My career as an outdoor writer is over. I’m done. Fried! Not only that, I probably got my wife fired to boot! I haven’t been to Owyhee Reservoir but once this year. So I thought I’d go check it out. I took Katy’s boss with me and guaranteed him we’d smoke ‘em. Don’t worry, I always catch a cooler of crappie at CJ, Brownlee or some at Owyhee.
We drove down the gulch to the lake and upon rounding the last rise my mouth dropped. It was dry sand past the end of the boat ramp for I don’t know? 200 yards? From what I could tell, the river wasn’t even running enough to float my little jon boat so we couldn’t even drag it out to the river and drift down to the main body of water.
I’m betting it was 20, maybe 30 feet lower than it normally is in the spring. It was the lowest I’ve ever seen. Well, we were here so we drove downstream on the slanted bank for probably a mile. There was a muddy slough that hooked into the lake. We parked and carried the boat for maybe 150 yards and put in. It was super shallow but we made it down to the main body of water.
The water was super muddy. I couldn’t see my chartreuse jig head over 1-inch below the surface. I don’t think a fish would even have been able to see my jig. Luckily I’d brought a big assortment of Pautzke Crappie Fireballs and other of their scents. But even with them I couldn’t beg a bite.
We moved to another spot. Nada. Finally after a while it became apparent. The crappie fishing was done for the year there. I’ve never seen the lake that low in my life. I can only assume that the crappie had moved out into the main body of the lake into a cooler, deeper hole. I only had a little 2.3 horsepower Honda motor on the boat so it’d of taken us a few hours to get where they might be and we only had a few hours of daylight left.
I’m usually the eternal optimist but it was clear. We were barking up the wrong tree today. We finally pulled the plug and headed back to the truck.
To add insult to injury, there were a few young men on the bank. One of them didn’t even have a fishing rod. He had a plastic bottle with fishing line wrapped around it and would throw out a jig and pull it in wrapping the line around the bottle like it was a reel.
He showed me their cooler. They had a good 15 bass in it and some of them were pretty decent ones.
Arrghh, all is lost.
Well, all was not lost. It was a beautiful day and an unbelievable scenic drive in. We’d had a good time. But all of this brings up the deep philosophical thought. Or maybe I should say choice to make. Are you going to let your circumstances determine your happiness or do you find your joy somewhere else?
There is a difference in happiness and joy. You make a choice as to whether you’re going to be joyful or not.
I refuse to let outward circumstances dictate as to whether I have joy or not. It’s not always easy and I don’t always succeed but if you don’t strive for that then you’re letting circumstances determine your happiness and your mood will be determinate upon the weather or surroundings, so to speak. If the sun is out and it’s pretty, then I’m going to be happy, etc. No, I refuse to live like that.
But I do like to fill my tags when I go hunting. So the struggle continues.
Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana. He also writes for various outdoors magazines and teaches outdoors seminars at stores like Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Bass Pro Shop. He can be reached via email at smileya7@aol.com.
