Summer is not done yet but I always consider the opener of dove season as the beginning stages of fall. Oh, the temperature is usually well into the nineties in early September but there is often an early cool front or rain from a tropical depression to give us a foretaste of what’s to come in October.
For the next few weeks though, hot weather will likely persist. I’m about to tell you how some friends and I beat the heat this past week and enjoyed an evening and the next morning hunting hogs and catching some big channel catfish. Hunting Hogs and catching HAWGS! Has a ring to it, right?
HOGS FIRST... I joined my friend Jeff Rice on his ranch on the upper end of Lake Fork an hour or so before sunset this past week, armed with my CVA Cascade VH chambered in .223 topped with an ATN THOR LTV thermal scope. I checked the zero on my rig a few days before and had it shooting ‘spot on’ at 75 yards which is about the maximum distance I shoot hogs at night. I’ve found the lighter caliber does a great job on hogs with proper shot placement.
Our goal was to harvest one of the many fat porkers that had been hitting one of the corn feeders on a daily basis. To stack the odds ever farther in our favor, Jeff had ‘corned’ the road near one of the feeders. His plan was to keep the hogs in the area a bit longer. Hogs often gobble up the corn under a feeder and quickly depart to the next one. The extra corn on the road would insure they stay in the area, hopefully long enough for us to make a silent approach.
Rather than set in a stand in the late afternoon heat, we decided to enter the area we planned to hunt a few minutes before dark. Many people think thermal scopes are strictly used for night hunting but they work equally well in the light of day.
Sunset was about 8:20 and we entered the woods about 8:45. There was still a little light but it was fading fast, in ten more minutes it would be totally dark.
From the cover of a stand of pines a hundred yards away, we stopped and using binoculars, checked the feeder. Sure enough there were about 12 porkers busily at work on the corn that Jeff’s Vineyard Max feeder and distributed in a wide orb around the feeder.
Our goal was to stalk within about 75 yards toward the hogs where Jeff would begin filming for this week’s show on “A Sportsmans Life” for Carbon TV www.carbontv.com and YouTube. Luckily there were several large water oaks that provided perfect concealment for our approach. The trick was staying directly behind the giant oaks so as to block our movement. The woods was as still as a graveyard with absolutely no wind to carry our scent to the hogs. The set-up was perfect.
As Jeff positioned the camera on the outside edge of one of the big trees, I got a good rest and eased back on the trigger. We had our pork on the ground and 25 pounds of ice back in my truck to keep the meat chilled. Success and we never broke a sweat as we finished the butchering back a camp. The evening was beginning to cool down and we ‘hit the hay’ early in preparation for some fun fishing at Fork the next day with my longtime friend guide David Hanson.
ON TO HAWGS... Just as day was breaking the next morning, we pulled up to the dock where David Hanson was waiting in his big Falcon guide boat. He had briefed me on the phone about his method of limiting out on channel catfish under the shade of a nearby bridge.
"Good morning boys," David called out. "Y'all ready for a LONG boat ride? All of about 200 yards to that bridge over yonder?"
David pointed to the form of a bridge that was just coming into view in the early morning light. With pork in the cooler in the back of the truck, we were more than ready for the second half of our adventure, the pull of some hard fighting catfish and procurement of some great tasting fillets !
In short order, David had his Falcon boat secured aft and stern under the bridge, rods with #6 treble hooks were passed out and we were fishing, we were no more than 6 minutes from the dock where we launched.
Cut shad or even pieces of rough fish are tops for blue catfish but for catching lots of channel catfish, nothing beats a good punch bait with just the right amount of fiber to keep the pungent cheese based bait on the treble hooks. David opened a bucket of Tony P’s Punchbait and in turn we began baiting!
Usually the fishing gets better a bit after the baits are put in the water. The scent disperses and the catfish are drawn in like hogs to a trough. But my bait no more than hit the water than then I saw my line go slack, a catfish had picked up the bait near bottom and was swimming toward the surface. Channel catfish sometime bite ‘funny’. At times they try to jerk the rod out of your hand and other times they ‘mouth’ the baits. We had a few hard strikes but it was very important to watch for that slightest twitch of the line before setting the hook.
I’m convinced we could have limited out without chumming the area with a few cattle range cubes but occasionally David would toss out a handful of cubes which no doubt attracted even more fish under the boat. After an hour or so of catching, the graph plotted solid catfish, all within a couple feet of bottom. By the time the sun had risen enough to push the shadows under the bridge to the bow of the boat, we had limited out on catfish. As usual Jeff “Big Fish” Rice caught the biggest fish.
Yep, a lot of folks abandon the woods and water this time of year awaiting fall and cooler weather. This little outing proved that a good time can be had with both endeavors, just as long as it’s done early….. or late! Contact guide David Hanson at 903-268-7391.
Email outdoor writer Luke Clayton through his website www.catfishradio.org
DOVE HUNTING OPPORTUNITIES... East of Lake Lavon near Neveda, Nathan Wafford and his partner are offering seasonal dove hunts on several thousand acres of grain fields they farm. Cost is $150 for both dove seasons. For more information, call 214-325-7203.
