Tale Of Two Days...........

[GloryDaze]

Me and a few buddies headed down to Hog Heaven Friday afternoon to do some fishing and introduce one of our friends from Los Angeles to the Missouri tradition of canoeing. He had never been in a canoe, only camping he had done was on the beach and he sure enough as hell had never caught a smallmouth.

We arrived Friday afternoon, set up camp, shuttled the cars and put in the river at about 5:30.... not a soul in site except for a few Blue Herons and a Buzzard or two. We were just floating a few miles down to Riverside, so we took our time, enjoyed the scenery and wet the lines. Goggle Eye were the catch of the afternoon, as it seemed they were in every hole and hungry. It was so darn peaceful to just have that quiet time out there. I told my buddy form LA, that more than likely by this time tonmorrow the river would be bank to bank with canoes, rafts and tubes and he didn't believe me, ha!

All four of us were catching plenty of fish on all types of lures, but to me it wasn't about catching a fish. I spent most of my time teaching Charles how to paddle a canoe, pick the right line in the water, etc..... but you know what, I was perfectly OK with that. You see, he was eager to learn what all the hype of paddling and fishing our Ozark streams was about so he made it easy to teach. He finally caught his first fish- a greenie, but hell you would have thought it was a 5lb smallie to the rest of us.... if I could have captured the smile on his face and the audio of him saying "dude this is so cool" it would have been priceless.

He caught a few more as I taught him where to cast and how to jig his line...... I had just as much fun watching him as I did fishing myself. Man, we're pretty lucky to have this natural resource in our area is all I could think. We finished the night by grilling out some steak kabobs and catching the house band play some tunes... all in all a good day.

DAY #2

..... well I'd prefer to keep my observations to myself, but we floated from HH to Mt. Shira and let's say my buddy from LA wasn't the only one who saw things he'd never seen before. Safe to say, I could go the rest of my life without ever seeing them again as well......

[Jocko]

I was there that weekend at HH as well. Crazy. Nice story

[Jocko]

I reread your post and have to think we were somewhere near each other on Sat. I saw lots of partying...no big deal but have to assume by your comments we saw something similar and without warning....lol. We didn' socialize much other than the guys right next to us on the end of camp furthest from the road. Were you the guys on the other end Russ called the KC boys?

Loved the House band, never been able to take my eyes off my kids for more than a minute and just know they were safe or not destroying something. Glad to hear you guys tore them up too, you would think the fish would be scared to death. On Saturday there was more inflatable surface area to the river than water, just glad the partiers, fisherman and families all had fun.

[GloryDaze]

Yeah' that was us.... I've been going to HH for about 5 years so it was cool to see the band play. They've been practicing for a while but it was the first time I'd seen them all together.