We’re right in the middle of what many of us that enjoy hunting and fishing perceive to be the very best time of the year. Cooling temperatures make spending time on the water much more enjoyable than just a few short weeks ago. We hunters have already had dove, teal and now the archery season to further ‘fire’ us up. Mother Nature has already given the fish a ‘heads up’ that it is time to put on the feed bag, winter is coming and their metabolism will be slowing down. Right now, there is a smorgasbord of food for them to eat, the summer’s hatch of shad, crayfish, sunfish and a host of invertebrates make for a time of plenty the next couple months.

 If you enjoy camping, it just doesn’t get any better than the next month or so. I recently set up a little camp down on the Brazos River and enjoyed catching a few of those scrappy ‘river’ bass. What is better than fresh fish fillets cooked in a cast iron skillet over an open campfire? If you’ve never smelled the blended aroma of frying fish, wood smoke, boiling coffee, and fresh Autumn air that is a pleasant combination of drying leaves, ripe grasses mixed with a hint of chill, I sincerely hope you get away from the traffic, noise and often chaotic lifestyle of living in the city and spend a couple of days ‘out there’!

 Lake Caddo in East Texas is a destination that we enjoy visiting each fall. It’s a surreal place where the scenery can best be described as a huge inland swamp, infested with groves of cypress trees. Boat lanes were cut through this thick forest years ago and channel intersections are great places to fish.  As a matter of fact, I’m planning to head that direction in a couple days to fish with Henry Lewis.  Mr. Henry, as most folks call him, calls Johnson’s Ranch Marina headquarters; he has guided at Caddo for crappie since 1950 when he was a youngster.  Fall has a different feel and look at Caddo than any place I’ve been and each year, I find myself called back to once again take in the sights, scenes and smells that somehow keep pulling me back. Life at Caddo Lake has changed little for folks that live by her shores. Going there is like stepping back into my boyhood days of the late fifties and early sixties.

 When you’re in the outdoors this time of year, keep an eye and ear tuned to the sky. We’ve already had an influx of migrating blue and greenwing teal. Soon, probably by the third week of the month, depending upon cold fronts up in Canada and Alaska, we’ll hear the haunting cry of geese heading south to winter along the Texas coast.  White Front (Specks) are the first to leave their breeding grounds on the tundra but cold weather will soon trigger the major migration of snows and Canadas.  I’ve been told by a friend that lived for many years in Alaska adjacent a huge snow goose nesting area, that the major migration begin each fall with the first full moon of October. His accounts of the many times when he  would look out his cabin window and the fields would be white with geese, then during the night, he would hear them taking wing and, the next morning, they would be well on their way to their ultimate destination to the prairies of the Texas coast.  I’ve often thought of just how lonesome the feeling must be to have thousands of nesting geese living almost in your back yard one day and have wake up the next to total silence. My friend managed the wildlife and fishing on over 2 million acres of wilderness in Alaska for several years for the U.S. military.  I can listen to his tells of trapping and  relocating bear, hunting moose, sheep and caribou from remote camps for hours on end!

If you’re bound by tight budgets, heavy work schedules and simply cannot find the times or means to travel to enjoy the outdoors, take a minute and look at the opportunities in your own backyard. Chances are very good you live a few minutes from a city or state park or lake with a camping/picnicking area. Pick up some charcoal, stop by the store and grab some hot dogs or hamburger meat and spend a few hours in the outdoors with your family. Or, pack that cast iron Dutch Kettle and make a pot of chili oven an open fire. Everything tastes better in the outdoors!
  I can guarantee you will come back home refreshed and recharged! Let’s get out there and enjoy this true blessing God has given us we call  AUTUMN!

Article by Luke Clayton

Listen to OUTDOORS WITH LUKE CLAYTON RADIO at www.catfishradio.com. Contact Luke at lukeclayton@prodigy.net.