MAKING PLANS Luke Clayton

I honestly think the planning stage of an upcoming outdoor adventure is ‘almost’ as much fun as the outing itself. A good case in point is a fishing trip I have planned later this week. When you have been as heavily involved in the outdoors for as long as I have been, it’s only natural to make lots of friends that share the same interests. It seems the older I get the more I find myself reconnecting with friends that I once spent a lot of time with.

One such friend is Donny Rice. Well over a decade ago, I fished and hunted with Donny and his brother Lawrance a great deal. Donny lives only a short drive from my home and owns a big lake that comprises several hundred acres that’s connected to the Trinity River via a feeder creek. The bottomland is perfect habitat for the wild hogs that I love to hunt as well as some bruiser river bottom whitetail bucks. Through the years, when the river gets high, Donny’s big private lake is stocked with all sorts of fish, including blue and channel catfish. I used to fish the shallow water in the spring for the channel cats, concentrating on the edge of cattails, using a 12-foot crappie pole and vertical dunking treble hooks baited with cheese bait into little openings in the vegetation. I never caught anything big but loaded up on good eaters up to about 5 pounds.

When targeting the larger blue catfish, I often set out ten or twelve jug lines baited with cut bait. I’ve enjoyed some great times watching my jug line sets while drift fishing with rod and reel. The trick is to set the jugs out from the shoreline the direction the wind is coming from and then stay within sight as they drift several hundred yards across the lake. It’s exciting to watch the jugs begin bouncing around on the water’s surface when a big blue catfish is biting and then race across the water when he takes the bait.

I’ve been rigging my jug line sets and have everything ready for a fun winter’s day of ‘jug fishing’. Another great friend, Jeff Rice who produces “A Sportsmans Life” our weekly TV show on Carbon TV and YouTube will join us for the festivities. Donny has a big 21-foot boat he has rigged for fishing and I’m expecting us to have a big time and probably boat some good eating catfish and possibly a jumbo size fish or two. I remember catching some blue catfish there years ago that weighed up to around thirty pounds. They ought to be fifty pounders now! I plan to bring some seasoned cornmeal, a cast iron skillet and cooking oil, everything necessary for a quick shoreline fish fry- might as well make a memorable outing out of our reunion!

I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of a new CVA short barrel Cascade in 308 caliber, which should be in later this week. For several years, I’ve been shooting the long barrel version of

the Cascade in 6.5 PRC caliber and topped with a Stealth Vision scope, it shoots tight groups much farther than I would attempt to kill game. The shorter barrel version should be ideal for hunting hogs in the woods as well as hunting deer in more open country. I’ve never owned a 308 but I’m well aware of it’s effectiveness as an all-around big game caliber. The last time I actually shot this caliber was with a M14 back in the late sixties and I wasn’t hunting game animals.

My deer hunting is a wrap for this season with the possible exception of a late season hunt on a friend’s ranch in Kaufman County who still has several buck permits to fill. On many managed lands ranches, we have until the end of the month to fill the permits. Next week, I have a hunt planned in Red River County just a few miles from where I was raised on Mr. Bart Payne’s Friendswood Ranch near Bogota. I know the area well and grew up hunting the hardwood and pine forests in the northern part of the county. The Friendswood is managed for trophy deer and like many areas, it has a wild hog population that needs to be thinned. This should be a great opportunity to get to know my new rifle and spend a couple days with a new friend. Hopefully some fresh pork chops from the wild will be icing on the cake!

Creek fishing is the next big fishing event. I’ve had some excellent reports of crappie already moving up into the feeder creeks to spawn. Water temperature dictates when crappie move shallow and the recent warming trend has triggered the early stage of this annual push to the shallows. Catching can be fast and furious when big schools of crappie pack a creek and tactics are basic; I’ve had great luck through the years with a white or chartreuse/white jig set about a foot under a floater. I try to make long casts and fish parallel to the creekbank. A few cranks of the reel handle and then allow the bait to pause, sometime a jiggle of the rod is all it takes to trigger a strike and other times a steady retrieve is best.

I am communicating with several guides closely for a tip off of the annual white bass run. Current caused by heavy rainfall on a watershed above a lake with white bass is all it takes to cause the fish to move upstream to spawn. This is one of my favorite fishing events of the year, partly because of the often fast paced catching and partly because of the tranquility of spending time fishing along a remote stretch of creek or river.

Spring turkey season is quickly approaching and it’s never too early to pattern that shotgun or chalk up the old box calls. I usually do a bit of shopping in advance for spring turkey season, seems there is always a new vest or decoy that I think I can’t live without.

For now I think I’ll replace some of the hooks on my jug line rigs, don’t want to miss any catfish because of dull hooks, you know!

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