigger fish from tangles of logs and other debris with a rather hefty looking lure. Unwittingly, I was on the brink of becoming the mark instead.

It was during one of my logjam flogging events that a flat-bottomed boat came into view from upstream. Two fishermen were stationed front and rear in this boat, casting enormous lures toward either bank. Each would whip-cast his lure toward the bank and retrieve it in an erratic fashion, swishing it back and forth for a few seconds at boat side before lifting it from the water and repeating the entire process.

Their boat was a befuddlement the likes of which I had never seen. It had the standard electric trolling motor attached at the bow but it was a shiny protrusion from the stern which slanted downward into the water that was the puzzle. As they got closer, I recognized it as a metal rudder that kept the boat from pin wheeling on the many currents.

Both fishermen were standing, the taller of the two in the bow. The shorter one kept glancing around his partner down river toward me, talking to his buddy between glimpses. I couldn't hear what they were saying when they suddenly angled their boat toward the bank I was standing on and beached it. The taller one jumped out and tied the boat securely to a root ball. Shorty followed after he retrieved a coffee thermos from amidst the ton of tackle they had neatly stored in the center of their boat.

They introduced themselves and immediately started asking questions machine-gun style about the kind of lures I was using, what I was fishing for, had I caught anything, and on and on. I remember thinking, "These guys are either very friendly or I've been caught trespassing." Shorty poured a cup of coffee and offered it to me. Ah, friendly types. I relaxed and accepted it, then began edging closer to their boat for a better look.

"Whatta ya think 'bout those lures there?" the taller one spoke as he pointed toward a Styrofoam cooler located in the middle of all that fishing tackle. A vision of Santa's sleigh flashed through my head. There must have been four dozen extra-large lures dangling from the rear set of treble hooks inside that cooler, lures the likes of which I had never seen.

"Homemade, they are," Shorty boasted. "You'll not find those in any tackle shop nowhere." A few of them appeared battle scarred. They seemed outlandishly large for bass or walleye, though.

"You guys use those big things for bass and walleye?" I asked unwittingly. They shot glances back and forth at one another. Shorty jumped in.

"Well, we do catch them every once in awhile. But we're really fishin' fer muskie."

I thought, "Muskellunge? That's a Canadian fish. What's a Canadian fish doing--"

"Hey," the taller one blurted out, "we've got a real special, secret lure that we make to catch these muskie with. Wanna see it?" I shook my head up and down hoping these easterners understood it as a 'yes.' He walked to the boat.

"We don't show this secret lure to everyone," Shorty said as he tipped his hat back, drawing my attention away from the boat. The taller fisherman returned and handed his buddy something. The shorter fisherman approached me and held out an object that resembled something out of a barnyard, except it had hooks on it.

I was surprised, no, shocked. I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing. I had seen enough of these during my mid-western upbringing but the thought never struck me to use them as fishing lures. I couldn't help it. A chuckle escaped then a full-blown laugh.

He quickly lowered their secret lure. The taller one glared hard at me. Possibly, I might have insulted them with my laughter. It became nervously silent.

"You mean, there's muskie in this river?" I asked pointing toward the water. They both shook their heads up and down together. Good, we speak the same language.

"And you actually catch muskie on this lure?" They looked at one another. I should have known they were up to something but I was from the Sucker State. It was my destiny to ignore any possible ruse. That's why we Illinoisans are so experienced. We recognize a mistake after we make it again.

"Let me see that lure one more time," I asked him, hoping they were being sincere in their claim. He held it up and I took it, holding it close for better inspection. Yep, it's what I thought it was all right. I twisted it around for a closer look. CLICK!

The shutter of a camera dropped. I turned to see the taller one with a 35mm camera pointed at me, and a smile a coon in a corn patch would have been proud of; ear to ear. I had been hoodwinked by a couple of hillbillies.

That secret lure was designed as a conversation piece and given to new fishermen they would meet as a souvenir of the new friendship that was struck.

I still believe to this day that it is possible to catch a muskie on a corncob lure, but be prepared to produce evidence to anyone who asks, "What'd ya catch it on?" when you do. We all got a good laugh out of that first meeting.

The vision of a corncob lure and a big grin are the first things that fill my head and face when I see or think of either of them. Since that encounter these two gentlemen became nationally acclaimed lure makers in their own right. Bill Looney (taller one) makes the world famous Amma Bama muskie glide baits. Bill Crane (Shorty) is also world reknown for his Crane Baits.

There are no longer any secrets about their lures in the muskie fishing fraternity.

Magnum Man

2009-09-08T15:42:00.000-07:00

Has technology really advanced us?
__________________

Deer hunting season. That time of year when fishermen take a needed break from being dumber than fish to become dumber than deer. Most every state in the union has a deer season and most outdoor types participate. I was one, and the 1975 pre-season gave me a hair-raising education.

Heaters, WV in Braxton County:
The blast roared up the hollow and back, a different sound that echoed from the hills before re-mixing as ominous thunder. It didn't contain the typical, short lived BOOM of a high powered rifle, and the patrons inside Libby's Luncheonette must have agreed as they filed outside to look. The shooter lay on the ground at the front of his truck, hands at his face as he writhed in pain.

He was a hulk of a man, pushing fifty and balding slightly. His hat lay several feet away exposing a thin spot near the crown of his head. He had huge hands that sprouted even larger fingers as they appeared to wrap completely around his head. Almost Neanderthal, I thought to myself. Never mind that his short stature wouldn't allow him to see very well over the steering wheel of his three-quarter ton Dodge pick-up. I wondered more how he ever got one of those massive fingers inside the trigger guard of his large caliber rifle without accidentally setting it off.

He pulled his hands away to expose a face that had been weathered by years of exposure to the elements. His left cheek sagged more than his right from the huge wads of tobacco that usually soaked there. He wasn't muscular or fat, just bulky. There was no neck that I could tell as being a neck. His head sat directly on his thickly bulging shoulders and his shirt strained against his thick biceps and forearms. He wore bib overalls and leather boots to mid-shin. Definitely Neanderthal from all appearances.

It was two weeks before bucks only season when even the truest of fishermen exchanged rod for gun and drifted over to Libby's to sight them in. It was a simple gun range, backstopped against a steep, grassy hillside behind the restaurant. Most shooters came to show off their newly purchased weapons and to enjoy the smell of fresh smoked, sugar-cured ham while using the trunks, hoods, doors or whatever else jutted out from their vehicles as gun rests. The annual target shoot and open display of weaponry in this small, mountain community was confidently entrusted to its residents. They understood the consequences of misuse, well, most of the consequences.

The injured shooter was an exception. An avid hunter who for years always filled his limit, he rarely bragged and never disclosed to anyone his hunting method or area. As long as I could remember, he had always successfully used an old .300 Savage lever action rifle with open sights. However, the 1975 season was going to be different for him.

Fed up with the inescapable advancement of gun technology, Magnum Man had shed his pre-historic club and purchased a rifle the likes of which was going to leave its mark of technological history upon ballistics science and the already deeply pocked and pitted hillside behind the luncheonette. It didn't take long for a crowd of admirers to gather around his truck when he laid the new gun case on the hood. This new rifle not only upgraded his status quo, it literally took the entire community to a new level of mindless avarice.

"Now, boys," he confidently aired, "let me introduce you to the latest and greatest in hunting rifles." He unzipped the leather rifle case in short, strip-tease actions causing the crowd to move in closer. Eventually he exposed the most erogenous features of a perfectly crafted Weatherby .375 H & H magnum complete with Monte Carlo stock and a 3 x 9 variable wide-field scope. We all nearly fainted from the lack of oxygen as everyone inhaled simultaneously in an expression of climatic exhilaration.

"Blow out the black of a bulls-eye at 150 yards," he stated to no one in particular, gently fondling the weapon with those huge hands. A stream of tobacco juice erupted from his face toward the ground as he ran a rugged hand along the curvaceous length of stock and barrel. He reached into one of the many pockets of his overalls and retrieved 5 rounds of ammunition for that hand-held howitzer. The shells were the same size as his fingers. I suddenly became aware of my near vicinity and sought sanctuary on the planet Mars.

One hundred fifty yards out, against the scarred ground of a hillside, stood a set of five targets. From the graveled parking lot where the shooters stood, the targets were pitched at approximately a 15-degree declination, purposely so in the name of safety.

This short, burly, tobacco-packed man took a solid stance over the hood of his truck and brought the glistening beauty up, placing its smooth, solid stock against his right cheek. The three-inch diameter scope appeared to be micro-moments away from swallowing him head first. Homo erectus, I envisioned, peering over the edge of his cave ledge on tiptoes, poised to smite a wooly mammoth. I looked back at the scope.

They are wonderful luxuries in providing shooters with less than eagle-eye vision the opportunity to place a distant target at the end of their nose for better viewing. However, they have a major optic flaw in that near and peripheral vision is totally obstructed as one peers through it.

It took a few seconds for everyone to absorb the concussion from the blast as it roared back upon us from its rambling trip down the hollow. The rifle bounced gracefully from the hood of the truck in slow motion and hit the ground on one end before slowly toppling over to stillness. Magnum Man was jerked violently backwards and onto his shoulders. I noticed more leaves than usual floating to the ground from the trees around us that fall day. The echo was deafening. It's yield thunderous. Then silence.

People began to stir. Someone rushed in to attend to Magnum Man. Another quickly gathered his hat and gun. I returned from Mars. He sat up and began shaking his head. He looked at his hands. They were crimson covered and a stream of blood trickled down the right side of his face. Tobacco juice flowed down his left cheek.

The scope had cut him deeply over and under his right eye in its failed attempt to gorge itself. He finally stood up under swaggering legs and gazed around as if to get his bearings. He staggered back to the hood of his truck to lean there, convincing me to remain dumber than fish.

It began in whispers, then finger pointing. The bullet from that magnum rifle never arrived at its intended target. The combination of a 15-degree declination, his simian stature, and a failure of the scope to see what the muzzle of the rifle saw two feet away led to the blow-out of a shiny silver truck fender instead of bulls-eye black.

The subject of that event and his magnum rifle was never discussed in his presence after that day. Some say an archeological dig centuries from now could possibly turn up the remains of a rusty, motorized vehicle with a big bore hunting device stuck deep into its right front fender.

The Vow of Silence

2009-09-08T15:30:00.000-07:00

What possesses fishermen to keep fish locations to themselves?
_________________

We were taught in kindergarten to share with one another. What seems to be the problem now that we're intelligent and experienced adults? It really steams my backside when musky hunters who catch big fish during the week while I'm working for a living won’t share the details. Besides, don't these guys have jobs to go to as well? It wouldn't be nearly so bothersome to me if their big catch came during the crowded weekends when the rest of us are out there involved in the confusion.

Then, to add insult to injury, I have to find out about it by reading the local news paper. And the sad part of that is, it was generally a musky fishing buddy of mine. I'd like to think it respectful to call and tell your friends before the paper prints it. But it never stopped me from continuing to be a friend to them, dogs that they may be sometimes.

My therapist told me to direct my anger outward. Use inanimate objects. Jog an extra mile each day. Do extra push-ups, anything that wouldn't turn faithful friend to flattering foe. He recognized that, due to my size, I could very well become a real threat to someone physically.

Sub-consciously, I had been directing my anger inward and it was eating me up inside to reveal those precious musky locations to my friends. If I understood him correctly, I had this unconscious desire to determine if a particular musky I had located and couldn't catch could become just as elusive with my musky fishing friends.

After my first year of therapy, I did feel less disturbed about giving those locations away. "After all," he explained to me, "the probability that someone else had discovered that fish before you and someone before them and even someone else previous to that should prove that keeping the location of a big musky secret was entirely self-centered of me since the odds of catching a larger, therefore, older and wiser fish were diminishing with each encounter from the first time it was discovered." In other words, so what if I told someone else, they probably couldn't catch it either. Damn he was good!

My musky fishing career was made up entirely of stumbling into large fish. But they were always the ones that were old Houdini fans or had an incurable case of lock-jaw. "Nothing more cunning than a big musky" someone in the Esox fraternity said. Hell, he was probably just as unfortunate as I.

My musky fishing buddies shied away from fishing with me at first – didn’t want to take any chances showing an unproven musky fisherman the big fish they had been keeping secret since the beginning of time. No, sir, didn't want me flying straight to the buzzard's roost to disclose the location of another carcass to the vultures that would eventually circle on the updrafts above hoping to gain the next opportunity afforded them.

As time wore on, though, they must have surmised that I was actually coming across these big fish of my own accord. "What is there to worry about," I could envision them saying to one another, "here's an honest musky dog who can put us straight into the lair of another giant musky he can't catch." Finally I had become a trusted friend.

"It's for the greater good," my therapist reminded me. "A big fish is probably an old fish and there is no benefit to the fraternity for one of them to die of natural causes." That made perfect sense to me. I do not enjoy seeing a natural resource going to waste and I always have a warm spot available for any of earth’s creatures. Thoughtful, caring, and sharing person that I am, I didn't particularly care to see creatures die and I do know of a few musky hunters out there less fortunate than I who could use a confidence builder like a trophy fish. Nothing wrong with that, is there? While it may take awhile for the light to go on in this attic, I’ve never let it stand in the way of friendship. We can only acknowledge that things happened for a reason and move on to the next adventure. As long as I'm the only one who gets hurt by my own actions, why fret and worry?

I gained an unprecedented confidence in my therapist along the way. Undoubtedly he did help me cope with my problem and assured me that while giving away trophy musky locations was not the best thing to sometimes do, it was the right thing to do where friends are concerned. He even had our group out to his summer cabin for sort of a “healing celebration", and that's when I took a turn for the worse, a relapse I believe it's called.

I thought I might have recognized four of the five trophy muskies he had mounted on the den wall of his cabin. Three of them were unmistakably fish I had been seeing but couldn't catch, the markings on them dead giveaways. It wasn't as though he had violated doctor-patient confidentiality. After all, he had kept it to himself and his cabin walls. But my inner voice raged - the sob used you!

I approached him for an explanation of his piscatorial display in light of all the "treatment" he had given me, allowing me to become even more open than I had previously been. "They would have succumbed to natural causes anyway," he reminded me. Hell, I probably helped pay for those mounts.

"Well," I shouted back, blood boiling hot, "I'm never disclosing the location of another big musky to anyone, especially you." I jabbed a pointy finger at him, not satisfied with having properly chastised him, "And as far as that goes, I'm just going to let that fifty-eight inch fish I've been seeing at the lower end of the Sugar Creek eddy die of natural causes, what do you think about that?"

That should ground the buzzard.

Muskie Hayday

2009-09-08T15:18:00.000-07:00

Horses can be led to water and should be in this case.
________________________

There was a distinctive KA-THUSH from upstream and then his characteristic chuckle. The head-high willows kept us from making eye contact with one another but I could clearly see the limbs of a large tree above him shaking vigorously. Smiling to myself, I thought how fortunate I was to have this father-in-law who was very much at home in the outdoors.

George was the one who introduced me to refreshing swims in a crystal clear, hide-away river eddy miles from civilization, deer trails and ginseng patches on hard-to-reach mountain tops, and the great fishing that could be had along this small creek between Gem and Rollyson in Braxton county, West Virginia. An avid bottle hunter, he frequented old, abandoned home sites along that creek while fishing some of its larger potholes.

It was during one of those bottle-hunting expeditions that he had walked ahead of me with his fishing pole. His chuckle erupted once more. He had stopped under a large, over-hanging sycamore tree, which shaded the upper end of a deep pool, to cast. The branches above him shook once more as I hurried to see what all the commotion was. His lure was stuck solidly in the tree limbs above him.

He grinned at me and pointed out into the pool of water. “Muskie,” he stated. I glanced quickly into the water hoping to see my first Esox in the wild. I had only read about muskie and had hoped to one-day catch one.

“It followed my Jitterbug in from the opposite bank, turned and swatted it out of the water with its tail,” he continued.

Toothy-mouthed critters with intelligence, I thought? What’s this world coming too? I glanced back out into the pool. It was hard enough to accept the notion that muskie lived in this wee creek but fish that purposely flip lures out of the water with their tails was totally ludicrous. “Say what?” I managed to mumble.

He reached down with one hand to pick up a long stick and deliberately foul the hooks of his tree-bound lure then pulled it free. I was still gazing out into the creek. “I once heard,” he continued, “that when a struggling rodent is close to escaping, the muskie will use its tail to flip it back out into open water where it can be easily dispatched.” What next, I imagined? Newspaper headlines flashed before me:
__________________

Muskie Threatens Local Fisherman
GEM—Yesterday, in what appeared to be an attempt to gorge itself,
a Salt Lick resident tail-swatted at the feet of a local fisherman
in an attempt to knock him into the creek…
__________________

“Let’s don’t go there today.”

“What’d you say?” he asked, stopping to gaze at me. I must have been mumbling. I do that a lot when my impressions of the world get blown to smithereens. I spoke up. “The muskie is still out there, you say?”

We cast our lures around in that pool for another hour without seeing the fish again. Ol’ Esox must have high-tailed it to the Salt Lick supermarket instead. I presumed that’s where they went for the sure thing when the tail-swat didn’t work. It was difficult for me to picture these long, torpedo-shaped fish living in a small creek. Do they leap out of the water and swap end for end to get turned around?

George also introduced me to many of the landlubbers along Salt Lick and gaining permission to fish from their property was a simple matter of dropping the names of my in-laws’. It was my mother-in-law who suggested that I begin returning the favor to the people along Salt Lick by assisting them with their seasonal chores such as haying.

As part of my early mid-western upbringing, I worked many summers in the hayfields of central Illinois during my high school years and, upon my mother-in-law’s advice, I offered this entrenched knowledge to one Hun Singleton for allowing me the use of his property. I was told, with a pat on the back and a smile, to report to his home the following morning.

I sensed an ill wind when I arrived at the Singleton’s the following morning to perform my volunteered duty. Having not seen any of the familiar haying utensils, I was wondering if I might be confused about the day or time when Hun answered my knock. The ensuing aroma buckled my knees.

My mother-in-law must have known when she shoved me out the door without breakfast that fateful morning. The Singleton’s had a breakfast spread fit for royalty. I tail-swatted the door shut behind me on my way to the table. Within 10-hours I would come to realize why death-row inmates are fed just such a meal before their final day on earth.

By the time we arrived in the meadow, I was totally bewildered. Not a tractor or hay baler in sight. I went from puzzled to panic stricken in a disbelieving blink. What had I gotten myself into and, better yet, how could I get myself out gracefully? If I wanted to continue fishing Salt Lick from his property, I had to follow through with our agreement.

“Uh, excuse me, Mr. Singleton, sir,” I stammered. “Are---are we going to be baling hay today, sir?” He grinned. I shuttered. My Adams apple pin-balled off the walls of my throat and stomach before returning as a vexatious lump. Beads of sweat broke out along my forehead and the wind I heard rushing past my ears was actually brain cells being sucked out of my head.

“The horses cut it yesterday evening and will come back to rake it directly,” he replied. “Why?”

In the name of the muskie, that’s why I reminded myself. “Oh, no reason, sir. I just thought I had my days mixed up.”

“Once the horses buck rake it, we’ll pitch and shock what we can on those tall poles you see out there in the meadow,” he said, pointing toward them. “The rest will go into the barn behind the house.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward a distant building high on the hill. My mouth hung open to expedite the brain sucking process.

Aliens, that’s it. I’ve finally met those space travelers who purportedly crash-landed many years ago in Flatwoods. They had lost all contact with their kind. And, from all indications, they never made useful contact with our kind as well. Apparently, for fear of drawing attention to themselves, they purposely never progressed to tractors and hay balers. If you’ve ever tried to pitch buck-raked hay with a pitchfork, then you fully appreciate what I went through that day. Horse-drawn buck rakes are a means to corporal punishment not a practice.

After that day of intense labor, I never fished Salt Lick from the Singleton property again. My plan to convince them to purchase and use modern haying equipment will continue to fail as long as horses continue to breed.

I wonder if a muskie tail-swat could tumble a horse into the creek for an easy dispatch?

Cowigatorskie

2009-09-08T15:14:00.000-07:00

Our lives are a chain of events leading to embarrassing situations.
_________________

A relaxing day of fishing. That was all I hoped for when we started the float trip on an uninhabited river two hours from any civilization. It was a cool summer day in June 1978. My body hair was standing on end as I inhaled the crisp, organic fragrance of nature. I felt strangely reminisce as I watched the reflection of the hardwood canopy off the mirror-like water.

Suddenly, I was taken back to June 1951. I was just beginning to synchronize myself with the outdoors at that time. Duke, my closest companion and confidant, can have all the credit for pushing ma nature in front of me. He and I roamed aimlessly through the dense pine thickets of eastern Maryland, near Chesapeake Bay, endeavoring to solve macrocosmic riddles that lay hidden among so many pinecones and prickly limbs. Duke was attracted more to the low hanging ones, acknowledging each one with a stellar hind leg salute while I lumber-jacked the treetops.

A mere boy of five with a keen-nosed dog can quickly become bored of familiar surroundings, so we ventured into an unexplored thicket a half mile from home. Unknown to either of us during that adventure, it would divide us as friends and dissolve any childish belief I had in the red bone breed as a brave and ferocious lot.

My fishing partner appeared to be mechanically involved as he cast his large artificial lure toward the bank from mid-stream. While I was yet a mere novice to this sport of muskie fishing, my partner was an older, more accomplished fisher of ten thousand casts, eager to hurl me headlong into battle with the wolves of the water. I mentally drifted back to the thicket Duke and I were charging into when it suddenly charged back.

Huge, long legged, fuzzy-tailed, horny-headed alligators were running toward us. Not sure of what to do, we instinctively ran for our lives. Duke had already jumped to the lead as we headed deeper into the thicket, hoping the low-hanging prickly limbs would slow the dog-ripping, little-boy eating creatures. I tried to keep up with Duke but eventually lost sight of him. I assumed the worst for my previously dependable comrade.

Later I found myself, still very much alive, pounding on the back door of a not so familiar farmhouse. The inhabitants, both quite old and obviously uninformed of the terror that lay out there, received my full disapproval. Falling completely apart at the sight of human life forms, I began crying at the top of my burning lungs, "IWANTMYMOMMY! IWANTMYMOMMY!" It seemed an eternity until she arrived and, after our glorious reunion, I tearfully explained to her as intelligently as any five-year old could about the big, mean, and ugly creatures that chased Duke and me away from home. Duke had stayed behind to fight them off and was probably laying out there in that big pine thicket a shredded, unrecognizable carcass.

Mother sweetly chuckled and told me that Duke had found his way home and she had so worried for me until our neighbors called. She looked into my tear soaked eyes to tell me that alligators didn't live in Maryland and what we had seen were probably just cows. She was as uninformed as those old farmers. A five-year old knows what a cow looks like and these were definitely alligators in my book, deformed, ferocious, ugly looking creatures with big protruding eyeballs ready to pop out of their heads. Well, maybe they didn't have sharp, pointy teeth but they were scary enough to be alligators.

We moved later that year from Maryland to Illinois and dad gave Duke away to some dairy farmer so he could live out the rest of his days dodging scary looking cowigators. As disappointed as I was with him, I remember feeling really sorry that he couldn't come with us.

My fishing partner was mumbling something as the ponderous, torpedo-shaped fish cruised into view behind my lure several hundred retrieves into the float trip. I was unaware as I quickly became lost in the yellow, protruding eyes of an alligator face. The fishing rod I was holding felt strangely like stale bread as I sped into the summer 1958.

Each summer for nearly five years it was the same vacation with the family to Florida to visit my grandparents. And, every summer vacation I would get the same scolding for climbing on Gramp's cyclone fence that separated his backyard from a neighborhood pond. Stupid fence. Why was it there if it wasn't to be climbed on? The pond had its typical resident duck population, the white kind or "Easter orphans" as he called them.

It wasn’t until June 1966, with four short weeks left before I entered the Navy, all the hoopla about that cyclone fence was cleared up. The resident ducks were bunched up together against their side of the fence as I approached them with a double handful of stale breadcrumbs.

Without warning, the pond erupted near the ducks and a greenish-brown hulk hurled itself against the cyclone fence, mouth agape, eyeballs protruding, and sharp teeth gleaming. Breadcrumbs and duck feathers floated from the sky for hours it seemed, but I never forgot those yellow eyes and sharp teeth as the 'gator lay there momentarily sizing me up before gliding back into the dark pond water. For an instant I thought I heard Duke's resounding bellow.

I jerked my lure out of the water at boat side in frightened fashion and yelled deep from my lungs. Silence prevailed. I recovered my senses and the great fish that I had been hoping to catch, sank slowly back into the depths of the river. I turned to my partner who was staring at me in disbelief, chuckling to himself.

"What's so funny," I asked.

My mentor grinned that malicious grin that I would become so accustomed to and said, "Coming up against a big, hungry muskie like that one and freezing up is not a laughing matter, no sir. What you yelled is."

At the moment of my long awaited opportunity, with the trophy muskie of a lifetime laying vulnerable at my feet and the river fragrances still lingering in my flared nostrils, I had yelled to no one in particular, "IWANTMYMOMMY!"

Despite my poor showing on that float trip and all of my awkward explanations, my muskie fishing mentor managed to put up with me for many more adventuresome years.

The Old Man and the River

2009-09-08T15:08:00.000-07:00

People are put in our way for a reason.
__________________

The huge muskellunge shook its massive head violently from side to side at the surface then dived under the boat. Line began slipping gradually from the reel as the fish turned and made a lunging run toward a mid-river logjam. Thumbing the reel spool only served to put more pressure on the line before it finally parted.

My heart had been going ninety miles an hour and nearly burst from the instantaneous relaxation. I stared at the logjam in disbelief, hoping the great fish would roll up from the tiring battle. If ever there was a fish to fret over, it was that one. They’re not called The King out of fairness. A noise upstream drew my attention.

It was him. Silently they had approached the scene in another boat and watched the battle to its bitter end. He was with a young boy and they both had witnessed most of the fight. “Nice fish,” he stated sympathetically. “At least you know whar theys a big ‘un now.”

I remember thinking, “Just who is this old geezer and why does he care that I just lost the biggest muskellunge I’ll ever hook in my life?”

“Thanks,” I mumbled to no one in particular. The old man nodded then told me any other fisherman would have gone ahead and taken a cheap shot at that struggling fish with their gaff hook while it was at the boat. “God, if he only knew the half of it,” I softly grumbled through gritted teeth. I did have my gaff hook in-hand and high above my head when the big fish was thrashing at boat side but I held off for fear of severing the line should I miss. I never considered wounding the fish and having it break off only to lose it because of my thoughtlessness.

“At the least, she escaped with only an injured ego,” he stated, attempting to further console me.

He was right. Hammering that fish with the gaff hook at the boat, as I was intending, wouldn’t have been the smart thing to do. I had elected not to on the chance I could fairly land the fish. There would be another time, I hoped, and I would be all the more deserving because of it. I felt a little better about the loss and I did know where The King lived. Then they were gone.

The following weekend I was back in the middle of that same eddy, looking for The King and fully expecting to find the corpse. Halfway through the eddy I saw the old man. He was standing on the bank behind his house, casting. I made small talk with him as I fished on by in my boat. A congenial old cuss, I thought, but something didn’t feel right. Here I was in a spacious and comfortable fishing boat that would easily hold two people with luxuries not normally afforded in an old wooden flat-bottomed john-boat the likes of his.

Something pushed me to ask him to fish with me in my boat for the rest of the day and he jumped at the opportunity. When we had only gone about fifty yards he blurted out, “Gonna hafta git me one o’ these padded chars, ya know.” I pictured him sitting in a padded seat in his old wooden riverboat. “It’ll work,” I told him, “it’ll work.”

He was a retired coal miner with a severe case of emphysema and his continued smoking didn’t help any. His condition wasn’t too bad when we first met. He had to use his portable oxygen bottle every now and then but only when he got excited or hot. He was a likeable sort, cheerful and always seeing the positive side to almost everything. I needed balance in my young life and he certainly provided a lot of that. I went fish-less that day but I remember it wasn’t as painful as it would have been without him along. I thought I might just enjoy this old codger after all and the relationship grew after that day

Over the next weeks and months, I quickly discovered his incessant love for this river we fished. The respect he held for this river in the tone of his voice when he talked hid a lot more than what he let on. And he had some stories to tell that kept me on edge. I caught myself really listening to him, actually enjoying his company more than the fishing.

We became inseparable whenever I was in his vicinity on most weekends I’d drive to his house to pick him up or, if the conditions weren’t right or he wasn’t feeling well, I’d join him on his porch swing and we’d chat about his river fishing adventures. He showed me his fishing equipment one day. He was from the old school of muskie hunters, toting an old True Temper octagonal steel rod and a Pflueger level wind reel minus the line guide. He even had braided fishing line loaded on that reel. He couldn’t be convinced of the superiority of modern tackle but he took quickly to the newer lures that were being used.

I gave him several brand new eight-inch long Crane baits that he immediately gravitated to. To him, the action of this lure imitated so well the lazy swimming action of a river sucker, favorite entrée of the muskellunge. It was one of these lures he was using while we fished the river one summer day in 1981.

He had cast it over two submerged sycamore logs and was crawling it back so tantalizingly slow over them when a muskellunge rose up from between them and hesitantly nibbled at the rear set of treble hooks. The old man reared back in his padded seat to set the hooks and his steel rod broke in two just above the reel seat.

Somehow that fish managed to get to the boat without tangling in the logjam. It dived under the boat and disappeared. I had the big dip net in hand moments after he had set the hook. Then he stood up, half crouched, rod butt and reel clinched tightly in his hands, as the broken piece of rod slid uncontrollably down the line toward the fish at the opposite end. I screamed at him to get the fish back up on top.

He calmly turned to me and said, “With what? The coaxin’ end of my stick is down there with that crazed fish ‘bout now.” He turned back to the business at hand and all I could do was watch, for the moment. He managed to lift the fish up to the top with that broken butt section and I immediately dipped it. He sat back down in the padded seat gasping for air, dropping his broken section of rod and reel to get his oxygen bottle. I had the fish in the bottom of the boat throwing an awful tantrum and we both watched it subside. I had removed the lure from its mouth while he continued gulping oxygen. I put it back in the water and grabbed it by the tail to help revive it until he had recovered enough to say, “Looks like a 43-44 incher to me.”

It was 43-3/4” long, a trophy to me. He wanted to help revive the fish but by then it had recovered enough and we both watched it swim off under its own power. I looked at him as he watched the fish swim slowly away and out of sight into the deeper water. A smile of satisfaction grew like a sun rise on his face.

He looked at me. “Did you hear the birds singing?” I listened. Birds were singing all around us. “Muskie birds” he called them. He looked at me strangely and said, “It’s going to be a good day when they sing, happens every time you know.” I was thinking, “Uh-oh, he’s stroked out on me.” I shook my head in the negative. “I didn’t hear them but I do now.” He smiled, looking me in the eyes and answered “We’ve still got time for you to figure it out.”

I motioned him to get his oxygen bottle and he took a few more breaths, then with a simple hand gesture, told me to continue fishing. “I’ve got my fish for the day, sonny,” he challenged. “I’m jis gonna sit in this here padded char and watch you take yer best shot at it.” He leaned over the gunwale of the boat and scooped a handful of river water over the back of his neck. He sprawled out in that padded seat, pulled his ball hat down a little bit tighter and folded his arms across his chest. He stayed silent for the rest of the trip, and I watched him like a hawk in case he really wasn’t feeling well.

He did have his silent spells. I often wondered what that sly, old mind was thinking. I had an idea he might be getting worse when he started bringing two of those oxygen bottles with him. We avoided those really hot days by staying indoors to talk about muskie fishing and the river. Sometimes he would go silent there as well. His silence worried me some and it caused me to scold him one day.

We were floating a pool of water just before entering its lower riffle. I was vigorously casting at a submerged log on the opposite side of the river and glanced downstream to judge our distance from the riffle when I noticed a small stick-up jutting out of the water, just in front and to the opposite side of the boat. I ignored it and concentrated on the big log with another cast. Several minutes later I heard the old man grunt. I quickly looked back at him, fearing the worst.

He was leaned back in the padded seat with his rod nearly doubled over. I traced his line down into the water and past the boat toward that stick-up, finally focusing on a huge muskie with his lure in its mouth. I put my rod down and grabbed for the dip net.

“Dammit, why didn’t you say something,” I shouted. By then the muskie was at the rear of the boat and had turned to come up the other side. I stuck the dip net into the water next to the boat and pushed. The fish swam directly into the net. I grabbed the rim and heaved the green fish into the boat, dropping net and fish on the bottom without considering any consequence. It took a few seconds for the beast to gather its senses.

It was as if the old man and that fish were on the same wavelength. He no sooner said, “Hooey, boy, you’re gonna have it out now!” and that fish began the wildest thrashing and bowing fit I’ve ever witnessed. Fishing tackle was being scattered about willy-nilly. He finally threw his jacket over the fish’s head and it calmed down. I was muttering unkind words of revenge to that stubborn beast when his chuckle drew my attention.

He then proceeded to verbally assail me for taking that fish so soon. I knew what the chances were of ever landing a twenty-five pound plus fish in a narrow width of river with potential snags in all directions but I wisely kept quiet and took the abuse. Afterwards, I think he was proud of it even if he didn’t get a sporting chance. It was then I heard the birds singing around us and couldn’t recall if they had been singing before the fish struck. I looked at him as he sat back in that padded seat again. “You know,” he said, “to some people fishing becomes personal time to be spend ponderin’ ‘bout things that can’t be pondered about in normal everyday life. Nature has a way about her for putting us in sync with ourselves if we’d only let her.”

“I do my best thinking when I listen,” he continued. God, I loved this man. Easy going and upbeat even with the odds stacked against him. We fished and talked together for two plus years, becoming the truest of pals. Never in my wildest imagination did I ever believe it would end. I didn’t care if we ever caught another fish together I needed him there with me.

I don’t know if the birds sang that cold December day in 1983 when my quickly made friend and mentor, lover of the river and the friendship it gave to us, believer and giver of the spirit, Delbert Boone, passed away.
I do believe he heard them, though. I was bitter over his passing at first, the memories we made together still so fresh in me. I thought about how my father-in-law had been taken from our midst before I had a real chance to enjoy him. In a way, Delbert Boone was pushed in front of me as God’s way of saying, “George wanted to give you these same things.”

I know the birds are singing where he’s at now and I’m more focused now when I look back at how I use to be. His chuckle and laugh, his observations he tried to keep to himself as he relaxed in that padded seat watching with his ears and listening with his eyes.

His perkiness and excitement as we watched mama mink scurrying from rock to rock, nipping at her four cubs when they didn’t pay strict attention. The big white-tailed buck as it plunged into the river ahead of us on its way to wherever white-tailed bucks roam. His ear-to-ear smile and special coddling gestures as a mother wood duck skittered along the river bank, attempting to collect her brood of twenty into a manageable lot.

Delbert was God’s way of slowing me down and dropping this big package called Nature into my lap. All I was required to do was listen more with my eyes than my ears in order to know and understand the man, any man really.

You were a man of the river, passing it on to another. God blessed you, my friend.

I Love Sugar Creek

2009-09-08T14:58:00.000-07:00

"When you've hit the bottom of the barrel there's no way to go but up, unless it's further down." - Walt Garrison
___________________

It wasn't that I couldn't catch a muskie. It was the over forty-inch muskie. It was as elusive as a shadow and as catchable as a cold. It could make a preacher cuss and a grown man cry. It couldn't be lived with and it couldn't be lived without. Men have destroyed tackle in their frustration of failure, nay, even boats and possibly their own lives. Why fishermen continue to pursue this fish is puzzling. Why they continue to ply one particular body of water for so many years in pursuit of that magic mark requires psychoanalysis at the very least.

Sugar Creek was that couch for me. It was the finest stretch of muskie water I've ever fished. It was the most frustrating place I've ever drove away from. And I should know. I fished this eddy of water for twelve years. For one hundred forty-four months it dictated my life when I should have conformed. For over five hundred days it controlled my life when I should have been in charge. I've since come to consider that control and conformity don't exist in the world of the over forty-inch muskie.

I put those finned creatures of Sugar Creek before everything else in life; my family, friends, fortune, and existence itself. Some would have considered it a complete waste of time those twelve years. But muskie hunters look at it as an investment, the interest earned being mental instability.

Those fish made sport of me as I went through four different vehicles, three different boats, several dozen fishing partners, a catalog of lures, sunglasses and hats, several stores of chewing tobacco and beer, two different body shapes and six hairstyles, anything to transform the misfortune. I've cussed them and praised them, not necessarily in that order mind you, laughed and cried, but mostly I talked to myself a lot, muttering unintelligible phraseology and humming heavy metal music as I continued to ply those many Sugar Creek lairs.

I can count on both hands the number of times Sugar Creek has not shown me one of her brutes. I can't count on both hands and feet the number of times I've hooked and lost one of those over forty-inch scoundrels. I can count on one finger the number of times I haven't sworn at the top of my lungs as I watched them swim off after parting ways with me, pulling the shroud of doubt further down. I've caught smallmouth bass and walleye from Sugar Creek that would make any fisherman envious, but I could never land that forty-inch plus prize that laughs there.

I managed to resume living with that knowledge but only as long as I know others, like me, are also meeting the same fate. Yet, I continued to thwart any and all scholarly thought by imagining my most rewarding victory over any forty-inch muskie in Sugar Creek. Many times I would skip work, explaining that I didn't feel well while sneaking off to Sugar Creek with the notion that would be the glorious day. I refused good paying overtime and Sunday morning worship services to search for success on Sugar Creek.

I've gone so far as to perform superstitious acts that I never before thought of as having anything to do with anything just to cover myself in case it really did amount to something. I've spit on lures, soaked them in mixtures of four different brands of formularized bait attractants, ritualistically placed those same lures, after the proper amount of soaking, on peculiar alters in my boats, even gone so far as to pee over the gunwales with the hope of creating the correct ph balance.

I've repeated verse from Homer's Odyssey and hummed Led Zeppelin's Heartbreaker to those over forty-inch muskie, hoping to strike a chord of sympathy. I would purposely retrieve a bologna sandwich from my lunch pail and wave it at them threateningly as I chanted, "We must eat to live and live to eat!" That single act alone only succeeded in increasing my daily consumption of bologna sandwiches and inflating my body mass.

I've since slowed my rush toward the inevitable and moved 1100 miles away to a muskie-less land but it still hasn't improved my mental state. I still mutter aloud to myself and my humming persists yet today. At the very most, I've gained the linear time to reflect on all the missed or blown opportunities for fulfilling my forty-inch dream. I've spent years since arranging and writing, re-arranging and rehearsing my victory speech for the day I finally succeed on Sugar Creek:

"I would like to thank Chevy, Jeep, VW, and Isuzu;
Steury, Monark, Lowe, and Crane Baits;
Delbert, Kenny, Carl, and Tim;
Matt, Mack, Johnny, and Em;
Nanuck, Bill, Red Man, and Bud;
Moustaches, side burns, long hair, and burrs;
Slim bodies, wide butts, bologna sandwiches, and gin;
Hefner, Swaggert, Ramsell, and Zen;
Saliva, incense, Jimmie Page, and Plant;
and most of all I'd like to thank The Maker of this here wonderful muskie and the Harbinger of the new age.
Oh, and I love Sugar Creek!"

I’ve always loved Sugar Creek. To this day I keep a name of The Creator on the tip of my tongue and every once in a while my loud humming will draw the attention of those around me, one of whom will invariably ask, "Are you crazy or in love?"

To which I reply, "Is it my Jimmie Page guitar imitation or my bologna belly that gives me away?"

Build Your Own Hellbender-Pet Spoon Rig

2007-11-22T09:40:00.001-08:00

In the fishing circles I'm involved in, this trolling rig is known as the Hell-Pet rig because it uses two different lures tied together in tandem with a drop line. The Heddon Hellbender must be modified in order to get the trailing Tony Accetta Pet Spoon to a precise depth with less line having to be let out. Steve Bradbury first showed this method to me several years ago.

Modifying the Hellbender
Picture #1 shows several different sized Tony Accetta Pet Spoons. Only the #12 and #13 sizes are recommended for the Hell-Pet rig. A 3/4-ounce casting weight is also needed. The distance between each black mark in the picture is 1-inch so you can see the sizes when compared to the Hellbender. The Hellbender comes in a variety of colors but the two colors I prefer are solid white or chrome.
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Click on the pictures to enlarge them, then click on the Back arrow to come back to the article. The blue object you see in the pictures is only a prop I used to help steady the Hellbender for pictures.
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Picture #1 - Parts of the rig

Picture #2 shows what components need to be removed from the Heddon Hellbender. Note the little tail spinner blade that comes with the Hellbender is removed from the small swivel and the swivel is left in place on the lure. You can either 1. cut the split ring that holds the spinner to the swivel with a pair of side-cutters or 2. spread the split ring with your thumb nail and remove the spinner with its split ring from the swivel. You will attach the 4-foot drop line for the Pet Spoon to this swivel to help eliminate any drop line twist.

Remove both of the hook eyelets and their bell housings from the lure using a pair of pliers to unscrew them with. If your Hellbender came with treble hooks on them, you will need to remove only the treble hook that is hanging on the front eyelet. You can do this by following the eyelet opening procedure shown in Picture #3 and #4 instructions below.

Picture #2 - removal of HB parts

Picture #3 and #4 shows you how to carefully open the front eyelet of the Hellbender once it is unscrewed from the body and then crimp it closed again after the casting weight has been installed. Use a pair of regular pliers and grip the shaft of the eyelet in the pliers as close to the eyelet as possible. Then take a small, thin-bladed straight slot screwdriver and place the tip of it in the gap where the eyelet end stops. Lever the screwdriver against the pliers and pry the eyelet open just enough to slip the 3/4-ounce casting weight brass stem eyelet onto the slightly opened threaded eyelet and crimp the threaded eyelet closed again with the pliers.

The brass stem on the casting weight should allow the weight to swivel around 360° both directions.

Picture #3 - open the eyelet

Picture #4 - crimp the eyelet back

Picture #5 shows the completed re-assembly. You need to replace the front screw eyelet-with-weight and its bellhousing to the front of the Hellbender. The back eyelet doesn't need to be re-installed. I personally prefer to use a very small Phillips head screw and a dab of silicon and screw the screw into the rear eyelet position with the head of the screw nested into the cavity that once held the bellhousing. This helps prevent water from entering the lure which would severely affect the Hellbender's action.

Picture #5 - fill the rear eyelet hole

Tying on the Drop Line
I use 12 or 15 pound test on my baitcasting reel and a quick tip 7-foot baitcasting rod. I tie a 10 or 12 pound test drop line 4-feet long to the back swivel on the modified Hellbender. Cut the drop line to about 54" to allow for any line used at both ends for tying.

I then tie a #12 or #13 Pet Spoon to the other end of the drop line. The finished line length between the Hellbender and Pet Spoon shouldn't be any shorter than 36" or any longer than 48". I like to use the #13 size because smaller sandbass tend to shy away from its large profile. I like to set the drag loose (I can pull line off the reel with one hand) in case a hybrid or striper decides to unload.

Setting the Depth of the Rig
Once I have the rig ready to fish, I put the boat in forward gear and get it moving between 2.5-3.0 mph (GPS reading) on the trolling line I want. I put my reel in free-spool and with my thumb on the spool, lower the Hell-Pet rig into the water making sure the drop line is not fouled on the Hellbender, let the Hellbender down into the water until it begins digging in and wobbling, then let line free spool off the reel while counting 1 mississippi, 2 mississippi, etc. I carry a permanent black marker with me so when I let the line out on the first pass, I can color mark the line just ahead of the reel with the black marker. Then I don't have to keep counting every time I let line out. If the fish go deeper, all you have to do is use the length of your rod and the black mark to judge how much additional line you need to let out.

I prefer to keep the rig off the bottom, so I will count down to 2-feet above the bottom reading. For example, if it is 18 feet deep, I will 1 mississippi count to 16. I like to keep the rod tip about a foot above the water surface. If the bottom starts coming up, raise the rod tip accordingly to keep the lure from striking bottom, even if you have to stick your arm and rod straight up into the air!

When you get a fish on, start reeling with your rod at about the 10 o'clock position. The Hell-Pet will come to the surface and you can basically "water ski" the fish back to the boat (unless it is a hybrid or striper).

I recommend the original Tony Accetta Pet Spoon and not the knock-off brands. The knock-off brands have been known to fail (the screw that holds the single hook to the spoon loosens and fish pull the hook out).

Good luck and have fun with the Hell-Pet rig.

Pictures of Recent and Past Catches

2007-08-19T15:18:00.001-07:00

Jim with a nice Cooper Lake hybrid

A keeper hybrid at the boat

Tom with a good Tradinghouse redfish

Mark's 35" Trading- house redfish

Rick with a double-digit striper

Rick and Jim with some decent stripers

Jim with a double-digit striper

Joe's 22-Lb 4-Oz Trading- house redfish (1995 world record)

Fish Some of Texas' Best Lakes

2007-08-19T14:55:00.000-07:00

from the comfort of a spacious boat

while downrigging (left), trolling, casting or drift fishing.

Fish any of several different lakes for stripers and hybrids within a 1-hour drive from the DFW area and fishing Tradinghouse Creek Reservoir east of Waco for freshwater redfish, all with artificial baits only. Ask about which lakes when you call.

Boat: 2007 Tracker Targa 185 SC powered by a 115 Mercury Optimax comfortably handles 4 people

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My 2007 Tracker Targa 185 SC tames rough water like nobody's business. Its all welded aluminum 2-piece hull with a full length longitudinal stringer system creates a great ride! Definitely the roomiest and most comfortable ride I've ever experienced and the on-board storage is second to none! Try one soon! - Jim Wetzel
Tracker Boats

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