Arkansas Sportsman

Waning year chock full of hunting, fishing highlights

It's good to meet everybody here at camp one last time on this last day of the year, and, my, what a great year it was.

2017 passed so quickly that it seems like we didn't do very much, but then I look at all the newspaper clippings and realize what a fun, eventful year it really was. It was one of the most fun and eventful years ever. It was yuuuge!

The hunting trips were the most recent, so they are freshest in my mind. I'll fondly remember this as the year I finally got the muzzleloader monkey off my back. After years of frustration, I finally bagged a mature buck with a muzzleloading rifle.

I also shed my "dove repellent" reputation, or at least gave it a sabbatical. It happened on opening day of dove season at Oakwood Ratcliffe Farms while hunting with Robert McGowan and Blake McGowan. Squadrons of doves zipped through the fog, and we all limited out by about 8 a.m.

The fishing trips were the best of all. Ray Tucker, host of "Ray Tucker's Arkansas Outdoors, It's a Natural" radio program, which airs Wednesdays from 7-8 p.m. on 103.7-FM, mentioned some of the highlights, including a trout fishing trip on the White River near Mountain View. The fishing was OK, but the best part was nosing my boat into a little side creek to eat lunch and wait out a storm that was passing through. We watched a railroad crew inspect tracks and then floated from Boswell Shoal to Mountain View in the fog. The fishing got good right about sunset, when we landed and released a mixed bag of brown, rainbow and cutthroat trout.

Then there was the Solar Eclipse trip on Crooked Creek. Again, the fishing itself wasn't all that great, but the fellowship we shared with Bill Eldridge and Rusty Pruitt was priceless. I'll also remember it as the first - and hopefully last - time I've tumped a canoe in ages.

Or the time in early summer when we visited the Buffalo River when it was at flood stage. Matthew Eldridge caught about 20 smallmouth bass at the mouth of a little feeder creek next to the boat ramp at Rush.

Or the unforgettable float trip Tucker, Pruitt and I took on the Caddo River in early summer. The smallmouth bass fishing was incredible until a violent thunderstorm hit. I don't remember ever seeing that much rain fall so fast. Tucker laughed until he choked at me trying to bail water with a plastic sandwich bag.

A few weeks later, my son Matthew and I had another incredible trip on the Caddo with federal magistrate judge Joe Volpe and his son John.

And let's not forget the epic walleye and striper adventure I experienced with Chris Larson on the upper Ouachita River in April, and subsequent trips with Pruitt.

The year's most memorable experiences were a couple of bucket list trips. One was with Copley Smoak of Bonnerdale, my son Matthew and daughter Amy to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota. There I caught my two biggest smallmouth bass, plus a whole lot of northern pike, yellow perch and walleye.

The other was a trip to the Islands of Loreto in southern Baja California, Mexico with a group of other media members. We had a grand time catching mahi-mahi before we found a pair of striped marlins napping on the surface. I battled and landed a 90-pounder without a fighting belt, and with the rest of the crew pushing and shoving me around the boat while yelling instructions and encouragement.

One of our crew was Jim Hendrix of Long Beach, Calif., a staff writer for Sportfishing Magazine. When it was over, he said, "I've never seen anybody whup a marlin that fast before."

Earning the respect of such a fine, accomplished angler as Hendrix meant almost as much as catching my first marlin.

As usual, Wayne Crutchfield, Paul Crutchfield and I ushered in autumn with our annual squirrel hunting trip in the Ozarks.

Those are just a few of the highlights. There were so many others that it would take a year of columns and features to chronicle them all. They're all piled up here on my desk waiting to be filed.

For our treasured readers, thank you for coming along. It's my supreme honor to share these times with you, and I'm looking forward to sharing another year of excitement with you.

Maybe we can do one together sometime.

Let's keep this camp going, and I'll see you here next year.

Sports on 12/31/2017

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