Friends’ fishing, floating adventures hit the mark
Trips from Alaska to Rio Grande remembered
It’s always fun in this column to remember and write about some of the adventures my pal, Hog Ears, and I enjoyed when we lived in our backwoods bachelor cabin many moons ago.
Oh those were the days. That paradise cabin sat in the middle of a thousand acre spread. Our nearest neighbor lived a mile away. A beautiful clear creek flowed right by our front porch and our mail carrier, Brenda, occasionally left us a warm home-baked apple pie fresh from the oven when she brought our mail. We both had fun jobs at Table Rock State Park, close to Branson.
“We always like it when you write about Hog Ears,” I’ve heard readers say. Yet a lot of them think Hog Ears is some fictional character I made up. Negatory. Hog Ears is the real deal.
After our cabin days, I didn’t migrate far to my little shack-ri-la cabin here on Beaver Lake. Hog Ears’ life journey took him to Alaska where he and his lovely bride, Cindy, have lived for decades.
His legal name is Mark Hughes, but to his buddies, particularly here in the Lower 48, his real name is Hog Ears. I’ll wager Cindy is the only one who calls him Mark.
As I recall, Hog Ears got his name when he was a tot and his dad was having a pig roast. Dad wrapped the pig’s ears in aluminum foil and toddler Mark took note. He pointed at the hog and started whispering “Hog ears. Hog ears.” Everybody got a big laugh out of that and started calling him Little Hog Ears.
In this ice fishing picture of him here, you can see his ears are really quite normal and of regular size.
I’d say Hog Ears is responsible for some of my life’s grandest adventures. Before our cabin days, Hog Ears worked for the U.S. Forest Service during summers in Idaho at a fire tower high on an isolated mountain peak. He lived there alone; only got to come down a couple times each summer. I drove out to visit him and spent a few days there at the fire tower. I drove my ‘68 Ford pickup high up the mountain as close as I could get to the tower, then hiked what seemed like 90 miles the rest of the way to the top. Carrying a heavy backpack made it extra fun, a 9 on the wheezer scale.
When he was off duty, we’d hike to back country lakes, catch brook trout and cook them right there on shore.
Later, two of his buddies from the Forest Service and I canoed for a week 150 miles down the Rio Grande.
We started at Big Bend National Park in Texas and floated through Santa Elena Canyon with walls 1,500 feet high. Later we drifted through hot, flat desert, but the flow was always fast.
The river booklet said we were supposed to portage around seven rapids. We went ahead and ran three of them in empty canoes. A 5-foot wave at one rapid flipped our boat, and Hog Ears and I were swimming in a Rio Grande washing machine.
The Forest Service boys arranged for us to be picked up at a ranch on the Texas side of the river. On the drive out we’d gone 20 miles and we were still on this guy’s ranch. Yeah, everything’s big in Texas.
On another adventure, I visited Hog Ears in Alaska for some fishing. We caught salmon after salmon from the Russian River, a tributary of the famed Kenai River. Those salmon fought so hard that 10-pound fish were breaking our 30-pound test line.
One day we hired a guide, Captain Mike, in Homer, Alaska and went halibut fishing out on the ocean. I caught a 25-pound halibut, one of the biggest fish of my life. Captain Mike unhooked it and quickly threw it back. I about died. “Chicken” he said, which is Alaska speak for “small” halibut. Later I could see why. Our biggest fish that day weighed close to 100 pounds.
We fished on the bottom in 200 feet of water. Catching those big halibut was like winching a ‘56 Buick up from the ocean floor.
Hog Ears and I keep in close touch texting and sharing pictures about every week. We both love to cook, especially grilling and smoking meat. We send lots of photos of our creations that emerge from the smoke. Hog Ears has plenty of meat to work with since he shoots a moose every year. We’re both fishing nuts and share lots of fish pictures.
Nowadays Hog Ears is mostly retired, but works part time in the hunting department at Cabela’s in Anchorage. It’s still called Cabela’s there, not Bass Pro Shops. Talk about a job that’s right up his alley. It leaves him plenty of time to fish with grown daughter, Emily, his favorite fishing buddy, and comes with nice employee perks.
If you’re ever up that way stop in and say hi.