Category Archives: Fishing Ramblings – My Fishing Blog

Random thoughts and musings about fishing

A Good Example Of Why I Have Problems With High School Tournaments

I was told “90 percent of our boat captains are safe.” In a 200 boat tournament that means that diretor knows there are about 20 dangerous boats out there!!

At Lanier the second weekend in November, on Saturday when a clerk at Hammonds told me there was an 80-boat high school tournament the next day I instantly wondered what dangerous, stupid and inconsiderate actions I would witness.


On Sunday I didn’t see many boats, I guess most stayed up the river due to the cold wind.

BUT – I had gone back to Balus Creek to finish up the day. I was fishing the bluff bank past the ramp at 1:00, about 3/4 way out to the point. I had been fishing there for about 15 minutes, slowly working out toward the point fishing a jig.

A bass boat came out of the cove on the other side of the ramp with one kid riding illegally in the butt seat up on the front deck and the other illegally in the chair on the back deck.

The “captain” was at that speed where the front of the boat stays way up, half on plane and making the biggest possible wake. And no way he could see ahead of the boat with the kid up there, too.

If I had been tournament director, they would have been disqualified for illegal and dangerous boating.

They came by me about 100 feet away, rode past me halfway into the cove, made a U turn without slowing down, passed me a second time and stopped on the point ahead of me and started casting. I guess I was fishing where they wanted to fish.

I had to hang on to the butt seat to not get thrown out of my boat from their wake.

I don’t know what they caught, but when I got to the point where they stopped and started casting ahead of me, I caught my third keeper and two 13.5-inch throwbacks.

    I try to support youth and high school fishing teams, but things like this are all too common and make it difficult.  I don’t blame the kids, the adult boat captains drive the boat and make the decisions where to fish so safety and courtesy are up to them. But too many of them are teaching the kids bad habits.

I fear it is “when” not “if” there is a serious problem.

Visiting Lake Nottely, Blairsville and the Georgia Mountains

Want a nice get-away to the mountains for some scenery, cool air and fishing? I just got back from a few days around Blairsville and Lake Nottely. On the trip I ate some good food, looked at scenic views and fished for bass.  And I was constantly having flashback memories of my youth.

All the years I was in elementary school, grades one through eight back then, my family went on summer vacation for a week in the mountains.  We would load up the 54 Bel Air – and later the 1962 Bel Air – and head north from Dearing. All the roads were two lane back then and it was a slow, enjoyable trip.

Each night we would stay in a cheap roadside motel, four of us in one room, and eat at a local diner. Daddy insisted on country food just like we ate at home no matter how much I wanted a hamburger or hotdog.  At lunch we would stop at a picnic table, often right beside the road but sometimes at a scenic overlook, and mama would make sandwiches.

My most vivid memory of lunches is not about the food.  We always had Cokes in small bottles back then. I picked up mine for a swig and didn’t notice the yellow jacket on the mouth of the bottle. It took exception to being pressed against my lip and, after the burning sting eased a bit, I swelled up for two days!

The roadside attractions back then were not politically correct.  At many you could buy a nickel Coke or candy bar and give it to a chained bear cub to drink and eat.  I never wondered what happened to those cubs when they got too big, the owners probably ate them.

I learned about scams on one of those trips. A sign said give the owner a nickel and he would open the lid of a box cage and let you see the baby rattler and copperhead inside.

Sure enough, there was a baby shake rattle toy and a penny inside.

I loved the mountain streams and lakes but we never stayed in one place long enough for me to fish. But the year I was eight we changed our plans and I could not wait for my dream trip.

My family and another family, close friends, rented a cabin at Vogel State Park for a week. It was right beside a small stream that had trout in it, and only a couple hundred yards from the lake.

The other couple had a baby girl and she had colic.  Her loud crying kept me up all night and almost ruined the trip. That is when I decided I never wanted kids of my own!

One morning before daylight I put on my overalls, slipped out of the cabin without waking anyone, picked up my cane pole and can of worms and headed to the lake.  Where the stream entered it several row boats for rent were chained up.  One was half full of water with its back end in the lake.

I sat on the edge of that boat for a couple hours as it got light, catching small bream, yellow perch and trout with live earthworms.  I put my fish in the end of the boat that was full of water and it was supposed to work like a livewell.

Mama came hustling down the path to the cabin calling my name. When they woke and I was not there they panicked and went looking for me. Mama found me after she asked two teenage girls out walking if they had seen a kid.

Apparently they answered that yes, Huckleberry Finn was fishing down by the lake the lake!  I guess that fit me with my bare feet, overalls and straw hat!

Many things have changed, you will not see chained bear cubs or baby rattlers. But a trip is still fun and fishing is good on Nottely and other area lakes. 

My trip was to go out with guide Will Harkins and get information for my June Georgia Outdoor News article. Although Will is in college he is a great fisherman and knows Nottely and Chatuge well.

I stayed in a nice fifth wheel camping trailer through brooksiderv.com in a retirement camper community.  It was cheaper than area motels and more comfortable and quieter than a motel would have been.  It was only a few miles from Nottely and Blairsville.

About a mile from the camper and Nottely Dam is Papaw’s Bac-yard BBQ where I got some of the best brisket I have ever eaten, delicious and tender enough to cut with a fork. He has a wide variety of sauces and his Brunswick Stew was very good, too.

Next door at the Amish Store some interesting jelly is available. Frog jelly is fig, raspberry, orange and ginger.  Toe Jam is tangerine, orange and elderberry.  Traffic jam is mostly strawberry for some reason. There are also many other things, from furniture to funny signs, for sale too.

The first night I drove into Blairsville and ate at Mike’s Seafood. The scallops were delicious, cooked just right, and the bite of grilled tuna I tried was excellent. I always like walking into a place like Mike’s and see you order at the fresh seafood counter.

I planned on eating there on Saturday night before I left. Although Google Maps said they got less busy after 8:00 PM, an hour before the close, at 8:00 that night the wait to order was 90 minutes!!

Sicily’s Pizza & Subs Pasta was just down the street and there was no wait. The pizza I got was great but it was not the scallops I wanted! Till next time – Gone fishing!

Cut Grass Or Go Fishing

 The sound of lawnmowers, weed eaters and blowers often disrupt the peace while I am fishing.  Those are both sounds I did not hear in my early years.  We had rakes and hoes, not leaf blowers and weed eaters, and many of the folks I knew had brush brooms, not lawnmowers. Their yards were dirt, not grass.

    If anyone wasted time and effort on a lawn, they did it with an old push reel grass cutter.  I had the “pleasure” of using one of those a few times in my preteen years but could never really push them hard or fast enough to make it work very well.

    By the time I was 13 we did have a nice lawn.  The year before my parents had torn down the old farm house we had lived in for 12 years, building a nice split level brick house on the same lot.  Termites in the old house sped up the need for my mom’s dream house and my parents went way out on a mortgage limb to build it, something they did not believe in.  Borrowing money was not something they wanted to do and going into debt was much less common 55 years ago than it is now.

    The old farm house had a huge living room and kitchen in front and two bedrooms and a bathroom in the back.  All the way in the back was a bedroom, a small kitchen and bathroom that my grandmother lived in for several years.  I think those are now called mother-in-law suites.

    We tore down the front half of the old house and lived in the back rooms while the new house was being built within feet of those rooms. When we tore down the old house we found the floor beams were hand hewn pine logs. The ax marks were plainly visible on them.

    The old section had a big fireplace and chimney.  My dad, being frugal, had us tear it down and chip off the old mortar and he sold the bricks. I was weird to me that folks would pay so much for old bricks that we could buy about ten times as many new ones with the money.

    Daddy decided to plant carpet grass since he had seen some pretty lawns of it in Florida.  It was delivered to our house in sod pieces about two feet wide and three feet long.  Rather than place those pieces for an instant lawn, my frugal dad made us pull it apart and plant sprigs in shallow furrows. That was a hot, tiring job but within a couple of years we had our thick carpet of grass.

    That grass required a good lawn mower and dad got a gas-powered push mower. I spent many hours struggling to crank it then slowly pushing it along. We had a big yard and it took several hours to cut it all.

    One of my friend’s dad was a sergeant in the Army and was very strict.  As punishment, he made my friend cut grass – with scissors!  He would be told to take the scissors out and cut for an hour to punish him for misbehavior. That would probably be called child abuse now but it taught him discipline.  I never had to do that, at least.

    Its funny now that I hate cutting grass in my yard although it is small and takes less than an hour. But I like going to the farm and cutting with the rotary mower for several hours at a time.  I guess it is knowing I am getting ready to hunt the field after getting it plowed and planting winter wheat.

Sandwiches and Other Food Eaten Growing Up and While Fishing

I loved the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches served at Dearing Elementary School, probably because they always went with the vegetable soup.  We had that meal about once a month and it was one of my favorite.  And there was always plenty for us to have seconds and even thirds.

    At home during the summers we ate tomato sandwiches almost daily, with delicious tomatoes from the garden. But I never heard of a BLT until I went off to college.  My tomato sandwiches were simply two slices of loaf bread, salad dressing and thick slices of tomato.  And yes, it was always salad dressing, never mayonnaise, although we used that term.

    During the winter we had the sandwiches just without the tomatoes. A mayonnaise sandwich, two slices of bread slathered with so much salad dressing it was hard to keep them from sliding on each other, was both a lunch and after school snack.  Another simple one was a catsup sandwich. Slices of bread soaked with catsup an eaten mostly as a after school snack.

    Pineapple sandwiches had the same bread and salad dressing and we always had canned, sweetened crushed pineapple.  By putting the salad dressing on one slice of bread, piling it with pineapple and putting another slice of bread on top the top slice got delightfully soaked in pineapple juice.  

    On fishing or hunting trips a can of potted meat and Ritz crackers was all I needed, unless I carried a can of Vienna Sausage.  With them I wanted saltine crackers, not Ritz.  The meat had to be paired with the right crackers.

    Those same canned delights made good sandwiches at home.  A thick layer of potted meat and so much catsup on it globs of the mixture fell into the plate from the bottom of the sandwich, to be licked up as a dessert, made a great meal.  I learned at an early age to line of the Vienna Sausage on the bread from side to side with two on top of the row, then the last on in the can on top of those two, filled up the bread. Again, lots of catsup completed my sandwich.

    We always said loaf bread at my house but some of my friends called it “white bread.”  Mom was a great baker, making cakes and pies to sell, as well as fantastic biscuits and corn bread, but she never baked loaf bread. 

    Corn bread was in sticks, muffins or pone that was baked in a black frying pan in the oven. Left over cornbread of all kinds was eaten as an afternoon snack, with a bowl of catsup to dip it in. Yes, I liked and still like catsup!

    My favorite cornbread was something we called “splatter bread.”  Sometimes mom would heat lard in the black skillet until there was a pool a half inch deep and pour a thin mixture of corn meal and water into it.  The edges were amazing, crisp and crunchy, and the center cooked just right.   I still make it to go with steamed cabbage, peas and creamed corn, and soup.

    Writing this has made me hungry, I think I will go make a batch of splatter bread and get a bowl of catsup.

Digging Bait and Other Ways To Get Fishing Bait Growing Up

Digging bait was always fun, mainly because it was preparation for a fishing trip.  We used all kind of bait in local ponds to catch bream, catfish, a few bass and a good many turtles, and red wigglers were one of our favorite baits.

    On our farm we had seven chicken houses with a total of 11,000 laying hens.  The four old houses were long wooden sheds with chicken wire walls. The birds ran free inside on the wood shaving floor.  Their roosts were wooden frames set down the length of the house on either side of the center. 

    The support posts inside divided the width into thirds. On the downhill side, a galvanized trough three inches wide and five inches deep ran the length of the houses at a slight slant.  At one end was a faucet that dripped constantly. At the other end a nipple in the drain stuck up about four inches and acted as an overflow pipe much like the one in a pond, keeping water up to four inches deep the length of the trough. Water slowly ran over the top and out a pipe to the outside.

    The water was very fertile since chickens are not real careful where they leave their droppings, and every morning one of my jobs was to remove the nipple, turn the water on at the other end and walk the length of the trough with an old broom, cleaning out the mess.  It flowed out the drain pipe.

    The ground behind the house near the drain was always wet from the constant flow of water and extremely rich from all the droppings washed out every day.  Red wigglers found it an ideal habitat and we could dig a can full in a few minutes with just one or two scoops of dirt with a shovel.  There would be dozens of worms in every shovel full and picking them up from the ooze was easy.

    Every critter that lives in water loves red wigglers. We even caught crawfish on them when fishing for catfish on the bottom.  They were our staple bait when fishing but we did have many others.

    The chickens themselves provided great catfish bait.  With that many birds on the farm, a few died every day and I would cut them open and take out the heart, liver and gizzard.  Those innards put in a jar and set in the sun to ripen made an irresistible bait for catfish of kinds.  The livers were soft and hard to keep on the hook but gizzards and hearts were tough enough to last through several fish, if we could get past the smell when putting them on the hook.

    One of mom’s favorite baits were meal worms. We didn’t buy them, we grew our own.  Mom would fill a coffee can half full of corn meal and flour siftings and let it sit open for a few days, then put a cover of cheese cloth or old curtain sheer over it. 

    The eggs the flies laid in the corn meal while the top was open soon hatched into grubs, also called maggots, and grew from tiny white worms barely visible to light brown bait about an inch long. If left too long they turned black and tough and fish did not like them much.  After that stage they soon emerged as young flies.

    Although maggots stunk when taken from dead critters, taking on the smell of rotten meat, they were clean and odorless when grown in corn meal.

    Anything we could catch was tried as bait. Grasshoppers, wild crickets, caterpillars, crawfish, big white grub worms and wasp eggs were all good and most harmless. But wasp eggs were a special problem.

    First, just getting the nest with the larvae growing in it was dangerous. We did not want to spray the nest with poison to kill the adults guarding the nest since it tainted or killed the larvae.  What I would usually do after locating a good nest during the day was go back in the dark, knock it to the ground with a long pole and run off. 

    Wasps do not fly in the dark so after a few minutes I could go back and pick up the nest, being careful to step on any adult wasps that had stayed with the nest.  You could not wait too long to go back for it since ants would quickly find the source of food and be all over the nest.

    The nest was then put in the refrigerator in a paper sack to slow down the growth of the larvae.    You had to be very careful when taking the sack out for a fishing trip since some larvae would come out as an adult even in the cold.  Since they were cold they were sluggish but you had to open the sack carefully and kill any adults that were barely able to move around and sting you.

    I found out the hard way that a sack with a nest in it, left in the sun while fishing, would make any larvae close to changing make the transition to adult quickly. More than once, in the excitement of catching fish, I would reach into the bag to get a new bait and get stung by a newly changed adult wasp.

    A friend once told me how he would take tiny pieces of meat and stick a little strip of cigarette paper on it.  Left outside, a yellowjacket would often pick up the piece of meat to take to their underground nest. He could follow them to the nest by tracking the tiny white dot of paper.

    Yellowjackets build big underground nest with paper cells that look like wasps nest.  My friend said he could sell a big nest to fishermen too timid to try to get them on their own for several dollars.

    I did not know about yellowjacket nests as a kid or I am sure I would have tried his trick to get my own bait!  

Have Your Fish and Eat it Too with Gyotaku


Randy Zellers Assistant Chief of Communications Arkansas GFC
from The Fishing Wire

LITTLE ROCK — Trophy or table-fare? Catch a notable fish and you’re stuck with the choice. Besides the high cost, taxidermy requires handing over your prize instead of enjoying it as a meal. A quick photo of the fish at the time of the catch is nice to share with friends via social media, but rarely are worthy of hanging on a wall.

Anglers from overseas faced the food-or-fame dilemma centuries ago, and their solution was so popular, it became folk art. Japanese fishermen would bring paper and ink along on their trips to make impressions of fish they caught. They would paint one side of the fish with ink, and press it to paper. The ink would transfer to the paper, showcasing the fish’s size. Once satisfied with their record, they would wash the fish and still be able to bring it back for a meal or market.

A Little History

No one really knows the name of the first angler to capture his catch in artwork, but the oldest existing fish print is of a large red sea bream, caught by Lord Sakai of the Yamagata prefecture in 1862. Soon after his artwork was displayed, the practice became a recognized art form called gyotaku (gyo – meaning “fish” and taku – meaning “stone rubbing”)

.Many modern artists have added their own touch to the process, transforming basic shapes into multicolor masterpieces, some of which sell for hundreds of dollars. But you don’t have to be an artist to enjoy the hobby, and there’s no better way to add even more excitement to a child’s first catch.’

Taku Tools

Gyotaku requires only a few items found in practically any art supply store – paper, paint and brush.

While any paper will make a decent “fish print,” the best option usually is rice paper; another good choice is parchment paper used for baking. Crumple the paper into a ball and smooth it back out a few times to offer a crackled texture and make it more flexible.

Use non-toxic paint, especially if you plan on eating the catch. Non-toxic acrylic paint is thin enough to show fine details and comes in a variety of colors. Dark paints help make small details stand out, but some people like to match the color of the fish in their print.

There’s no need to splurge on an expensive paintbrush; the fish is doing the real painting. An inexpensive sponge brush works well to coat the fish with the pigment. A fine-tipped paintbrush also comes in handy to touch up the work and add detail to the fish’s eye.

Find a Fish

The best part of making a fish print is finding the fish. Arkansans are blessed with so many streams, lakes and rivers that finding a fishing location is as easy as a quick search on agfc.com. When it comes to finding a youth’s first fish, the Family and Community Fishing Program offers ponds in major cities around the state to get young anglers hooked. Visit www.agfc.com/familyfishing to discover one of these locations near you.Crappie, bass, bream and other fish with large scales tend to make the best prints; catfish can be printed, but it requires a delicate hand.

Fishy Flair

Clean the fish with water and a bit of dishwashing detergent to remove its protective slime coat. This slimy layer offers an excellent barrier to bacteria and fungus, but can cause the paint to smear into a featureless blob. Press paper towels against the fish to dry it. Be sure to wipe the insides of the gills and undersides of the fins as well; any water left in these areas will be squeezed onto the paper when pressed. Give the fish a firm squeeze at the belly to ensure all liquids are purged.

Lay the fish on a flat surface and use newspaper or magazines to prop up the dorsal and anal fins.Use the sponge brush to apply a light coat of paint to one side of the fish; coat everything but the eye. Be sure to apply paint to the mouth and fins.

Place the paper over the fish and press firmly across the entire painted surface. Do not let the paper move once it is placed over the fish. Pull the paper straight up off the fish’s body and look over your artwork.

Don’t be discouraged if the first print doesn’t have much detail. This usually means there’s too much paint on the fish. Just press more clean sheets against the fish until you get the look you like. If you run out of pigment, you can repaint and try again.

Paint in the fish’s eye using the fine-tipped paintbrush. You can also add a few details to add color or contrast. Trout wouldn’t look the same without their spots, and crappie come to life when you darken a few random scales and add a few specks to their fins.

Once you’re satisfied with your print, wash the fish, filet it and cook up your catch knowing you’ll always have a record of the one that didn’t get away.


Combat Fishing At Clarks Hill In April

Club bass fishing can be a humbling experience.  And in my limited experience, at higher levels it is worse.  It is easy to go from hero to zero in a few days.

    I grew up fishing Clarks Hill, catching my first bass from the lake in 1962 while my family was camping at “The Cliffs,” an unimproved access point on an old dirt road.  My church group as well as my family camped there several times every summer.  Then in 1966 our family joined the Raysville Boat Club, where I am still a member.

    For years in the 1970s through the 1990s I spent most holidays fishing there, including Christmas, Thanksgiving and spring break. And, since I was a teacher and school administrator during those years, I had summers off and would spend several weeks there each summer, fishing every day.

    I learned the little keys to the lake, small rock piles, drops and stump fields most people never saw.  When the lake was low during the winter I looked for hidden gems that held bass, places like those as well as hidden points, ditches and humps. And I built brush piles to attract and hold the bass.

    Now many of those kinds of places are easily found with modern GPS mapping, but some are still somewhat secret.  But the lake has changed a lot over the years, first getting blueback herring in it that changed the feeding habits of bass.  Then hydrilla spread all over the lake for a few years but it has now been killed off completely.

     The biggest change is fishing pressure. For years it was unusual to see another fishing boat during the week, now even on a weekday I often have to get in line to fish a place that holds bass.

Jim Berry invited me to join the Spalding County sportsman Club in March, 1974 and we fished the club tournament in April at Clarks Hill. I got hooked on tournament fishing and I joined the Flint River Bass Club in 1978 and the Potato Creek Bassmasters in 2016.

 I think the Sportsman Club has fished our April tournament at Clarks Hill every year since 1974.  I often do well, a memory on Facebook showed me winning the tournament there in 2016 with ten bass weighing 24 pounds.

    Way back in 1983 I came in fourth in the State Top Six Championship competing with 550 other club fishermen at West Point. Then I came in second in the Regional at Kentucky Lake, missing qualifying to fish the Bassmasters Classic by two pounds in a three-day tournament.

    That made me think I was a pretty competitive fisherman, so I signed up for the six Georgia Redman “semiprofessional” tournaments the next year. After not placing in any of them, I figured it was just first year “jitters” so I signed up for all six the next year.

    At the end of that second year I again had not placed in any of the tournaments.  It made me feel completely incompetent. I decided maybe I was a decent club fisherman, not good enough to compete at a higher level, so I have stuck with club fishing since then.

    I did make the state team four more times over the years and have done well in the clubs, winning the point standings in them multiple times. Some tournaments do not go as planned, and sometimes after one I wonder if I really know what I am doing.  But that usually passes after a few days.

    I am writing this at Clarks Hill on Tuesday. I have been here a week, fishing every day and fishing the Sportsman Club tournament over the weekend.  Right now I feel totally incompetent and am lost about how to catch fish. None of my old places or methods have not worked.

    In the Sportsman Club tournament 14 members fished nine hours on Saturday and seven on Sunday to land 106 bass weighing about 153 pounds. There were 18 five fish limits and no one zeroed.   

    Sam Smith won with ten bass weighing 20.53 pounds. Kwong Yu was second with ten at 18.24 pounds and had big fish with a 3.80 pound largemouth.  Niles Murray placed third with ten weighing 17.18 pounds and Wayne Teal came in fourth with ten at 15.51 pounds.

    I came in 11th with three bass weighing a whopping 5.23 pounds!

    I was very disappointed to see almost half the bass weighed in were spotted bass.  They are expanding in Clarks Hill and I am afraid this change is really going to hurt the largemouth fishing over time.

    After two days of practice and catching only five bass, I felt like I needed to do something different. There is a pattern and place that has been good for about the past seven years, it is how I won in 2016 and a couple more times since then.

    But so many folks know about that now I just did not want to do it. I call it combat fishing, joining many other boats in a small area and fighting to out fish and out cast them.  It is just not much fun but now I wish I had tried it.

    After not catching a single fish Monday and only one today from my old places, I guess combat fishing is on the schedule for this weekend in the Potato Creek tournament here!

Who Should Control Hunting and Fishing Limits and Seasons

 Hunters and fishermen always know better than game and fish biologists what needs to be done to keep our game and fish populations healthy.  Any time they don’t catch or kill enough, they want things changed, and they know just how to do it.

    This year the folks that earned college degrees and spend their careers working with game and fish recommended delaying the opening of turkey season for two weeks. Based on some turkey hunters complaints, you would think the world is ending. Oddly enough, many of those complaints come from the same folks whining that they aren’t seeing as many turkeys as in the past.

    Many if not all the biologists at the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Game and Fish Division are hunters and fishermen themselves. They can make mistakes but they do not go out of their way to inconvenience hunters and fishermen.  That would be a self-inflicted injury.  

    Unfortunately, many of the administrators of the different Departments are politicians more than biologists and they do make political rather than scientific decisions.

    In an article in Georgia Outdoor News a professor at the University of Georgia who is also a hunter was quoted: “Agencies want to open seasons so hunters like me can go and enjoy the gobbling activity, but what that results in is birds often being harvested early in the breeding season, which researchers have known for decades may be problematic if harvest rates (percent of males harvested) are high,” said Mike Chamberlain, the Terrell Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Management at the University of Georgia Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources.

    In that same article this statement raises questions: “There may still be a host of other factors affecting the decline of wild turkey populations —habitat loss, fragmentation of the landscape and poor management practices are chief among them,” said Chamberlain. “But being more mindful of when the birds are breeding is one way to help the population while also securing better hunting trips in the future.”

    Some of those other factors may also include increased numbers of predators like coyotes, raccoons, hogs, possums and foxes. Not only can some of them  kill adult turkey, they easily kill poults and also eat the eggs. And even fire ants can kill young birds in the nest.

Growing up we shot every hawk we saw; it was not illegal back then and we knew they killed quail, rabbits, squirrels and doves, game we wanted to kill and eat. It was rare to see a bird of prey back then.  Now I see them pretty much every day, and they kill and eat turkey polts.

    Chris Plott is a turkey hunter and owns Plott
Hide and Fur Company here in Griffin.  He has seen the decline in numbers of turkey everywhere he hunts, from Lamar County to South Georgia to Mexico.  He is not sure why turkey populations are in decline, but he thinks numbers of predators may be a big part of it.

    “We have not bought any predator furs locally since the 1990’s Chris said.  Before then predators were trapped regularly, and their populations were kept down.  That does not happen now.

    Chris said he knows land management and the proliferation of big pine plantations has hurt. There is a reason huge forest of nothing but pine trees are called “pine barrens,” there is little for wildlife to eat in them.

    Diseases may play a part, but I found no mention of evidence of diseases found by biologists.  I know we had to guard against many kinds of fowl diseases when we had our chicken layer farm and there may be some out there that kill turkey in the wild.

Weather definitely plays a part short term.  An extremely rainy or dry spring can hurt nesting success, but that usually lasts only one or two years before having a normal year, so long term it balances out.

    I never saw coyotes or heard them “sing” when growing up in the 60s and 70s. Now I seldom go 24 hours without seeing one on my trail cameras and often hear them calling at dusk when I am camping.  No doubt they eat eggs, poults and adult turkey.

    Biologists admit they do not have all the answers. When they identify a possible cause they do what they can to adjust and stop it, things like delaying season opening.

    We need to support them in their efforts while watching to make sure those decisions are based on biology, not politics.

Mississippi Kites and Swallow Tail Kites

At the Sportsman Club meeting last Tuesday Raymond English said he thought I was talking about a Mississippi Kite when I wrote about seeing a Swallow-tailed Kite.  He told me he saw the Mississippi Kite one time and he had to get more information about it.  So I did too!

    I am not sure I have ever seen one, but maybe. Griffin is right on the edge of their territory and they are rare here. They look similar to sparrowhawks that are common here and I may have confused them. Sparrowhawks are actually American Kestrels, a type of falcon rather than a hawk.

The Mississippi Kite is a little bigger, with body length about 14 inches and wingspan of about 30 compared to a sparrowhawk with body 12 inches and wingspan about 24 inches. Sparrowhawks have more brown while Mississippi Kites are more gray, but young kites have more brown with bars so they look very much like sparrowhawks.

    Mississippi kites do not have a forked tail that makes the Swallow-tailed kite stand out. But one interesting fact – Mississippi Kites often build their nests near wasps nest – maybe wasps help protect the young birds!

Right now males of all species are in full mating colors so they really stand out. Male bluebirds in my back yard are very colorful but will fade some in the coming weeks as they mate and nest.

I will be on the lookout for them and other interesting birds this spring, while fishing and other times. It is much easier to look up new bird sightings now we have the internet.  It is fast and easy compared to the old book field guides I used for years.

Growing Up On A Farm and Growing A Garden

 I have vague memories of a big barn and animal pens beside the house where I lived from 1950 to 1962.  I have no idea how old the farmhouse was when daddy bought it and the fifteen acres it was on after graduation from college in 1948 for his new family.

When we tore it down in 1962 to build a modern split level brick house on the same site we found hand-hewn timbers supporting it. The ax marks were plainly visible.

The barn was torn down when I was three or four, I think. Most of my memories of it are piles of rubble and finding boards with nails in them with my bare feet.  Then we got it all cleaned up and used the 100×300 foot area for a garden. The soil was extremely rich from years of animal waste and rotting hay debris.

Mama And daddy grew up during the depression and did everything they could to be self-sufficient.  Although daddy taught school and later became principal of Dearing Elementary, he worked long hours on the farm, developing a thriving egg business, eventually including 11,000 laying hens.

Mama worked the farm but also made cakes to sell, using milk from our cows and eggs from our chickens. She also canned, pickled and froze everything possible to have delicious food year-round.

Our summer garden included tomatoes, potatoes, corn, string beans, field peas, butter beans, okra, cucumbers, squash, peppers (bell and hot) and onions.  Our early spring garden had radishes, lettuce, cabbage, turnips and broccoli. Some of them were replanted in the fall.  Daddy also had a small asparagus bed he kept active.  

Even as a young kid I “got” to help.  I didn’t have the patience to drop two or three butterbean or pea seeds per hill in the trench daddy dug with an old push plow, so I followed mama as she dropped them spaced just right.  My job was to cover them, using my bare feet like plows to push the dirt on top of the seeds then step on top to compress the soil. Mama would look back regularly and and also check the first row as we worked back up the next one, checking to make sure I had not gotten distracted.

We planted tomato plants after raising them from seeds inside.  I hated that process. Mama or daddy would put the small plant into the ground and I had to haul water in small bucket from the house and pour a little beside each plant, being careful to not wash dirt from the roots.  The biggest bucket I could carry was still small so it meant dozens of trip!

We always planted on Good Friday since that was usually a safe timing to avoid a late frost. Is your garden plot ready?  If not you have less than two weeks!

I have many more gardening and canning memories. I wish I could still do things like that. Now I limit myself to about eight tomato and six bell pepper plants each year.