LITTLE ROCK — Alan Thomas sounded drowsy when he answered the phone last Sunday.
“What’s the plan?” I asked. “Are we hunting teal this afternoon, or should we try to knock down a few doves?”
“I ain’t knockin’ down anything but this couch,” Al replied. “It’s 97 frickin’ degrees outside.”
“Aw, now, you can’t back out on me now!”
“The heck I can’t! It’s 97 frickin’ degrees outside!”
Obviously, this was going to require a little finesse. I started weaving images of blue-winged teal rocketing over the shallow flats along the channel at Lake Dardanelle. He didn’t hang up, so I projected images of doves swarming the sandbars.
“We could put a couple of chairs in the shade and wait for them to show up,” I said. “Have us an ice chest full of cold drinks. A few snacks. We could probably limit out in two hours.”
Ninety minutes later, I met Al at the boat ramp, thus beginning our 2010 “End of Summer Celebration.” The question was whether to hunt teal or dove. You can’t do both because of steel shot requirements to hunt waterfowl.
“Teal hunting is usually a morning thing,” I said. Al nodded in agreement. “If we’re lucky, we might get one flight of birds. And if we’re really lucky, they might actually come close enough for us to shoot at them, and then it’ll be done. But as hot and dry as it is, with this wind, I’ll bet the doves will bomb the sandbars until they go to roost.”
Minutes later, we arrived at a promising-looking spot on public ground below thehigh-water mark on the Arkansas River. As we beached the boat, doves swarmed out of the weeds along the sandy shoreline.
“Awww, baby, it is so on!” Al chuckled, practically salivating. The doves were in a small gully that ended at the water’s edge. At the far end was a single tree. I decided to sit under the tree, and Al manned the water end. We were shooting in no time, but the doves preferred Al’s end ofthe gully. Little puffs of feathers dotted the sky as the booming report of his Remington 870 12-gauge rolled across the dunes. The stragglers tried to escape from my end, and my little CZ Ringneck 16-gauge took them down. We only got to hunt about one hour, but we got a combined 15 doves. Had we arrived two or three hours earlier, both of us would have limited out.
“What a great call to come out here!” Al gushed. “That was awesome! We need to follow this up with something.”
That’s when I played the smallmouth bass card. Al loves smallmouth fishing as much as I do, and he will brave 97-degree heat without complaint to chase brown bass. Al would be off work Tuesday, and he eagerly agreed that a smallmouth float on the Caddo River should be the second installment of the “Endof Summer Celebration.”
We launched our canoes at Glenwood at 10 a.m. A landowner gave us permission to use her property in exchange for sacking a few bags of trash. Our plan was to use our canoes as commissary boats to haul our gear and ice chests. We would wade upstream a couple of miles, then float back down. The river was very low, and a stiff south wind took the edge offthe heat. After organizing our gear, we plunged into the cool water, and it felt wonderful.
We each caught a smallmouth under the U.S. 70 Bridge, and the fishing got progressively better as we waded and floated upstream into Caddo Gap. However, we caught mostly spotted bass. We started out using Zoom Tiny Brush Hawgs in watermelon/red flake, but the wind and wave action made it hard to control the bait. I switched to a white, one-eighth-ounce Booyah buzzbait and caught spotted bass, redear sunfish and green sunfish next to limbs, laydowns and water willow.
There’s an old saying among fishermen that the most beautiful sight in the world is seeing your best friend on your favorite stream - going the other direction. I’m not that way. I love fishing side by side with a friend in a pool that’s loaded with fish. Al and I found such a spot, a narrow, rocky, sun-dappled run where chunky spotted bass were stacked like cordwood. That spot was out of the wind, and the Tiny Brush Hawg was deadly. We caught one fish after another from behind the boulders, including the fish of the day, a fat, muscular 16-incher.
That day ended with an unsettling encounter with avery large cottonmouth. Backing my canoe onto a gravel bar, I glanced behind me and spied the snake among a thin growth of water willow, just two steps away. It was semicoiled, with its head held high. That’s the second time this summer that’s happened. The other was on the Buffalo River. I also encountered a small copperhead under a log Sunday as I tied up my boat on the dove hunting sandbar.
We ended the day with about 45 fish of six species.
“That’s two great trips in a row!” Al gushed. “We need to make it a trifecta. Let’s hit the gully again Thursday.”
We arrived at 4 p.m., along with Pete Hornibrook II of Little Rock. Again, doves boiled out of the weeds when we beached the boat, but this time they came back. We shot several as we stood by the boat. I noticed birds exited through a little funnel over a tree, so Itook my chair and a backpack of shells to sit in its shade.
Al and Pete put on a shooting clinic as doves bombed the shoreline, and I picked off the stragglers. As is our custom, we always shout, “How ’bout dem Hawgs!” whenever we shoot a dove or duck.
“Boom!” Feathers, and a dove folded.
“How ’bout dem Hawgs !”we all three shouted.
During duck season, the birds are actually named.
“How ’bout dem Hawgs!”
“Take that, Carolina!”
We ended the day with 39 birds. I got 11, but should have had a limit if not for a couple of cold shooting spells. Once, I waited too long for a pair of doves to line up for a one-shot double. I fired both barrels at about 20 feet and missed. To add insult to injury, the uninjured dove lit on a branch just 3 feet over my head.
Grace, Al’s ancient Labrador retriever, earned her keep many times over by finding downed doves in the weeds and brush. The workout exhausted her, and Al announced it was probably her last dove hunt. He’s been grooming her daughter, Ruth, to take her place. It was kind of bittersweet because she lives to hunt.
We wrapped up the “Celebration” discussing the best way to prepare dove breasts.
“That’s the way to spend the first day of autumn,” Al gushed. “Three awesome trips in a row. I can’t get enough!”
Now begins the 2010 “Autumn Extravaganza.”
Sports, Pages 29 on 09/26/2010