A Canadian Fishing Report...

My home lake, Sam Rayburn Reservoir is great fishing. It's so good that I am often not concerned with fishing anywhere else and I travel with a been there done that kind of attitude in regards to other water bodies. On our recent trip to Canada visiting Lake of the Woods and staying with my daughter and family at their cabin produced some good fishing for a first visit to the area and had us enjoying several tasty fish dinners. 

Seems that the lake is home to 70 species of fish with most anglers chasing muskie, walleye, smallmouth and largemouth bass, northern pike, lake trout and even crappie in spring. I won't get into the ice fishing side of things but I saw many anglers using familiar tactics and lures and once when passing close to a guide boat I saw paddle tail plastics nearly a foot long tied on their rods. I don't know what they were after but we caught smallmouth, Walleye and northern pike. 

Cathy caught this walleye on a Chartreuse curly tail jig with a 1/4 head. I had one walleye break my line at the dock and another that spit the hook back at me. If you heard walleye is tasty you heard right. 

I managed to catch 5 smallmouth and one throw back, all on a yellow curly tail jig. All fish caught from the dock except one caught from a paddle boat. We had a motor boat as well as canoes and kayaks available but fishing was good enough from the dock and paddling is work. Later a couple of guys came by in a bass boat casting the shoreline just like in East Texas and they said they always hit our dock for a few fish. 

That's a northern Pike on the right and I caught him on the yellow curly tail when I cast it behind a family of half grown mallard ducks swimming along the shore. Later I visited a store called Canadian Tire which is kind of like our Tractor Supply but with an extensive fishing section and saw duck lures for $30. I had visions of grandchildren whipping the water to a froth and catching big bass but to buy each a duck lure would have set me back $270 Canadian which really would have been $196 USA but I decided against it. The curly tails worked too well and I got plenty of them. 

Hamish tries his luck from the dock. The kids caught lots of crawfish on hot dogs and in traps and I could see that Cathy wanted to use them for bait but the kids crawfish raced and when I cleaned the smallmouth their bellies were full of crawfish. Probably smuggle in one of my dad's old crawfish pattern Bomber crankbaits next trip. 

 

If you visit Lake of the Woods take a pole. 
   

  

 

          

Not My Favorite Time of the Year...

 It's been just below freezing for several nights here and while there are many places where that will be the case till the month of May I'd just soon have winter over. I'd like to be fishing and though I look back through the fishing log and see many photos of us in coveralls and facemasks on a winter wind swept lake the circumstances of Cathy's recent shoulder surgery and a couple of lingering ailments, small grandkids who would be absolutely miserable when they outgrew their snowsuits during the trip and a slight cold I have had make me wish to fish on a day when no shirt and no shoes feels about right. 

I know that sounds a bit lazy because the fish are probably biting. After all Cathy fell in the lake on a December day when we caught our biggest catfish ever. Various duck hunting adventures over the years have left me pretty soggy. I guess I have become a bit afraid of being cold even though I own suitable clothing for any adventures you might go on in this neck of the country. 

I don't think I am suited to live north of Tyler, Tx. All hail summer and girls at the beach. 

 

A Walk in the Big Slough Wilderness Area and the Year End Catfish Count...

After Cathy fried up wood duck breast, made gravy and served it over jasmine rice with some left over egg plant casserole on the side it was so good that she gave me permission to duck hunt all that I want to for the rest of the season which ends on Jan. 30th. I did not rise and exactly shine today but I made it over to the Big Slough Wilderness Area about noon or so figuring that there are going to be ducks on the slough somewhere. There were not.    

I did see a couple of deer driving in and once in the woods the owls were quite busy. I took a good long walk for a fat old guy in hip waders down the slough but never heard a wood duck, saw any flying or jumped any up. Previous trips to the slough there had been enouh ducks moving around to make it interesting.  

I did see one hooded merganser duck. His white head stuck out like a sore thumb in the dull brown winter woods.  A good duck if you are looking for a pretty specimen to mount but this duck is a meat eater, dining on small fish and crustaceans and I was able leisurely watch him go about diving duck business while I googled suitability for the table. Reportedly if cleaned quickly, soaked in salt water and cooked rare this duck is "not too terrible for the table." I let him pass.    

I think those deer I saw were someone's pets. I don't know anything about when deer season starts or ends but I do know that sometimes it helps to take a lawyer with you hunting. 

Here's that fried duck. I have people tell me they hate the taste of duck. Try it chicken fried. If it aint fried it aint food. Speaking of food the catfish count for 2023 is tallied and since it's a little low this year we counted bass, bream, rainbow trout, gaspergou and everything. Final count is 202 fish. I did not count skiing and tubing trips or all the canoe trips but it was about 14 pontoon boat or bank fishing trips that produced this catch.  Usually we manage between 300 and 500 but we traveled and camped a bit more dividing our time and I assure you 202 fish fed us very well.   

I think I have one small package of fillets that I plan on using for a courtbullion soup and a few small whole catfish that we will knaw down to the bones for an old school supper one night but the rest of those all got ate. If we do better than this in 2024 that will be very, very good. 

 

Ducks, Bent Trees, Horseback Riders, Just a Day on the Big Slough...

I spent a nice afternoon yesterday in the Big Slough Wilderness Area . It's duck season and with recent rains the water is up a bit. The pot hole in this photo was attractive to wood ducks. It's wadable water to get downed birds but on my last trip on opening day this was dry land.   

I bagged one wood duck hen yesterday and missed an easy shot on a drake. I probably saw all total a dozen ducks including about six that swam past me on the big slough while I was watching the pothole. Those six hugged the far undercut bank in the fastest current. They made themselves too much trouble for an old fat man in waders to even think about shooting and trying to retrieve.  

It was a good day for stalking quietly through the winter woods and I slipped up on a big hawk eating this racoon. He flew and after a photo of the carcass I went on down the trail to leave him to his business. 

After shooting that duck I slipped up to the big, fast water with a long straight away view down the slough and saw several more ducks probably including the drake I shot at swimming on the water. I was well hidden, not moving or making noise and they flushed. I pulled back to keep and eye on the pot hole where downed birds would be retrievable and I hear voices approaching from near where I had seen the ducks swimming.    

Duck hunters don't have to wear orange as ducks see color but I keep hunter orange in my backpack for if I come on other people and I want to be seen. I donned an orange hat and these horse riders appeared. They spotted me and stopped to talk. They were looking for a lost hog dog. They gave me a found duck decoy.

I guess I was raised to hunting by a WW2 veteran who was very cautious with guns and hunter safety and in the old days horse back riding, especially on open national forest land was considered dangerous as some one might spot the large animal and mistake it for game. Hunter education courses have been mandatory in Texas since 1988 and anyone born after 1971 needs it to hunt. It's possible that people are safer in the woods than when I was a kid. 

Those riders seemed surprised I was duck hunting without a dog. I had hip waters and a 12' telescoping fiberglass crappie rod that I rake them in with. Pretty low tech in the modern world but it works. They probably told people they came on a Wildman in the woods, an old guy with long gray hair and beard who had walked way into the middle of nowhere.      

Speaking of wildmen I noticed this bent tree across the old grown over logging road trail down to the water. Trees in the woods get bent by storms, the weight of  ice on the branches or other trees falling on them. 

Then I noticed how the branches of the horizontal tree formed an interlocking natural latch against the vertical tree. 

Can you see it? Locked tight. This looks like the work of a Sasquatch who does not want me down in this part of the woods. I thought it would be pretty funny so I urinated on his gate just to let him know who is boss. 

I saw no more ducks so when shooting hours ended at abut 5:20pm I walked back to my truck arriving in the dusky dark. There was a dead pine sapling about 25' tall across the road. There was another truck down at the dead end that must have parked before it fell or was pushed down so it had not been there too long. I carry an axe, shovel and tow strap and was able to break out the top of the tree and toss the skinny trunk off the road. Did someone want me to spend the night?

Anyway we have two ducks in the freezer with plans for Cathy to cook her famous fried duck breast and gravy. That, along with any other duck hunts before closing day on Jan 30th and Bigfoot encounters will be other blog posts.       

 

The One Man Show Fishing Report...

I took a day today. Cathy was busy with her regular counting of the church collection (referred to by Parker as stealing the collection) so I went to the lake by myself. I even forgot my cell phone and it was a nice change from the business of the past week or so where we babysat, played two funerals, played a civic band concert, bought a car, went to the Rudolph lighting, enjoyed the downtown Christmas parade and rehearsed for an upcoming Drum and Tuba Christmas Show. I don't think I left out too many things. 

I don't think there's much that's more beautiful than heading East down the lake on a winter day. I make this same run every time I go fishing so I have seen this many times at different times of day, all seasons and in every type of weather condition available to us here in East Texas but something about crisp, cool morning air brings better focus.     

I caught a couple of nice catfish quickly and it seemed like a mess was going to be quick work but it turned into one of those days where you catch one fish here and one fish there. Since the lake is at least 5 feet low I fished mostly deep spots. I noticed from my fishing blogs that 2018 was a year of high water and shallow fish in late December. Might try that on an upcoming camping trip. 

I did check one of my duck hunting spots. The season is closed right now for migration purposes and due to open this weekend. There were about a dozen teal loafing in my spot mid morning and when the flew several big ducks jumped up from somewhere else. Very pretty sights against the clear sky.   

Final total was 9 cats, nice fillet size with a meal planned Friday of Dad's famous Creole topping over broiled fish and baked squash served on a bed of noodles. That's for the big people. I'll fry a few pieces with hushpuppies and fries to keep the grandkids busy. 

I am the truck backer while Caty runs the boat on the trailer. All by myself I managed to remember how to do that. Maybe I'll do this more often.  

 

Opening Day Duck Hunt at the Big Slough...

It was a good day for a duck hunt. Morgan and I went to the Big Slough Wilderness Area. It's a place where I hunted ducks with my dad going back to the late 70s. We split up for the first part of the hunt and I had this limpkin out in from of me feeding on the creek clams for a confidence decoy. If the ducks see he's ok they will say it's ok for us too! 

I have never bought a gun in my life. My old Winchester Model 1200 12 gauge was a Christmas gift when I was about 16. That makes it 50 years old. That's a lot of duck hunts. Actually I have a single shot Winchester 20 gauge model 370 That I think about carrying sometimes for it's lighter weight as I get older. It was my first hunting gun before the old man trusted me with something that had more than one shot and my kids used it also. I remember that shotgun costing $30. Used in good condition they fetch around $200 these days.     

I have thought about a new shotgun occasionally but this one does the job.  

This was Morgan's first duck of the day. My dad told me the wood duck was sacred to the Indians. He was in all three planes of existence, flying in the air, nesting on the ground and swimming in the water. The old man might have made that up but he felt hunting them was special.  

Morgan is on the stalk to jump up a big bunch from the creek. He spooked them but they circled and he took two with one shot. I first saw him do that at about age 10. 

You can keep 6 ducks but they have to be a mixed bag. Only three woodies allowed. Morgan bags a limit. 

For the weird things in the woods file. Two pairs of waders. These were in an area where I have found a small kayak stashed for use I would imagine of crossing the slough as it's too deep to wade here. Not real good waders, not really stashed or stowed and with about three days of good rain the bottom would flood and claim them for it's own. We left them as you never can tell of a game camera might be present to keep honest men honest.    

The roads are not bad to get there. Muddy but a hard bottom. It's the dirtiest I have gotten a truck in a while. I washed pounds of dirt from underneath. 

 Hopefully we do not get too much rain for the next couple of months and the creek stays just like it is now, flowing and wadable in some spots. 

The Great Day After Thanksgiving Catfish Round Up...

This might be a record for time between lake trips but the last time we fished Rayburn was mid September. There has been some beach fishing and a canoe trip to Old Dam B but with so much time since we had our fingers on the pulse of the noble catfish made us have to scramble a bit for fish today. Especially since we invited a few folks over for a catfish fry scheduled for tomorrow. They said, "have you caught a lot of fish?" We said, "no we haven't caught any." 

It was slower than we like but I did not have to take any anxiety meds as we managed to put 29 cats in the boat all caught from deeper water at the edge of the old river channel. At first the fish seemed like they were going to run small but we did wind up with about half the catch being good solid fish.    

I note from looking at the old fishing record that this time of the year has sometimes found the fish in the shallows and sometimes deep. Being that the lake is low with no water around the bushes where they like to hide I chose deep but catfish live everywhere in the lake and they might have been cruising the exposed sandy banks. 

Cathy lands a good one but Matt might have caught several of the best fish today. I don't care as long as I'm on the fish fry list. 

Fall colors are doing well and some of the areas we fished exposed to the north wind were pretty cool. Maybe I am broken in enough to the East Texas winter that I will venture a duck hunt soon. 

 

Times Have Changed...

 I learned to duck hunt following my dad up and down old backwater sloughs like the one in the photo toting a single shot Winchester model 370 20 gauge shotgun that brand new cost $50. My techniques have not changed much since those days. Once someone suggested I accompany his group on a trip with the tease, "we all killed 270 ducks last trip." I told him right quick that I was not picking 270 fricking ducks. 

We won't start figuring productivity on manhours or anything like that but if I bring home two ducks and breast them out and also take off the legs Cathy will chicken fry them in hot grease and make gravy and we will eat that and feel all fat and sexy. If I just bring home one duck I'll roast it with vegetables in one of those clay pot cookers and we will eat it with a bottle of dealcoholized wine and feel all skinny and sexy because after all it is  lean meat and the fake wine means that we wake up in the morning without our tongues wearing little hairy purple jackets. 

Once I was in a sporting goods store. The counter with the fishing reels shared space with the firearms. As I looked at the reels just down the counter a middle age man with his wife looking on asked to see a gun similar to the one that is popular with school shooters. I think my dad, who landed on Omaha Beach in WW2 and who I learned everything about guns from would have recognized it as a military style weapon. 

As the counter clerk handed over the gun for examination the gentleman took it and turned and aimed out through the store. The clerk responded immediately with a firm, "Sir, sir if you aim not out through the store, behind the counter only." 

Obviously the gentleman had never done his time on a slough with a WW 2 vet and a single shot shotgun. What he knew about guns he probably saw on the internet somewhere and like all that stuff you learned on the internet it's wrong. 

All that duck hunting with my dad is committed to memory. That's good enough. Tines have changed and if I could give up an old shotgun right now to ease someone else that is in pain and suffering because of ineffective gun laws and dummies like that guy in the sporting good store I would.     .           

Fishing the Old Way...

I headed out to the Big Slough again yesterday. I called myself duck hunting but did not see a thing. When my wife told one of my son in laws I was gone hunting he said, "by himself?" As a man that will fall into the elderly category of the population when my 65th birthday hits next week like a megatron bomb I do know how to make good use of my time. If there's no ducks on the water I check to see if there is fish in it.   

I had god luck on my last trip catching these little bass like this on my Ronco Pocket fisherman. Today for some reason it jammed up. I had brought a telescoping crappie pole which was really to be used to rake fallen wood ducks in but I tied a short line to it and a chatter bait and it worked just fine for bass fishing. 

I remember my dad telling me that they used to bass fish rivers and sloughs in the days before reels were common equipment in the everyman arsenal of gear. In those days they used a cane pole and a length of black dacron line to pitch the lure out and drag it by downed logs and brush tops. Here are a couple of lures from that early age of bass fishing which were in my dad's tackle box. I consulted an antique fishing lure book I own but no luck identifying these. One might be a Hawaiian Wiggler. Antique lures in good condition usually have some value but I don't think these would make that grade.      

The Ronco Pocket fisherman. The advantage to this outfit is the small bass seemed to hit after following the vibration and flash of the chatter bait after a longer cast. 

The old ways still work. Granted the equipment is a bit more modern. The telescoping fiberglass pole is easier to carry down through the woods and the chatter bait has a lip that skips over hang-ups making it pretty weedless. Flip it out and drag past a brush top and those bass decided it looked like a meal.   

There was another fellow that showed up on the slough with a bucket of minnows and a slip cork rig. He caught quite a few undersized crappie. That slough is full of fish.

Here's an example I filmed of my pitching technique with the crappie pole and a H & H spinner bait. The H & H was always my favorite when I was a kid because they were small and the bass liked them but because of their size big crappie would latch on. I think they were made in Louisiana to the exacting standard of some ancient Cajun French Creole who knew all kinds of things about the size of each species of fish's mouth. Now they are made in China by folks that are probably nice as that long gone Cajun but have little idea about old sloughs and bayous and what swims in them.  

There are a lot of good bass fishermen out there using modern techniques some of us might not have heard of yet and having a great time. I'm a catfisheman and it makes me feel good to fish like my dad did. It was a pleasure to fool a few fish with a lure and the fight of the fish on the light crappie pole was worthy.

Maybe I'll take someone with me next trip. 

@Carl-Wallace-23

     

 

Big Slough Trip...

Over the past two weeks I have made a couple of trips to the Big Slough Wilderness Area in Davy Crockett National Forest. It's a great getaway and if you need some relief from the crazy world I recommend it. 

Roads are pretty good, and any muddy spots will have hard bottoms but it's bumpy and there is a spot that was probably part of an old railroad tram that is starting to wash so if you like a sightseeing trip a pick up is probably better than a car. There's been some logging on private properties so that part of the road is well maintained for the big trucks. I don't know what the Forest Service plan (probably not one) is for the roads in the wilderness area since there are often separate rules different from regular national national forest.      

Note the beer can. I've made about four trips down here the last several months, I think all week days and I've seen one other car so not a lot of people use the area. I can only surmise that Bigfoot threw that can down. I don't drink beer so who else besides me is down here? Must have been him. 

This hill coming up out of the bottom is more impressive in person than the photo shows. Go up that and down the other side and you will get to Ratcliff Lake and Park. Probably be later rather than sooner. Start early and bring food, water, toilet paper, sturdy shoes, a GPS and if it's spring time bug spray. 

I noticed about four of these signs along the road. They are boundary markers for the wilderness area and the trees have overgrown them. They give a brief reminder that nothing with wheels, motors (includes boats) or hang gliders are allowed. Somebody must have once had a pretty big screw up to get hang gliders on the list. 

I know guns and shooting animals can be controversial but I killed this one duck, baked it in a clay pot and ate it last week. It was delicious. If I could kill a couple more I would breast them out, invite my friend Charlie who loves to eat duck along with his wife Suzi over and have Cathy chicken fry them with gravy. 

That shot gun was given to me for Christmas by my dad. Best I can figure it was at least 48 years ago. I have my dad's old shotgun and I hunted with it a good bit after he passed. It's probably 60 to 70 years old and is retired. 

These are not the oldest things I regularly use. I have a tuba that's 86 years old and a banjo that's 98. The instruments and the shotgun have something in common in that they are the only ones I have ever needed.  

I did see a couple of ducks today. They were down aways and on the water. For a good clean shot they needed to be closer and I shouldered my gun but I could see it was going to be a messy, iffy try and I decided a crippled bird getting away around the bend before a fat old guy could wade the slough and get over for the retrieve was likely so I let them be. When I moved to put my gun down they spotted the movement and flew. 

Lucky I had my Ronco Pocket Fisherman with me. I've caught fish from Texas to the rain forest mountain streams of Puerto Rico and it kept the day from being a skunk.  

I caught this bass and lost a couple more on a chatter bait. I'd guess a native largemouth vs. the Florida bass that are stocked in the lakes these days. I wondered if way back up in this wilderness area slough he had ever seen a lure? 

There's not a bunch of ducks over at the big slough but I might try a few more getaways for the bass before spring weather brings the snakes out and believe me, it's possible that there might be more of them than there are ducks and bass.  

 

A Big Slough Hike...

I made a little scout around to the Big Slough Wilderness Area in the Davy Crockett National Forest. Hunting seasons are open, most notably deer season but I like duck hunting. The season happens to open this weekend and these old sloughs are a good place to ambush wood ducks like my dad taught me to hunt them. I saw zero ducks yesterday and probably won't hunt till cold weather brings some migrating in. At the rate I go I'm in no danger of overharvesting the population but Cathy does cook an excellent fried duck breast. 

If you recall all the rain last spring I am sure this low lying river bottom was flooded out. Looks like from water marks on the trees it was at least waist deep on the rises and in the drains armpit level. Maybe we won't get too much water. All over the bottom seems to spread the ducks out and if the water is deep it's hard to retrieve them.  

This is one of my favorite spots when the water is low like this. It's some kind of gravel like ore along the slough bank and nearby are a couple of larger ore looking rocks. I did not check out those formations today but for some reason I always have a great cell signal here for such an isolated area. 

From the abundance of freshwater mussel shells I would say that it's a fine late night buffet for many woods critters and a great population of these filter feeders indicates good water quality. I have never eaten one of these myself and don't see why you couldn't if it's cooked properly but I have picked them up, shelled them and used the meat for trotline bait and caught good blue cat. 

I think I need to look at that infrastructure bill a little closer. I have been going to this area since the late 70s and it's the first time I have seen this kind of water damage to a generally good firm bedded road system. I suspect that this elevated roadway between two low-lying swamp areas is part of the Central Coke and Coal Company railroad that transported harvested timber to the saw mill that was located at Ratcliff. 

I am not sure the policy on maintaining roads in wilderness areas. All the little old pig trail roads through the woods have been allowed to go wild. There are restrictions on what can be done. The Davy Crockett website has an alert that this road is passible by four wheel drive only.    

Glad I came over in the good daylight to scope things out. 

This photo is down the 4 C hiking trail. It's part of the old railroad bed. The Central Coke and Coal ended their operations here in the early 1920s. All the trees were gone.