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Fishing Stories from Ned Kehde |
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Submitted by Ned Kehde - Nov. 9, 2000 But such a meeting occurred on Oct. 19, when Mike Smith of Lawrence and Renee Shumway of Topeka spent an afternoon afloat on the Kansas River near Eudora. And Shumway showed Smith some of the ropes. It was Smith's first piscatorial outing on the river. Most of his treks are to Clinton and Perry lakes, where he catches scads of channel cats. On the other hand, Shumway says there isn't an abacus made that could calculate how many days he has been on the Kaw in chase of catfish. Nor does he have a clue of how many of these fish he has caught. But never in all of his 44 years had Shumway seen the Kaw running as low and slow as it ran on this day. Even though the current was moving at a snail's pace and nearly inaudible, Shumway noted that to his ears the sounds of the river's current and all the natural stirring that occur along the riparian border are greater than the most elaborate Wagnerian opera. Shumway called it bewitching, noting that the river and its denizens has mesmerized him since his father opened Shumway Bait and Tackle Shop in Topeka in 1962. Throughout the 1960s, Shumway was either at the river's edge in pursuit of catfish and carp or in his father's shop listening to glorious tales from the veteran river fishermen who had been plying the river since the Great Depression. Nowadays he runs a guiding service and fishes primarily from Lawrence to DeSoto. Before Smith and Shumway left the Eudora boat ramp, Smith asked about the Kaw's reputation of being one the most polluted waterways in American, being so tainted many Kansans are afraid to touch it. After a moment of reflection, Shumway said that he has dipped his hands into the Kaw so often that he suspects that some molecules from the river are coursing through his veins. What's more, he has consumed oodles of catfish from the Kaw, and except for a bulging waistline, Shumway can't detect any ill effects from fishing the Kaw and consuming some its catfish. Straightaway Smith could see that the fishing the Kaw is a hardscrabble affair -- much more arduous than a windy day at Perry and Clinton lakes. Shumway admits that the Kaw is a difficult, dangerous and dirty waterway, but it is still a more peaceful and enthralling place to be than the lakes. Shumway also says that a consummate reservoir fisherman, such as Smith, can tangle with more catfish in a day than a savvy river angler can. The river, however, is likely to yield bigger ones. In fact, the state record channel cat was caught on the Kaw in 1993, and that brute weighed 34.68 pounds. After Shumway showed Smith how to anchor the boat upstream from a pile of logs and trees and place a piece of shad impaled on a 4/0 hook and weighed with a -ounce egg sinker a few in front of that snag, they began getting bites and catching an occasional channel cat. One channel cat eclipsed the nine-pound mark, but the others were small ones. And they were the first small ones Shumway had caught in a long while. The demise of the small channel cats has Shumway worried. He told Smith that this downturn began around 1997, and this year even the big channel cats have become scarce. Shumway doesn't know if the root of the problem is caused by the pollution that Smith was asking about. Or if it has something to do with all the high water that plagued the Kaw in the 1990s, and is compounded by this year's drought. However, Shumway is catching more big blue and flathead cats than before, and perhaps those titans are preying upon the lesser channel cat. Upon making their last casts, Shumway invited Smith join him again in mid-November and focus on catching a big blue, which don't live in the waters that Smith fishes. |
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