By Luke Clayton

Your outdoor scribe has been taking a cue from the fish and critters the past week. I am up well before daylight and enjoying the cooler hours of the morning and then seeking AC during the heat of the day whenever possible. Wildlife and fish do much the same, but they are smart enough to simply seek deeper water or look for shade in areas with a breeze when the summer sun bears down.

But even during the hottest period of the year, I still find ways to enjoy time in the outdoors. Let me share with you a few activities that I have found enjoyable, even when daytime temperatures are at or above the century mark. I have a good buddy with a covered boat dock and he keeps the water under the shaded portion baited with grain. Catfish, both channel cats and eater size blues are always plentiful this time of year thanks to the abundant food supply shade.

One of my favorite summer pastimes is arriving at the dock about the break of day and fishing cheese bait vertically under the dock. I bet the fishing would be good there even during midday but as mentioned, that is when ole’ Luke has himself positioned around a cooling AC unit somewhere. The water is only about 5 foot deep under the dock and a coffee can full of grain tossed around the dock puts the fish into instant feeding mode. Fishing could not be easier, I have a big fish basked tethered to the dock for my catch and a cooler back in the truck full of ice that I picked up before daylight on my way to fish.

Rigging is simple, a #4 treble hook baited with cheese bait with a small split shot about six inches above. The weight serves two purposes; it helps get the bait down to about six inches above bottom where the catfish are and it makes the sometime subtle strikes easier to detect. The bites usually occur the instant the bait gets near bottom and a quick hook set is necessary. The ‘eater’ size catfish I usually catch weighing between 1.5 and 3 pounds are notorious for hitting the baits on the run and the window for making a hookset is short. I use a 6-foot lightweight spinning rig with a soft tip that makes ‘feeling’ the fish easier.

Bait is not all that important, they will hit anything from earthworms to liver but I use a cheese bait that I helped Magic Bait company develop years ago. It’s called Stick-It and for years it’s been my go to bait for catching channel catfish. Needle nose pliers are a must for removing the hooks and snipping off the end of the barbs. I learned long ago to take the time and break the ends the barbs off to avoid getting stuck when the fish flop around and they always do when fresh out of the water. It usually only takes less than two hours to catch my limit and before the sun begins beating down, I have the fish on ice and heading back home to my little fish cleaning station-situated under a big shady oak in front of the little cabin behind my house. By the time the sun starts heating things up outside, you know where I will be! Chances are pretty good you might know where there is a shady dock on a lake nearby to enjoy some of this earl morning fishing. Many public lakes have fishing piers that provide good fishing, you can always bring a bucket of cattle range cubes along for chum, the catching might not always be non-stop like around a baited hole but chances are good you can catch a nice mess of good eating catfish and… be back home before it gets hot.

I limit my hog hunts to the first couple hours after sunset this time of year and I am planning a pork procurement hunt this coming week. My good friend Larry Weishuhn aka. “Mr. Whitetail” and I have an event we’re hosting at the Dallas Safari Club office in September. We will be visiting with folks and telling a few campfire stories but also furnishing dinner. I will help Larry grill a bunch of buffalo burgers, made from meat from a buffalo Larry’s friend Steven Hornady shot last winter at the Choctaw Hunting Lodge owned by the Choctaw Nation in southeast Oklahoma. My job is to supply the pulled pork.

My plan is to shoot a couple of fat younger pigs weighing from eighty to one hundred pounds and slow smoke the meat with several domestic pork butts and then chop it all into pulled pork sandwich meat. I absolutely loved wild pork from younger hogs but it is often a good bit more dry than domestic pork. The fat from the Hormel pork butts will blend well with the lean wild pork. I smoke pork at about 200 degrees for 12 hours usually. To keep it from drying out, I use large aluminum pans to retain the moisture. I like my pulled pork sandwiches to be well seasoned and punch holes in the meat and load it with bit so garlic and slices of jalapeno and then when the meat is fall off the bone tender, chop the garlic and jalapeno in with the meat and season with black pepper, salt and usually more garlic powder. A good dose of Bullseye barbeque sauce puts the finishing touches on the sandwiches. I caught the pork on sale last week and have about 40 pounds of meat in the freezer. I have a sounder of ‘just right’ pigs hitting one of my corn feeders every night and plan to be in the bed of my old GMC with my CVA .223 Cascade rifle topped with an ATN Thor 6 Mini thermal scope. Of course, I will have a big cooler half full of ice with me-have to keep that meat chilled in this heat you know!

Listen to Luke’s weekly podcast “Catfish Radio with Luke Clayton and Friends” just about everywhere podcasts are found. Email Luke through his website www.catfishradio.org