The good days are great

Last minute trip

I ran to the lake yesterday afternoon to see if I could catch a few fish before Hurricane Isaac brought rain to the entire region.  I was hoping that it would be better fishing than this past weekend.  Last weekend was a brutal grind…it was exceptionally slow and emotionally I wasn’t ready for another trip like that.

Around 3 PM I pointed my truck east and started my trip to the lake.  I had 100 miles of ground to cover on gently rolling highway that makes a straight line through the farmland of north Mississippi and southwest Tennessee.  In that 100 miles I passed through six or seven speed traps, got stuck in traffic due to an accident on the highway, was hit by a downpour of rain, and found out that the fuel dock at my marina was closed.  I took all of it in stride.  I stopped at an auto parts store and bought a gas can along my route, found a detour around the accident, and bought some non-ethanol gas for the boat right before I go to the marina.  Now all I needed was for the fish to bite.

The weather was partly cloudy and windy…and the parts that had clouds were big dark clouds.  I was also worried that the wind might have the lake chopped up with heaving rollers which would severely limit my options and likely my success as well.

I backed the boat out of its stall and eased around the other boats resting in their slips.  When I got around the end I could see the rock wall jetty that separates the marina from the main lake.  The wind was fairly strong but due to its direction it couldn’t really chop the lake up…another good sign.  I idled over to a large rock wall that forms one edge of the marina and planned to fish my way along it with a spinner-bait to see if I could get some action before I left the marina. 

I put my trolling motor on autopilot and pointed it parallel to the wall and started pitching a white and chartreuse spinner bait.  I made perhaps 20 casts with no action before I got to the mouth of the marina.  The wind was a lot stronger here as it blasted through the opening between the high rocky point on my left and the long rock-pile on my right.  I was now sitting right in the middle of the entrance to the marina…a gap maybe 60 yards wide and the fish finder was going nuts. 

Frenzy in the gap

With the fish finder going crazy I figured I better investigate the area thoroughly before moving on.  I had just cast my spinner-bait out toward the rock-pile jetty and was walking back to look at the sonar when I got hung on something.  “Dang” I thought…”I’m hung up on something deep”.  The wind was blowing, the water was moving, I was walking, and the boat was slipping backward in the water a bit so it was tough to tell exactly what was going on.  I pulled harder on my line trying to free it and it looked like the line was moving…but so many things were moving at the moment that it was tough to tell. 

I reeled against the line and it appeared to be coming in…but it was still heavy and still deep…and then the line really started moving.   It took off to the right, straight toward the “no wake” buoy in the middle of the entrance channel.  I wasn’t even out of the marina yet and I had a fish on the line!  That first fish fought like a champ…ultimately he was fighting way above his weight class.  He was only a 2.5 lb. largemouth but I’ve had bigger fish fight less.  It was a nice start to the evening trip.

Now I was really curious about this spot.  I had the lake entirely to myself at this point. One or two fishing boats had come in off the water but there was nobody left.  The parking lot was empty and the only company I had were these fish and about 60 boats lying empty in their slips. 

It was late afternoon, it was quiet, not too hot, and the wind removed any hint of humidity that might have been there.  Amidst this solitude the circus began.  I could now see schooling fish rising from the depths and racing each other to hit smaller fish on top.  The sonar was still going crazy with beeps indicating fish in the area and there were sporadic top-water strikes all around me. 

I saw a feeding frenzy on top not 15 feet from my boat so I put the spinner bait down and I grabbed a spinning reel rigged with a green Senko.  A Senko is the most plain-Jane lure ever created.  It is a stick of rubber designed to look like a Bic ball point pen…very unremarkable.  But the action of the lure turns out to be wonderful.  It floats horizontally, and if you give it a twitch it darts one way of the other and then resumes its horizontal float.  This makes it a very tempting target for a predator like a bass.  It’s long and skinny and helpless looking and it makes a huge tactical mistake every time it moves.  It bolts quickly which gets everyone’s attention (Look at me!  Look at me!) …and then it stops…which makes it ridiculously easy to kill.  This thing is about as tempting and vulnerable as bacon on an all-you-can-eat buffet.  Everyone likes to eat it and it can’t get away.

So I toss my Senko into the fray.  I was amazed to sit there and watch these powerful green fish racing alongside each other as they competed to see who ate first.  This was the food chain in action...survival of the fittest in real-time.  I watched as the four-fish group quickly hammered their target and then broke away from each other in different directions.  Once the crime had been committed they scattered…and one was moving directly toward my Senko.   He was making a gradual descent into the green depths as he approached my boat and when I thought the timing was right I twitched the Senko once…then twice…then BOOM.  He had it.  Fish on!  This was a smaller fish and I caught it just a few feet from the boat so there wasn’t much of a fight but it was fun and I had clearly stumbled onto something here.  I had just caught two fish on two different lures at the mouth of the marina. 

OK…that was cool.  But can I catch another one from this area?  This time I started casting toward the outside of the rock jetty.   I wanted to see how much of an area these fish were occupying.  After a few casts I hooked up with another hard fighting bass.  This was crazy.  I enjoyed the fight, the weather, the solitude, and the surroundings.   After landing him I quickly tossed him back started to think.

What was the deal?  Why was the fishing good right here, right now?  What are the conditions that are driving this feeding frenzy?  A quick survey of my surroundings gave me some clues.  The wind was pushing hard straight into the mouth of the marina.   This could be causing some current that is forcing bait fish into the area where the predators are stacked up and waiting on them.  As much as it’s a success story about bass fishing it could alternately be written as a shad’s worst nightmare…a strong current pushing you down an alley full of murderers bent on your destruction.  Yeah…that’s a small fish’s nightmare for sure but today it was a dream come true for me.

After giving some quick thought to the conditions that might be creating this frenzy I had to get back to fishing.  I picked up a rod loaded with a chatter-bait and I tossed it toward the cliff that formed the left side of the marina entrance.  The chatter-bait vibrates like a small jack-hammer as you wind it back to you.  It wobbles and vibrates and puts off some commotion that makes it easier for a bass to track it.  It feels kind of like you’re holding an electric toothbrush when you’re working it…until something hits it…which happened at that moment with a hard thud.  The small vibrating retrieve disappeared with a heavy thump and my line started cutting toward deeper water just outside the marina.  It was a good fight but this fish wasn’t getting away.  It was destined to see the inside of my boat just as the others had.  The fight grew a lot harder as I drew the fish toward the boat…which made me think it might be a smallmouth.  Closer and closer it came diving deep each time I got near it.  Ultimately I pulled a bronze colored smallmouth bass from the water.  Now I had another fact to ponder.  The largemouth were all caught to my right where the deep water meets the man-made rock-pile jetty.  This smallmouth was to my left where a natural cliff/rock wall fell to the water line leaving a scattering of small boulders lying about before descending to deeper water.   I filed that info and got back to work. 

Moving on

I wanted to see if I could catch some more smallmouths so I eased out of the marina and worked the natural shoreline to the left because it was the same boulder strewn landscape where I caught that last fish.  I worked methodically for the next 50 yards but I came up empty.  Now the plan was to go back and work the other direction…along the man-made rock-pile jetty.  

I figured I’d ease my way down 50 yards of that structure and then move on.  There were several other places I wanted to try out while the fish seemed to be in the biting mood.  I hated to leave a big school of biting fish but I really wanted to try some other places and techniques while the conditions seemed optimal. 

I got one strike as I moved down the rock-pile to the right of the entrance.  It wasn’t a really committed strike and nothing came from it.  After 50 yards I pulled up the trolling motor, sat down, fired up the big motor and started to idle away…but then I saw something on the sonar.  It looked like a big ball of baitfish sitting on the bottom with some other larger fish around them.  A fleeting thought turned into a plan and then into action as I killed the big motor and grabbed a rod holding a heavy jig.  Out of sheer curiosity I wondered if I could put a big jig down there in the middle of that action and draw a strike.  Normally I wouldn’t waste my time with such a move…after all I had just fished along the length of it with no luck.  But today I was brimming with confidence…I was on a roll.  Why not try it?  I pitched the huge jig with a tube trailer straight toward the rock-pile that was perhaps 40 feet behind me. 

After it hit the bottom I heaved it up twice and let if fall back down…nothing.  I heaved it up twice again and let it fall…BAM!  Before it hit the bottom something smacked it.  I heaved back on the rod and felt it load up heavy…something was on the other end now.   I was laughing as I brought this fish up.  It was clearly another largemouth bass and I could see my orange/brown lure in his mouth when he breached the surface trying to shake loose. I wanted to tell him that it was a waste of time fighting…today was my day and there was nothing he could do about it.

In just over half an hour I had used five different lures to catch five bass.  This was so easy it was like I was the king of these fish…I was ruling them…everything was working.  I was catching fish at will with any lure I chose to use.  At this point I felt as if I could just slam my hand down into the water grizzly-bear-style and snatch a fish up.   It was ridiculously good fishing.  It was the type of day that keeps you coming back for the rest of your life.  I was putting a bona-fide MMA type beat down on these fish.  I was dropping elbows on them, putting them in rear-choke-holds…heck I even put a fish in a Kimora…and that’s tough to do because fish don’t have arms.

After catching the fifth fish I sat down at the console of my boat with a huge smile on my face and I surveyed my surroundings.  Here I was on the Pickwick Lake, surrounded by high forested hills and bountiful waters.   A huge lumbering barge slowly churned its way toward me in the distance.  It was the only other boat on the water and it was perhaps 4 miles away.  The sight of that barge set against the tree-topped rocky cliffs behind it was a sight I could have sat and watched for an hour.  It’s serene.  I fish a lot of places and see a lot of things on the water…but when I see a barge pushing through the river channel with those hills behind it I know I’m home.  Sitting here alone catching fish, with no traffic, no phone, no e-mail…no stress. 

Decision Time

Now I had a decision to make.  Do I stay here at the marina and keep pounding these fish?  Or do I try to take advantage of these conditions by seeing where else I can catch them (and learning more lessons in the process)? 

Ultimately I decided that this was the perfect time to move on.  I’d caught a limit in a hurry which meant that as long as I didn’t get hit by the only other boat on the lake (the barge) the day was a complete success no matter what I did next.  I decided it was time to do some learning.  My next stop was a hump out in the main river channel.  The idea was to throw a heavy jig, wait for it to hit the bottom, and then hop it back to me along the bottom.

The first part of the plan went great.  I heaved that big jig down river toward the barge in the distance and then I watched my spool.  I watch the spool so I can tell when the jig has hit the bottom.  It will give line continuously and then stop when the jig makes contact with the lake floor.   Then I start my retrieve. 

I was casting into maybe 30 foot of water so I knew about how long it should take before I’d see the spool stop.  I’m looking straight down at my reel the whole time.  After about 10 or 15 seconds the spool is still going.   “Hmmm…maybe I’m stronger than I realize and I tossed it way out into deeper water.”

The spool continued.  I watched as the spool got to “new line”.  This was line buried so deep in spool that it had never seen the water on a normal cast.  I was shocked that this much line was leaving my reel.   What on earth could be going on?  I looked up more to make sure my trolling motor was holding my on my spot than anything else when I realized my line wasn’t where I cast it.  It was now far off to the right of my boat.  Could a fish have hit it on the way down?  No way…but I’d better set the hook just in case.  I yanked back hard on the rod but he jig just came toward me with no resistance. 

I was confused…so I figured I’d start over.  Again I cast downriver toward the barge and again the reel gave waaaaaay too much line. Then it dawned on me…this is current…a very strong current.  Pickwick is a power generating lake with a hydro-electric dam at each end.  When they let water out they can use one or more generators…the more they open the more water they “pull” from the lake.   This was more current than I had ever seen on the lake.  I’ve got a heavy jig with a tube trailer on my line and it simply cannot reach the bottom in this current.  It is being swept sideways and past me on every cast.

Now a light has really gone off in my head.   The fishing has been so good today because all of this current.  The combination of the wind and the current is changing the playing field.  Now I just need to read the landscape to find places where the baitfish will be pushed…and I’ll find the bass. 

With the puzzle finally solved I set out in search of places “like” the marina entrance.  I wanted places creek mouths with deep water nearby and potential “slack water” areas where fish could stage...and the wind had to be pushing into the creek mouth.   Basically every creek mouth for the next four miles should work…I just had to hit them to see if the fish were home. 

All good things…

It was getting late and the sun had just dropped behind a huge cloud bank on the western horizon.   As it did so it set the edges of the cloud ablaze with a fiery orange fringe that made the cloud itself seem impossible grey.  I had to work faster than the sun was dropping if I was going to get to all the places I wanted to hit.   The only bad feeling I had on this trip was when the sun started getting low.  It was a timer that couldn’t be slowed and it was reminding me in the starkest terms than my great fishing day would soon be over. 

I hit the gas and went to my next spot.  Despite the wind, the water was still pretty smooth and I flew up river with the water rushing by and new sights coming into view and just the most unbelievably comfortable weather you could ask for.   Spot after spot I checked with not much success.  The final spot I had picked out was just covered up with fish.  The sonar was beeping like a terrorist going through a metal detector and I was really excited that the plan was working.  Before I could make many casts it was dark.  I have no problem fishing after dark but I had told the wife I’d be home to hang out with her by 9:30 and I had to leave now to make that happen.

I left with a big smile on my face and nobody around to see it.   I had a short 2 mile run back to the marina but I could see 6 miles downriver.  I saw no one.  It seemed as though I had the entire 50 mile long lake entirely to myself.    I flew along in complete peace making only one stop right there at the mouth of the marina for “one more cast”.  I pitched a few more times for good measure but nobody wanted to play. 

I put the boat back in its slip, jumped in the truck and drove home victorious.  This morning the wife asked me how I slept and I said that I slept great…unlike the fish who slept with shame and fear and embarrassment if they slept at all.  Oh yeah…and sore mouths.  The trash talk really never stops when you’re having a good day. 

In fishing, as in life itself, you don’t get too many days like this so you just have to sit back and enjoy them when you can.  Tomorrow it will be the fish’s turn to gloat but today…today it’s mine. 

Stripers in Vegas

I feel like a man who’s been away for a year.  I just awoke from 10 hours of sleep in my own bed and I still feel tired.  The last month of travelling has been hectic.  New York City for three days, California for four days, and I just capped it off with a three day trip to Las Vegas.  In the past four weeks I think I’ve been in 12 airplanes, 6 airports, 5 hotels, 2 homes of friends, rental cars, cabs, and a conference hall…oh yeah…and I leave again tomorrow morning on another plane for more rental cars, hotels, and conference halls.

So here I am, sitting on my couch, steadily drinking coffee and trying to piece together every moment of the past 24 hours.  I just returned from my first ever trip to Las Vegas.  Before you start thinking of the cliché “Vegas trip” of a booze-laden outing that consists of crawling from one bar to the next, let me point you in the right direction.  This was a trip designed to abruptly transition from business to fishing.  There was no drinking or gambling in the schedule.  The adventure we were looking for was far away from the bright flashing lights of “The Strip.”  Our biggest gambling losses would be the money we spent on gas and bait…and even if we caught nothing I could hardly think of those as “losses”.  No matter how this trip ended I’d have spent a good bit of time on a new lake with an old friend…I was winning no matter what the fish did.

Before we go any further let me rewind the tape to give you an idea of how this came together.  A few weeks ago my good friend Tony told me that he would be attending the conference in Vegas.   As soon as he registered for the conference he called and told me that he thought he could line up a fishing trip for us on Lake Mead.  “Great” I thought…I was scheduled to speak at the conference but this now became the main reason for going. 

Tony is one of my Monday morning redneck e-mail pals.  Every Monday the e-mails start flying asking “how’d you do this weekend?”  Everyone exchanges tales and pictures of adventure if they have them.  It’s a fun way to stay in touch.  Tony is the author of some of the most adventurous tales on the Monday morning circuit.  He’s up for anything, and I have yet to learn of an obstacle that can stop the man from hunting or fishing.  The only time I know that he has had to cancel a trip is when his canoe tipped over and dumped him and his gear into an icy river.  He said he had to call the trip off so he didn’t die of hypothermia but I suspect he would have risked it if he still had his gun…it went to the bottom of the river when the canoe tipped over. 

He tells of days when he has had to break ice at the boat ramp to get on to the lake.  There are stories of pulling his boat on church trips “just in case” he gets a chance to slip away to a lake that he knows is nearby.  And after watching Tony this weekend not even bat an eye in the face of a 25-30 MPH wind forecast I realized that he is like a black lab or a retriever…if there is water nearby…he will be there…and he’s not coming off until he’s dead tired or someone literally drags him away.  He might be the ultimate fisherman. 

So Tony is the man who set up this trip.  He has a good friend just south of Vegas who has fished Lake Mead for 20 years or so.  The striped bass population is supposed to be very robust.  Our goal is to leave the conference at the Mirage Casino, head down to Henderson Nevada, and do some fishing.  Our plans have been a little vague as so how much fishing we’d be doing.  We’d basically have 17 hours before I have to leave for the airport.  Plan A was to fish just Saturday morning…meaning we’d rise at 0230, on the lake by 0300, and fish til 0900).  Shortly after Plan A was formulated, someone hatched Plan B…which was to fish Friday afternoon, head back to the house around 11 PM to catch a few hours of sleep, then head back out at 0230 to implement the aforementioned “Plan A”.  I don’t know what you really call that….a hybrid plan?  I guess it doesn’t really matter because before long another plan was created…this one had us hitting the lake Friday afternoon and spending the night on the boat…then we could fish until I had to leave for the airport.  The planning process reminded me of a group of 9-year olds planning something.  The plan started with something great and just kept getting more outrageous every time there was a chance to make a change.

I had no idea which of the plans would be executed but I was excited and along for the ride.  When we got to Johns house he gave us some bad news.  The wind was forecast to be at 25 MPH for most of the day and late into the night.  My heart kind of sank.  I have the same size boat that John has and when I see winds over 15 MPH I cancel my trip…no questions asked.  I figured our afternoon plans were sunk.  When I glanced to my left I saw that Tony’s expression hadn’t changed a bit…he was totally down with hitting the lake in 25 MPH winds.  I don’t think he cared at all…he wanted to go fishing and if we died in the process I guess he was cool with that…this was tenacity like I’ve not seen in a fisherman before.  I’ve never been striper fishing before but I started thinking that this must be some kind of great fishing if we are really talkin’ about taking at 18.5 foot boat out onto a big lake with high winds. 

After running down some essentials like fuel, ice, drinks and snacks we hit the lake.  We hadn’t solidified our plans…we still had no idea how long we’d be out.  In typical 9-year old fashion…we’d just figure it out once we got on the lake. 

Lake Mead

For those of you who have not been to Lake Mead let me take a moment to tell you about this place.  The lake is situated just a few miles outside of Las Vegas but it might as well be in a different world.  It is a deep and clear lake that sits in the middle of a rugged and mountainous desert landscape.  I fish in the south so I’m used to seeing lots of trees on the shoreline and covering the rolling hills that surround my local lakes.  Lake Mead has no trees.  It’s nothing but rocks and mountains, and craggy gullies literally as far as you can see.  There are the occasional clumps of trees around a homestead or campground but for the most part it is barren of plant life. The colors here are all various shades of tan and black right up to where they meet the blue sky.  It is a stunning landscape…beautiful in its rugged simplicity.

Waiting for my first Lake Mead striper

In the middle of this dramatic moonscape sits Lake Mead.  It is a very deep lake by my standards…in many places our depth finder was reading over 200 feet of water below us.  In my part of the world 50 feet is deep…and you never fish in the few areas that go down to 90 feet.  I’d be lost fishing this lake by myself.   Luckily for us we had Tony’s good friend John as our guide.

Captain John

John is one of those guys who when you meet him you like him immediately.  If you’re an outdoorsman you’re going to feel like you’ve known him half your life.  He’s an easy going guy with a ton of great stories, a terrific sense of humor, and a depth of knowledge on local history that was enough to answer every question we could throw at him.  To give you an idea of how great a guy he is…the local high school named their gymnasium after him…and it wasn’t one of those deals like at a college where the name goes to the guy with the most money.  He’s just a great guy, and he has volunteered to take us out and show us his lake and we couldn’t be any more excited. 

First strike

We hit the water late Friday afternoon with a plan to hit a spawning flat in 50 feet of water where John had caught a few fish earlier in the day.  We pulled up on a place just off Boulder Beach, tossed out our anchor, and John started chumming the water with a mixture of corn, anchovies, and shad.  If we got stranded I guess we could survive a few days on the chum alone if we really had to.  The fishing was slow starting out…and for a change the weathermen were correct…it blew every bit of 25 MPH while we were there.  It blew hard enough that our anchor lost its grip and we kept drifting off our spot. 

I could see the concern on Johns face.  He really wanted to put us on some fish and he was working really hard to make it happen but it just wasn’t looking good.  We kept reassuring him that we were having fun regardless….but the stress was obvious…he wanted to catch fish. 

Second strike

After a short while of being blown around like a paper sack in the wind John made a call to run down the lake to a more protected spot where they had laid into some catfish that morning.  With the wind at our stern it was easy going and we made good speed over deep water.  Along the way he pointed out local landmarks on the lake like Black Island, Battleship, and Sand Island.   There was also a big pumping station that pulled water for the city that looked basically like a tall oil rig.  It was about 100 yards high and perhaps 150 yards offshore with a bridge leading back to the top of a tall cliff where the pipeline started.  We ran past the pumping station, weaved our way between a few tall islands that jutted up from the depths, then turned left and made our way down past Sand Island and into a place called the Vegas wash.  The terminology was a little different than what I was used to.  They called it a “wash” but it looked like a “creek” to me…a creek with no trees and surrounded by a moonscape but still…a creek.

We set up again and John chummed the water with our emergency food supply of anchovies, shad, and corn while Tony and I waited dutifully with our bottom bouncing rigs.  We were essentially tight-lining shad and anchovies with an egg sinker in 50 feet of water.  We’d see schools of fish cross the depth-finder, with occasional swarms of fish so thick that you’d think it impossible to not catch something…but nothing hit.  We got a hit here or there but nothing was happening.  Just before sunset Tony’s rod bent, he snapped it up, and he had our first fish of the day.   It was fun to watch him battle our first striper to the surface…we were no longer getting skunked.  Success was now on our boat. 

Over the next hour or so we watched a perfect sunset turn the sky to dusky hues of orange and gold.  It simultaneously turned the western horizon into a gorgeous jagged-silhouette of a desert sundown and set the slopes of the mountains to our east awash in a soft golden glow as their peaks fell from great heights along sharp cliffs and ridge-lines that ultimately slipped away into the depths of Lake Mead. 

With sunsets like this, who cares if the fish are biting?

As we watch the sun set it became obvious that most of the fish were stacked up on Tony’s side of the boat.  We’d catch one here and one there but almost all of the bites were on the port side of the boat.  It’s one of those things that make you think the guy was just born to fish.  We are sitting side-by-side…literally one foot apart…and the few fish we are catching are on his hook like a dog on a bone.  Ultimately we caught maybe 8 fish in that spot.  From his demeanor you could tell it was far fewer than John was expecting.  

It was now dark and the little blip in the action that we enjoyed at sunset had abruptly stopped.  We’d had no action in a long time and John began to ponder our plan.  He was weighing two big issues that were staring us in the face.  The first was that the fish simply weren’t biting.  The second was that the wind hadn’t died down at all.  This was a tough set of factors to sort out because on the one hand it made a great deal of sense to call it a night, head back to the house and get some sleep.  But on the other hand we had the weather, which was going to serve as a huge obstacle to getting home. 

The wind was supposed to have died down by now…but it hadn’t dropped a bit.  It had now been blowing at 25 MPH down that lake for hours…which turned the surface of Lake Mead into an angry, heaving mess.  It was also pitch black because the moon hadn’t come up, we had big rollers to deal with, and the stretch we had to cover is one that the locals call “cape fear” due to the way it behaves in the wind. 

I looked alternately at John, who sincerely thought that leaving was the best option, and Tony, who it generally takes a hurricane to dislodge from a lake.  I was a guest so I was up for anything.  Ultimately John decided we’d head for the boat ramp. 

The trip back was an interesting one.  The wind was high, the waves were high, and the going was slow.  A lot of water came over the front of the boat and in a way it was like a slow motion shower on a roller coaster.  John took the brunt of it as he was piloting the boat and didn’t have the luxury of hiding behind the windshield like I did.  Every 30 seconds or so it was like someone took a 5-gallon bucket of water and just threw it in his face.  To his credit…that wind-whipped water lashing at him from the dark never seemed to dampen his spirits…he just chugged along with a smile on his face…I wish I had one-tenth of that guys patience.  After a while we made it around the “cape fear” area, we saw the water pumping station that made such a great landmark, and calmer water made high speeds possible.  We jumped on the gas and headed for home. 

You'd never know the boat was about to sink from looking at Tony

I don’t know what time we got back to the house but I think it got in the bed around 11:45 with a wake up time of 3:30 AM.   If I was lucky I’d get just over three and a half hours of sleep.  This fishing-pace was making our Las Vega casino-pace look like an old folk’s convention.  At the casino our lives were never in danger and we were getting at least six hours of sleep…this fishing was an adventure.

Wake up

3:30 came very early. It was made earlier still because of the cultural differences between Nevada and Tennessee.  In Tennessee if someone wakes up at 3:30 in the morning the first thing they do is make coffee…there are no exceptions to this rule.  You make enough coffee to last until you get to your fishing spot, or until you can reach the first gas station….where you get more coffee.

Today there was no coffee…and nobody mentioned coffee…so like a redneck, kung-fu, zen-master I made like water and just went with the flow.

Third strike?

In no time at all we were back on the water.  Our plan was to head back to the beach we started at yesterday afternoon.  The wind was calm and John was able to put us right on a spot he thought would work.  It was getting light out and the pending sunrise was turning the desert landscape from shades of shadow and grey to lighter colors that allowed us to slowly make out details on the shore. 

Fishing buddies always look wise when set against a sunrise.

Soon enough John was chumming and Tony and I sat monitoring our two rods for any sign of activity.  The first 15 minutes saw our enthusiasm cool a bit.  We saw a few fish on the graph but there was no activity.  After sitting for 20 minutes with no activity John again showed signs of stress…he really wanted to put us on some fish. 

Even when viewed through the fog of sleep deprivation the backdrop was just as beautiful as it was the night before.  The sun was rising over the eastern peaks and there were a few signs of life on the shore.  Suddenly one of Tony’s lines bent over.  It was a deep bend in the rod that caused him to instinctively set the hook.  The first fight of the day was on.  A minute or two later he landed a beautiful striper that might have weighed three pounds.  The timing was perfect, our confidence had just begun to get shaky and John had just begun talking about moving to our secondary spot when Tony got hit. 

A few minutes later another rod bent over…this one in a rod holder at the front of the boat.  BAM!  It jerked down hard.  It’s funny to watch the process.  The rod bends over hard and the guy on that side of the boat has a lag time between recognizing that a fish is hitting, then he has to get to his feet, then he has to sprint 10 feet or so across a crowded boat to get to the rod.  By then you have to hope the fish is still on.  Tony made it in time and caught another fish.  Two fish in just a few minutes was a good start. 

It started to look like it was going to be another day when Tony’s side of the boat got all the action when my line got hit heavy.  I lifted the rod tip and I felt the weight of the fish and started reeling hard…then it went slack…he spit it out.  Tony was still in the lead.  I lost a few fish that way over the course of the morning but we were starting to get some real action. 

As I was explaining how the fish spit the bait out Tony got hit again.  He quickly landed our third or fourth fish of the morning.   The graph showed a near constant procession of fish crossing underneath us.  It was very promising.  John kept chumming the water and handing us rods when they got hit at the front of the boat.  It kind of crept up on us but before long it was a running-riot on that boat. 

There were times when we had three or four fish hooked at a time with lines crossed and three guys handing fish to each other over-and-under the others lines as we tried to untangle them.  It was like a redneck jigsaw puzzle. 

Bam, another fish.  BAM!  Another one.  Rods were deeply bent, drags were screaming, we no longer had time to ask “you got one?”  It was a crazy pace.   Gone were the comments about how pretty the sunrise was or how great the mountains looked this time of day…there was no time for it.  Now it was all business…it was fast and it was furious.  John had summoned a violent gang of fish to gather under our boat and they were absolutely crushing everything we threw at them.  We’d unhook them, throw them in the cooler, and re-bait as fast as we could.  It was moving so fast that we hardly stopped to take any pictures. 

At one point we had a moment that to me seemed like a scene out of a war movie when someone announces that they are out of ammo and everyone stops in the midst of the chaos, looks at each other, and tries to come to terms with the significance of what they’ve just heard.  Tony turned to us and announced “’we’re almost out of room in the cooler.”  Everyone stopped and looked at each other.  Someone mentioned using the live-well, it was a great idea…and we all went back to hammering the stripers. 

Success!

What happened next surprised us…John began openly contemplating leaving early.  He was deeply conflicted about pulling us off a bite like this.  First of all, he’s not the kind of guy that would ever pull off a bite like this…it just doesn’t happen every day.  Secondly I thought that maybe he feared a mutiny if he tried it…maybe not so much from me as I was just a guest…but I don’t know how Tony might react to such an idea.  He’s a laid back guy but crazy things happen in a feeding frenzy like this.  

At one point I had just put a fish in the cooler, John was reeling one in at the front of the boat, and I looked at Tony on my right and he was holding two bent-over rods.  He had two stripers on and no way to bring either of them in.  He handed me a rod and we both began fighting these fish to the boat.  I looked over at him with a smile and a look of disbelief and he was looking back with the same expression.  Here we were on Lake Mead absolutely hammering dozens of stripers.  His plan had come together in a major way. 

At some point John said let’s give it five more minutes.  That would give us time to clean the fish and get me to the airport in time for my flight.  I can’t recall how many more fish we caught in that five minutes but it was enough to convince me that we could have continued catching them all day at that rate.  Picturing it from a side-view it was a frenzy on top of a frenzy.  Hundreds, maybe thousands of fish were schooling frantically below us…and 50 feet above them floated a boat with three sleep-deprived rednecks working rods and reels as fast as they could while the action lasted.  We boated 43 stripers in two hours that morning...that combined with the eight fish from the night before put us over fifty fish our first time on Lake Mead.  It was an unbelievable day on the water. 

Thanks

To John and Tony I say “thanks”.  Thanks for introducing me to Lake Mead and to striper fishing.  After our trip to the cleaning station the guys tried to force some filets on me that I could take home.  The logistics of flying with fresh fish weren’t going to work for me that day but I assured them that there is no amount of fish they could put in my carry-on luggage that would equal the amount John had already given me by teaching me how to fish for stripers. 

If you ever get to Vegas, leave the strippers in town and make a trip to Lake Mead for stripers you’ll never forget.

Mothers Day

Yesterday was Mothers Day.  Like many families around the country we had plans to get together at a relatives house where a bunch of families and in-laws were gathering to celebrate the day at hand.  Unfortunately my wife wasn't feeling well as the event drew close.  She was't feeling up to going so we stayed home.  I asked her if there was anything I could be doing for her to make her feel better.  She said she'd be alright and that there was really nothing I could do.  So, I did what any tender, warm-hearted, loving husband would do...I went fishing.  

I had a 100 mile drive ahead of me and the weather was perfect.  It was gray with really low clouds and occasionally drizzling.  With this limited amount of light the bass should be feeling very comfortable and be out roaming around and absolutely hammering the food chain.  

I have to be honest...I felt a little guilty pulling my boat through town on Mothers Day.  I was obviously the only one hooked up and headed to the lake.  But what small amount of guilt I might have felt began to feel more like notoriety as I hit the edge of town...it was like “I”m really gonna pull this off!”

I’ll now fast forward through the 10 gallons of gas, 2 gatorades, and 1/2 bag of beef jerky that it took to get to the lake.  I got the boat in the water and I had a plan to execute.  

Plan your work and work your plan

Plan “A” was to fish deeper water near secondary points on the lake...these are where a smaller creek or cove flows back into the main creek.  The bass are in post-spawn mode which means that they are no longer playing Barry White songs and dancing in the dark with each other...the mating business is over and it’s back to being the aquatic marauders they are meant to be.  It’s all business now.  All fish are now on notice...the bass are back on the warpath.  If you cross them...you will be crushed and eaten.

Now I figured the bass better be on notice...because I’m back too.  Any fish that crosses my path will be hauled from the deep, laughed at, photographed, and generally hazed...then they will be thrown back to their watery hideout with bruised egos.  

That’s how the game is played in my minds eye.  In reality what usually happens is that “Plan A” collapses under the load of confusion and stress caused by a stunning lack of progress on my part.  I’ll normally try the “Plan A” gig for a while but what usually happens is like watching one of those “intervention” shows on TV where they feature a crack addict and try to get them off the drug.  My drug is the shoreline...the bank.  I’m very comfortable throwing a spinner bait at the bank...and whenever things start to get tough you can watch me slowly revert to doing it.  If my plan is to fish jigs about two casts away from the bank I’ll probably do it for a wile.  But then when it starts to get frustrating I pick up the proverbial crack pipe again...a 7 foot rod with a white/chartreuse spinner bait and I’ll run to the shore like an addict runs to the neighborhood dealer.  I’ll beat that bank to death with a spinner bait because I know I’ll eventually have something hit me.  Even if it’s a 1 lb. dink I know I won’t get skunked.  

So that’s my demon...the bank calls to me and I answer...even if I’m supposed to be doing something else.  It’s a hard habit to break.  But I know that if I’m going to be successful I have to push myself.  I must learn new ways of doing things or my good fishing days will be limited to those when the fish just happen to be on the bank wanting to eat spinner baits.  

With this in mind I decided that today’s “Plan A” would be to work deeper water about 80 to 100 feet out from the bank.  There was a long stretch of good water for this just a half a mile outside the marina’s “no wake zone”. 

After idling to the “no wake” buoy I dropped the hammer, got the boat up on plane, and blasted over to my first spot.  The plan started well enough.  I pulled up on my first spot to the sight of fish hitting topwater everywhere.  It was promising.  

No plan survives contact with the enemy

I worked top water to no avail.  I could now hear the crack pipe calling me...it was right there just a few feet away.  I could see the bank just 50 feet from away...and my spinner bait rod was just 10 feet to the other side of me.  Nobody is around...it won’t hurt anyone if I just throw once or twice at the bank...what harm could it do?  I had started to rationalize giving up on Plan A.  

For now I made a crack head compromise.  I told myself I’d use the spinner bait but I’d fish it deep.  Which I did for a little bit...and I caught a bass off a log where the water started to get deep.  It was a nice start.  But just like illicit drugs, once you try it you need more of it.  I had given in to the urge to fish the bank just a little bit...but now it had me and I found myself throwing that spinner bait incrementally closer to the bank.

Casting “once or twice” at the bank soon started an avalanche that I simply could not stop. I found myself hugging the bank and beating it to death with that spinner bait.  The whole time I kept telling myself I was right to do it...I’ve done it before and it was fun and everything worked out.  Well this time it didn’t.  I caught no more fish.  A few times I managed to pull myself away from the bank a bit but it was a half hearted effort designed to make me feel like I was doing the right thing.  Kind of like a crack head that goes to church...they feel like they’re doing good...but at the end of the day...they’re still a crack head.

Eventually I was out of luck.  I had worked the entire bank and arrived at the main creek channel.  When I say “creek” I want you to think of a really big creek...like a mile wide and 12 miles long...that’s the size of this creek.  

When you get to the main creek channel on a day like today the wind has it whipped up into a heaving fury.  I was about to leave the placid wind-protected waters that I’d been fishing for the past hour and move into a churning mass of danger.  

“Plan A” hadn’t worked.  More importantly I hadn’t worked “Plan A”.   It was now time to pay the piper.  “Plan B” was to fish some offshore structure.  

Getting over the hump

I’m not a huge fan of today’s “Plan B”.  One reason I like fishing the bank is because that’s how I learned to fish years ago.  The other reason I like it is because I can see the bank...I know exactly where to throw because I have a big fat target.

When you fish offshore structure you’re basically fishing underwater hills and ditches.  You might find a “hump” that starts in 30 feet of water that tops out at say 18 feet.  It’s just a big underwater hill.  The big problem is that the top of this hill is still under 18 feet of water...there is no way to see it.  

To be successful in this endeavor you need a good depth finder and if you’re lucky you’ll have a lake-map chip for your unit that shows all of the underwater hills, ditches, and other structure.

At this point I decided that I’d give “Plan B” a shot before heading home.  I used my maps software to find the closest underwater hill and I maneuvered the boat to be right on top of it.  Then I kicked out my trolling motor and told it to hold me right on this spot.  A quick word about the trolling motor is needed here.   This year i upgraded to a new trolling motor that has a built in GPS...and it has the ability to hold me on any spot I tell it to.  It is a thing of beauty.  Whole books could be written about how great this device is...songs and poetry too probably...but that’s not the point.  The point is that I now had the boat on top of the hill and I didn’t have to baby sit the trolling motor.  I could focus 100% on fishing.

I started throwing a fairly heavy blue/black jig with a crawdad trailer.  As I worked the jig back up the underwater hill toward me I started to get a feel for this presentation.  Throwing a jig like this is new to me.  I just learned the technique from a friend a few weeks earlier.  After a few casts I felt something “different”.  On the next cast I felt it again and I set the hook.  Bam!  The fight was on.  I had hooked my very first offshore/deep-water structure fish.  He wasn’t the biggest fish...but I had caught him a long way from the bank.  This was my first step toward quitting my old habit of fishing the bank.

Emboldened by my success I ignored the heaving of the boat and the water splashing over the bow and I got back to work.  I began systematically casting in a 360 degree circle around the boat, bringing the jig back to me with the same cadence that worked on the first fish.  A few casts later CRACK!  The noise was so loud that I figured I’d snapped my rod in half when I was casting.   It wasn’t my rod...it was my line.  I hadn’t retied in a while and it had weakened to the point that the stress of being cast one more time destroyed it.  I briefly watched my jig flying toward the Alabama shoreline before it fell to it’s watery grave.  I was impressed with both the distance and speed with which that $6 worth of tackle was leaving the vicinity.

I was undeterred.  With a smile on my face I dove into the tackle box, pulled out an even bigger jig, and put an even bigger tube trailer on the end of it.  When I got done rigging it up I had to laugh.  It was so big it looked like something they use on a Costa Rica swordfish trip.  It was by far the largest bait I’d ever thrown to a largemouth bass.  Being an optimist at heart...I tossed it as far as I could and got back to work.  

I’d pump it once, then twice hard off the bottom, reel in the slack, then waaaaiiiiit for it to hit the bottom.  If it hits the bottom I do it again.  Heave once, twice, reel slack, then wait.  BAM!  I got struck hard.  I couldn’t believe it...TWO fish off this deepwater structure in 10 minutes.  When I got it to the boat I recognized it as a white bass...a big one...the biggest one I’d ever caught...and he had that huge Costa-Rican Swordfish bait in his mouth.  A big glowing light bulb was going off in my head.  I’m learning something today...something big.

Now I’m not even aware of the wind and rough seas around me.  I took my swordfish bait and threw it back into the deep water around me.  Just a few moments later WHAM!!  I hook up again in 20 feet of water.  This fish is clearly much bigger than the first two.  This fish is looking for a fight.  

When I got the fish to the boat he seemed to summon the power of the seas.  That bass pulled down so hard that I thought he might flip my boat.  I lightened the drag on my reel to give him some room to run while I got the net ready.  It was then that I realized that the net I had reminded myself to put in the boat was still in my garage...literally 100 miles away.  

I had no way to end this fight early...I couldn’t “tap out”.  This fish was angry and strong and I was kicking myself for not having the net with me.  I don’t mind if a small fish comes unhooked before I get it in the boat.  That’s no big deal...but when a hog like this gets away it’s enough to break a mans heart.  It’s the stuff nightmares are made of.  It’s the type of thing that probably drove the Exxon Valdez captain to drink.  Every time I see this fish come to the top I fear that he’s going to shake the hook.  I can see he’s big...and he won’t quit fighting.  I bet that fish took six good runs away from the boat before I’d tired him out enough to get a hand on him.  The whole time I was praying he wouldn’t break my line, shake the hook, or pull some bass voodoo that I’ve never seen before.  

Ultimately I got him in the boat.  When I landed that fish I landed knowledge.  I landed a new way to fish.  I now had 5 scaly pounds of tangible proof that you can fish far away from the bank and be successful.  

With the help of a good depth finder, good advice from a friend, and a dose of tenacity I was able to kick my bank habit and open up a whole new world of opportunity.  

I’m no longer frustrated by offshore structure...I’m “over the hump” so to speak.

I went to the lake with the family last week.  We had an awesome time...it was pure relaxation to be away from everything and have time to spend with just my wife and kids.  My plan was to bass fish in the mornings and/or evenings and then just crappie fish and run around the lake exploring things during the day.  

The bass fishing was terribly slow for me.  I simply couldn't find them.  I knew they should be thinking about coming shallow to spawn but the back of every cove was empty.  Nothing...devoid of life.  I tried hitting main points and secondary points all to no avail.  I'd like to blame it on the weather because it's a convenient excuse but in reality I'm sure it was me...just not doing something right.  

The first night I caught a bass about the size of my iPhone so there was no use in taking a picture of that.  The next night I caught what might have been the exact same bass judging by the size of it...plus a kicker in the form of a 1/2 lb yellow bass.  I was disappointed.  

I fished Thursday morning and caught a 2 lb bass on a rocky bluff in deep water so I thought I'd try that pattern.  At some point after realizing that the day was failing I remembered that i had bought an Alabama Rig before I left home!!!  Everything I'd heard said that most of the tourney's recently were won with that thing and I thought now's the best time to try it.  So I tied it on.  It felt a little ridiculous throwing that thing...no...it felt a LOT ridiculous...but i did it.  At one point there was another boat coming toward me and I thought "man...I'm a little embarrassed to be throwing this thing..." so I put it down and started throwing a spinner.  As they got closer I had to laugh...both of those guys were throwing A-Rigs.  It was a funny moment and a good chance for me to laugh at myself a bit.  i threw it a bit more and after snagging it perhaps 5 times something happened on cast number 20.  POW!!! It sounded like my rod broke in half.  It was so loud I think I ducked a little bit...that heavy A-rig snapped my line and I watched $30 worth of the winningest tackle in recent tournament history arc through the air with five little rubbery fishies flapping their tails in the wind and fly toward it's watery grave.  That was the beginning and end of my Alabama Rig.  I later read that it's supposed to be used with much heavier line than I used.  An expensive lesson for sure...but so is any decent education.  Soon enough I was run off the water by more thunderstorms.  Despite my efforts I caught nothing else that day.  

Friday I didn't bass fish.  We went crappie fishing all afternoon and it was a ball just floating around with the kids and teaching my son how to drive the boat, navigate, deal with other boats.  It was awesome.  He's 12 years old and wicked smart and to see him on our 9 mile run home, hitting all his GPS waypoints, scanning for boat traffic, and properly managing his throttle and trim...it was great.  Twice on the run home he had to deal with barge traffic.  I was sitting right behind him like his redneck Jiminy Cricket providing advice.  I loved watching him pass his first barge.  I told him to keep it at least 100 yards off his side of the boat, stay parallel to him and stay on the gas.  He had the biggest smile as he raced past that barge and left it behind.  He had both hands on the wheel and he's flying down the lake at 40 MPH with his family on board and he's learning how to pilot this boat.  He kept scanning to keep track of where it was, then had another one between us and our dock.  Again I talked him through the process...making sure he was waaaaaay out in front of it before he crossed it's path to get on the other side.  The rest of the trip it was like he took some pride of ownership in that boat.  He'd stick around to double check that everything was squared away before we were done for the night.  It was like he grew up a little bit on that 9 mile run.  

After that i went out again Saturday evening after watching one of the local tourneys weigh in.  The winning weight was 22 lbs...and the next three spots were all in the 20's...so clearly they were catchable.  I went out that evening and I scored in a small cove with a 2.5 lb bass.  I thought I was starting to figure it out when BOOM. Thunder...close.  That ended the evenings fishing...I ran for the dock.  

This morning was our last day so I went out intent on fishing til the bitter end.  The view that greeted me as I slipped away from the dock made it all worthwhile. 

I hit several places where i'd caught the two decent fish of the week...and nothing.   I was very thorough in my approach and I couldn't get bit anywhere.  About 9 o'clock I was making my way around a secondary point with a big rocky bluff that rounded a corner and gave way to a shallow rocky flat that gradually tapered into deep water.  I was just easing along throwing a white and chartreuse spinner bait and really slow rolling it and THUMP.  It felt like a solid bite.  I pulled and it pulled back and it was on.  It didn't fight too hard at first, but when that hog came up through that clear green water and I first caught sight of it I about passed out.  It was clearly WAY bigger than any bass i had ever caught in my life.  You say some strange stuff when surprised like this and I think the first words out of my mouth (and I was by myself) were something like "OMG...OMG...that's a personal best...OMG it's a hog".

I was shocked at how wide it's back was...and it's head was huge.  I almost didn't believe it was a bass at first.  It was a thing of beauty.  Once it came up and saw me it started to put up a fight.  I almost didn't notice the fight because I was having an argument with myself about what to do.  My brain was screaming to wear it down a bit, don't let it jump, then lip it.  My heart was screaming "GET THE NET you fool!"

If this fish got away it would crush me.  It would be the worst sort of heartache.  It would be the heartache borne of ones own stupidity.  I would cry like a spoiled child every day for the rest of my days if this fish came unbuttoned.  My heart couldn't take that type of blow after the week I'd had...so I got the net.  I was scared to death that this fish would pull some hog-magic and give me the slip near the boat but I was able to get her in the net and on the deck.  I ran for my scale and my iPhone.  When I turned around I was just shocked at how big that pig was laying on the deck...I couldn't believe I had just caught it.  

I took a quick picture or two, weighed it (7.5 lbs), and eased it back as quickly as I could.  Just like that my week had gone from a totally frustrating failure...to a complete success that I'll remember for the rest of my life.  One fish is all it took.  One big fish.  If I'd sunk my boat and had to walk back I'd have taken every step with a smile because of that fish.  I don't know what that says about me...but I think people here will understand.  A few pics are below...I just wanted to share the story.

Lessons

Today was a bittersweet day.  We brought home some venison...but we left some too.  A good friend of mine hit a deer this morning with a shot that was a bit off.  He said he knew it when he saw the hit and asked that we come help track it.  No problem...if a deer leaves blood we do a very thorough job of finding it...we owe it to the animal to make sure we don't waste it's life.

My 12 year old son was along on this trip too.  He has been hunting with me since he was 3...and hunting with his own rifle (and me by his side) since he was 8.  He's spent a good deal of time in the field and I'm very proud of, and impressed by his skills.  Today's tracking job would be one more lesson that he could use to build his base of knowledge.

We had a three-man tracking party and we assigned my son the duty of being a marker...when I found blood I had him stand next to it while I moved up the trail until I found the next bit...then I'd call him up to stand next to the new find...and so it would go.  This would ensure that I could always go back to the last known "good blood" if I lost the trail.

While I was tracking and my son was marking, my friend would ride the rifle.  As the tracker, my whole world would lie at my feet.  I'd be bent over searching for clues the whole time and if a wounded deer jumped up to run I'd have no hope of getting a shot off at it...this would be his job.  He would scan forward with the rifle at the ready.  With the duties so assigned it was time to get started.

We began in an area that is a basically two small hills containing a mix of thorn thickets, a low draw in between them and "islands" of trees separated by long thin curvy food plots.  Imagine a small hilly golf course where the "rough" was thorns, thickets, and trees, and the "fairways" and "greens" were turnip patches and strips of winter wheat.

The deer was shot on the top of a hill that quickly gave way to a slight downhill run into increasingly thick vegetation that ultimately hit an almost impenetrable wall of thorns.  Imagine the Great Wall of China if it were made of thorn vines as thick as your little finger and you'll start to get an idea of this thicket.


From my perspective it was all down in the weeds and focusing on finding the next drop to solve this puzzle.  From my buddies perspective it was staying on constant alert and scanning ahead for an opportunity to end this goose chase.  And from my sons perspective he got to watch two dedicated hunters deliver a seminar on tracking.  He had a front row seat on how to track a wounded animal and I'm certain the lessons will be with him forever.   Before it was done I'd learn a few myself.

After we left the hilltop we descended into a jumbled mix of pine and hardwoods.  This is an old cutover section so it's a mix of saplings and mature trees with a heavy dose of southern undergrowth thrown in just to keep things frustrating.  The forest floor is lined with dead leaves, fallen branches, and game trails.  From drop to drop we went with my son eagerly stepping up every time he was called and me wandering around in front of him bent over and carrying a pointing stick and looking very much like the hunchback of Notre Dame.

It was painstaking work as this deer left a very faint blood trail.  Compounding the challenge was the fact that the sun was at our backs, meaning that what little blood was available to us would be cast directly in our shadows.  I commented that if this deer had an ounce of courtesy it would have run to the south as this would have given us better light for tracking.  But given the circumstances of our initial introduction it should come as no surprise that it decided to be evasive.  Many times the only  blood we had was equivalent to the dot that might be left from a single tine on a dinner fork.  One dot of blood the size of the tip of a dinner fork tine that was hidden in the middle of a curled up dark-brown leaf...this was hands and knees tracking at times.  

In a way I'm still surprised by how long we were able to track this faint trail.  At times it seems like your brain just makes an adjustment and allows you to pick up the smallest details once it knows that's the game you're playing.  Ordinarily you'd never notice any of this...it's almost invisible.  But once you're on the trail and have something riding on the outcome you can get really tuned in...seeing blood almost unconsciously.  Many times I'd just look out in front of me along the trail and my brain "triggered" that there was blood in the scene I was looking at...and I'd be drawn to a general area of the forest floor where there was blood that my brain had seen but my eyes hadn't locked on to yet.  Every time I got that signal from my brain I found blood when I looked closer.  Focus is terribly important in this game.  If you lose focus you might step on the one leaf in the next 10 yards that held any blood, pushing it deeper into the compost scattered on the ground and losing it forever.  This is essentially one long crime scene where every clue no matter how small must be preserved.  

The clues all add up to tell us the story.  The story might be that this deer was poorly hit and will live a long time.  Alternately it may tell us this deer is losing a lot of blood and could be just around the next tree.

With experience and patience on our side we began making a good deal of progress on a very difficult track.  Ultimately we hit the mother-of-all-briar-patches.  This is a southern briar patch at it's finest.  The fiercest barbed wire made by man is no match for what Mother Nature had laid down in front of us.

These were big thick dark colored vines covered end to end with evil needle-sharp thorns that are shaped like shark teeth.  Nothing was immune from the tearing and stabbing action of these thorns.  Clothes were caught and skin was ripped and thorns were buried under any skin they could find.  The further you pushed the more of them grabbed you and they eventually pulled so hard on your clothing that you'd begin to wonder if you might become trapped here to die in the most frustrating of fashions...stabbed to death by a million tiny thorns.  At times it seemed as though merely looking at a vine would cause it to catch on you.

When we got to the thicker portion of this briar patch I watched with a sinking feeling as the blood trail ran straight into the heart of it.  The game trail essentially became a tunnel for lack of a better word...a tunnel of thorns.  If you were shaped roughly like a short smooth cylinder you might be able to get through this path...but anything else would get hopelessly tangled and slowly bled to death by the thorns.  This was exactly the place you should run to if you were a wounded deer.  This evil, thorny briar patch was made to keep predators at bay.  I imagine that a coyote might even balk at going in after an easy meal.  At the least this thicket would mean you'd only have to deal with one coyote at a time...they couldn't surround you...they'd have to come one at a time into the funnel.

As I studied the problem it was easy to see that this thicket was a big egg shaped area perhaps 60 yards across and 100 yards wide.  We took a bearing on a tree on the far side of the thicket where we thought this blood trail would emerge, then put our marker on the last "good blood" and told him to help steer us to the spot we'd picked out once we emerged on the other side.

We plotted a course around the left side of the egg that looked to hold the least amount of pain, and then we pushed ahead.  When we popped out on the other side our marker began calling a few directions for us.  We quickly realized that the far side of the thicket was bordered by a deep creek.  In this part of Mississippi a creek is generally a deep gouge in the red clay earth that has very steep sides and a small trickle of water flowing through it most of the year.  In the rainy season it can swell until it overflows it's banks but for most of the year it is a muddy clay ditch with walls from 3 to 10 feet deep, bordered by vines and littered with branches and logs.  It is WONDERFUL snake habitat.

As I studied this creek and measured the considerable distance we'd covered so far I commented that if we find sign that this deer entered the creek...and we didn't see it lying at the bottom of it...then I'd have to consider that this tracking job was over.  If it had the strength to cover the preceding 200 yards, and still be able to clear an obstacle as formidable as the thicket and then the creek...then that deer would not be found.

My partner agreed and we got back to looking for blood.  As I scanned the thicket floor I made a point to continually scan as deep into the thicket as I could...hoping beyond hope that I might catch a flash of white hair that would signify a dead deer lying there.  As I scanned to my right something caught my eye.  Perhaps 15 yards away, deep in the thicket something looked different.  Looking this deep into a thicket means you are peering through a maze of jumbled vines that criss-cross each other in every conceivable  direction.  In a way it's like looking at a kaleidoscope whose only colors are earth tones like tan and green and black.  Well here I saw what looked like small patch of dark gray.  It almost looked like a piece of a squirrels hide.  As my eyes adjusted focus to really determine what I was seeing my spirits began to lift.

I quickly called out to my partners that I had found our deer!  I called up our marker, my buddy came over and peered in at it...and then we realized that we have to go into that hell-hole of a thicket to drag her out.  He handed me the gun and said it was his job to go in since he had shot the deer.  I understood completely and watched as he began to enter.

I looked to my right to say something to my spotter and the whole thicket exploded with noise.  We had been hunting for 4 hours and now tracking for almost another hour and all conversation over this time period had been in quiet tones and whispers for fear of giving away our position.  So this explosion of noise could not have been more shocking nor bewildering.  I looked up just in time to see a deer rocketing out of the thicket in front of me.  It was running to my left, away from my buddy who was standing in the thicket just a few feet in front of me.

I threw the gun up to my shoulder as quickly as my shocked brain would allow.  I could see the outline of this deers back and head blowing through these thorns like they weren't even there.  I couldn't find it in the scope and it was gone in a heartbeat.

"What in the world?!?!"  I exclaimed.  When things happen quickly confusion typically sets in.  My buddy said he thought it was a buck.  "Wow" I thought...that's pretty crazy odds that this buck was bedded down just a few feet to the left of our dead doe.  I went back to peer in to see our doe...and she was gone.  I figured I had peered into the wrong spot so I looked again...no deer.

It took a moment for me to grasp that the deer that just exploded out of the thicket is the same one that we had just tracked 200 yards into this mess.  We had indeed seen it laying low in the thicket...but we had assumed it was dead.  This was a costly assumption.  When my partner got within 5 yards of the deer it took off like a rocket sled.  BOOM...gone.  And gone with it was our only chance of recovery.

My son learned some very solid tracking skills today.  I learned a lesson as well.  If we had put another bullet in that deer when we saw it laying in the thicket 10 yards away from us we'd have recovered it.  As it was we thought it was laying dead and didn't need another shot.  We had watched that deer lay perfectly still in the thicket...no movement at all...it appeared to be stone cold dead.  But it was merely playing dead and hoping we'd pass right on by.

Complicating matters also is the fact that if we'd have taken another shot we might have shot another deer...there is the very real possibility that we could have stalked up on another deer that just happened to be bedded down in the area.  This is after all the perfect bedding area.  I had a friend from out west tell me one time of a customer who had a similar experience.  This customer had wounded an elk and when he was tracking it he jumped it up, then shot it again and killed it.  As it turns out the elk he jumped was a completely different animal....and they ultimately found both animals dead....and he was charged for killing both.  This essentially doubled the cost of his already very expensive hunt.

So at this point I'm leaning toward our new tactic being just putting another bullet in the animal at the first available opportunity...whether we think it's dead or alive.  I'm saddened that this animal wasn't recovered, but confident that the lessons learned by all of us will lead to successful outcomes in the future.

Reflection

Like many other winter nights I find myself leaving the woods alone, long after darkness has enveloped the forest.  As I walk with quiet strides it soothes my soul to hear the coyotes and owls begin their nightly routines.  Their sounds are like the voices of old friends as they carry far through the timber on the cold thin night air.  My breath appears before me in the dark as millions of foggy crystals visible only by the moonlight that washes over this field.

My lungs savor the fall air.  On the frosty breeze I catch wind of a distant fireplace burning.  It stops me in my tracks and instinctively I inhale deeply and purposefully.  The mixture of the cold air, the smell of a wood burning fire, and the scent of the woods filling my lungs invigorates me and generates a new bit of energy that quickens my pulse as I stand perfectly still taking it all in.

As I walk across these woods, fields, and dirt roads that lead me back to my truck I wonder with some small bit of sadness how long this will last.  Every year I see the crops planted.  I walk through high beans on summer scouting trips.   Then during hunting season, after the crops have been harvested, I walk unhindered across those same fields that are now bare.  The yearly cycle of harvest has been completed.  It is a stark reminder to me that time indeed marches on.

The deer I hunt know these same fields.  They use them for sustenance.  They watch the same cycle as I do year after year, growth and harvest.  I too rely on these fields for sustenance and if I'm lucky I'll take a deer from these fields; a deer that will feed my family.  A deer that will have completed its own cycle of growth and harvest.  

So here I am, stopped in my tracks on a chilly autumn bean field remembering hunts from my past.  Captivated by my surroundings I reflect on friends and family that I've hunted with and the wonderful times we've had pursuing game over these very fields.  Frozen in the moonlight the memories rush through my mind as fluidly as the air into my lungs.  The tree line in the distance is nothing more than a jumble of dark shapeless shadows, black upon black set against a clear dark-blue sky...but my memories run in color and I can recall every detail of every animal we've taken here as if it happened only moments ago.

I catch wind of that fireplace again, it snaps me back to reality and I realize that I've grown old hunting these fields...and that eventually my own cycle will be completed.  Yes indeed it saddens me to think that eventually I will no longer wander these woods feeling very much alive and free.  The thought of death itself doesn't bother me...it's the thought of losing this feeling of peace...of freedom...of solitude...of life.

Ultimately I decide it's just part of the grand scheme of things.  So I start my walk back to the truck feeling strangely reassured as I shrug off the cold.  I'll go home to my family tonight and thank God for the life I've been given.  I'll also cherish every day that I get to spend in these woods for I know that eventually...it will end.