I haven't seen so many fireflies since the 2004 Fourth of July weekend.
I don't know why there are so many fireflies this year, but I am glad to see them. No southern night is complete without a firefly light show and a symphony of chuck-will's-widows.
Similar to a whippoorwill, the chuck-will's-widow is a nocturnal bird of the Caprimulgidae family. The informal name for these birds is nightjar. They look alike, but their calls are slightly different. The whippoorwill's call is a three-note trill that sounds like "Whip-or-WILL!"
The chuck-will's-widow call has four notes. The first note is clipped, like "chuck." The last two notes sounds like "widow." It lives near swamps, rocky uplands and piney woods, which pretty much describes our little corner of Hot Spring County.
Earlier in the week I took several of my children on a nighttime walk to a creek near our home. We stopped to rest on a narrow two-lane bridge, and that's when I really noticed the fireflies. There were so many, and they flashed like an aurora or 15,000 Bic lighters before the main act comes onstage at Verizon Arena. I stifled the urge to yell, "Free Bird!"
My son Matthew said it was one of the most beautiful things he ever saw.
It took me back to the 2004 Independence Day weekend, which I spent with my family on the Eleven Point River in southern Missouri.
The fireflies were mesmerizing, but I also remember that weekend for the best smallmouth bass fishing day of my life.
Many of the big mountain streams in Missouri are two-tiered. The upper stretches of rivers like the Niangua, Meramec, Eleven Point and others flow lazily for fairly long distances until they meet up with the big springs that gush from the karst. Within a couple of feet, the water goes from warm to cold, from stained to clear. The sudden inflow increases the current speed considerably.
Smallmouth bass dominate the water above the springs. Trout and walleye are ubiquitous below the springs.
We arrived at a small U.S. Forest Service campground July 3, and I went fishing as soon as we made camp. I caught a few trout as I waded upstream to the mouth of the spring. The Eleven Point bends to the right past the spring mouth, and there the water turned warm.
I cast a Blue Fox Vibrax inline spinnerbait toward a fallen log, and two chunky, 13-inch smallmouths hit the lure at once, and each caught a barb of the treble hook. I landed them both, but several bigger smallmouths tried to take the lure away from them.
That was about the time my sister-in-law and her husband showed up, so I reluctantly quit fishing for the day. Little did I know what was to come.
My brother-in-law didn't buy a fishing license. I warned him that was a mistake, but since he could only fish one day he didn't believe a non-resident license was worth the expense. He spurned my pleas the next morning to buy a license from a nearby store. He accompanied me on an 8-mile float as an observer.
That day didn't start out well. The smallmouths ignored my soft-plastic crawdad imitator. After an hour or so I switched to a Bomber Ultralight A in brown crawdad pattern. The results were immediate and dramatic. Smallmouths smashed that lure time and time again with a ferocity that I haven't seen since.
Time can trick the memory, but I recall the smallest fish being 12-13 inches. Most were 16-17 inches, and I caught a few that were 18-19 inches.
It nearly killed the brother-in-law. He became real fidgety and even asked if I -- who was employed by the Missouri Department of Conservation -- might look the other way while he made a few casts.
"I pleaded -- no, begged -- you to get a license, but noooo!" I replied.
So, a second rod lay tauntingly across the canoe thwarts while the fishing got better and better. That crankbait was brand new when we started. When it was over, most of the paint was gone and the hooks were trashed.
The brother-in-law, when he can bring himself to talk about it, rues his frugality to this day.
That night, the fireflies were as bright as a thousand lanterns. I never thought I'd see anything like that again, but now they're here.
I wonder if I can find a fishable stream this weekend.
Sports on 06/21/2015