A douple dip of paying dues...

AT first light my brother let me out about five miles from the truck. In between was all lovely woods, hopefully full of ginseng. Five hours later I staggered out of the woods with five paltry ginseng plants. This woods had taken the full brunt of the drought. All the plants Id found were just about gone and dried up. Two I found only because there was red berries on a bare stalk. No leaves at all. deciding to try and salvage the day I decided to go fishing at the site of the old kings dam. On the way down the bike trail I saw several deer and two wild turkeys. So I'm thinking hey thats a good start, its going to be a great evening. I get down to the river and wade in. Right away I catch a smallie and as I'm unhooking it I hear a deer blow behind me. I turn and see two deer bounding away from the rivers edge. Yep it's going to be a great evening... way away in the distance I can hear a storm. I'm thinking that sounds like its going around, should be just close enough to cool things down nicely. Just then the wind began to blow a bit as I made a few more casts. About that time lightning struck so close I just about jumped out of my skin. Two minutes later all the leaves were just about ripped from the trees as the wind hit hard. With the wind came more lightning. And rain. Buckets of rain. big buckets of rain. I backed up against a pile of rubble from the old dam to hunker down and wait things out. OK this will really turn the fish on after all this dry weather. Sure enough as I sat there I swear I saw fish swirling below the riffle between sheets of rain. But more flashes and thunder booming all around. Im ok with fishing in the rain but not lightning... So I sat getting wetter and wetter as it rained harder. Thru the heavy rain I could see the river coming up just a bit and coloring a little. Then poof no more rain. Even the sun began to peak out from behind the clouds. But across the hole I could see huge streaks of muddy orange water as runoff poured into the river. Ok I've got a vibrating crankbait with a rattle this will be ok. But withen minutes the whole river was orange and worse the storm had washed every leaf in the state into my section of river, you couldn't retrieve two feet without fouling on leaves. So driving home soaking wet and defeated I took the senic route home and drove upstream. Halls creek which had been dry yesterday was waist deep and going fast enough to drown in. All the way to Todds Fork the river was a mess. Crossing the bridge in Morrow looking upstream the river was beautifull. I bet the fishing was really something up there tonight...

Ginseng Hunting

The woods was a long rectangle bordered on all sides by roads but with the fork running thru the middle of it. Because of the steepness of the terrain along the fork there was left a strip of woods in places close to a mile wide and it was about eight miles lengthwise from road to road, broken up only by a couple tractor paths and one soybean field in a flat down by the water. My brother had dropped me off two weeks ago at the upper end and I'd walked the creek all the way out scouting things out. It might be eight miles by road but the fork twisted and turned almost back on itself so much that a walk started right after first light had me scrambling to get out by dark. This time I had a good idea of where I wanted to go and where I wanted to hit the creek, which was about halfway up. So I left the truck at the bottom and walked the road for an hour before cutting across to the woods. A small hollow led down to the main creek. This wasn't where I wanted to be but it was just downstream and a can't miss landmark to guide me in. About halfway down it started to rain. I was expecting showers and rain but this was something else entirely. It was one of those rains that make you pull over if your driving. No overpasses for me to park under tho. I found a big oak that leaned a couple feet to one side and backed up into the overhang the best I could to wait it out. After 15 minutes of feeling like a fire house was turned on me things began to settle down to just a rain and I started out again. When I reached the main hollow I did not go down inside it but instead walked the edge to where I was originally headed. For on my scout I had found something here that had stopped me cold. I'd worked up the hill seeing ginseng semi regularly then topped out on this little flat. Not really a good looking woods but there was some baneberry and maidenhair fern so I was still looking. Well I looked ahead and here was a big three prong, then I saw a four prong standing proud, then three or four other big plants all bunched up. About ten feet away there was ten or twelve more and I just felt real still and calm knowing where I'd be on opening day. So here I was in the rain and even before I found my spot I dug a half dozen big plants. And then I was there. In an square roughly a hundred feet by a hundred I guess I dug a pound of sang. I sat down next to a big four prong and had lunch, a half a loaf of raison bread. I've learned that I need lots and lots of carbs during a ginseng hunt and nowadays I tend to load up on bread of some kind. Up and down the fork from here I'd only seen a handfull of ginseng but I hadn't scouted down the hill towards the fork from here. I slowly worked down the hill zig zaging back and forth finding a plant here and there. Towards the fork the hill flattened out and the remains of an old woven wire fence stretched more on the ground than up, held up here and there by old rotten locust posts. The path of the old fence was marked by something else too. Growing right up thru the old wire was ginseng. Old big ginseng that had been there for decades. There were twenty or so in sight and I had to look further before digging those, I just couldn't help myself. Sure enough further along was another big plant and just in sight two more. Almost all of this ginseng was yellow or at least burned a golden shade of green by the drought. I had to be carefull or the top would seperate from the root while digging and I'd have to search and search for the root. No matter how much ginseng I found today it was obvious the year itself was going to be just okay because most ginseng would be gone for the year in a week or two. But right now those golden tops shown out thru the woods saying dig here, dig here. I forced myself to slow down and dig carefully, these were old big plants demanding respect with one to three inch necks of bud scars. Every year the new years bud leaves a scar and these build up in a neck and some of these plants looked to be as old as me. Finally after a couple hours I dug all the plants out of the old fence and had dug another twenty or so down to the fork. Bone weary I headed for the truck with two and three quarter pounds of ginseng, truely an opening day to remember.

This and that ginseng

I'm constantly asked what does ginseng look like so I thought I'd post a little photo gallery of sang images





Some mature ginseng plants





Small ginseng too little to harvest





Ginseng thats turned yellow in the fall just before the top dies down. This is when ginseng is the easiest to find as you can sometimes spot it twenty feet away or in weeds where you would miss it green.



A small three prong starting to turn



A giant root that had two four prong tops




Some really old "trophy" ginseng plants