Christmas Memories of Times Forever Gone

 Christmas is a bittersweet time for me.  All the good and not so good memories come flooding back and I know those days and times are gone from my life forever.  Memories are all that are left.

    Good ones involve getting up Christmas morning to the joy of toys and unexpected gifts.  I guess my brother and I were a bit greedy, we hung one of mama’s old stockings on the mantle rather than a big sock.

But they were always filled with everything from oranges, bananas and pecans to rolls of caps, boxes of sparklers, bags of candy, boxes of .22 bullets and many other necessities of life.  I think Santa picked up the pecans from our yard and the oranges from the big bag we always brought back from our week before Christmas visit to grandma in Ocala.

    There were the gifts Santa left, which included one big gift and many smaller ones each year.  Big things I remember best are the high-power BB/pellet gun I got when I was 10, the strongest on the market at the time.  It would fire a pellet with the same velocity as a .22 short. And the Remington semiautomatic .22 I got when I was 12, the real thing. 

One year I got a set of Duckback briar britches and coat, a great need when quail and rabbit hunting.  Another is the stand that had metal ducks that revolved, and a gun that shot rubber suction darts at it.

    Smaller gifts included the usual underwear and socks, but even more appreciated were the insulated hunting versions of them.  Boxes of .410 shells, hunting knives, mess kits, hunting caps, hand warmers, fishing lures and other outdoor stuff topped the list.

    One memory brings back sad regret.  When I was about 12 I wanted a new bicycle, as did my brother.  But those were very lean years.  Daddy was the principal and shop teacher at Dearing Elementary School and one afternoon I walked into the shop while waiting on him to go home.

    Hanging from wires were two old bicycles that had been carefully disassembled, sanded and painted.  Daddy had got some junked bikes and repaired them to almost new status.  I got a sinking feeling when I saw them, I knew that would be my present, not a new one.

    I am afraid daddy saw the disappointment in my eyes Christmas morning, and it no doubt broke his heart.  He did the best he could, sacrificing things he wanted to do more for us, and working to make us something he could not afford, even thought he worked all day at school then went home to run our farm.

    I loved that bike and rode it for years.  I would give anything to be able to go back and thank him for it and tell him how much that memory means to me.

    A happier memory is when I was about 8 or 9 years old.  I knew about Santa but my younger brother still believed, although he was starting to question it.

    Our old house had a bathroom in the back off my grandmother’s apartment that we seldom used after she moved out.  For some reason I went to the bathroom a couple days before Christmas and heard birds chirping. When I pulled back the shower curtain a bird cage with two parakeets was hidden back there.

    Christmas Eve Billy and I went to bed but could not sleep. He kept asking me about Santa. It told him let’s make a wish for something no one but Santa would know and see if it comes true.  Let’s wish for parakeets! 

    The next morning he was excited and amazed to see the birds in our gifts.  My parents almost messed it up, saying the birds were from them, not Santa.  I convinced my brother since Santa knew they were giving us birds he didn’t need to. He believed another year!

    I do not ever remember getting daddy anything, but when I got old enough, I always had to find a bag of chocolate crème drops for mama. She loved them and chocolate covered cherries so I tried to make sure she had some.  That is really the only kind of bought sweets she ever ate, all the rest were homemade.

    One very sad gift memory involves a neighbor. Lynn was about two years younger than me and a tomboy so she liked the same kinds of things I liked. My family went to visit for dinner a few days after Christmas.

    Lynn had gotten a stand-up punching toy, about five feet tall shaped like snowman with a heavy weight bottom so hit bobbed back up when you hit it.  I must have been nine or ten, and we were warned to keep the toy away from the floor furnace vent, it was very hot.

    Stupid me drug the punching toy across the vent and the heat melted the plastic with a loud pop. Of course Lynn started crying. That pretty much ended the visit. I felt terrible but could do nothing.  I wonder if daddy bought her another one, if he did I never knew.

    As an adult presents really don’t mean much anymore.  I tend to buy whatever I want when I want it, so it is hard to buy something for me.  Gone is the joy and wonderment of Christmas morning.

    If you have kids, make this as truly a wonderous time of the year as long as possible.

St Croix Rods Official Sponsors of Bassmasters Opens

St. Croix Announced as Title Sponsor of 2022 Bassmaster Opens Series
PARK FALLS, WISC. – B.A.S.S. officials announced in October the slate for the 2022 Bassmaster Opens Series, with nine tournaments in three divisions covering nine states as the pathway to some of the most-coveted invitations in all of professional bass fishing. Today, B.A.S.S. and St. Croix Rods, handcrafters of the Best Rods on Earth® for nearly 75 years, are pleased to announce St. Croix’s title sponsorship of the 2022 Bassmaster Opens Series. In addition to St. Croix’s title sponsorship, the St. Croix Rods Rewards Program will award an extra $1,000 to an angler who wins a St. Croix Bassmaster Opens tournament fishing St. Croix rods, or $500 to the highest-finishing top-10 angler fishing St. Croix rods.

Review of St Croix Rods.

The 2022 St. Croix Bassmaster Opens Series will return to a regular schedule this season with the first tournament, a Southern Division event, set for February 3-5 on the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes in Kissimmee, Florida. From there, the Opens will wind through Tennessee, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, New York, and Maryland.“The Opens have always been a critical proving ground for tournament anglers,” says Hank Weldon, tournament director for the Bassmaster Opens. “Current Bassmaster Elite anglers and St. Croix pro-staffers like Caleb Kuphall, Bob Downey, and Pat Schlapper have all leveraged their success in the Opens to ascend to bass-fishing’s biggest stages, the Bassmaster Elite Series and the Bassmaster Classic. This year, the St. Croix Bassmaster Opens combine Elite invitations, Classic spots and a ton of coverage for new anglers on FOX Sports and the B.A.S.S. platforms. All of that has led to record-breaking registration numbers as anglers try to get one of the 225 boater spots for each 2022 event. We’re thrilled to welcome St. Croix – America’s premier, family-owned rod company – onboard this year as our title sponsor to help us spotlight the future stars of our sport. The competition is going to be fierce.”
Bob Downey of Hudson, Wisconsin began fishing Junior B.A.S.S. Nation tournaments as a teenager. “I remember watching KVD win the 2001 Bassmaster Classic on the Louisiana Delta when I was 14,” he recalls. “That sparked my interest in wanting to try and do the same thing someday.” After experiencing success at the junior level, Bob attended the University of Iowa, where he continued his tournament angling. Downey signed on to fish the Bassmaster Central Opens in 2019, claiming a check in all four events and qualifying for the 2020 Bassmaster Classic by winning the final event of the season at Grand Lake, Oklahoma. He also qualified for the Elite Series by finishing fifth in the 2019 AOY standings. Downey has fished the Bassmaster Elite Series for the past two seasons. “Bassmaster – and specifically the Bassmaster Opens – provided the platform for me to get to where I’m at today,” he says.
The same is true for St. Croix pro, Pat Schlapper of Eleva, Wisconsin. Schlapper left a stable career to fish full time in 2019, signing up to fish the 2020 Bassmaster Eastern Opens, and also qualified for the 2021 Classic by virtue of his 2020 TNT Fireworks B.A.S.S. Nation National Championship win. Schlapper’s performances on both tournament trails double qualified him for the 2021 Bassmaster Elites.
Caleb Kuphall, a recent addition to the St. Croix pro staff, is another angler who’s made a lot of waves in Bassmaster events the past three years. Of the 23 Bassmaster events the Mukwonago, Wisconsin angler has entered, he’s had four top 10s and finished in the money 22 times. He spent just one season fishing the Opens in 2019, when he won the 2019 Central Open at Lewis Smith Lake to qualify for the 2020 Bassmaster Classic and finished second in the Central division points race, earning a spot on the Elite Series. Earlier this year, in just his second year fishing the Elites, he won the Bassmaster Elite tournament at Lake Guntersville.

“St. Croix exists to give every angler the upper hand, and that philosophy extends well beyond simply providing them with the Best Rods on Earth®,” says St. Croix Vice President of Marketing, Jesse Simpkins. “We couldn’t be more pleased to extend our support to the St. Croix Bassmaster Opens Series, which provides hope and opportunity for so many talented and aspiring tournament anglers. It’s a chance to prove to themselves that they can compete with the very best and a realistic pathway they can follow – applying their skills along the way – that can quickly ascend them to the ultimate levels of bass-fishing competition. Caleb, Bob, Pat and others on our own staff here at St. Croix have proven that, as have dozens of other talented and driven anglers.”The winners of all nine 2022 Opens will earn a berth into the 2023 Academy Sports + Outdoors Bassmaster Classic presented by Huk, provided they have fished all three events in the division where their win occurred.

Follow all of the action of the 2022 St. Croix Bassmaster Opens Series at https://www.bassmaster.com/bass-pro-shops-bassmaster-opens.

More Country Christmas Decorations

 By this time every December growing up my hunts got more specific. All fall I had kept my eyes open for pretty cedar trees that were the right size and shape, marking their location in my mental GPS. Back then it actually worked and would hold many locations.

    But around the first of December I got serious, searching for the perfect tree. It had to be as perfect shape as a wild tree could be, and as tall as possible without being more than seven feet tall, about as high as I could reach.

    I hunted a lot on an old farm about a mile from my house. The fields were mostly overgrown with broom straw and weeds but the field edges of briar, brush and small trees gave rabbits and quail perfect places to hide. The old fields still provided a variety of food for them.

    Cedar trees grew in the field edges and in the old fields, too. Since they could get sun from all angles out in the field, they were conical shaped and full all the way around.  Trees near the woods usually had a gap on the side that did not get full sun so the ones in the open were the best.

    About a week before Christmas Day I would direct daddy to the best tree I had found.  He drove our old Chevy pickup pretty much anywhere although it did not have four-wheel drive. Since the best tree was usually in the open, it was not hard to drive to it.

    Daddy “let” me lay on the ground and saw the tree down, using a lumber saw. It’s fine teeth made the cutting slow and took a while but for a preteen or teenager, it was not too bad. I tried to get a nice smooth even cut for the tree stand we would make with 2x4s.

    We would also cut some limbs from other cedar trees that were not candidates for “The” tree, even for the future. Those limbs were used by mama to decorate the mantel where our stocking were hung, and a center piece for the table.

    Getting the tree in to the house and set up was not hard with several folks to help. Within minutes the house would smell of cedar, a wonderful smell that would be reinforced by mantel and table decorations that would last until the day after Christmas.

    We didn’t have a lot of money back then and most of our tree decorations, as well as house decorations, were homemade. I brought in sweetgum tree balls and small pinecones from the few trees that produced them. I still do not know what kind of pine tree produced those two-inch-long cones but they were rare.

    We would spray the pinecones and sweetgum balls with silver or gold paint and sprinkle glitter on them.   They were hung from the tree with short pieces of colorful yarn. We would also cut strips of colorful construction paper and make chains out of loops of it for the tree.

We did have bought lights, big bulb strings that were very colorful. The strangest “lights” for the tree were ancient small pans that clipped to the tree and had a spike for  a small candle.  We were not allowed to light the candles except for a few minutes each night while mama and daddy watched carefully.

There were some very old ball decorations that had been in the family for years and we were very careful handling them. They were beautiful, some shaped like angels, some like Santa and some like bells and balls, and all very colorful.

Store bought tinsel was made from metal, I think it was strands of tinfoil, and mama would not let us kids touch it. She hung each stand carefully, placing it just right. After Christmas she would remove it just as carefully and put it back on the cardboard backing and into a pack for next year. I felt like we were rich the year mama said throw the tree out with the tinsel on it, we would buy more next year!

Undecorating the tree was a sad time and I did not help much, I wanted to get out in the woods with my new boxes of .22 bullets and .410 shells!!

WALLEYES UNDER THE ICE

FIRST BREAK WALLEYES UNDER THE ICE

By Joel Nelson for Northland Tackle

from The Fishing Wire

First Break Walleyes Under the Ice

It’s been a few years, but I’ve always been a big fan of full-moon fall trolling on the big lakes. What thermocline may have kept bait and ‘eyes out deeper all summer, gave way to incredible shallow water fishing come late October and November. What surprised me however, was just how many anglers had that full-moon fever bite going, and never re-connected with it come first ice. Those same fish didn’t make vast moves or change their feeding patterns too much. They were just under a few inches of ice now.

It’s that same mentality you need to take with you to the lake come first ice walleyes, especially from a location perspective. You’ll have plenty of time to pound off-shore reefs, deep mud, gravel bars, and rock piles. Early ice is the time for fishing right off of shore, just below or on the “first break.” By that, I mean simply that you should look for the first appreciable steep drop from shore, which could bottom out anywhere from 5 to 15 FOW. First ice walleyes love to cruise the bottom of these edges in search of food, and when you’ve got some weed cover, substrate change, or other features to target, the spot is all that much better.

Large, main-lake points are favorites no matter where you go, to focus feeding attention of hungry ‘eyes. They’re also angler magnets, so if you’re fishing pressured bodies of water, understand that you don’t always need to be on a prominent piece of structure to get it done. More and more, I’m looking for small areas of interest. A living-room sized patch of rock that doesn’t show up on the contour map, a quality weed-bed that’s more dense than the surrounding area, or even some hard-pan sand vs. nearby mud or muck. Often, that’s all it takes to gather some near-shore walleyes once the lakes freeze over.

Where most anglers miss out on the shallow water walleye bite, is that they fish it the way they would mid-winter walleyes in deeper parts of the lake. They ice troll across the shallow flats, scaring the very fish they seek. With fall trolling, we learned that there were nights where hundreds of feet of line behind the boat was what it took to get bit. The same walleyes that don’t love hanging tight in your main-motor wash, don’t appreciate lots of hole drilling and overhead traffic.

First Break Walleyes

For that reason, it’s best to have a few dead-set approaches. While there are a few ways to skin that walleye, the two I employ are tip-ups and deadstick rods. Tip-ups for early ice eyes are a mainstay and have been around for forever, so there’s not much new under the sun here. Select some quality fluorocarbon line in or around 10lb test, select a good light wire live-bait hook, and rig up a small sucker or preferably shiner pegged with a sinker above the hook a few inches. Put that sinker closer to the bait if a lively sucker, or further for less lively minnow species. Set your tip-up on a very “light-trip” setting, preferably not under the notch unless needed for wind’s-sake. Then you wait.

Tip-ups are great, but do have their problems. Namely, fighting a fish hand-over-hand, especially if it’s a trophy. Dead-stick rods on simple rod-holders have been a great solution to that problem and more, while offering several advantages over the standard tip-up scenario. Why a specialized rod for this type of fishing? Mostly because a dead-stick is unlike any other ice rod. The action is extremely slow for half or better of the length of the rod, offering bite-detection and minnow-monitoring convenience. Then, a hard-wall on the blank that goes straight to very stiff backbone – perfect for setting the hook.

While dead-stick rods may tangle, any issues are usually seen quickly and above ice, rather than the below-water snarls that can happen on a tip-up without you knowing about it. More importantly, a quality dead-stick will telegraph every movement of the minnow, all while offering you immediate clues both during and after the bite. Set the rod in the holder, and watch your bait or several baits go to work.

Sometimes the fish will grab the bait and sit right below the hole, which is easily seen on a deadstick as it very slowly loads. That’s far less visible and harder to manage a hookset when that happens on a tip-up. I highly recommend bait-feeder reel designs for these rods, as with the flip of a switch, free-spool is offered to running walleyes. These quick runs are easy to detect for either tip-ups or dead-sticks, but the hookset and fight are usually superior on a dead-stick-setup.

First Break Walleyes

Usually, I’ll either jig on the deeper side of the break and watch a deadstick rod right on it, or many times, simply put out the max number of lines I’m allowed in dead-sticks and wait. As with most things walleye, the bite is best early and late, but cloudy days can make for spurts of great fishing throughout. It’s a really fun way to fish if you’ve got a group of friends, as you can cover a long section of break, all while enjoying each other’s company until a rod goes off.

Just make sure to tend the set, just as you would a tip-up. Extreme cold weather doesn’t bode well for this type of fishing, but the good news is that first ice is typically pretty mild after that first blast of cold that locks everything up. Check your baits, make sure the hole isn’t icing up too badly, and more than anything, resist the urge to drill too many holes and stomp around throughout the day. These fish are sensitive to noise, as you may only be targeting them in 5-8FOW.

Especially when your panfish lakes aren’t locked up well, or you’ve got good walkable ice near-shore but not the whole way out, this is the way to go. Setup a few hours before dark, stake out your spot, and wait until some rods start bending or flags start flying.

Natural Christmas Decorations In the Country

We didn’t deck the halls with boughs of holly, but we did use holly in many decorations. In the drab December outdoor colors of browns and grays, bright green holly, and duller but green cedar, green briar and even mistletoe stands out, and we collected all four for festive decorations.  

    In pictures holly always has clusters of pretty red berries everywhere. Not so much in wild holly.  If there were a few scattered red berries on a limb it was carefully cut and taken home.  Mama used the holly for mantle and table decorations, along with cedar limbs.

    One decoration always took center place on the mantle. It was an old kerosene lamp with a bulbous lower chamber for the fuel, a wide flat wick and a tall glass chimney.  We filled the fuel chamber with small colorful balls and mama put a collar of green cedar or holly around its base, arranging it so it set off the lamp.

    We had several of those old lamps and the others were kept with kerosene in them for the times the electricity went out.  Along with a few candles, they gave enough light to get by.

When I was 12 we moved into mama’s dream house, a split level brick home that had three bedrooms upstairs and a den and egg room in the lower level.  The egg room had a big walk-in cooler and an area where we “candled” the eggs.  It got a lot of use since we had 11,000 laying hens.

The house was an orangish brick, not red.  The year we moved in mama bought plastic candle sticks for each front window, eight total, and put orange bulbs in each one. Those candle sticks had five bulbs each and set off the house just right at night.

    Getting mistletoe was always my job and I loved going into the woods, finding a big clump high up in an oak tree and shooting it down with my .22.  I tried to use as few bullets as possible, hoping to clip the main branch of the mistletoe with two to three shots.

    For as long as I can remember we had a big gold bell with a music box inside. The clapper for the bell was actually a pull cord and when pulled down it slowly retracted, playing a short clip of “Jingle Bells.”  Mistletoe was put in the bow above the bell and it hung over the door going to our downstairs level den.

    That doorway got a lot of traffic and my little brother loved to pull the string and make the bell play. So much so I usually hated to hear it within a few days. I think he liked to do it to bug me.

    I could stop the irritation for a few days by unclipping the music box from the bell and hiding it. He would whine to my parents, but I think they got sick of hearing it, too, so they would not really force me to get it back out for a few days.

    An old home place a few miles from our house provided “smilax” which I learned later in life is green briar.  We would go get several long vines of it and mama used it to outline our front door. The door was covered with shiny red and green paper and a wreath was placed in the center for a pretty entryway.

    Greenbriar stays green all winter, so it is an important food for deer in the lean months as well as being pretty.  I learned to hunt patches of it in late December for deer looking for something good to eat in the mostly barren woods.

    Food was amazing.  We never made gingerbread houses, but gingerbread cookies along with Martha Washington balls, snowballs, chocolate chip and many other kinds of cookies were set out on the table to nibble on as we decorated and all during the holidays.

    The holidays meant many big meals with family.  Mama and daddy had several brothers and sisters living near us, and we had to go to every one of their houses, and they all came to our house for meals, too.  There were often a dozen adults and twenty cousins running around on a day we had meals together.

    The table was loaded with turkey and dressing, ham, fried chicken, mac and cheese, string bean casserole, squash casserole, scalloped potatoes,  devil eggs, potato salad, string beans, turnip greens with roots, rutabaga, rice, corn bread, rolls and other staples.

    There were always several kinds of jello salad, from simple orange and shredded carrots to my favorite with cherries, pecans, pineapple and cherry jello.  The desserts ranged from ambrosia made with fresh oranges, coconut and marshmallows to every kind of cake and pie imaginable.

    Most days started and ended with hunting, either quail with several uncles and cousins if daddy or one of the uncles wanted to get the dogs out to me going alone after squirrels and rabbits.  Many mornings were quail hunting with the adults, then after a big meal, me hunting alone, since the adults were too full to move.

    Presents were exchanged with all cousins and family members.  One that I got every year from an aunt and uncle that lived in South Georgia was a window envelope with a dollar bill inside!  That may not seem like much now, but it was a lot of money to a kid that spent hours collecting empty coke bottles along the road for a penny each!

    I have great Christmas memories and I hope you are making new ones this year.

Should Muskie Fishermen Stop Fishing When the Water Is Warm?


MUSKY WARM-WATER MORTALITY STUDY IN JAMES RIVER

from The Fishing Wire

Musky Warm-Water Mortality Study in James River

Warm water angling is a contentious topic among devout muskie anglers, with many anglers deciding to stop fishing when water temperatures exceed 80°F because catching fish in elevated temperatures is believed to lead to high mortality. Until this point, there has been no formal evaluation to validate this belief. Over the past two years, graduate students from Coastal Carolina University, in cooperation with the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR), the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources (WVDNR), and West Virginia University (WVU) conducted a two-year warm-water catch-and-release mortality study for muskellunge in the upper James River.

Researchers surgically implanted muskellunge between 26 and 46 inches in length with individually coded radio tags in February-March of 2020 (N = 45) and 2021 (N = 50) so we could track and monitor the fates of all tagged fish. We also attached external loop tags to the radio tagged fish so anyone who caught a radio tagged fish could report it and receive a $50 reward.

With the help of local anglers, researchers attempted to catch half of the radio tagged fish during the warm-water period, which we defined as July through August because that is when water temperatures tended to exceed 80°F. After a tagged fish was caught and released, researchers tracked the fish for several days to verify whether it survived or died.

We were able to locate 39 of 45 fish in 2020 and 46 of 50 fish in 2021 prior to the beginning of July each year. The missing fish may have moved into areas we could not track, had their tags fail, or were unreported harvests. Five of the located fish in 2020 had died prior to the warm-water period and six died prior to the warm-water period in 2021, one of which was harvested.

Of the surviving fish we were able to locate, seven fish were caught in 2020 and five were caught in 2021. Three of the seven fish caught in 2020 died and one of the five fish caught in 2021 died, leading to a mortality estimate of 33.3% for fish released in warm water. Additionally, we had one natural mortality in 2020 and three natural mortalities in 2021, resulting in a natural mortality estimate of 6.9% for the warm-water period.

Fishing action (i.e., follows, strikes, and catches) during the warm-water period was extremely low, even with known locations of tagged fish and experienced anglers using a variety of tactics (e.g., live bait, night fishing). Fish also visually exhibited signs of stress (e.g., no movement or interest in baits presented to them) and would aggregate near thermal refugia (e.g., creek mouths).

We used our mortality estimates, as well as James River muskellunge growth data and angler catch data from previous summers, to simulate how a season closure during the warm-water season would affect the size distribution of the James River muskellunge population. Based on our simulations, the changes in the estimated probability of muskellunge achieving >40” and >45” did not significantly increase in the upriver (+2.0% and +0.5% respectively) or the downriver (+2.5% and +0.1% respectively) based on expected exploitation rates.

Take home points:

  • Mortality is higher for muskellunge caught in warm water.
  • Catchability of muskellunge during the warm water period is low.
  • Because few muskellunge are angled in the summer, the effects of summer angling mortality on size structure of muskellunge in the James River is minimal despite the high probability of mortality for fish that are angled during this period.

Searching for Seafood in Thomasville Georgia

   Searching for good food is a fun activity anytime I travel, and fried scallops top my list. I enjoy cooking at home but fried seafood like scallops and shrimp are not something I cook well, so I eat them whenever I go out.

    In Thomasville last week I had only one night without a set schedule and had found George and Louie’s Seafood with fried scallops on the menu. Linda had eaten there and said it was good, so we planned to go Thursday night.

    At our welcome get-together at Kevin’s Gun Room, several asked our Chamber of Commerce host about dinner. She said Jonah’s Fish and Grits was famous and only a block away. Ron Brooks asked if they had scallops – he knows me well and I think he asked for me – and she said yes, so a group of us went there.

    When our group of eight arrived at 7:30 they were busy but pulled some tables together and seated us almost immediately. The menu listed scallops, but only as an appetizer or with pasta. I asked the waitress if they would fry me a batch of them for dinner and she said “no.”

    I have made that request at dozens of places all over Alabama and Georgia, and every single one of them said yes. Sometimes it was a couple dollars more than the fried shrimp dinner on the menu but I did not mind.

    In their defense, Joanah’s closes at 8:00 – we did not realize that so our party of eight was right at closing time. I ordered fried shrimp and they were ok, a little over done, but maybe partly not as good as they would have been due to my disappointment.

    Ron got the seafood linguine and the scallops in it were tiny, so maybe it was for the best, although the menu said the scallop appetizer was “sea scallops,” which are the big ones.

    Lesson learned, I should have gone to George and Louie’s!

    Friday night we had our auction meeting and dinner at Q-Café. I wondered what the meal would be like but the outdoor pictures on the walls reassured me, and the owner was great. He even bought a painting at our auction to hang on his wall and bought one of our auction guns.

They are usually open for breakfast and dinner only but they catered our meal and it was great. It was buffet style and they kept cooking till everyone was full. The blackened shrimp were delicious and the fried chicken fingers were cooked just right and piping hot, too.

    I filled up on pastry cups with either chicken salad or pimento cheese, too. Those bite size pastries were seasoned just right. And the cold veggie platter provided my greens I want at every dinner. A couple of our members went back the next morning for breakfast and said it was fantastic.

    Our Awards banquet Saturday night was at Plaza Restaurant and Oyster bar, and we had three choices, fried shrimp, prime rib or Greek chicken.  You can guess what I ordered, and the shrimp, although there was only one waitress serving the 30 of us, were hot and not over cooked. So I did get one really good fried shrimp dinner.

    Our lunches were provided by JB Crumbs. Sandwich platters were varied and good. If you are planning a conference, or just a personal trip, there are plenty of great places to visit, help you and provide food for your group in Thomasville.

    As soon as I got home I went to Jimmy’s Steak and Seafood in Jackson for my fried scallop dinner.  This small place in a strip mall has as good fried scallops and shrimp as I have had anywhere. Fishtales here in Griffin is just as good, but Jimmy’s is open every night but Monday!

    When I got home Sunday, still thinking about seafood, one of the first emails I opened was from Taste of Home magazine. I get their recipes in about four categories every day and the first one I saw was for shrimp and grits, so I had to cook it.

The cheese grits were cooked in the cock pot so it was easy and didn’t burn, and the sauteed shrimp and sausage with bell peppers and garlic topped it just right. I had it twice last week.

At Kevin’s Gun Room for our greeting get together we had a cheese tray with different things made locally in Thomasville. The different kinds of preserves went well with the locally made cheese.

Kevins started in Tallahassee, Florida and is a big pawn shop featuring everything you would expect. Kevin did well and opened his place in Thomasville as his showcase and personal get-away. When you walk in the front door you are greeted by a full-size brown bear mount and there are mounts all around the main room.

Upstairs in the remodeled mill right downtown is the amazing part. From the polar bear rug on the floor to the red stag mounts brought from Germany, the room shouts “rich man cave!”  Kevin has spent a lifetime hunting and collecting outdoor equipment.

The walls of four rooms upstairs are lined with guns for sale. The first one I looked at, a beautiful side by side 28 gauge, had a price tag of $49,999.00! I had to back away carefully. Most of the guns were not as expensive, I saw a lever action .410 for only $5000.00. But one gun in his catalog lists for $149,999.00.

You can get a good idea of the items for sale at Kevin’s in his catalog at https://kevinsguns.com/

Kevin’s GunsTallahassee, FL (850) 386-5544 Mon-Fri 9am to 6:30pm EST Sat 9am to 6pm EST Sun 11am to 5pm EST gunroom@kevinsguns.comkevinsguns.com

Maybe you want to order one for Christmas! I am honored to get to tour his facility and see what someone dedicated to their passion and willing to work to make the American Dream come true, can do.

Last Tournaments of the Year At Jackson

Two weekends ago all three local bass clubs ended our tournament years at Jackson Lake. Saturday the Potato Creek Bassmasters fished from 7:00 – 3:30 and on Sunday the Flint River Bass Club and Spalding County Sportsman Club fished our annual two-club tournament from 7:30 – 3:30.

Saturday 21 of us weighed in 42 keeper bass weighing about 59 pounds. There were three five-bass limits and eight people didn’t catch a keeper.

Lee Hancock won with five bass weighing 7.35 pounds, Tom Tanner placed second with five at 5.53 pounds, Mitchell Cardell had four weighing 5.37 pounds for third and Mike Cox placed fourth with five weighing 5.15 pounds. Sport Hulon had a 4.08-pound largemouth for big fish.

On Sunday, ten members of the two clubs landed 31 keeper bass weighing about 41 pounds. There were three five fish limits and one person zeroed.

My five weighing 6.51 pounds was first, Niles Murray had four at 6.10 pounds for second, third was Don Gober with three weighing 5.69 pounds and fourth went to Jay Gerson with five at 5.64 pounds. Raymond
English had big fish with a 2.89 pound largemouth.

Fishing seemed much better Sunday with a lot fewer boats on the lake. Saturday was crowded with other fishermen, pleasure boaters and even skidoos. Weather both days was about the same, with cool cloudy weather and water temperatures in the mid-50s.

Shooting At Doves and Other Hunting Memories

 A polite descriptive term might be “little gray sidewinder rockets.”  But on a dove field you are likely to hear much more descriptive, unprintable language after a series of shots.

    Dove season opens Saturday, September 4 this year.  There will be hundreds of happy hunters sitting in blinds on hot fields waiting on a chance to burn some expensive powder, and maybe actually hit a dove or two.

    Don’t get me wrong, some dove shooters are excellent shots and hit with most of their shots. But the way doves dart and twist while flying mean even the best shots miss some.

My uncle Adron was the best shot I saw growing up. With his Browning “Sweet 16” shotgun, he hardly missed. Part of his expertise was knowing which shots NOT to take. Growing up during the depression taught him to conserve every shot.

I was not a good shot.  Usually if I could hit one dove every five shots I was doing good.  That’s five doves per box of shells, or with the current 15 dove limit per day, three boxes of expensive shells. But for the $7.00 per box, if you can even find shells this year, about $21 for what, a little over a pound of meat? That is higher than the cost of prime porterhouse steaks and you don‘t have to clean them! But you miss out on the fun of the shoot.

I say dove shooting rather than dove hunting since you sit and wait on a dove to come to you to shoot. You don’t hunt them until a cripple goes down in the thickest briar patch for a mile.

I loved going to dove shoots with daddy and being his “dog,” not carrying a gun but watching and retrieving any birds he shot. Saturday afternoon shoots were the norm for the month season was open, and we went to some good ones.

I have not been on a dove field since 1972, the first fall I lived in Griffin.  I didn’t know anyone here with a field but I saw an ad for a pay shoot near McDonough. I went over, met the farmer and he took me down to a field.  Some doves were flying so I paid him $25 and thought about where I wanted to place my blind on Saturday.

When I arrived Saturday mid-morning, I built a small blind with dog fennel woven into the fence at a post near a tongue of woods that ran out into the field. I noticed the field looked more like a pasture, and there were more hunters on another bigger field on top of the hill but didn’t think much about it as I got ready to shoot at noon.

By 1:00 I had shot two doves, the only two that came near me.  I was thrilled, I seemed to be on target that day. Then I noticed two guys dressed in solid green, not camo, walking from blind to blind talking to the hunters, so I got out my license.

I started to worry when I saw they were federal Fish and Wildlife agents, not local game warden. When one of them took my license, looked at it then put it in his other hand with a stack of licenses, not giving it back, I knew I was in trouble.

They explained I was shooting on a baited field and showed me ariel photos plainly displaying white strips of wheat on the green field.  They gave me a ticket.

There were about 30 furious hunters with guns that went up to the farmer’s house.  He got up on the porch, said don’t worry, he knew the local judge and nothing would happen, and bought a lot of beer for us. He also refunded our fees.

Local judges have no influence in federal court in Atlanta, where I was instructed to appear or pay a fine. I paid a $75 fine as did the other hunters, and I heard the landowner was charged $2000.  I have had no desire to go to a pay hunt since then.

Oddly enough, the game wardens did not ask to see my two doves even though I told them I had two, and they did not confiscate them.  But two doves for $75 is even more expensive than normal!!

When I bought my land in Spalding County I hoped to plant a dove field. But the only field on it is about an acre. The Georgia DNR recommends no less than five acres for a dove field. I planted wheat and even tried sunflowers, but at best would see two or three doves around the field.

The last doves I shot were about 15 years ago.  My upper pond was about five feet low all summer and the doves were using it as a watering hole since the bare ground around the water was easy to get to and fairly safe for them to drink.

I set up on the corner of the dam one afternoon and managed to shoot five as they came in to drink.  I found out doves would float when they fell in the water, and the breeze blew them to the bank.  Those were also the last doves I ate – they were good but not nearly as good as the ones mama and Gladys cooked.

For years going to Argentina to shoot doves was on my bucket list.  Tales of 1000 doves a day and having to use two or three guns to keep barrels cool made me want to go. But that is going to be an unfilled bucket, just like catching a tarpon.  

My goals have grown simpler as I get older. Now, just going fishing this weekend and maybe catching a bass or two is about all I can hope for!

Captiva Island Snook Fishing with Captain John Houston

Fishing Captiva with a Snook Guru

By Frank Sargeant, Editor

from The Fishing Wire

Captain John Houston is a Sanibel Island, Florida, guide who grew up on the backwaters between San Carlos Bay and Charlotte Harbor, building a guru-like knowledge of the movements and preferences of the snook in his areas, and no matter what the weather, he usually is able to solve the daily puzzle and put his anglers on fish.

I was apprised of that fact on a trip with Houston a few weeks back, on a morning when a chilly wind was whistling out of the north at close to 20 knots. Normally, for snook anglers, the best strategy on a morning like that is to turn over, pull the covers up and sleep until noon.

Houston and I didn’t have that option–he had one morning when he could fit me into his busy winter schedule, and this was it–we were going snooking. We met at the ‘Tween Waters Marina at a leisurely 8 a.m., because the guide had been out since daylight loading the live well with an assortment of pinfish, grunts and pigfish that would allow us to target big snook.

“Young snook will take shrimp about as well as anything, but when they get up in the 30-inch range and bigger, they want some meat,” Houston told me. “I do especially well with the grunts and pigfish. They make a lot of noise on the hook, so they’re snook magnets.”

Houston is an easy-going guy who bounces around the world between sessions of guiding on his home waters. He has a second home in Costa Rica and has hiked the mountains of Columbia, including the drug-lord territory, as well as regularly visiting island communities all over the South Pacific. He’s also a yoga instructor–needless to say, his resume is a bit different from most skiff guides.

Houston advised me that the south shore of Redfish Pass–which is the cut that separates North Captiva island from Captiva Island proper–is usually stiff with undersized snook (less than 28″) along the south shore, while the rock jetties that jut out from the north shore–where the Kohler Plumbing mansion is the most visible structure–is the home of much larger fish much of the year.

“The big ones get in the pass starting in late April pre-spawn, and they’re in there pretty much into early November most years,” he told me. “A lot of them go out to the reefs when it gets colder in December and January, and some go up into the rivers, but other than that you can catch trophy snook in the pass most any trip.”

We made the 10-minute run across the choppy water, dodging spray blown up by the howling wind the whole way. We were in the lee as we moved in close to the jetties, but waves generated by the combination of the wind and the strong current through the pass had Houston’s center-console bucking so hard it was tough to get an anchor to stick.

After a couple of attempts, we were finally in position. I sailed an unhappy 6-inch piggy out toward the end of the rockpile, where the green water of the pass swirled in a foam-capped eddy. The bait went down, the 20-pound-test braid jumped a couple of times, and I was hooked up to what felt like a submarine. One big head roll, mouth the size of a coffee can, and I got the mauled pigfish back sans snook.

Next cast, basically the same result, but even faster. Third cast, a good stick but then Flipper showed up. The dolphin chased the fish around the rockpile at flank speed, and the hook pulled. I couldn’t tell if the fish went down the hatch or got away clean, but in any case it didn’t come to the boat.

“The dolphins here have really learned to home in on fisherman,” lamented Houston. “Some days it’s tough to get a fish to the boat, and if you do get one in and release it, they eat it right away.”

That was the end of the story for the jetty–the next pigfish that went in the water got chased all the way back to the boat by a dolphin that came up right next to us rolled on his back, I swear grinning an evil grin.

No problem, Houston had plenty more spots up the sleeve of his foul-weather gear.

“There are quite a few people who live on the water and dump their live bait and their fish carcasses by their docks, and the snook get on to that pretty quick,” he told me as we motored into a series of canals on the back side of the island. “If you throw a few sardines or shrimp in there as chum to get them started, you can get bit pretty quick.”

He wasn’t wrong–the second dock we tried produced a pair of 28-inchers, both legal fish if we had been in harvesting mode. The limits on the Gulf Coast are 1 fish per angler per day from 28 to 33 inches long.

We caught a few smaller fish at another location, then finished off with a muscular lunker that was over 30 inches. Not bad for a three-hour trip on a 20-knot morning.

Houston said snooking is good in the area year around except after severe cold fronts, but if he had to pick two prime times they would be April and late October, when water temperatures and weather combine to create the most reliable action.

The Gulf Coast snook season is closed December 1 to the end of February to protect cold-shocked fish, and from May 1 to August 31 to protect the spawning period. For more information, Captain John Houston can be contacted at www.nativeguidesfishing.com. Houston also runs tarpon charters, chases trout and reds, and offers shelling and diving trips as well.