Mud Dog.

He mighta' already caught every fish in Harding, and there's a good possibility he picked every clipper on the river bank. I know he bounced every rabbit, flushed every grouse, called in every turkey, spotted every deer, tracked every coyote and without a doubt drank every tap dry in Luzerne and Wyoming counties.



To most sportsmen he'd be considered a nuisance, worse than a shifty wind, a hard rain or a cold, crunchy autumn day on a whitetail stock during the peak of the rut. Just when you thought you'd have a nice, quiet day with some friends on the lake throwing plugs to bass and enjoying some root beers, here comes Mahi hotter than a walleye on a bucktail throwing some serious wake your way and shoutin' above that old 75 Johnson he's got cranked over to full throttle, "get off my @#$ #$%^ fish!." But he's a die-hard woodsman, one heck of a smallmouth fisherman, better than a beagle on bunnies, a pretty good clay-bird duster and the dirtiest dog you'll find the whole way north on 92. And as Mud Dog likes to say, "it don't get much cleaner than a little river mud behind the ears."



The last time I saw him he was hanging upside down from a big silver maple--sixty pound braided line fastened tight to his left shoelace--dropping cinder blocks on the ice jam over the walleye hole behind Bev's Country Store.

"Whatcha' doin' Mud Dog?"
"What the hecks' it look like I'm doin'?"
"Looks like you're gettin' ready for some walleye fishin' tomorrow night," I says.
"Heck!" he says. "By tomorrow night this here hole'll be all jammed up again! Soons I get this ice busted up I'm a run up to the truck and grab my rod. Why don't ya go grab a couple a' jigs and a couple a' cold ones for us!"







It was mid-October. The pre-rut was underway, but there was still fishing to be done. The smallmouth were feeling pretty fiesty, and so was Mud Dog, so him and Flintlock planned a nice relaxing float on the Falls stretch for the evening. I wasn't invited, most likely because I had outfished both of them on the previous smallmouth outing and they just didn't feel like going through the agony of friendly defeat again. I assume the canoe was loaded with rods, soft plastics, eighth-ounce jig heads, barrel swivels, bullet sinkers, a few cans of clippers, maybe a few cans of beer, maybe more than a few, maybe a couple minnows, life jackets, and whatever else two great minds thinking alike thought they may need for the evening float.



Around eight o'clock that night I received a phone call from the Appletree Restaurant--the local watering hole home to all of the Harding Boys. It was Big Mike, Mud Dog's old man.

"You better get down here right now," he said to me in an abrupt, demanding shout.
"Why?" I questioned.
"Because it's wing night! And Mud Dog just got a seven...fishin'!"