During the summer of 2003 I was working with a literary agent in Iowa and Adams Media about writing a book on fishing. The agent had seen my web site and contacted me about a proposed book, The Everything Fishing Book. I agreed to write it and signed a contract.

I started on the book on Memorial day and from then until August 18 I spend many hours each week researching and writing. My deadline for 85,000 words was August 18th and I met it. There were days that I did not want to look at a computer screen and keyboard ever again, I just wanted to go fishing. But I finished the book on time.

Adams Media publishes a series of books with the Everything title. There are over 100 different books in this series and they have very specific guidelines on what they want. That really helped me and guided me as I wrote the chapters of the book.

It was quite a thrill to see the book listed at all the big internet book stores like Amazon and Borders. I received some copies and have given them to folks that helped me with the book. Jim Berry has a few copies at his store for sale.

One of the nice things about the contract with Adams is that I was paid up front. I get no more money whether the book sells zero copies or a bunch. So I have no vested interest in it as far as money goes, just my pride.

The book is a guide for adult beginning fishermen. I was told to write it for someone who never fished but decides to start fishing as an adult. It has a lot of basics, like explanations of the different kinds of reels, how to find a place to fish, different kinds of bait and even a glossary of different kinds of fish.

One chapter of the book is on tying good knots, another chapter discusses different kinds of line and which work better in different situations and another chapter is on cleaning and cooking your catch. Most of the information in the book comes from personal experience. All the mistakes I have made gave me good ideas of what to warn people not to do!

Looking back the writing does not seem so bad, now that it is over. And contrary to what some people told me, I do know that many words! Someday I may try it again, when the memory of those long days sitting at a computer when I could be fishing fade a little more.

Monster Alabama Gator Sets of Media Frenzy

This huge gator was caught in Alabama

At 5 p.m. last Friday, Mandy Stokes of Thomaston, Alabama, was a wife, mom and assistant to Dr. Bill Bledsoe at the Camden Veterinary Clinic. Less than 24 hours later, Stokes was an instant, multi-national celebrity.

Stokes admits she had no idea what she was getting into during the second night of the Alabama alligator hunting season and, especially, the media feeding frenzy that started when word began to circulate about the 15-foot, 1,011.5-pound alligator that she tagged in the wee hours of this past Saturday morning in a slough near Miller’s Ferry Dam on the Alabama River.

“I don’t really know how to describe it,” Stokes said of reaction to the monster gator. “It just went nuts. John and I have a daughter that is 3 and a son that’s 1, so we kind of have a full-time job with that. I think the whole world record potential is what’s really got people stirred up.

“I never expected to be a celebrity in any way, but I sure never dreamed it would be from gator hunting.”

Stokes said CBS New York contacted her husband, John Stokes, and ABC News attempted to get an interview through Jeff Dute, who broke the story as outdoors editor of the Mobile Register/al.com.

“I’ve got an email from Fox News, but I haven’t even opened it,” she said. “I can’t keep up with all the notifications. I’m already two or three days behind just trying to be polite to people. I don’t want to be rude and ignore people, but I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

With her job as a veterinary assistant and John’s job with AT&T, Stokes said their commitments to their jobs have to come before the interviews.

“I’ve had people call me and tell me they were driving to Camden to interview me, and I told them not to come,” she said. “I don’t want to upset anybody, but I don’t have time to talk to them all. I’m at work. I’ve got kids at preschool. Plus, John and I are trying to build a house. It’s just crazy around here anyway.”

Stokes said she, John and Kevin Jenkins, her brother-in-law, went out on Thursday night, the first of the season, to look around for a gator to no avail.

“John and Kevin decided to work Friday, so we didn’t stay late Thursday so we could go back out Friday night,” Mandy said. “When we got back on the water Friday night, I think the three of us decided that we were going to tag out no matter what we found. We just didn’t have time to hang out on the river for six nights.”

Stokes said they had no idea a monster gator even lived in that narrow body of water off the river.

“I had never been in that slough in my lifetime,” she said. “It’s unlikely that I’ll ever go back to it.”

And if she draws an alligator tag in the future, she’s going to make sure John and Kevin do some downsizing.

“I don’t ever want to hook into one that size again,” Mandy said. “If we had known what was on that line, it would have intimidated us so bad that we would have never harvested it. We never really saw the gator except for his eyes and tail. We thought it was going to be a 10-footer.”

More than four hours into the fight, the team managed to get two ropes on the gator and secured him to the boat. That’s when Mandy tried to shoot the gator at the base of his skull with her 20-gauge shotgun. Unfortunately, the gator’s head went underwater when the trigger was pulled, stifling the shot. The gator then took the team on a boat ride it’ll never forget. The boat slammed into a cypress stump and sent the members of the team tumbling into the bottom of the boat.

“When we crashed into the stump, we all knew what was fixing to happen – we were either going to cut him loose or kill him,” Mandy said. “My brother-in-law managed to get another hook in him, and he said he was going to try to get his head up. He told me, ‘when I get his head up, you be ready.’ His head came up just as calm as you could ask for.”

Stokes’ second shot applied the coup de grace, and the gator rolled over.

Family That Caught 1000 Pound Alligator

“If that attempt had failed, we were through,” Mandy said. “We were OK just to let this animal go. Our safety was at risk, and we weren’t willing to compromise that.”

When Stokes realized the epic struggle was finally over, she didn’t know how to react.

“I was speechless,” said Stokes, who still gets breathless reliving that night. “I was so overwhelmed with emotion at that point I didn’t know what to do. I thought, oh, what just happened?”

The emotion of the successful hunt quickly turned into work as another rope was tied to the gator and the trolling motor was used to navigate out of the stump-filled slough in the early morning fog.

After exiting the slough, the boat was pulled onto the bank of the river to secure the gator for the 2-mile trip to the boat ramp.

“We really tied him up good, because we knew if he ever came off the boat, we’d never find him again,” Stokes said. “We tied him the best we could. In fact, we ran out of rope.”

When the Stokes team finally made it to the weigh station at Roland Cooper State Park, Alabama Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries personnel were then presented with an obstacle similar to what the hunters experienced – the gator was too big for the equipment.

Wildlife Biologist Mike Sievering said Big Daddy Lawler, who hosts an outdoors radio show in central Alabama, alerted the weigh station crew that a gator was coming in just as the scales were about to close.

The behemoth arrived on a flatbed trailer, and Sievering knew right away that this gator was special.

“This thing was huge,” Sievering said. “I’d never seen anything that big.”

The previous gator that topped the Alabama harvest charts was the so-called Fancher gator at 14 feet, 2 inches and 838 pounds. That gator also came into the weigh station at Roland Cooper.

“The equipment on the Fancher gator was just fine,” Sievering said. “But on this one, the winch just wasn’t big enough. We got him off the ground, but one of the clevises popped and straightened out. Finally, we got up with State Parks and got them to bring a backhoe in there so we could weigh it correctly. Kudos to State Parks for helping out on that deal, or we’d have been in trouble.

“We had to re-rig it several times and tie the tail up to get it weighed. A 15-footer is a lot of animal hanging there.”

As for the world record, there are really no set parameters to determine a world record, although it appears the length of the gator could be the determining factor. The Safari Club International recognizes a gator from Texas that was 14 feet, 8 inches long and weighed 880 pounds. The Arkansas state record gator weighed 1,100 pounds, but it measured 13 feet, 9 inches.

“It was something to see,” Sievering said. “That girl, Mandy, sure was proud of it, but she was basically in shock at how big it was.”

Stokes hasn’t been the only one inundated with media requests since the big gator hit the scales.

“I spent Monday morning on the phone with CBS, Fox News and a bunch of others,” Sievering said. “There was even a media outlet from France that did an interview. I couldn’t get my weekly report done. Heck, I couldn’t even get a cup of coffee.”

Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Director Chuck Sykes said the Stokes gator highlights another exciting hunting opportunity for outdoors enthusiasts in Alabama that has been in existence for a relatively short time.

“We are now in the ninth season of our alligator hunts, which began in August of 2006,” Sykes said. “Since that first year, we have more than tripled the size of our three hunt zones, coupled with an increase in tags to match. Each year, interest continues to increase from Alabama hunters for the opportunity to hunt this elusive species. As stewards of Alabama’s natural resources, we strive to manage for sustainable populations of alligators. With sound management practices, such as regulated quota hunts based upon continued population monitoring, we anticipate that Alabama hunters will be able to enjoy these hunts for many years to come.”

The spring conference of the Georgia Outdoor Writers Association was held in Savannah in 2003. We enjoyed fishing for stripers in the Savannah River, eating seafood, walking a birding trail with the president of the local Audubon Society, eating seafood, visiting a local fish hatchery, eating seafood, touring the city, eating seafood and discussing writing. Oh, we also ate a lot of seafood.

One of the highlights of this conference each year is the Excellence in Craft competition. Outdoor writers from Georgia can enter their work in about 10 different categories like “Daily Newspaper,” “Color Photograph,” and “Magazine Article.” All the entries are bundled up and sent to the Tennessee Outdoor Writers Association where they are judged by outdoor writers from that state.

I was honored to win awards in four categories. A picture of Hunter Caraway holding up a big bluegill that was published in Georgia Sportsman Magazine won first prize in the category “Black and White Photograph.” An article I wrote for OutdoorFrontiers.com about fishing for bedding bass won second place in the category “Electronic Media.”

Two of my articles in the Griffin Daily News won awards. I received 3rd place for an article “Holiday Wishes” in the “Non-game/Outdoor Recreation” category. Ducks, Unlimited judges and gives a special award, the “Waterfowl” category, and I placed second in it with an article about the work of DU in Georgia.

It is a very good feeling to win an award based on judging by other outdoor writers. I was vice president of the organization this past year, and it was my responsibility to gather all the entries and send them to Tennessee. There were a lot of excellent entries in many categories.

I like making thing including fish traps.

When I was a kid Mama always said I could take anything apart. She didn’t mention putting it back together again. As I got older I did learn to re-assemble my projects, and learned a lot about building things from scratch, too.

Living on a farm with 11,000 laying hens there were always pieces of equipment to fix, chicken houses to repair and other jobs around the farm that required building skills. Daddy was really good at coming up with a design for anything we needed and building it without plans other than those in his head.

While in college I worked each summer at National Homes in Thomson, assembling pre-fab houses at that company. I learned a lot about carpentry, electrical work and plumbing. It is a good feeling being able to fix most things that go wrong or break. But sometimes I know just enough to get myself into trouble.

One summer I “borrowed” enough scrap lumber at work to build a bow box. It had a rack for my bow and all my arrows, and a shelf for accessories. It was six feet tall, a foot deep, made out of half-inch ply wood and 2x12s, and almost too heavy to move. But I kept it in my dorm room all through college and it still sits in my garage, 45 years later. It was built to last.

If you have a boat you are going to have problems. In June I broke a steering cable on my trolling motor. I tried to find someone to replace it for me but gave up and got new cables. I was careful taking the old ones out to make sure I knew how they went in the foot control and motor head, and even took pictures.

With just a couple of mistakes I had to go back and correct I got it working in time for my next tournament. I have installed trolling motors, depth finders, transducers, bilge and live well pumps and switches, and almost all worked like they were supposed to work when I finished.

Like everything I built growing up, and even now, my rabbit boxes featured function over form. All us boys built and set rabbit boxes to catch rabbits to eat and possums to sell. My friend AT could make a very pretty box that worked great. Mine didn’t look so pretty but they worked.

I built cages for many of the animals I caught and for my hamsters. My hamster cages were about two feet square, with four different cages and doors for each on each one. When raising them to sell you need a lot of cages.

After moving to Griffin in 1972 I caught a young raccoon one night when walking back to the car after deer hunting. I built him a big cage, about six feet long with hardware cloth bottom, sides and top. It was raised about a foot of the floor on legs. That cage sat in my living room and the raccoon was beginning to get tame when Linda decided to vacuum under it – with him inside.

He was never the same after that and I had to let him go and get rid of the cage. Maybe she did it on purpose?

I have built some deer stands but preferred hunting out of my climbing stand. I had one of the first ones in the state. A friend saw one in a magazine, designed and built some and sold me one for $3.00. That was in 1965, when they first came out.

My best deer stand ever was very simple, two 2X4s between two sweet gum trees about three feet apart, with an 18 inch board nailed on top. I took an old coke case with a pad I attached to the top to sit on with me. Over the years I killed about 30 deer from that stand.

It was not real comfortable. Most of the guys in the club had very nice stands that were comfortable to hunt from. But mine had one advantage. It was so small nobody else in the club ever asked if they could hunt from it!

One of my most functional projects was a fish trap. For many years we put out trotlines, jugs and bank hooks at Clarks Hill and the best bait was a small three inch bream. It was fun catching them for bait on hook and line, but when we had out a couple hundred hooks we could not catch enough bait.

I bought a roll of hardware cloth and made a two foot square cage fish trap for small bream. I could put some dog food in it, drop it under our dock and catch enough little bream for all our hooks. The hardware cloth holes were small enough to catch very small bream.

All my projects were fun, and most worked as I intended. Now, what should I build next?

I had a lot of pets growing up. I guess you could say the 11,000 laying hens on our chicken farm as pets, but I never did. They were way too much work! Many of my pets were work, too, but they were fun.

I don’t remember my first dog but was told a lot about her by my parents. She was my best friend when I was about three years old and mom said she looked after me, barking like crazy if I tried to leave the yard. And she had a special talent in the fall when pecans fell from the trees in our yard. She would pick up a pecan, bring it to me and crack it with her teeth so I could eat it. And mom said the nut was never even wet.

Many of my pets were wild critters I caught and brought home, but my favorite was a flying squirrel that found us.. One summer the young squirrel came down our chimney and we caught it. It lived in a birdcage in the living room for years.

I named it Perry Mason after my favorite TV show. Perry was very tame and I would often sneak him into my shirt pocket and take him to school. He would sleep in my pocket all day during class and I would take him out to play at recess. He never got me into trouble.

Perry was very smart and figured out how to unlatch his cage door. One Sunday night we came home from church and when mom turned the lights on he came sailing off the top of a curtain and landed on mom’s head. I thought that was the end of Perry but when she stopped screaming she started laughing. It was funny – after she realized what got her.

Mom hated snakes and would not tolerate them in the house, but I often caught a king snake and kept it in a box in the barn, feeding it mice I caught in the feed bins. Daddy would always insist I let it go after a few days, saying it could catch rats and mice on its own.

I caught a “water moccasin,” what we called any snake around water, and brought it home. I was proud of myself. I had seen the snake trapped in the concrete overflow spillway behind the church. It was down about 20 feet from the top of the dam and I went home and made a noose on the end of a long pole to catch it.

When I got home I had to take it back to the pond and let it go immediately. It was not poisonous, I knew to look for the triangular head to tell me if they were dangerous, but mom and dad agreed it had no place around our house.

Every summer when the branch dried up I would have washtubs in the back yard with small bream and catfish I caught in the holes left by the receding water. I would work hard hauling them to the house in five gallon buckets of water and setting up a hose from our well to fill the tubs. But they always died.

Thinking back it is ironic that I worked so hard one day to save the branch fish and the next day I would go across the branch to Rodgers Pond, catch little bream and catfish clean them and have them for dinner.

In the spring I would often find baby bird that had fallen out of their nests. I tried a few times to put them back but quickly found out the mama bird would push them back out of the nest. I guess I tainted them by touching them.

I had many bought pets, too, from canaries to hamsters. Hamsters were my favorite and I actually had a hamster farm for a couple of years, breeding them and selling the young ones for a quarter. Many of my friends would surprise their parents by bringing one home from school after buying it from me with their lunch money. Their parents usually were not pleased!

Pets are generally good for kids and teach them a lot about loving something, being responsible taking care of it, and the sorrow of losing something you love since they live for such a short time.