Payback Time at Clearwater Lake

Fishing and catching up on recent events, Alan Chitwood & Randy Eudy with morning catch at Clearwater Lake.

To those who love it, the Great Outdoors is like the old farm house on the old TV show, The Waltons. Like the warm and nostalgic feel of the old farmhouse, no matter where you’ve been or how long you’ve been gone, the Great Outdoors is a place to ‘gather around the fireplace’ and be warmly reunited with friends and family as if you had never been apart. Last weekend at Clearwater Lake it had been over 20 years since Alan Chitwood, Randy Eudy, and I had been together. The last time we had all been at the same place at the same time was the summer of 1990 at the Doe Run’s Buick Smelter. In late August of that year on my last day of work as summer student labor, I walked out the front gate after I had pulled a practical joke on Alan for the second year in a row. Earlier that same day I had told Randy I was walking out the gate for the last time because I was going to graduate from college after the fall semester and Randy had told me how he looked forward to the day he too would walk out for the final time. Well, last weekend, with Alan and Randy having both walked out the front gate for the last time some years back, we all met around the ‘proverbial fireplace of the Great Outdoors’ as if August, 1990 was yesterday.

Several weeks back Alan and I had devised a plan to get the three of us together for an October fishing trip just after the lake was pulled down to winter pool level. He had called me and we had settled on meeting in Ellington the following week for our trip. Upon meeting at 6:00 am we all shook hands and it was as if we were standing in the break room at Doe Run in 1990. Nothing had changed. Randy and Alan hadn’t seen each other in over 10 years and, as we all rode together down to the lake, the conversation felt just like the last time we were on a smelter blast furnace run together, just 20 years removed. The two old guys were catching up on recent happenings and the snot-nosed new kid that they tolerated was along for the ride. What was amazing is that 20 years later, as I listened to them talking, I was still learning things I hadn’t realized about the smelter and the goings-on within the plant! And that wasn’t to be the only lesson I would be taught that day. Alan and Randy are both accomplished fishermen and Alan knows Clearwater Lake as well as anybody. Not only was this going to be a great reunion fishing trip but, according to Randy it was also going to be a patented Alan Chitwood fishing seminar.

We put in at Webb Creek at approximately 6:30 am and headed up the lake. Per Alan’s direction I had tied on a buzz-bait and we pulled up alongside the bank at the first spot he knew to hold fish. Running the trolling motor at the front of the boat, in his first 5 casts Alan managed to hook 3 bass and miss a 4th. From my spot in the middle of the boat I heard Randy in the back laughing and saying, “Yep, this is going to be another Chitwood seminar!”

Alan was casting and reeling so fast it was amazing. Each time he caught a fish he would pull it into the boat and, as it was hanging there in front of my face, he would say, “Put that in the live-well for me, would ya?” After unhooking his 5th fish for him and putting it in the well I told him this trip was starting to remind me of many of the trips that I had taken with my dad as a boy. Randy was in the back of the boat laughing as if tickled by the whole spectacle of me taking Alan’s fish off the hook for him. I’m ashamed I didn’t see it coming.

Alan Chitwood & Greg Stephens with bass caught at Clearwater Lake.

Eventually I noticed a suspicious pattern starting to take shape. Not only was I unhooking and putting his fish in the live-well but each time I cast toward the front end of the boat Alan’s cast would drop in right next to mine. A few times he even hit my plug with his plug, tangling our lines together. I’m not sure I would have really suspected it was on purpose except that each time it happened, from the back of the boat I could hear Randy laughing uproariously!

Finally, after having one particularly good cast ruined by Alan casting right on top of my lure, I asked “you aren’t still ticked off about those pink boots of yours that I painted, are you?” Randy just kept laughing. In a ‘gotcha’ voice, Alan finally ‘fessed-up and said it was payback. After 20 years, over a practical joke a fella still holds a grudge and tries to ruin your fishing trip! That has to be violating some unspoken outdoor law or something. You just don’t purposefully mess with a guys fishing trip!

At the beginning of the morning on the way to the lake Randy and I had decided it was going to be a great time whether we caught a single fish or not. At the end of the morning, after departing from Alan at Ellington, we had had a great trip. Many fish and much laughter later, as we reminisced about outdoor hunting, fishing, and camping trips passed, Randy said, “This is what it’s all about.” And he’s right – enjoying life as designed by Mother Nature and making great memories with friends and family in the process. The outdoors is the stage to reestablish old friendships and make new memories. This fall I hope you make the effort to catch up with an old friend or take a young child to the Great Outdoors. Sometimes you don’t get a second chance. So says the One-Eyed Hillbilly.

Greg Stephens is a 35-year veteran & life-time student of the great outdoors. His column appears weekly in print & online publications. You can email him at gregstephens@one-eyedhillbilly.com. For more columns go to www.one-eyedhillbilly.blogspot.com.