Have you ever been out on a Southern bass lake in the middle of the night? It’s a scary place. As scary as any old house. It’s like the inviting, fun-filled lake you’re familiar with becomes another world after dark. Especially a big, Southern lake like Lake Guntersville. It teems with life, most of it seemingly involved in the massive, slithering convulsions you hear all around. You can’t tell how far away or how close most of it is. Sometimes things bump the sides of the boat. Other times you hear something in the air. Bats? Who knows? You’re unsure if a bat would be better or worse than what you’re imagining. You hope it’s neither. Guntersville is choked with aquatic weeds. This adds its own creepiness once the light of day is gone. The thought of falling into that choking, clinging mass can paralyze you with fear, any ideas of a cooling midnight swim long forgotten. Carp, big bass and other, mostly benign creatures are responsible for the majority of the noises, but in the darkness the human imagination can be a frightful, even deadly thing.

But there are bass to be caught. Big ones that don’t like to come out and play during the harsh summer sun of daylight. So lots of us fish the lake at night, or at least we did years ago. Back when I was a kid, there were nighttime bass tournaments that let out from the Mud Creek boat ramp every Tuesday night. My brother and I would sometimes fish with our dad. We would get lucky on occasion and win one, but mostly Bobby Hutchins won them all with everyone else fighting for second place. Bobby was a heck of a fisherman. He was a skinny, older fellow who was a legend among the local bass fishermen. Bobby always fished alone and always at night. He was extremely secretive about the lures he used and his favorite fishing holes. He was friendly enough, but the rest of us always got the feeling he was making fun of us somehow, especially at weigh-in time when he’d wait quietly until everyone else had weighed their fish. Then he’d pull the winning stringer out and pick up his check.

This didn’t bother me too much. I was just a kid, and I felt lucky just to be hanging around so many good fishermen. Plus, like I said, we’d occasionally win one of the tournaments anyway. By the time I got in junior high school, my friends and I didn’t fish the tournaments any more. Our dads got the crazy idea that we were old enough to be paying our own entry fees if we wanted to fish, so we just went out by ourselves in the little aluminum boat with wooden seats that we had christened The Hawgdaddy. We’d row the boat over to watch the weigh-ins, but mostly we decided that we liked the fishing better than the competing anyway.

Then one night Bobby didn’t show up at the weigh-in. They found his boat in McIntyre Slough, but they didn’t find his body until early the next morning. Officially his drowning was an accident, but there were some pretty rough characters who fished those tournaments. Characters who didn’t take well to donating their hard-earned money to Bobby every week, and who might have grown tired of Bobby’s smug attitude. We always figured some of them did Bobby in that night.

A couple years went by, and most people forgot about the whole thing, or at least didn’t think about it much. Us kids didn’t though. We’d go out fishing at night on the lake in the Hawgdaddy, and we’d scare each other with stories about Bobby’s ghost stalking the shores of the lake on the darkest nights, eternally searching for those who held his head under that black water. Like I said, Lake Guntersville at night is a scary place. It wasn’t hard to scare each other. (more…)

Dutchess and Me

We lost a good dog this weekend. Dutchess was nineteen years old (yes, we know her name is a misspelling, and we don’t care). She was a chow mix mutt. Jacqulyn and her were friends long before Jacqulyn and I even met, so it was always understood that, while I might be a human member of the clan, Dutchess nonetheless held a somewhat higher position in the hierarchy.

I did come into the picture early enough that I got to meet Dutch during her mature but still highly active years. There was nothing she liked so much as to chase a cat away from its dinner, and then help herself to it. Dutch had the pickiest eating habits I’ve ever seen in a canine, leaving us to sometimes practically beg her to eat, but the one sure way to make her eat was to try to give her food away to one of the cats.

Dutch didn’t know many tricks, apparently considering them below her dignity. Well, she was a Duchess, you know. Still, she had a few eccentricities that could be exploited for the benefit of all who enjoy good play. You could angrily bark “Get ‘em Dutch!” and she’d immediately switch into guard dog mode, attacking any invisible villains in the area. If you clapped your hands and yelled “Get Dutch!” repeatedly like a hyperactive child high on sugar, she would run circles around you as quickly as she could.

That was my favorite game with her. I’d get her going and then try to tackle her. She picked up on it, and a raucous game of tag would ensue with Dutchess almost always coming out the winner. One particular time she flat out tackled me. Dutch was blind in her left eye, the unfortunate result of a shooting accident when she was a pup. I made the mistake of chasing her on that left side where, of course, she couldn’t see me. She turned and cut my feet right out from under me like an NFL cornerback, sending me tumbling down a hill. When I managed to sit myself upright, Dutchess pounced on me with what appeared to be a big grin on her face, apparently not sorry in the least for nearly crippling me. Anyone who says a dog can’t smile obviously never knew Dutch, or most any other dog for that matter. Or maybe they’ve only known sad dogs, which Dutchess most certainly was not.

Dutchess and I shared a healthy fear of lightening, however we reacted to it differently. I tend to seek shelter, feeling most comfortable with something over my head. Dutchess, assuming we didn’t let her in the house, would run frantically around, back and forth, right out in the rain. I assumed she was trying to keep moving so as to give the lightening a moving target. On occasion we’d let her in the house to lie peacefully on a rug until the storm passed, but generally she was an outdoor dog.

Dutch was quite a devout dog. She could be found faithfully sitting on the steps of the neighborhood church every Sunday morning for many years until we deemed her health too poor to let her make the walk. She wasn’t happy about that and sulked for some time despite our best efforts to explain our reasoning. How that dog knew it was Sunday morning, I’ll never know.

In her later years Dutchess grew quite deaf and blind and was plagued with arthritis. Even then you could easily see her excitement when we arrived for a weekend visit (Dutchess lived with Jacqulyn’s parents). Her whole body wagged when she came to greet us even though she could hardly walk, and that twinkle was still there in her one good eye when she’d hobble over to chase a cat from her food.

We held on to her as long as we could, until the pain she lived with daily was too much for both her and us to bear. We buried her Saturday up on the hill behind the house in a pretty spot overlooking the woods. It wasn’t much, but when we finished covering the grave with stones from the forest and planting a couple flowers, her final resting place looked pretty and peaceful.

Good bye, Dutch. We love you and miss you. You were the best. I hope we meet up again some day in a better place without pain or blindness. Rest well, girl.

Nathan

I’ve been intrigued this year with decaying fall leaves. I’ll just be walking along idly staring at the ground, and suddenly I’ll be struck with the pattern of veins or the unusual coloring of a particular leaf out of a ground covered with them. I’d like to set up some nice still life scenes using these leaves, setting them in artfully amongst a pile of other fallen leaves. You can see some nice samples of stuff like I mean on sites like www.naturephotographers.net (look in the flora gallery). So far I haven’t found the time, so I’ve gone a quicker route. I’ve always liked old wood as a background for fall leaves. Not very creative, I suppose, but it works in a pinch. A couple were photographed near where I found them while two are photographed next to a nice knot in the landscaping ties at my in-laws. I was more interested in the patterns and texture as opposed to the colors, so I went the monochrome route with them. Of course, what all this probably means is that I really need to get out and go fishing…

This leaf was still bright green in the center but fringed with a ring of decay.

I found this leaf lying near these small ferns. The lines of the ferns and the leaf are in opposing tension with each other. Not sure the composition works, but I still like the leaf.

I really liked the detail and curves of this leaf. If I had it to do over again, I would have tried to make sure the entire leaf was in focus.

These are leaves from a black walnut tree. I liked how they stood out from their mossy background, and there seems to be a sense of balance to the twig even though its weighted heavily to one side.

Take care,
Nathan

In life you sometimes get a reminder, if you’re looking for it, of how good you’ve really got it.

A few days ago, I drug my son out to the beach to do some surf fishing. In all honesty, I think the only reason he went with me was because he’d been in trouble and was restricted from his lifeline – the Xbox. With nothing to do at the house, he probably figured watching Dad cuss on the beach was more entertaining than checking out the latest House episode.

We tossed some shrimp out, and even gave a topwater plug a useless twirl or two in the subdued surf of the early evening. Christian’s first hook up was a ladyfish – think of a tarpon, but instead of 50 lbs it’s 2. The fish jumped and ran like a sport fish is supposed to and, even though it was small, it lit up the afternoon. He immediately claimed superiority over me in fishing, loudly proclaiming me as THE Loser on The Beach, until I hooked a drum that probably would’ve gone 6 or 7 lbs. Then his competitiveness ebbed…

It turned out to be a mostly un-eventful outing. We caught a few more fish but really had nothing to come home and brag about. Rapidly running out of daylight, we left with sand all over us and a rumbling in the belly. I couldn’t tell then if he’d actually enjoyed himself, but I didn’t think it was all bad. Teenage boys are very difficult to read, and they oftentimes don’t even know how they feel themselves – they’re too busy trying to figure out how they’re supposed to feel.

Flash forward a few days. My son’s had a bad go of it at school, and my job hadn’t been much better. He came downstairs and plopped on the couch to catch an episode or two of Dirty Jobs with his old man. A couple hours pass, and we laughed at Mike Rowe fighting bed bugs in mattresses and cleaning out God-knows-what from the latest sewer pipe he’d decided to crawl in to. When the eyes started to get heavy and the hour grew late, he popped up off the couch to head to bed.

Just before making the right turn to head upstairs, he spun around and asked, “Hey Dad – you wanna go fishing Saturday morning?”

Now, I don’t care where you’re from our how you were raised, what your background is, how you get your jollies, nor where you fall in the political spectrum. But there is nothing in the world that feels better than having your kid WANT to spend time with you.

In this cynical world, with all the bickering and fighting, with all our problems and all we have to worry about, my son wants me to take him fishing.

Kids sometimes get a bad rap in our society. We see them through the jaded eyes the media paints them with, and too often come to expect them to be the apathetic, angry jerks we just KNOW they are. But every once in a while, every so often, a kid turns aside from the movies, video games and cell-phone texting and chooses to simply spend a morning with Dad. You can rest assured that unless God blows the whistle and we’re all asked to get out of the pool beforehand, Christian and I will be hitting the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, surf fishing in Satellite Beach, FL, during the early morning hours this Saturday.

And I’ll be smiling.

Matt

Took me awhile to get this done. We’ve had some pretty severe illness in the family which took up a good bit of my time. This trip took place Aug 21 – Sep 5.

The Great Plains
This trip marked my third road trip to the Rockies in the last four years. The otherworldly charm of the Great Plains is wearing off. At one rest area I read that it took pioneers in covered wagons a full month just to cross Nebraska. “That’s pretty rough, but at least it wasn’t South Dakota,” is all I could think. The third day on the road found me and my sore hindquarters desperate for a sight of the mountains. That first glimpse of the Big Horns is like a drink of cold spring water on a dusty late summer day. Some day I hope to take a more leisurely tour of the Rockies. When and if I do, I will plunge into those mountains and give them a good looking over. This time we just drove right on past. The first time I went to the Rockies, several of us younger folks drove 32 hours straight (with visits to a few spots along the way) before stopping to rest. At the time, when we were desperately searching for a hotel with a vacancy before we passed out completely, it felt like a really stupid idea. This time we had parents with us who struggle to do 10 hours on the road at once. The idea was to take it easy with the trip spread over four days. I have decided I like the suicidal 30 hour drive better. Just get it all over with at once if you and your group is physically capable.

My parents and Jacqulyn at Avalanche Lake.

The Alabama Bar
We stayed our first two nights in Glacier at Lake Macdonald Lodge. I liked the place. The hunting lodge atmosphere was cool and the food was great for a national park. After dinner a few of us went to the little bar for a drink. When we walked in there were only two other people present (it was near closing time). I had on my Bama ball cap. I ordered a favorite Montana beer – Moose Drool – and the bar tender, in a distinctly Southern drawl, asked where we came from. The girls said Alabama, and the guy laughed, said he was from Birmingham and pointed at the only other person in the room, a fellow sitting at the bar who looked a lot like Tom McGuane. When he told us he was from Sylacauga, AL it became pretty obvious he wasn’t Tom McGuane, but it was almost as cool that the bar was entirely populated by native Alabamians at that point.

Avalanche Lake
The next day I had a day hike planned for everyone to Avalanche Lake. We spent a long time trying to find a parking spot. I wouldn’t recommend this trail if you want anything even remotely resembling solitude. Dad and I carried our fly rods on the hike to the lake, but when we got there we found so many people milling about and throwing rocks that we just sat on a log and enjoyed the view. I took a few photos, but the light was pretty harsh.

That's me netting a nice cutthroat.

The Good Fishing
We drove across Going-to-the-Sun Road to St. Mary Campground where we would spend the next five nights. The first full day Dad, Jacqulyn and I hiked into a high alpine lake where we found absolutely stunning scenery and abundant rising cutthroats. This was really my first experience with good high mountain lake fishing, and I loved it! 10 nice cutts between 15 and 18″ came reluctantly to my hand. It was pretty easy to spot cruising fish in the crystal clear water even though the surface was choppy. The trick was finding what they wanted. I had good luck on mayfly emergers and caddis dries. Dad and Jacqulyn didn’t have as good a luck, but both of them missed some fish and Dad caught a couple. This lake is far from a secret, but I’m not going to name it anyway. If only we’d gone back there a couple days later…

Back at camp, we drove over to the KOA for showers and a meal at the Park Cafe. Try the Park Cafe if you’re in St. Mary. Good hamburgers and fantastic pies. If you’re in a big group, don’t make the mistake of asking for separate checks. One of the girls working there was pretty rude when one of our group asked if they’d mind separating them. Still, the pies and burgers are worth a bit of rudeness.

A cutthroat trout caught in Glacier National Park.

Dad casting to cruising cutts on our lake.

I waited forever for Dad to cast for this shot, but he must have had the mother of all tangles, so I just snapped it anyway.

Another of the cutts I brought to hand.

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