And Shumway showed Smith some of the ropes. The other day my nephew Roger Kehde of Sedalia, Mo., made his annual piscatorial journey to these parts. Perry Lake's Rock Creek arm every autumn. In crappie and walleye circles hereabouts, October can be the most trying of times. David Schmitdlein, a superb crappie angler from Topeka, says he can't make up his mind whether October or March is the worst month to be a crappie fisherman.
Biologists call it eutrophication.
And this inexorable condition is happening at Perry Lake at a rather rapid rate. In angling circles hereabouts, the summer of 2000 will be remembered for years to come as summer of the spoon. My wife, Pat, began our annual stay at Lake Ossawinnamakee in the north woods of Minnesota just as she ended last year's visit. A small cadre of knowledgeable anglers hereabouts contends that some sections of the Mississippi River that course through Crow Wing, Morrison, Benton, Stearns, Sherburne and Wright counties in central Minnesota contain the finest smallmouth bass fishing in the world. According to Jeff Gabel's best recollections, his piscatorial baptism occurred at the James River arm of Table Rock Lake, Missouri, in 1968.