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.

We all have memories of some Christmas gifts that were very special to us. Most of mine were something for the outdoors, like the Mitchell 300 spinning outfit I got when I was about 15, the .22 Remington semiautomatic rifle I was given when I was 12 and still use to plink and shoot squirrels, and the camping mess kit and canteen I used for years in the wilds of my backyard.

When I was ten or so I wanted a new bicycle. That is how kids got around back then. We rode everywhere, from school to local ponds to go fishing. We even went hunting on our bicycles. My desire was a shiny new red bicycle as shown in the Sears catalog. I just knew I would be proud and happy with it.

About two weeks before Christmas holidays started at my elementary school I was out in the shop. My dad was principal and shop teacher. He worked hard at school but also ran a farm where we had 11,000 laying hens and sold eggs to local grocery stores. We also raised hogs and cows and most of our food came from those animals and the huge garden we had each year. We did not have a lot of money but lived well.

That day in the shop I saw two old rusty bicycles sitting by a work table. I didn’t think much of them, they looked terrible. Then, on Christmas morning, my brother and I found those bicycles, now shiny with new paint and repaired to new condition, by the Christmas tree.

My young heart sank. I really wanted a new bicycle. I never gave a thought to the hours may dad sanded and painted those bicycles, or the time it took to repair any small defect. I rode that bicycle for years.

Now I appreciate the work he put into it and the fact we just could not afford new bicycles for my brother and me. I still regret not telling dad what that gift meant to me when I was old enough to think about it.
When I was 11 or 12 I had learned my parents were Santa Claus by my younger brother, three years junior to me, still believed. But he was beginning to question the idea of Santa Claus.

We lived in a big old frame farm house and it had an apartment attached to the back. For years we rented the two rooms to military families stationed at Ft. Gordon, then my grandmother lived there for several years. It had a bedroom, kitchen with room for a small dining table, and a bathroom.

A few days before Christmas that year I went to that bathroom since the other one in the house was busy. I heard chirping and opened the shower curtain, and saw a cage with two parakeets in it. I immediately knew they were Christmas presents for me and my brother but did not want to spoil the secret. We had not asked for parakeets but always loved pets of all kinds.

Christmas Eve my brother and I were in bed, trying to stay awake. He started asking me about Santa Claus and I had an inspiration. I told him we should ask for something from Santa that nobody else knew about. Since it was just a few hours before we could get up and find our presents there would be no way we could get that present unless Santa heard us.

I suggested we ask for parakeets! And guess what. The next morning, there they were. My parents almost ruined it by saying they were a gift from them. I saw my brother’s face drop.

I quickly covered, getting my brother alone and explaining that since Santa knew our secret wish was being fulfilled by my parents he did not have to bring us the birds. His face lit up and he believed for a couple more years.

Our gifts back in the 1950s and early 60s were very simple. There was always something special, like the revolving ducks you shot at with a rubber tipped dart. Or the bicycles, .22 rifle or camping gear. The rest of our presents were clothes and other needed stuff.

Stockings were hung by the fireplace and they were always stuffed with fruit like apples and oranges, pecans and small items like a box of sparklers. Strangely enough, the oranges looked just like the ones in the sack we had brought back from a visit to my grandmother just before Christmas in Florida and the pecans where the same kinds we had gathered from our yard. But finding them in our stockings made the oranges sweeter and the pecans taste even better.

Christmas does not have to be so commercial. Small things may not mean a lot right now to kids, but what you do for them now will bring great memories for them later in life. Parents’ time is more valuable than any gift could ever be. Spend time with your kids this Christmas and make memories that will last long after the toys are broken and forgotten.

Rip was my four footed fishing friend. He showed up at my farm one day and adopted me. There has never been a happier, more fun loving dog. His name fit him well. He never walked when he could run and his tail never stopped wagging. His smiling face welcomed everyone.

Rip loved to ride in my truck, but not the first time I put him in it. I tied his collar to a hook in the bed of the truck and he tried to jump out, almost hanging himself. I shortened the length of the rope and drove out to the farm and he never tried to jump out again. I quit tying him in after a few months an never had a problem again.

He would jump from side to side, putting his front paws up on the sides, going back and forth especially when getting near the farm or home. When I made a stop at the store there was almost always someone petting him when I came out. Despite his 90 pounds he just looked friendly and always welcomed a petting hand from anyone willing to give it. And everyone that saw him was willing.

Going to the pond was one of his favorite activities, but sometimes he got into trouble there. Rip would not swim but would wade out and sit down up to his neck in hot weather. Anytime I caught a fish he got excited and tried to sniff it. If I gave a bream to him he would eat it. I worried about the bones the first few times but he never seemed bothered by the fish he ate. I guess he liked sushi. And if I let the fish go he stared at the water then looked at me like he was asking why I let dinner go.

Tearing things up was also a favorite pastime. I had a bundle of yellow insulation at the barn and tried to use it to insulate a house for him before taking him to my house. The next day it looked like a yellow snow storm had hit the area. At home sticks of wood from the woodpile would be dragged into the yard and chewed to bits. Maybe he was part beaver. No rug had a chance on the back deck, it would be nothing but threads the next day. He even chewed the handle off an ax left in a stump in the woodshed.

When he was ten years old I got a friend for him. Ginger is a brindled pit bull but very gentle, and she and Rip played together. They got along great.

Rip loved it when I got out a gun. The first time I shot a squirrel in the back yard I wondered how he would react. The shot did not bother him, he just ran and got the squirrel and brought it to me. From then on if I walked out with a shotgun he started looking up in the trees. I even trained him to go around the tree so the squirrel would move where I could shoot it.

But both Rip and Ginger were terribly afraid of thunder. Last summer while I was at the lake they dug under the fence during a storm and got out of the yard. Two days later, on a Saturday, I got a call from a neighbor about a mile down the highway saying Rip had been hit by a car. He was alive but dazed. I took him to an emergency vet clinic and they sedated him. That night at about dark I called and they said he might recover. He was no worse but no better, either.

I went to bed at midnight planning on fishing a tournament the next day. About an hour later the vet called and told me Rip was going into convulsions. He probably had brain damage and had less than a 25 percent chance of recovery. More likely he would just suffer until he died. I choked out “Put him down.”

I could not catch a fish the next day – my broken heart kept me from thinking about fishing. I picked his body up from the vet and buried him under the pear tree with Merlin and Squirt, watering the ground with my tears as I dug.

Two days later Ginger came home, safe and sound.

Rip Was My Four Footed Fishing Friend

Everybody needs a dog to make them realize what it is like to have boundless energy and the pure joy of being alive. My dog Rip constantly amazes me. He never slows down from daylight to dark and finds everything from cats to old pieces of wire and waterhose extremely interesting.

He lives up to his name daily. Nothing is safe from him that he can get his paws or teeth on. When the cold weather hit I bought a cheap indoor/outdoor thermometer to monitor the temperature in his insulated dog house. It sat on top of his house out of his reach, but the wire probe stuck an inch or so into his house.

One morning last week the probe reading was flashing. Sure enough, to no real surprise to me, he had grabbed the end of the wire in his house and pulled it out, chewing it up. So much for keeping up with the temperature in his house.

Exuberant is the best word to describe him. He doesn’t walk when he can run, and he doesn’t run when he can bounce like a kangaroo through the woods. He loves to chase a thrown ball, stick, plastic bottle or anything else, and will bring it back for more. I get tired of the game much faster than he does.

He loves to fish. That is one of the few times he will sit and stay still. Anytime I make a cast he watches the arch of the lure, never letting it out of his sight. When it hits the water he watches with great interest, waiting on a bass to jump. I think he wants to go chase them but so far I have been able to keep him on the bank.

Rip loves to wade in the shallows, lapping up water and cooling off. When it was hot he would wade out and sit down, submerging his body chest deep. He does not like to swim, though, and will not get his head wet – on purpose.

At my pond I had dug out some dirt near the bank with a back hoe, making a three foot deep hole right by the bank. The outer rim of the hole has a couple of inches of water covering it. Rip waded out around the rim then decided to come straight back. When he hit the deep water his head went out of sight. I will never forget the look on his face when he came up and immediately headed to the bank.

When he got out on the bank I was laughing so hard I could not stop. He did his usual trick when confused, he started running around me in circles. It is amazing how fast he can run in a 20 foot circle without spinning out. The harder I laughed, the faster he ran. I am surprised he did not turn himself into butter.

Rip can really make me feel old. While working on a siphon on my pond dam, I had to climb up and down the dam. I am just able to pull myself up it by hanging on to limbs and inching along. Rip runs in circles around me while I am doing this, running up the dam face like it is flat ground. I have to remember he has four wheel drive compared to my two, but he often will circle me 20 or 30 times while I make one transit.

Rip is a pretty good squirrel hunter, too. He surprised me the first time I fired a gun near him. I did not try to train him at all, but he is definitely not gun shy. The first time I fired a shotgun he just looked at me, then he heard the squirrel fall. He immediately went to it. Now if he sees me with a gun he starts looking up in the trees for my target.

Last week I shot a squirrel and it fell outside the fence around the back yard. Rip was watching and got real excited. When I went to get the squirrel it was not there. I let Rip out and he ran to where the squirrel fell the tracked it straight to a stump about 30 yards away. He stuck his head in the stump and pulled the squirrel out. Although the squirrel bit him on the nose and he yipped real loud, he hung on and shook it, killing it instantly.

I want to train him to tree squirrels but Rip does not bark. I have had him almost a year and he makes lots of different kinds of noises from a whine when I won’t take him with me to a strange combination growl/whine when confused to yipping when bit by a squirrel, but he just will not bark. That is a good thing most of the time.
Dogs can be a great joy and a real pain. The pain seems short and the joy much greater overall. Everyone needs a Rip to keep them laughing.

Do you ever wish for a simpler time at Christmas? If you are old enough you know of more simple holidays that involved family and friends, church and great food. For me almost all my memories also included the outdoors. From kids getting BB guns and rushing out to shoot them to adults getting new shotguns and shells for an afternoon quail hunt, guns and Christmas always went together for me.

My Christmases growing up in the 1950s and 60s always ran a similar pattern. We went to Florida the week before Christmas to visit my Grandmother who live there. That was usually a four day trip but we always came home a couple of days before Christmas to enjoy everything we had been working on, from the door decorations to the tree.

Christmas Eve we always had a service at Dearing Baptist Church, singing wonderful songs and eating great food. Then it was home to make sure the stockings were hung, milk and cookies were out for Santa and off to bed, where we tried to stay awake and listen, but never could make it long.

Well before daylight we would wake up and rush into the living room where a wondrous spread of gifts awaited up. There was always on big item wished for all year, a bicycle, a .22 rifle, a set of briar proof hunting clothes. Then there were smaller gifts.

I always got a brick of .22 bullets, 500 rounds promising many happy hours of shooting. And I could count on a box or two of .410 shells for rabbit hunting. Guns, bullets and shells were always prized. I am sure I got regular clothes and other things but really don’t remember them.

The stocking was kept to pull down last because it would be stuffed with small things. There were always a couple of oranges and I never made the connection that they looked just like the ones in the sack we had brought back from the annual visit to my grandmother in Ocala Florida the week before Christmas. But there were also boxes of sparklers, often a pocket knife, maybe the knife, fork and spoon set to go with the mess kit under the tree.

After exploring the gifts over and over I usually wanted to go outside and shoot my new guns and bullets. But I couldn’t go far. Christmas Day was the day for just my parents and my brother and I to have a big lunch together. We didn’t visit other family members until the days after Christmas.

My dad often took me quail hunting after lunch, one of his loves. We would go get the dogs from a nearby pen and head to fields where we knew the coveys would be feeding. If we didn’t go quail hunting I would usually get with a friend and go squirrel hunting, or go by myself. I loved being in the woods all along.

I still have the .22 rifle I got for Christmas when I was 12 years old. It still works well and is very accurate even after killing untold numbers of squirrels, birds and paper targets. Guns are often passed down from generation to generation if they are taken care of and cleaned.

The week after Christmas was filled with visits to kin folks houses. Usually there were huge meals at lunch time and my aunts and uncles hosted the meal on different days. That was quite and undertaking with over a dozen adults and 20 or so kids running around. Five of my mothers brothers lived near us and she was the youngest, so even when I was very young some of my cousins had kids my age.

I don’t know how we stuffed so much into the two week holiday from school but we did. It seemed we never slowed down from heading to Florida the day after school was out until the church services on New Years Day and then back to school.

Later in life deer season became important. Back in the late 1960s season was open all November then closed until opening again from December 26 to January 1. I hunted as much as possible during that week. Then in the mid 1970s I found out bass and crappie would hit good during Christmas holidays and started spending most of them at my place at Clark’s Hill, fishing and hunting every day except Christmas Day when I joined my family for dinner.

We all have Christmas memories and that is one of the things so important about this time of year. I hope everyone makes so great new ones this year!