This past week was a very good one for me. I was fortunate to enjoy some great times on the water and in the woods with a couple of very good friends. There was a time when I was young when I judged every outdoor outing by the fish in the cooler or game on the meatpole.
Granted, fresh fish fillets or backstraps from wild pork or venison is a big plus but what really matters is the quality time spent with good friends. This past week definitely provided a lot of white bass and catfish fillets for the freezer. I even had an up close and personal encounter with a chunky wild porker that I had earmarked for the smoker. The real reward though was the time spent with a couple of close friends.
Let me tell you about my two adventures, the first with Brandon Sargent, Lead Slingers Guide Service on Lake Ray Hubbard, for a few hours of catching post spawn white bass and then on to Wood County for some hog hunting and creek catfishing with Jeff Rice.
White bass first
When Brandon Sargent called one morning last week and invited me to go for an afternoon of white bass fishing, I was all in. Brandon and I have enjoyed many good times together catching everything from white bass to giant catfish at Ray Hubbard and have become close friends through the years. Although we’re separated by 34 years in age, we have a lot of the same personality traits, I joke with him that it would have been dangerous if we were in our early forties at the same time!
I have to be careful when we’re fishing not to get long winded and bore him with tales of yesteryear. I remember hunting squirrels from the ‘woods’ that are now under Lake Ray Hubbard and later working on the construction of the power plant back in the late sixties. Lake Ray Hubbard and I have a very long history!
Brandon’s roomy guide boat is equipped with state-of-the-art sonar and without it and his ability to interpret the pings from sonar on the four graphs, fishing might have been slow. The big schools of white bass were in deep water in the lower lake and on the move, chasing even bigger schools of shad that have about wrapped up their spring spawn and moved out into open water.
We began by graphing a hump where the fish were staging earlier in the day, only to find the images on sonar- blank with the exception of submerged trees with a few scattered fish holding tight to structure, probably crappie. The big schools of shad had vacated the area and Brandon buried his head in the sonar and went on the hunt. About a quarter mile away, a long-submerged ridge began to plot on sonar and on the windward side, scattered schools of baitfish marked the graph along with a few larger marks; the white bass we were looking for!
This was a good sign but not the concentration that would cause Brandon to mark the fish on GPS and engage spot lock which would keep the boat positioned over the fish. After a hundred yards or so graphing the ridge, we noticed what appeared to be a huge inverted cloud plotting on sonar. This was the concentration of fish we were looking for! Brandon clicked the timer on his watch and predicted we would limit out in thirty minutes. He was not wrong! The drill was simple, drop the half-ounce slabs to bottom and then slowly crank them up through the water column. The brightly colored lead baits seldom made it more than a few feet up through the water column. Twenty-six minutes later, we had our limit of white bass on ice!
Back at the dock at Sapphire Bay Marina, we went to work with fillet knives. Brandon heated his electric grill, and we were soon sipping a cold beverage, munching on very fresh white bass tacos. It was a very good day! On to Wood County hogs and catfish A couple days after our white bass extravaganza, I pulled up to my friend Jeff Rice’s Buck and Bass Ranch on the upper end of Lake Fork. We have had untold good times hunting hogs, deer and squirrels here through the years and seasonally fishing the creek adjacent to the property for spawning white bass in early spring and catfish throughout the summer. Several years ago, Jeff and I purchased a homemade RV constructed by my nephew and set it up as headquarters for myself and others that visit the ranch. Jeff recently remodeled the inside with modern plumbing fixtures, a TV and AC. It has become home away from home for me. He and his wife have a large RV nearby that serves as headquarters for their frequent visits to their little piece of heaven on earth. Our plan was to hunt hogs that afternoon until dark if necessary and fish the creek for catfish the next morning. A fat young boar had been showing up on one of the trail cameras near a feeder on a daily basis and we hoped to put some pork on ice! Fresh pork or not, I had smoked a side of ribs and made some baked camp beans earlier that day. Dinner awaited after our evening hunt! We set up a little fold out camo blind about 65 yards from the feeder and I settled in with my CVA Scout Rifle in 308 caliber about 4:30 in the afternoon, Jeff headed to a stand near the creek with his Gearhead bow. From this spot I have taken several hogs through the years, often with my PCP 50 caliber air rifles. I felt very confident I would be quartering a fat porker on this hunt. As if on cue for a well-rehearsed play, just after the feeder motor distributed corn, the boar we had seen on camera eased up to the feeder and began vacuuming up the kernels. I was attempting to film the hunt for our TV show “A Sportsmans Life” on Carbon TV and YouTube. I activated the camera and filmed the boar as he slowly fed his way toward me. At fifty yards, I flipped the safety off the rifle and settled the crosshairs just behind the hog’s jaw, in the center of his neck. At the shot he dropped and kicked a few times, just as hogs usually do. I was confident I had pork for the cooler and didn’t bother to bolt another round into the chamber. You guessed it!! He jumped up and took off through some very heavy cover. Jeff and I gave the area a thorough search, not a drop of blood. After reviewing the video, It appears I had just grazed the hog and stunned him for a few seconds. At camp we enjoyed some very tasty BBQ ribs and discussed our afternoon hunts. The next morning, we spent a couple hours fishing punch bait under corks in the remote creek and caught a nice mess of eater-size channel catfish, a few of the fillets blackened in a cast iron skillet with left over camp beans served as lunch. What a couple of great outings with a couple of fine friends. Outings like this is what good times in the great outdoors is all about. 
Check out Luke’s weekly podcast “Catfish Radio with Luke Clayton and Friends” just about everywhere podcasts are found.
