Fun times outweigh discomfort of intense cold

Duck hunters are tenacious to rise in the middle of the night to travel to flooded woods or fields, but fishermen are just as dedicated.

It’s one thing to get out of bed and head for the lake or river on a warm morning in spring or summer. It takes a much deeper level of dedication to get on the water at dawn or before in freezing weather. You only do that if you love it.

I’m thinking of Shawn Paul Miller, a young guy with a wife and child. He works hard, but he plays hard, too. He killed the biggest black bear ever taken in Arkansas. He kills deer on public land with an ancient Browning Auto-5 12-gauge.

Lately, Miller has been fishing for walleyes at night on the Ouachita River. Everything about his photos suggest cold and sleep deprivation, but the plump walleyes and the gleam of satisfaction in Miller’s eyes prove that it’s all worthwhile.

Being cold is part of an outdoors lifestyle, but I have been what I would call deathly cold three times. The coldest I’ve ever been was after a dunking in Bayou Meto Wildlife Management Area at age 11 while hunting with my father. We broke ice on a death march from the Long Bell parking area to Brushy. I tripped on a root and went underwater. The sudden immersion caused me to lose my shotgun, so I had to re-immerse to find it.

This was before modern water-repellent clothing and form-fitting waders. I wore a Duxback cotton coat, cotton undergarments and hip boots. Only when I began exhibiting signs of hypothermia did my dad relent and begin a more arduous march back to the vehicle.

The second coldest was camping in a sleet storm at Giant City State Park at Makanda, Ill., in February 1988 while backpacking from Arkansas to Maine. The temperature at night was about minus-10 degrees for several days. When it’s that cold, you don’t really sleep. You hover in semi-sleep because your body knows that you probably won’t wake from deep sleep.

The third coldest was fishing in a tournament on Lake Ouachita with the late Gary Hubble. We made several long, high-speed runs to various remote parts of the lake. Hubble often recalled that trip for its intense cold. He fished a lot in the winter, so that meant something. Had the weather not warmed by mid- morning, it would have been unbearable.

On the other hand, that was also the first time I competed in a tournament. I won money. It was also the last time I fished with Hubble. That means more than anything. All of the good things outweigh the cold.

About this time two years ago occurred a short-lived walleye and striper trip on the Ouachita River with Chris Larson. Thick ice covered the lake, and Larson tore up his trailer lights and other items backing his jet-powered War Eagle into the ice at the Arkansas 27 ramp.

We made it a couple hundred yards past the Arkansas 27 Bridge before the ice blocked our progress. One look should have told us that it was foolish to try, but our desire to fish made us take leave of our senses. We were never in any danger. We just wasted a lot of time and effort.

Some of my coldest days are my best. They occur every year on Martin Luther King weekend on the White River. Rusty Pruitt, Bill Eldridge, Ed Kubler and I always stay at the White Buffalo Resort. It’s always bitter cold. It often snows. Sometimes after a day on the river, we have to put our fishing rods in the shower to de-ice them.

The best of these trips was in the snow. The flakes were as big as quarters, and we caught so many fish. We caught some big brown trout trolling stickbaits. Eldridge and Kubler slayed the rainbows with prepared baits.

Last year the snow blanketed the surrounding hillsides, making a memorable frame to photograph the 28- inch brown trout that I caught about a quarter of a half mile upstream from Ranchette Access.

I’ve spent some mighty cold mornings in deer stands, too. I’m thinking of a 2004 hunt in Chariton County, Mo., that was so cold that it froze the oranges I brought for snacks. I killed four does in less than 30 seconds. I shook so badly that I couldn’t climb down from the stand for about 30 minutes.

Add that to the list of times I’ve been deathly cold. Except for the dunking, they were all worth it.