Andy Dear | Tuesday, 2 April 2024
This month marks exactly two years ago that my dear friend John "Bubba" Tebbetts passed away. Instead of writing a piece about all the interesting and important things this man did in his life, I thought I'd share a story that will hopefully reflect what a fun guy he was to be around.
One of John's greatest loves in his life was his farm in East Texas....Dogwood Hollow as he so apropriately named it. Over a period of years, John had done a tremendous amount of work to the infrastructure of this property to accommodate his hobbies. He could hunt, fish, ride dirt bikes, walk his dogs, shoot targets with both pistol and rifle, all within a few minutes of walking out of his back door.
And, speaking of his back doorstep, just a few hundred yards away, right in the middle of a lush green field, sat a beautiful lake that he had stocked with Largemouth Bass. Not just any Bass mind you, but the incredible strain of fish that grows to MONSTER size that inhabit Lake Fork not far from the farm. According to John, He and his buddies would go over to Lake Fork and catch a legal limit of brood fish that they kept alive in the livewell of the boat. Upon returning to the farm, the aforementioned Bass somehow "found their way" into John's private lake.
Back in 2004, when John and I produced the first rodbuilding instructional video on the DVD format at his studio at Dogwood Hollow, one of the first things I asked about was this extraordinary, picturesque lake in the middle of the field next to his house. Bubba kind of grinned and said," oh that's where I keep my trained Bass"
According to John, during the spring, summer, and fall, he would have the fellow who managed his farm take the large John Deere tractor over to the field and "mow" it for lack of a better word, to keep it manicured and safe for his daughter and the family dogs to run around in. The tractor operator would start on the outer perimeter of the field and run circles closer and closer to the lake. With every pass, he would flush out TENS OF THOUSANDS of Grasshoppers that would eventually get pushed into the lake itself. This would cause hundreds of bass to rush to the shallows to gorge themselves on these hoppers that were desperately trying to escape the shredder attachment on the tractor.
Now that story in and of itself, while mildly interesting and entertaining is not where it ends. According to Bubba, the farm hand shredded that large field so frequently that the Bass began to associate the physical vibrations that they could feel and hear from the tractor, with the grasshopper feeding frenzy that would regularly ensue just a few minutes after the tractor entered the field. Whenever they sensed the tractor was in the field, they instinctively moved up into the shallows waiting for the feast to begin. It was so predictable that even when there were no grasshoppers around, Bubba would purposely have the farmhand get on the tractor and ride around the field for 10 or 15 minutes, causing the Bass to move up into the shallow water waiting for the mass of grasshoppers to flood the waters surface any second. Of course, there would be Bubba waiting with 6wt. in hand, rigged with a Dave Whitlock hopper pattern ready to strike.
And that my friends is how an East Texas Redneck trains a lake full of Largemouth Bass to feed on command
Hope you all are having a great week,
Andy