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The Hopedale Highway

It doesn’t take much effort to see what the primary occupation of the locals is when driving toward Hopedale. Signs advertising saltwater fishing charters hang out from waterside boat docks and piers like Spanish moss dripping from the Evangeline Oak.[…]

Bass Fishing

Grass Drills

Largemouth bass love grass and so do bass anglers, just not the kind that requires mowing Saturday mornings or that Bill Clinton didn’t inhale. […]

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Brenton Blast

Ernie Pyle called it the “thousand-yard stare.” Pyle was a WWII war correspondent who shared foxholes with the boys who won it. He wrote for the folks back home about the grunts and dogfaces and the holy hell they went through while blasting their way to victory — but from a front-line seat. Ernie was a “real-time” Stephen Ambrose.[…]

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Back in Black

Spring sprung as suddenly as a wind-up Jack-in-a-box. For me, it sprung in the form of an alarm clock’s irritating buzzer awakening me out of a sound sleep at 3:30 in the morning.[…]

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Cotton-Picking Bluegills

If you’re going to catch the most and the biggest bluegills from any bluegill bed, you have to pick bluegills just like you pick cotton,” said Nathaniel Davis, an elderly outdoor friend who helped me learn to hunt and fish many years ago. “You know how to pick cotton, don’t you?”[…]

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Barre Barrage

The wind was blowing out of the northwest as the sun peaked over the horizon, but it wasn’t terrible. Chad Chaisson was still confident the trout would be waiting.[…]

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Deep Blue, Deep Yellow

It was a case of the “Haves” and the “Have Nots.” Louisiana has them, Florida doesn’t. No, I don’t mean Cajuns; rather drilling rigs — the fish-friendly structures that rival just about any natural formation for species diversity and angler access.[…]