Fish Records

Earlier this week I took a short respite at Aunt Dee's and "Almost Uncle" Tom's place in Cole County,  Missouri after motoring around the back roads of Moniteau County with Uncle Raymond, looking for ancestral burial sites and old family school houses: more on that later. Aunt Monie provided room and board at her establishment and was kind enough to wash up 2 newly acquired long sleeve shirts I procured from Walton-Mart in Camdenton, after relizing a hundred miles out I'd left home without any shirts. As a side note, the next time you find yourself in California or the metropolitan McGirk area, I'd recommend you stop by the "Burger Haus" for breakfast, lunch and/or dinner. Ask for Mike and tell him cousin Russ sent you. Back to the story...

As Max and I sat on Tom and Dee's back porch enjoying a stellar Cole County afternoon, I found myself thinking about dinner, which I was hoping would include some of Tom's fresh caught crappie. Luckily it did, along with a mess of freshly picked mushrooms that Tom and Darin discovered that afternoon on his Missouri River bottom farm. It was good eating (restaurant quality that I'd estimate would run in the range of $23.99 or better). Sitting there wondering whether or not supper would include a mess of Tom's famous fried crappie, resulted in me thinking back on an overnight fishing trip several years ago with my good friend Nickademus. We didn't break the Beaver Lake striper record that night, but we did end up with enough striper filets to open a nice little fish place just outside downtown Hiwasse. We didn't, but we could have.
Anyway, that's my old friend, Nick-Nick-Nick, there on the right in the hat, which I'm guessing he procured for somewhere around less than $1. Which brings me to the point: if you're in the market for just about anything you can think of (legal merchandise) and would like to get it at the best deal on the planet, contact Nick or Aunt Dee...they can point you in the right direction.

Update: I forgot to ask "The Duster Man" this past Tuesday over lunch at Steve's Family Diner in Lohman, along with his dad D-Wayne, whether or not he has any near term plans to catch that darn Missouri state record flathead. If he does, he'll have to also break the World Record, because according to the fine folks at the santeecoopercats website, the world record Flat was caught near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. That darn thing weighed in at 130 pounds, which is about 90 pounds more than all those stripers Nickademus and I caught the only time I've ever gone striper fishing. If Duster Man breaks the Flat record, Nickadimus and I may have to go back out in search of the Arkansas state record Striper. If so, the darn thing will have to weigh at least 64 lbs and 9 oz., which will be good enough to move Jeff Fletcher to 2nd place in the Arkansas record books. If that happens, I'll buy Nick a brand new $20 hat to celebrate our achievement!

On fish and mushroom related matters, I'll keep you posted.....