I wait almost all year for October.
When bass leave the shallows in June, I start to think about October. When it’s 100 degrees in the shade in August, I’m definitely thinking about October — when the cool nights start to show up, the leaves start to turn colors, and just about everything a sportsman could dream about comes true.
October is a time for harvest, and not just in the agricultural fields that border the woods where so many of us hunt. It is a transition time, with deer moving to acorns, brown trout moving upstream to spawn, bass in our favorite reservoirs moving back into the creeks, and just about every saltwater fish worth pursuing moving toward the ocean.
A couple of years ago, somebody asked me why I’d quit bow-hunting. Aside from the fact I’m color-blind and have trouble blood-trailing, I had an even better reason.
I like to fish too much to give up one of my favorite months on the water to spend the time necessary to sit in a tree and try to kill a deer with a stick. Let me have my two or three weeks in November, and deer season is fulfilling. But give me two or three weeks in October with a spinning rod in hand and a big speckled trout in my crosshairs, and everything in my world is wonderful.
Already this morning, as I write this, I’ve had my calendar out, trying to figure out which week I can fit in another fishing trip, what with magazine deadlines rolling in on a regular basis. Can I get in a day of bass fishing on Lake Murray that Wednesday? When did Davy Hite say he could take me to Clarks Hill? Can I move one of my trips to the coast back a couple of days and another one up a couple of days so I can hit them in one swing?
Will I have room in the freezer for this season’s venison, what with all the flounder I plan to have stashed away? Maybe I can take that wild turkey to fish camp and fry it — that should free up enough room for at least a ham or two. How am I going to do all this and not miss any of my son’s JV football games on Thursday nights?
Growing up, October meant the World Series to all of us kids who played baseball every day during the summer and thought Bobby Richardson, Willie Mays and Don Drysdale were the greatest. Of course, the games were played in the afternoon back then, and sometimes your teacher would magically produce a portable TV at just the right moment.
But it also meant Saturdays slipping through the woods, hunting squirrels. Well, that was just an excuse to scout for deer season — it didn’t open as early back then, either — because inevitably, wherever you killed squirrels, you found the most acorns. And acorns would mean deer, a month down the road.
October will always be that big harvest moon, yellow and orange, just after dark. It will be hearing the leaves crackle as an animal approaches. It will be all the clucking and yelping of a flock of turkeys feeding through the woods. It will be smallmouth bass hitting Beetle Spins in a rocky river in the edge of the mountains. It will be the first fire of the year in the fireplace after that first true cool snap.
It will always be my favorite month.
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