Posts Tagged ‘fishing season’

17
Apr

Fort Dodge Sports Anxious

   Posted by: admin    in Tall tales

The Fort Dodge Messenger: April 17, 1905

Fort Dodge Sports Anxious

Are Getting Uneasy for the Opening of the Fishing Season.

Fish Stories Going Already

Big Fish Are Caught in Vicinity of McQuire’s (sic) Bend – One Eighteen Pound Cat Pulled out by a Native of That Part of the Country.

With the many reports that the fishing is excellent, the hands of the Fort Dodge sports are itching to take out the rod and reel and pull in a few fine specimens. It is a month yet however till they can toss the line without an eye as to the whereabouts of the fish commissioner, so they will have to content themselves for another thirty days, unless they care to go down and get a few suckers on worm bait.

Before the catfish was put into the catalogue with the gamers, along with the trout, the pickerel, the pike the bass, the carp and many others, there was some sport to be had even before the expiration of the time limit set by the game law. Then the Isaac Walton who got particularly hungry for fish shortly after the ice went out, could go down and sit on the bank with a crawdad on his hook and pretty generally come home with a nice mess of cat fish on his string.

While the catfish is not a fighter when hooked, there is a considerable amount of fun in pulling out a big fellow, and the fishermen miss him very much from the ranks of the tribe the law fails to protect.

There is nothing now outside the protecting pale of the game law except these two bundles of bones, the sucker and the redhorse, or salmon. These are free plunder at all times, and there are many who fish for suckers and make a mistake of catching other brands. A number of people are even unable to tell the difference after they are pulled out of the water, and take them home with them. But in fear they have made some horrible mistake generally use a grain sack to carry them in.

There are reports that the fishing for catfish is excellent this season, and a large number of them have been taken from the river in the south part of the county, where some very large ones have been caught. It is reported that one monster landed in the vicinity of McGuire’s Bend weighed in the neighborhood of eighteen pounds.

There are always a few of these big fellows who make their way up from the Mississippi river and get hooked by some Webster county fabricator. There is something strange in the fact that liars are always the most successful fishers. They are generally able to land a fish considerably bigger than the one that got away from the ordinary sport.

In spite of the fact that it is early yet, the local fishermen are getting out their tackle and will be in readiness to do business on the first day of the open season, which falls on May 15.

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