Summer vacation. Those words were magic all during my school years. They were the words that opened up endless days of bare feet, fishing, building tree houses, visiting relatives and friends, and riding bicycles all over my end of the county.

The end of school meant no more early morning wake-up calls from mom and then sitting at the breakfast table staring at food I did not want. It meant the end of riding my bike almost a mile on pretty days to school or riding in the car with dad on the way to his job as principal. And no more seemingly endless hours of staring at books in the late afternoon when I wanted to be fishing or hunting.

We had a little ditty we sang – “no more pencils, no more books, no more teachers with dirty looks!” For some reason my teachers were always giving me dirty looks, mostly for talking about hunting and fishing during math, reading an outdoor magazine tucked into my notebook or trying to sharpen my knife during spelling!

Many summer days I would call one of my friends Harold or Hal and make plans. It was easy to call back then, you picked up the phone and told the operator two numbers. My phone number was 26. The phone would ring on the party line – one ring for Harold, two rings for the neighbor on my side of his house and three for the house on the far side. Sometimes a neighbor would answer the wrong ring and tell me Harold had already left for the day!

Our plans were simple – I would ride my bike to Harold’s house and meet Hal there. We would have our tackle box in the bicycle basket and rod and reel across the handlebars. After a quick stop in town for candy bars and cokes, we would head to a local pond. Fishing consisted of wading around and casting plugs or those new-fangled rubber worms for bass, sitting still watching a line for a nibble from a catfish or dunking live bait for bream.

The catfish bait was always my responsibility. We had 11,000 laying hens and some died every day. I could go out to the chicken house and quickly collect enough livers, hearts and gizzards with my pocket knife to last us all day. All the “innards” were put into a glass jar with a top so we could transport them without mixing them with our candy bars.

Live worms were a group effort. We usually met at my house and went behind one of the chicken houses where the water trough drained. One of us would stick a shovel into the moist earth and turn it over, and the other two would grab for red wigglers as they tried to get back into the ground. And old tin can could quickly be filled with all the worms we would need.

Catching fish was very secondary to going fishing. We often caught enough for supper for all three families, and cleaning them was our task as soon as we got home. But the fun of the trip was everything that it involved, and mostly just being with friends. If the fish didn’t bite today there was always tomorrow.

I can still feel the hot sun on my face and the cold water on my toes as I waded the upper end of Black’s Pond. There was an old channel in the upper end and the water was always cooler down in it. I was my own first depthfinder and temperature gauge! I learned the location of drop offs, stumps, hard bottoms and other structure by feeling it with my feet.

We also learned to pattern fish in those early days. There was one stump at Harrison’s Pond that always had a bass beside it. If I could cast my topwater plug just right, and work it up to the stump, I would always get a bite. Unfortunately, many times my line went over the little bush growing on the stump and I would have to wade out and unhook my only topwater plug, scaring the fish away.
Many times I want to return to those more simple times. Everything was much better back then, or so I remember. The sun was warmer, the water cooler, the candy bars more tasty and the fish harder fighting. Summer vacation made all my activities happier times.

I hope all school kids have as great a summer as I remember and make memories that will last them as long as mine have lasted me.

Found him! How Missouri DNR Mission Ready wardens helped find a missing teen

Published in Wardens in Action

By Joanne M. Haas/Bureau of Law Enforcement
from The Fishing Wire

The first thing Warden Supervisor Joe Jerich did when he found the shivering, wet missing 17-year-old canoeist in a remote area of Ozaukee County was think of what the teen’s worried mother needed.

“I handed him my phone and told him to call his mom,” Jerich said.

That was about 7:45 a.m. Thursday — about eight hours after a DNR Mission Ready conservation warden team responded to midnight calls to help a multi-agency effort find the boy who flipped his canoe in the swift waters of the Milwaukee River.

The calls roused Jerich from his West Bend home, and Wardens Ryan Propson in Appleton and Sean Neverman in Sheboygan County. Within minutes, Propson, Jerich, Neverman and DNR Pilot Michael Callahan were on their separate ways to join other local law enforcement agencies and fire departments in their search to find the missing boy.

They’re called Mission Ready warden teams – trained to answer calls for help at any hour and to stay with the mission until completed. The DNR Bureau of Law Enforcement has several of these specially trained teams ready to handle emergencies. In this week’s missing person case, the Tactical Flight Officer Team answered the call for assistance from the Grafton Fire Department in eastern Wisconsin.

Propson wasted no time in leaving his home and headed for Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh, where the DNR has a plane equipped with a heat-imaging camera known as FLIR. Wardens and pilots have completed hours of training in how to use this camera from the skies to help find missing persons. He was joined by expert pilot Callahan, there to take command of the plane and get the duo in the air and to Ozaukee County — fast!

Jerich and Neverman also were in high gear, traveling from their homes in their warden trucks to the search command post in Ozaukee County.

The Mission Ready warden team added the DNR airplane, a warden boat and two trucks to the multi-agency search team involving the Ozaukee County Sheriff, Port Washington Fire Department, Grafton Fire Department and Mequon Fire Department. The mission? Find the kid.

By the time the wardens were on site, five hours had passed since his mother last heard from her son. That was 8 p.m. Wednesday, just as his cell phone battery was dying and after he had flipped the canoe. And to add to the urgency, the temperatures were on their way down below freezing.

“As soon as we got on site in Ozaukee County, we got more details about the GPS location of that last ping from the missing person’s cell phone,” Propson said. “That gave a start.”

Propson put his hours of training to work and manned the FLIR as pilot Callahan maneuvered the search flight route through the night sky. Jerich joined Neverman, who brought his flat-bottom boat, on land patrols while keeping in constant contact with other search teams and the DNR air team.

Jerich and Neverman drove toward the Milwaukee River with the thought an on-water search was in order. “But, it was very, very swift water,” Jerich said. “We had concerns swift water at night was not a safe situation.”

So, instead of potentially causing yet another flipped boat emergency for even more emergency workers to handle, Jerich and Neverman stayed on land and separated. Neverman took off to search all the area’s water access points in case the boy made it to shore elsewhere, and Jerich joined the ground search, staying in contact with the DNR air team above using the FLIR to detect any and all heat sources below. A human body is a heat source.

The wardens kept the land searches going until Propson and Callahan had to call it off around 3:45 a.m. Thursday.

“The camera was picking up images. But, you didn’t know immediately why it was showing hot. It could be an outdoor stove or a deer,” Propson said. “You had to differentiate what you were looking at. And that determined if we then directed the ground search teams to that spot.”

Propson said the mother of the missing person also knew he had not crossed a specific local bridge, which gave the air and land teams another landmark to plot search patterns. Then, the weather interfered with the FLIR.

“It started to snow and I couldn’t see any more,” Propson said. “So we made the decision to return to Oshkosh and come back at 6:05 Thursday morning and look with just with our eyeballs.”

Two hours later, Jerich was back on the scene to handle foot and land searches guided by directions from the DNR flight crew overhead, flying this morning in a different plane with a different strategy. Fly lower.

“The plane we had in the morning had more windows which made it easier for us to really look — and to continue to look,” Propson said. “We had to fly in very tight circles.”

Callahan said within 10 minutes of starting the search, Propson spotted an aluminum canoe aground on the west bank of the river. The canoe was located in a difficult to access stretch of the river. But, it did look like it fit the description of the missing canoe.

Propson and Callahan then directed Jerich how to drive to get to the general area, and then helped guide him on foot to the canoe through what was a difficult terrain — a flooded, mixed-forest area.

“The plane crew directed me as close as I could get with the four-wheel drive truck and said the canoe is so many hundred yards in on foot,” Jerich said.

Warden Ryan Propson texted success.But Jerich never made it to the canoe.

“In short order, I came upon the boy who was in his green tent,” Jerich said.

The teen had pitched his tent under a stand of very thick pine/juniper trees — a fact that gave Propson an aha moment. “”That explained why we couldn’t see it from the sky or with the camera,” Propson said. “The FLIR does not pick up heat through dense things like tree canopies. The tent will trap the heat inside but hold it under the pine trees.”

Propson was able to detect search personnel, animals and vehicles with the FLIR so the team knew the camera system had functioned properly.

Back on land, Jerich said he was face-to-face with one very cold kid.

“He had no dry clothes to change into after he had gone into the water,” Jerich said. “He spent the night in this tent — and it was cold.”

How cold? The Weather Channel at weather.com shows the overnight low hit 23 degrees at 1:05 a.m. in Grafton and Cedarburg. And the missing teen did not have dry clothes to change into after going into the water.

Still, Jerich said teen appeared to be OK. So Jerich gave him the phone and gentle directive to call his mother — now.

At that point, Jerich radioed his success to the air team of Propson and Callahan, who then directed the land emergency medical teams to the tent site to handle transporting the boy to a local medical facility for evaluation. Neverman, who was on his way to join the search, got the call to turn around because of the happy ending.

Jerich said while it is not a good idea to canoe in a river with such dangerous flooding conditions, the teen did make a good decision. “He stayed in his tent and waited for help.”

Up in the skies, it was a feeling of a job well-done and kudos to DNR Pilot Callahan for maneuvering a successful low pattern for Propson to spot the canoe and to guide Jerich to the boy.

“That was awesome to find him and know he was safe,” Propson said. “It was great.”

Jerich says this was multi-agency teamwork and cooperation at its finest, filled with many ready to help and to serve the public at split-second notice. The only thing that made it even better was finding the young man safe and OK in his tent. He was mighty cold, but he was safe.

And he got to call his mom.

The weather guessers said the weather would be nice the end of last week so I headed to my place at Clark’s Hill Wednesday afternoon. I needed to check to make sure everything was ok because I was afraid pipes may have frozen but wanted to fish, too. And the guessers were right – Thursday and Friday were beautiful.

I lucked out – no pipes were busted and no limbs from the pine trees around my trailer had fallen in the ice storm. But the bass didn’t seen to know conditions were perfect. I got two bites and landed one bass on Thursday and never got a bite on Friday.

The water temperature ranged from 54 to 65 degrees and should have been ideal for the bass to be feeding. The water was muddy but that is not unusual. But I fished many of my favorite places and the bass just were not there.

Fishing and staying at my place at Clark’s Hill always brings back great but bittersweet memories. I fished around the cover where daddy, mama and I spent countless days pulling crappie out of the button bushes. And in the trailer are their favorite chairs, empty for many years now since they both died 14 years ago, but I can still see them sitting there and talking to me.

I fished around an island where my first dog, Merlin, got out one day and tried to dig a beaver out of a clay bank. It took weeks to get all the Georgia red clay out of her coat. And I fished the rocky bank where I used to tied the boat in the summer and throw sticks for here to retrieve, and she would even bring back rocks I threw if they were in less than a foot of water. I could never understand how she found the rock I threw among all the others, but she always found the right one.

It broke my heart when she got where she could not stand and I had to have her put down when she was 14 years old. Dogs never live long enough.

I fished the docks at the boat club where I spent thousands of hours skiing when I was younger. Now my old body won’t let me water ski. The last time I tried about a 20 years ago my muscles hurt so bad I could hardly move for a week.

And I fished the cove where I shot two deer from my boat over Christmas holidays one year. I always spent the two week school holiday there, fishing, building brush piles and hunting. I was often by myself for days in a row, just me and Merlin.

Fishing has got to get better over there soon, but the memories will always be perfect.

Spring Means Fishing

In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of … fishing! Not to mangle Alfred Lord Tennyson’s famous quote too much, but when I was a young man fishing definitely occupied most of my thoughts. In fact, it still does.

There is something almost magical about watching a cork bobbing on the surface of the water, anticipating the thrill when it disappears and you hook whatever finny critter fell for your bait. If you don’t believe in magic, just take some kids fishing and watch their faces.

Fishing can be different things to different folks. My mom loved fishing just for fishing’s sake. She could be happy sitting for hours hoping for a bite. My dad thought fishing was only worthwhile to put something in the frying pan. I take after my mom.

If you love to fish, have you ever tried to figure out why you like it? One time, when I was about 12 years old, I was fishing at one of my uncle’s ponds. He was not a fisherman but kept a stocked pond for friends and relatives. I was happily casting a Heddon Sonic, trying to hook a bass, when he walked over to me.

“Why do you like to fish?” Uncle J.D. asked. I responded that I liked to feel the fish pulling on my line. He pointed and said “tie your line to that Billy goat – he will pull harder than any fish you are going to hook.”

Since then I have often wondered why I like fishing and have asked many people. Most respond with something about the fight, the food, or the challenge of outsmarting a fish. Think about that one. You are trying to outsmart a fish, an animal with a very rudimentary brain that cannot think; it just reacts.

I never played sports and don’t like games, I am just not competitive in anything but fishing. That is strange, fishing is supposed to be a contemplative activity where you enjoy the quiet and calm of nature, and I love that, too. But I also love fishing bass tournaments, trying to catch more and bigger bass than others in the tournament.

One reason I think I am competitive in bass fishing is the fact you are not really competing with other people, you are competing with the fish. And, like I said, they can’t think! In a bass tournament it makes no difference what others do, if you catch more fish, you win. So the conflict is between you and the bass, trying to figure out what they are doing and how to make them bite your bait.

Sitting by a pond watching a cork is great and one of the best things about fishing, but blasting down a lake first thing in the morning in a bass boat is special, too. There is nothing else that feels like running 60 miles per hour on a calm lake. The boat almost feels like it is floating, not connected to anything on earth. I guess it is as close to flying as I will ever get.

Opposed to that feeling, one of my best memories is of my mother and me putting a trot line across a cove at Clark’s Hill, then building a fire on the bank and casting out chicken liver for bait with our rods and reels, waiting on a catfish to bite. I was in college at that time and we talked as adults, one of the first times I remember being treated as an adult by her.

Memories are one of the reasons many people fish. Fishing trips provide the best memories for many folks about their youth. If you went fishing with your parents, think back. Can you remember any of the trips and the special feeling you had? There is an old saying that God doesn’t count time spent fishing against you. Fishermen often live longer because they have an escape from the hassle of every day living, and learn to relax and enjoy life, as well as learning to accept what happens without going crazy.

When kids go fishing with parents they learn many things, and kids that fished growing up seem to be happier and stay out of trouble. But that is true of any activity that parents and kids enjoy together. Fishing just enables them to talk without too much distraction.

If you have a child, take them fishing and make some memories. If makes no difference how old they are!

A message on the forum on my Internet site got me to thinking about my fishing and hunting legacy. Several people have posted in a thread named “To Those That Came Before” about people who have influenced their lives through fishing. Heritage is one of the most important, if not the most important, part of fishing and hunting.

My mother has to top any list when I think of people that influenced me. She loved to fish so I got my love of fishing honestly. She was thrilled to catch anything from a tiny bream to a big catfish, and never met a fish she did not want to catch. I thank her for taking me to local ponds and creeks when I was growing up, and showing me the patience to sit and watch a cork for hours on end.

She also sacrificed so I would have time to fish as a teenager. Living on a farm with 11,000 laying hens, there was work to be done all day every day, and I was expected to do my share. But I realize now there were many times my mother worked extra hours, often long into the night, grading eggs so I could go fishing. She would do anything she could to make me happy.

My father also instilled a love of the outdoors in me, but from him I got my love of dove shooting and quail hunting. I spent many hours with him following our bird dogs, and also have many good memories of sitting in a dove blind with him telling me what to do and how to hit the elusive bird that I almost always missed.

He also taught me dedication and the desire to do a good job at anything I started. This has carried over into my fishing, making me want to learn all I can about the fish I am trying to catch, the equipment I use and the methods that work best.

My Uncle Adron hunted and fished almost every day of his life. He came back from World War 2 “shell shocked” and never held a regular job, but owned a small hunting and fishing gas station. He would lock the door and go hunting or fishing in a second if no one was there to run it for him when he wanted to go, though.

Uncle Adron took me deer hunting for the first time. He taught me to shoot a bow and helped me learn how to sit in a tree perfectly still, waiting on what was a very uncommon animal back in the 1960s. Seeing even one deer was something to talk about for a week, and shooting one was celebrated for all year. Uncle Adron had dozens of racks around the canopy of his store. There is no telling how many he killed.

Uncle Mayhu lived in Virginia but his visits every summer meant day after day of bass fishing. He taught me a lot about the habits of my favorite fish, where to catch them, how to fight them and even how to land them. He was always calm and thoughtful while fishing, and helped me learn to think about what I was doing while fishing. He is the first one to tell me to think like a bass to try to catch one.

Uncle Walter loved to go to the coast and fish saltwater. I went with him one time and will never forget fishing on a “head boat” for grouper and other bottom dwelling fish in the Gulf off the coast of Florida. The trip was exciting, too, since I seldom saw him without his bottle of whisky in one hand and a cigar in his mouth. I found out later my mother was worried sick the whole weekend I was gone, but everything worked out OK.

There are many others that influenced my love of the outdoors. Those memories are very special, and they will live with me the rest of my life. I hope you have many similar memories, and are passing them on to your children.
If you would like to share your own fishing and hunting heritage, email your comments to me to post.