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Fishing Stories from Ned Kehde |
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Submitted by Ned Kehde - March 2, 2001 On Feb. 21, the Kansas River ran clear and at a snail's pace, trickling past the mouth of Cedar Creek at 909 cubic feet per second. But by Feb. 26, the river ran turbid and like a raging bull, gushing past the bridge at DeSoto at 36,801 cfs. This dramatic rise put several of the catfish anglers hereabouts in a jubilant mood. For months, these anglers had feared that this part of Kansas was stuck in a major drought. Therefore, they would have to endure another year of low water and dreadful fishing. But after Mother Nature's winter deluge, these fishermen began anticipating a bountiful spring. None of these anglers, however, could recall such a wintertime occurrence on the Kaw. So one of them called Tom Burns of Lawrence to see if he remembered a similar phenomenon. Burns was a fishmonger on the river from1931 and until he retired at the age of 72 in December 1991. His wizardry at catching its denizens earned him the moniker: "King of the Kaw." Burns said that he had never seen the river raise as it did on Feb. 26. A couple times back in the 1930s and 40s, he said, the Kaw ran bank full, but these rises were caused by massive ice jams, not a winter rainstorm. As Burns remembered those past winters, he laced his tales with some of the stories that appeared in his memoirs, 60 Years on the Kaw River, which he published in 1994. Lately Burns has been working on a second edition of his book. The new edition will reveal some secrets that he couldn't bear to divulge in the first one. For instance, in the new edition he writes: "When I started fishing, I had no one to show me anything. So to get an idea what was going on, I started looking for any movement in the water. I believed in the powers of observation. Thus early in the morning or late in the evening, I would just sit on the bank or in my boat and watch for any goings on. When I saw a fish, I would examine the river bottom, checking its depth and makeup. "Initially, I thought that wherever there was water there were fish. But after I observed and fished for a few years, I gradually discovered that each species has its own ways and routes to move about and most of the water doesn't have any fish living in it. I also found that at different times of the year, the same fish would behave differently and inhabit different spots on the river. "I also discovered that when the river was rising or falling, it was hard to see where the fish were. But as in every aspect of fishing there are exceptions, and here's one of them: "After a big rain fell way up upstream before the dams were built on some of the tributaries of the Kaw in the 1950s and '60s, the water would be so muddy from the erosion off the fields that I would see flatheads backing down the river with their mouths open gasping for oxygen. And if these gasping flatheads would come upon a stream with clearer water flowing into the river, the flathead would head up that stream. At such a spot, I once caught 40 flatheads at the mouth of a creek where the clearer water mixed with the muddy water." Burns also notes that fishermen ought to be catching channel
cats and small flatheads at this moment on the upstream portions
of the Kaw's many sandbars, and they should be able to catch
them there until mid-April. |
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