How much is a rockfish worth?

It was a seemingly normal summer day in 2007 when Stacy called me saying I should come with Ron and him rockfishing below Fort Loudon Damn. Earlier he had produced pictures of himself holding fish as long as a man and I had thought "how many fish steaks could I get out of that". There are not many fish safe to eat in Loudon lake due to mercury and pcb's, but the Rockfish or Striper (as some locals call them) can be consumed, at least for now. I jumped at the chance to battle these non-native giants with two of my best friends. Stacy, who could grow a beard in middle school, had not changed physically in a decade but was no longer the wild man that gave him the moniker "crazy Stacy" on the football team. Since returning from a short college football career he had graduated college and became a family man. His amazing instincts for harvesting game makes him one of my favorite people to hunt with. On the other hand Ron had grown to 6'3" tall and weighed at least 250lbs which happens to be 100lbs heavier than when he wrestled in high school. He is the hardest working man in the world, holding down two jobs for as long as I can remember and still spending more time in the woods hunting and trapping than the rest of us. I myself had gained weight like Ron but with out the growth in height. I went from being little Gabe at 5'7" to being "stocky" to anyone not wanting to insult the bowling ball I had become. I always expect adventure when I am with the boys since they seem to have little fear of anything and a curiosity of whats over the next ridge. But I had no Idea how close we would come to meeting our makers this day. We slid Stacy's 15' modified V aluminum boat into the river and started up stream toward the damn. Even though Stacy had used this boat in the boils below the damn before, I wondered if he had considered what difference adding me, a 200 pound man, to the back end would have. The first sign of trouble was during Stacy's explaination that we may not have that good of success because the moon was wrong. Then he mentioned the fact that my job was to put the two naked wires laying behind me against the battery terminals to start the bilge pump anytime the boat started filling up with water! The roar of the boils were evident before we could see them. the water being generated from turbines at the bottom of the damn looked like a whirlpool in a class 5 rapid. For the first 30 minutes we bounced around in the boils pumping water and trying to cast large plugs in to the concrete cut-ins on the face of the damn. Ron was standing at the front of the boat tempting fate every time the boat was jarred by the upheaval of water when Stacy had to gun it in full reverse to keep us out of the most dangerous area. First I felt water rush in over the back and up onto my legs. then I felt my heart jump as I reached for the afore mentioned naked wires to get the pump pumping. I was having trouble since water was over the battery and something kept hitting my elbow. When I realized that the something was the gas tank I almost panicked. Luckily Stacy stayed calm and set the engine full forward and shot us up into one of the cut-ins in the damn we had just been casting into. For reasons I am unaware of the water is as calm as a swimming pool in these little concrete coffins and this gave me time to regain my cool get the battery in the dry and proceed to pump the calf deep water out of the back of the boat. After some heavy duty pushing by Ron and some fancy boat work by Stacy we popped out of the cutout and raced across the boils to safety. Oddly enough this was the first time I noticed a family of Mexicans on the rocky shore fishing and I wondered what they thought about the crazy rednecks that just attempted to drown themselves for a few lousy rock fish.

Expedition Melton Hill

I get off work at 4:30pm. (I know your jealous, I understand.) So I have the ability to grab my intrepid son "The Fish Slayer" and head over to my Dad's whom my son calls"Big Papaw" to take short fishing trips to Melton Hill Lake. I like Melton Hill Lake because it has less residential property along its shoreline than most East Tennessee lakes due to its proximity to a nuclear plant (don't worry it is upstream of the plant). It has pretty good fishing to go with its beautiful scenery and a diversity of fish to catch, you never know what you will hook. Our latest endeavour found the three generations of outdoorsmen putting in at about 6:00pm which allowed us 3 hours of daylight fishing. It was crowded at the ramp for a weekday, but its been that way ever since Bob Hodge, a local outdoor writer, spilled the beans on how nice and uncrowded the lake was. It is still nothing compared to the skiing and boating nightmares of Norris and Loudon lakes which lay nearby and have more boat docks than most Island nations. We had more fun than success if you measure success by how much food was collected from the water. My 6 year old son, of course, pulled in the most fish from the green water (2 bluegill and 1 channel catfish) and most of them were from one cove we call Stumpy Hollow, my father nicknames most everything to the point I don't know the real names of some places I go. The Scenery itself is often worth the fuel spent getting there. My son yelling go faster to my 65 year old father as he drives a modified v-bottomed boat through choppy waters is probably my favorite part. Peaceful cove where Ryan caught the Fish (Stumpy Hollow).

First of two bluegills

Small channel cat which later got stocked in the pond next to Big Papaw's house.

It is like the Envirocapitalist always says "Take a kid fishing so your wife can't hassle you for going fishing to much". After all, it is for the children......right.

East Tennessee Bush

Sweat was dripping down and burning my eyes and mosquitoes tortured me with their constant attempts to land in my ears. I remembered all the other times I had climbed the Brier covered bank up off the road then fought through the tangles of vines left in the area cleared at the end of every summer. This pilgrimage led to the only public land that I know of where I can shoot a ground hog then skip on down to the edge of the lake and catch some bluegill without running into another human. The hike itself is not long but I have to carry my Marlin 22 mag, a telescoping fishing rod, a trash bag, and a cooler making the task much more difficult in the humid south. On this day I was alone and still in a state of panic over a 3 month old baby I had left at home. The smell of honeysuckle was thick in the air and the poison Ivy which climbed every third tree and covered much of the ground was a rich and dark shade of green. I entered the Field opposite the lake and was relieved to see that TWRA had mowed recently. I laid down under a popular tree shading me from the noon day sun and proceeded to glass the field with my Simmons binoculars. The little brown spot I had seen before now stood up and looked my direction. He was more than 200 yds away which is out of my 22 Cal. comfort zone so I left my supplies and crawled back into the woods. I slipped back out to the edge of the field but the whistle pig had moved during my short hike in the woods (closer to his hole as I later found out) so the shot would still be a little longer than I might of liked at 140 yds but manageable. I pushed my fanny pack out in front of me as I laid prone and let the barrel of my rifle lay on it. After placing my cross hairs at the top of the hog's head I slowly pulled the trigger and the mini bear disappeared. I waited a few minutes then walked to where I thought the G-hog had been standing. I was surprised to find his hole, and after closer inspection with a flash light I saw his back legs in the hole. Now, I knew he was dead but if you know how vicious a ground hog can be you understand my hesitance in reaching into his hole to retrieve my prize. I spent considerable time thinking about shooting him again....but that would ruin some meat. So I finally settled on poking him with a stick a few times then jerking him out quickly as though he would revive like a zombie . Freeze G-hog I said to my self and after laughing at myself and putting Mr. hog in the bag and jamming him into the cooler I sat down on the cooler at the waters edge and tried to finish my freezer filling day by fishing. Although I kept a watchful eye on the field in case he had company in that hole. That night as I sat cleaning the fish and ground hog, I couldn't help but feel connected to the world. I had retrieved my own food from the world. After packaging with a foodsaver and tossing them into my lay down freezer I said to myself "who needs McDonald's when you have McNature".