I’ve got a good buddy that traveled up to Minnesota spend a few days ice fishing for walleye and spearing northern pike -- yes, spearing pike is a thing ‘up north’, using a multi-pronged spear that resembles a pitchfork.
Anglers have specialized little portable ‘fish houses’ complete with heaters where they fish vertically through the ice during the dead of winter. I’ve never ice fished but think spending a few hours in a comfy tent with heater, dunking minnows or jigs for walleye would be a great way to spend a cold winter’s day. Being a devout fish cooker, I’d probably bring the essentials for a meal of very fresh blackened walleye.
Texans have a plethora of activities to keep us busy during our coldest part of the year. “Cold” takes on an entirely different meaning the farther north one goes. Here in Texas nowadays, a skim of ice on a stock tank is about as “wintery” as it gets. Oh, we occasionally have a couple days of freezing weather but those days are not nearly as common as they used to be. I remember winters were much colder when I was a boy growing up in northeast Texas. I can recall ice thick enough for my friends and I to skate on back in the late fifties.
I love this brief period we call winter here in Texas. I live in the heart of some very good wild hog hunting and can be setting over a corn feeder a half mile from my house in a matter of minutes. My farmer friends who allow me to hunt their land are happy for every hog I kill. Sows give birth to pigs throughout the year but it seems every one will have a litter of piglets from now until spring. Now is a great time to do some hog hunting and put some prime pork in the freezer. I used to skin and quarter every hog I shot but now often remove only the backstraps and hind quarters.
Oh, If I have a request for pork from someone, I will field dress and quarter the porker, but my marching orders from my friends are to "get those darned hogs off my land,” so I often just take the choicest cuts. If you’ve never enjoyed a meal of thick-cut backstrap steaks well seasoned with garlic and jalapeno and cooked in a cast iron skillet with butter, you’ve been missing out!
I have a new ATN Corp. Thor 6 mini thermal scope coming in this week so I expect I’ll be spending some time out in the night woods later this week. With night temperatures in the thirties, I can leave my pork in the back of the truck overnight and do my butchering mid-morning the next day when it’s a bit warmer. Few endeavors are more relaxing than sitting out all bundled up in the woods in my winter clothes, on a night with a crescent moon and the sky so black every star appears close enough to touch.
But wild porkers don’t occupy all my time...I’m also stocking the freezer with blue catfish fillets for our 7th Annual outdoor Ron-De-Vous at the Top Rail Cowboy Church in Greenville on March 28. Our goal is to have enough catfish fillets to feed everyone, which is quite a challenge, but winter fishing has been good and it appears plenty of crispy fillets will be hitting the hot oil!
Now is also a good time to get ready for the upcoming white bass run. I begin watching the weather closely beginning mid-February. This is when an influx of run-off water from heavy rains creates current in feeder creeks and causes spawning white bass to move upstream for the spawn. A good friend has land adjacent a good spawning creek. We set up a little cooking camp stocked with dry wood, cast iron skillets, potatoes, corn meal, potatoes, cooking oil, etc, everything needed for a fish fry.
We then walk upstream a quarter mile or so and fish our way back to camp. If we time the annual outing correctly, we always have the making of a big fish fry when we get back to camp. Crispy fried white bass fillets taste mighty good on the banks of a remote creek on a crisp day in late winter!
Soon, I will be restocking on eighth-ounce Roadrunner jigs and respooling my spinning reels, making sure the drag system works perfectly. Those solid 2-pound white bass pull hard after several days fighting the current in the creek!
Spring turkey season is only a little over a couple months away. Our area was restocked with Rio Grande turkeys several years ago and although hunting is not allowed, the birds give me a great opportunity to capture some great photos. After the recent warmer than normal weather, several of the gobblers began strutting and displaying. I will set up my pop-up blind soon, put out a hen decoy and do some ‘hunting’ with my Nikon camera!
I’ve learned that these hunts with a camera are almost as much fun as hunting with a bow or shotgun. What is lacking is those golden fried turkey nuggets prepared at turkey camp, but that will come later! I’ve got an old hen decoy I’ve named Heneretta. Her paint is not as bright as it once was. I’m currently pursuing Amazon for a new decoy. Oh, I just don’t have the heart to retire Heneretta, she has helped me dupe many a gobbler through the years. I will just purchase a new shiny decoy to set beside her!
Some buddies and I are planning a squirrel hunt next week. Donny Lynch, the noted squirrel dog breeder from Uncertain on Caddo Lake is coming up to Becker, Texas to hunt the Becker Bottom Ranch owned by my friend Edgar Cotton. We will ride through the woods and let the dogs out in likely areas to hopefully tree a ‘mess’ of squirrels.
Please check out my weekly podcast “Catfish Radio with Luke Clayton and Friends”. Contact me through my website www.catfishradio.org
