From the July archives of the River Hills Traveler:
5 years ago
• Sometimes I tell people my job with the Traveler for most of its 40 years has been to go fishing in neat places and write about it.
Yeah. But I also have a fierce allegiance to this particular part of the world, especially the natural world here. This is a special place and it has been a privilege to cover it as a journalist. (Bob Todd)
• I remember exactly when Traveler entered my life. That in Itself speaks volumes. Heck, I even have a hard time remembering relatives names. Traveler Bob and Pat Todd’s original creation, literally helped shape the lives of my family and me. (Greg Rudi Rudroff)
10 years ago
• It ain’t often that an ‘ol gar gets a bunch of attention, but there was certainly plenty of it in late May when the Conservation Department stocked a handful of alligator gars in Mingo National Wildlife Refuge.
Kathleen Burchett, Mingo manager, said, “A lot of people go through a career without being part of a species reintroduction. You can’t imagine how excited I am.”
Indeed, she’s the architect of the Mingo reintroduction. She’s been working for seven years to bring back this fish that was once a component of Mingo’s historic ecosystem. (Bob Todd)
• We sometimes measure the passing of time by recurring events. Like the fishing trip my son Bo and I usually do on Father’s Day. To start out at daybreak this time of year requires getting up very early. For Bo, it was about 3 a.m. to get to my house in time to head for the St. Francis River. We got there and had the canoe in the water not long after 5. But we could have been 30 minutes sooner. (Bob Todd)
15 years ago
• The role of competition in fishing…. Pat and I had been to the weighing of a smallmouth tournament on Current River the day before, and as a personal preference, I’d affirmed yet again that tournament fishing isn’t my thing. (By Bob Todd)