A Blast and Cast Saturday

Saturday, April 28th was the first Saturday of turkey season…the alarm went off at its regular time, but instead of turning right to Edgewood I made a left and headed further into Owen County; today I would also have my boat in tow in hopes of getting a few hours of fishing in as well. I pulled into my Sweet Owen farm at 6:15am and had just enough time to hustle on down to my set up point, set up a few decoys and get settled in…when it began to rain. I knew there might be some rain but didn’t count on there being a lot and as it turned out I made it through the entire morning with little more than a few drops.

By about 7:30am I hadn’t yet heard a bird…but to the north rumbles of thunder began to roll through the hills and with each rumble gobblers started their morning ritual of calling to the females. Above me, high up on the ridge a Tom was shouting out his intentions and I quickly gathered up my decoys and hustled up in elevation and parked myself against the largest tree I could find. As luck would have it…this bird stopped but from across the field I could hear yet another Tom that was fired up and in less than five minutes I had crossed the open field and had the bird within 100 yards. Now this is where the morning took a dive; not sure how many years I have experienced the same scenario…but I had a fallen tree between me and the bird and had to move about 15 feet. I knew something was up immediately when the woods went silent; I will never know how…but this wily bird spotted my movement and left me scratching my head. Now if you are a turkey hunter, an experienced one…you totally understand and if you aren’t, well it is almost impossible to describe how good the eyesight of a turkey actually is!

As I peered out into the field I saw a bird walking around the edge, picking at various seeds, flowers, etc…just feeding away. As luck would have it there was an island of brush between me and the bird and I hustled toward the bird using the cover to stay out of sight. This is where it gets interesting as I immediately thought this was a hen but on further examination I could see it had a noticeable beard…so what was going on. I was only about 40 yards away and decided to just lay still and watch to see what the bird really was. The bird also had a sense that something was not right and took its time…hovering on the backside of a grassy edge. After about 15 minutes the bird once again became comfortable and started feeding directly towards me; it was a hen, but one with a long beard and totally legal. My conservation conscience kicked in and I had a small battle with myself…but I knew the bird was legal and there is clearly no shortage of birds, so at about 20 yards, when the bird stopped, I made one clean shot and my 2012 turkey season ended with a unique 10 pound trophy.

After a short talk with my farmer friend Tom I turned onto highway 246 and a left onto highway 59, in about 30 minutes I pulled into one of my favorite small lakes located in Hillenbrand FWA. I loaded all my fly fishing gear into my boat and headed out with my 8 weight floating line with a white streamer and my 5 weight floating line with a green, size 2 popper. The water was calm and it felt like one of those big fish days…within 5 minutes I had landed a 15 incher on the streamer and a 16 inch fish on the popper as the bass exploded from below giving me quite the show just a few feet from the boat. The carp in the lake were in the shallows feeding, wallowing and just making a nuisance of themselves; I have a theory that bass, both smallmouth and largemouth, hover closely to these carp and wait for them to scare bait fish and other food sources away and when they do…bam, these predatory bad boys put on the feed trough. I was casting the streamer parallel to the wallowing carp when I felt a big tug and thought I had a carp…I was waiting for the explosion as carp are known for their incredible first run; when I saw the back of a big bass. I have learned now with the boat to quickly sit down and use reverse in the trolling motors to pull the fish away from trouble and in a couple minutes I had lipped an 18 inch female that was absolutely full of eggs; she weighed in at 3.5 pounds on the nose and as I eased her back into the lake I couldn’t help but think about the incredible morning I had experienced…and all while Enjoying the Great Outdoors.