A Couple of Favorite Stories

You would think that being a writer of four books, I would have a million stories to tell that would be of interest to everyone. The problem is that my books are not stories and usually do not contain stories unless they relate to the instruction that I am giving. A couple do however come to mind.

When Mac Byrum and I were researching for our latest book "The Catfish Hunters", we made a special trip to The James River in Virginia. This was to be a night fishing trip and we were after a big fish, hopefully a personal best for both of us.We used large bait because we didn't want to be bothered by the smaller catfish.We had flown to Richmond in my plane as we had many times before, and by the time we started fishing, Mac was getting a little sleepy. He decided to go up front on the deck of the boat to take a small nap.It was my turn to watch the rods and take the next fish that hit the lines.

Mac was sound asleep when the rod closest to his head suddenly went down hard with a big fish. The bite was so fierce that it woke Mac and he instinctively grabbed the rod and started to retrieve the monster fish.Having caught many big catfish before Mac knew that this was a big one, but the reel was jammng and it was nearly impossible to make an effecient retrieve. Using all of his skills, Mac managed to land the fish and it was indeed his personal best 56.5 pound blue catfish. After the fish was weighed and photografhed, Mac let the fish go and went back to sleep, but not before saying, "Jake you can have the next one"

The other fishing story that I have told many time is short. We had been fishing in a remote lake in Ontario Canada. The fishing was great all week and on the last day of a seven day trip, the fish suddenly stopped biting in both boats at exactly noon. We fished the rest of the day but neither boat got a bite after noon.

We talked about this strange phinominon at dinner that night but never could decide why the fish stopped biting after being active all week. We went to bed about 10pm and no sooner had we rested our heads, when there was a tremendous roar and our remote cabin was struck be a tornado. It all happened so fast that we hardly knew what was going on when about 10 minutes later, the same roar again and a second tornado struck, just a few feet away from the first one. Maybe we didn't understand why the fish stopped biting but the fish must have known something that we didn't know.

Thank God no one was hurt, but we did have a story that we have told over and over again. Nature does funny things.