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This Sunday morning I am sitting on my back porch watching the birds and squirrels around the feeders. It is so dry that the watering bowl has attracted six or seven species of birds and a …
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By Larry Dablemont, Contributing Columnist
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10/20/26
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A couple weeks ago, as the weather cooled and the acorns pelted my rooftop, a covey of 15 or 20 quail fed around in my back yard for much of an afternoon. The big oaks are producing a lot of acorns …
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By Larry Dablemont, Contributing Columnist
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10/14/26
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A few years back I bought a good-sized place in rural St. Clair county with a big house and two cabins on it, intending to make a retreat for small churches that had a youth group but didn’t have …
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By Larry Dablemont, Contributing Columnist
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10/7/26
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Trotlines are productive, and they are enjoyable this time of year when the heat makes nighttime activity more acceptable. But trotlines are hard work, and they are dangerous. It has been said that …
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By Larry Dablemont, Contributing Columnist
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9/23/26
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Readers of this column may recall that weeks ago I wrote that I was going to have a big sale here on Lightnin’Ridge on September 26. I have decided, because it may be so hot then, to …
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By Larry Dablemont, Contributing Columnist
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9/22/26
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By Larry Dablemont
Trotlines are productive, and they are enjoyable this time of year when the heat makes nighttime activity more acceptable. But trotlines are hard work, and they …
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By Larry Dablemont, Contributing Columnist
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9/15/26
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It was a nice little cove with clear water, and it looked to be a good place to fish a topwater lure, late in the evening as the hot sun dipped below the horizon. There was a nice little rock cliff …
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9/2/26
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Today I love to watch both gray and fox squirrels from my porch, and there is one tree just a ways from my office where baby gray squirrels are born every year. They emerge from the hole in the early …
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By Larry Dablemont, Contributing Columnist
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8/25/26
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The crawdad, or crayfish, is an unusual creature, always looking back where he has been, and going where his isn’t looking. Quite often where he has been appears quite safe and there looms a …
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By Larry Dablemont, Contributing Columnist
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8/12/26
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My maternal grandparents, Bert and Hilda McNew, had a little farm out southeast of Houston, Missouri a few miles. I was born in their old farmhouse. They were wonderful people whom I dearly loved.
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By Larry Dablemont, Contributing Columnist
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8/11/26
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It dawned on me recently that the way to know if your life has been a success is by being able to hire someone to mow your lawn when you have become too old to do it yourself. You cannot be a …
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By Larry Dablemont, Contributing Columnist
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7/28/26
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Bullfrog season is open! I might go down to my pond soon and grab a couple to eat. Usually, when you read a natural history account, it discusses the basic things you find in a nature book of …
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7/21/26
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Bullfrog season is open! I might go down to my pond soon and grab a couple to eat. Usually, when you read a natural history account, it discusses the basic things you find in a nature …
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By Larry Dablemont, Contributing Columnist
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7/15/26
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There have been many innovations since the use of the first fishing lures, including the advent of the many varieties of pork-rind. Probably the use of pork-rinds all came about when some old-timer …
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By Larry Dablemont, Contributing Columnist
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7/14/26
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I tried my best to create a Big Piney River museum and Nature Center near my hometown of Houston. But it was not to be and now I have to empty it in hopes that someone else can take over and use that …
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By Larry Dablemont, Contributing Columnist
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7/8/26
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My teachers didn’t really approve of me working after school at Dad and Grandpa’s pool hall. One of the older lady teachers said I was spending too much of my time in that pool hall with a bunch …
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By Larry Dablemont, Contributing Columnist
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6/30/26
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In my library there is a volume of Field & Stream magazine, in a hardbound cover, from April of 1918 to April of 1919. In these old magazines there is some very interesting reading, much of it by …
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By Larry Dablemont, Contributing Columnist
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6/23/26
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If I were ever asked to list the ten things I have enjoyed the most in my life as a fisherman, not too far down the line I would list, “watching a bobber.” It was one of life’s greatest …
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By Larry Dablemont, Contributing Columnist
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6/16/26
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If I were ever asked to list the ten things I have enjoyed the most in my life as a fisherman, not too far down the line I would list, “watching a bobber”. It was one of life’s greatest …
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By Larry Dablemont, Contributing Columnist
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6/10/26
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As a seventeen-year old freshman at School of the Ozarks College in the mid-60s I studied fishing mostly! With Table Rock Lake so close and my having a key to the gate and boat on the school’s …
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By Larry Dablemont, Contributing Columnist
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6/9/26
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