Fishing story-the good, bad and the ugly

[CrappieHusker]

This happened to my wife and I several years ago. We took a little 4 or 5 day fishing trip to Pomme de Terre with another couple that we had fished together with many times before. This is a small (compared to Truman or Lake of the Ozarks) lake in Missouri. Had never fished it before, but did a little research and found a resort not too far from the lake, but we still had to drive to their dock to launch my friend's boat. My buddy and I went out early every morning and fished mainly for bass and did pretty well. We also caught quite a few small crappie. This lake is well known for its musky but we did not fish for them. In the evenings we took our wives out to fish. They would rather be at the mall or any other place that takes money or plastic, but both are pretty good fishing persons. We did real well casting crankbaits for bass. :D

One morning my buddy and I came back about 10 am after catching several nice bass. It started raining a bit, so when we got back to the cabin, the wives talked us into going to Boliver, a little town nearby, for lunch and shopping. We left all of our equipment in the boat, covering it with our rain gear.

Well, we went into town now in a pouring rainstorm, had lunch, then while our wives were spending our money, we decided to go inside this tavern to have a cold beer and maybe get a few tips on Truman Lakes crappies. Well, we met this guy and he told us about this boat ramp and a large tree about 50 yards out along a channel. We were excited to get back to the resort and fish the rest of the afternoon at Pomme de Terre, then go to Truman the next moring.

So we weave Boliver, get back to the cabin and the two of us head to the dock, the boat and the lake. We get back to the boat. My buddy and I start to bail the boat a little bit before launching and I notice that we have no rods and no tackle boxes. We each had lost 3 rods and 2 tackle boxes full of lures. Guess someone needed them more than we did.

We took the boat out of the water and the next morning Bill and I, both armed with our wives' Zebco 33's, went to the bait store, bought some hooks, weights and minnows, then headed toward Truman. We found the ramp, think it was close to Avery, easily found the huge tree, and caught our limit of 10" to 12" crappie plus about 50 shorts in about an hour.

You have heard the good and the bad. Now here is the ugly. After all of this we take our (probably now $25 dollar a pound) crappie, fillet them right there in the water near the ramp. Here along comes Missouri's best--a rookie game warden. Now I have never had any problem with cops or any authority figure, but this guy went down to where we had neatly placed the crappies skins. He acted as though he had just found two guys that had robbed a bank. He counted them really slow, just seemed to drag it out. He thought he had us big time. Well, he finally got thru counting and ended at 30, so we were relieved and he was I am sure very disappointed.

Sorry for the long post, but hard to tell this story quickly!

[Crappie Reaper]

I really hate theives. Scum of the earth, lazy bastages!