It is time to go fishing

Olson home and barns outside of Grainola four miles

Living on Beaver Creek one mile north of Grainola and three west which is one mile west of Vea Harris's house is where we lived.  As soon as you topped the third hill from Vea or Eddy's house you could see our house about 1/2 mile from there.  Off to the left was a grass field where we had two ponds filled with catfish and a few perch.  Past the house and all along the tree line you could see from the hill a great view of Beaver Creek.  Beaver Creek is a small creek which you would never want to try and take a boat of any kind and try to float it.  The problem is that about every 100 feet you would have to get out of the boat and walk it past a very shallow gravel bed with water running over it and then there would be another area of small pools of water.  Sometimes those pools were three for four feet deep and sometimes they were 10 feet deep.

Cliff and Opal Olson in front of house built in 1958 or 59

There were three methods of catching fish when I was a kid growing up on the creek.  First you could go out by the barn typically where there was some shade or an old board or brick laying on the ground and you could move it over and take a shovel (sharp shooter) and dig for worms.  Now if you knew what you were doing you could catch a lot of catfish with worms and sometimes a bass or always perch.

The second method was to seine for minnows in the shallow water and in particular the best minnows were shiners with a little orange on the fins.  Now with those you could catch bass (both large mouth and small mouth) and always perch.  Catfish just did not seem to like the minnows as well.

Third, grasshoppers were plentiful but catching them was a challenge.  Dad rigged up a long pole with a small net made of screen wire.  I think I had just as much fun catching grasshoppers as catching fish.  Anyway grasshoppers were great for catching bass and of course perch but once the grasshoppers were dead you seemed to be able to catch catfish.

All in all it was a great time and place to fish as you could always catch something on the creek.  If we ever got bored we would look for flint rocks and arrow heads.  Now sometimes we even took a 22 rifle and hunted for turtles if the fishing got slow.   To this day I have never figured out how someone thinks there is nothing to do in the country away from the city, stores, and traffic.

Well if you have not tried fishing on the creek you are missing something special.  I better run but right now I am sitting out by the water looking at the moon and writing this story.

So what do you learn in the Osage?

• if you spirit gets a little down count your blessings and go fishing on the creek
• Sometimes it is nice to fish and sometimes it is nice to catch and on the creek you always catch
• If you think about it it is not about the catch but about the adventure

Thanks for your time,

gary@thepioneerman.com