It's been my fortune and misfortune to have fished with three puppies in my time. It is a contradictory experience. For example...

Saturday I grabbed the fly rod and waded off into the river. Along with me came our big old black mostly Lab, my neighbors big old mostly Ridge Back, and my neighbors 12 week old hunting dog, what I call a Black and Tan but I'm not a dog expert. A coon dog basically. At this point his paws and his head look like a grown up dogs but the rest of his body is small. Clumsy, friendly and cute as hell - but a pain in the neck because he likes to get between your feet while you are trying to walk.

They wait to see if I'm going up or down river, see that I'm going down river and take off ahead of me. The two older dogs know where I'm headed and the puppy goes with them. When I get to the Guinea Hole I'm amazed at how much it has changed since the flooding. All the mud and vegetation is gone, it's a gravel and rock bottom and clean as a whistle. It's the same depth, the same width and the same length, just cleaner.

On my second cast I have a big blue gill on and the puppy swims out to me - I'm in waist deep - and proceeds to try to climb up me like a monkey on a tree. Immediately I have a puppy clawing at me that has gotten my stripped fly line wrapped all around his body and a fish on. I'm cussing and laughing at the same time. I'm equal parts ticked off and amused. It is a peculiar situation but a familiar one - I've been through this twice before with other dogs, one of which is the Lab.

The puppy swims and swims and swims - it has more stamina that I could imagine. Must be those great big paws. After a while the other two dogs corral the pup and head home. About half way back a kayak comes along and the pup swims out to it and tries to board. The kayak goes by me with the pup swimming desperately after it. It's not my dog and I'm almost happy to see it keep going but my mouth starts calling the dog, and eventually it turns and swims back to me and starts trying to climb up me again, getting wrapped in my line, while a nice fish is trying hard to get landed.

The pup gets tired finally and goes and sits on the bank. Pretty soon I look up and here comes another kayak and the pup swims out and tries to board it and then follows it until once again I call it back and it tries to climb up me while getting wrapped in my line. No fish on this time. But in a while I see it headed for home.

Fortunately the raccoons didn't show up until the pup was out of sight. Six raccoons came down the bank in front of me, about fifty yards from me, and proceeded to hunt for food as if I wasn't there. Silent and quick, they moved down the bank in that peculiar hunch back walk they have. Like day time ghosts they disappear without a sound, just seeming to vanish one at a time. Had that pup been there and spotted them he'd probably be ten counties over by now.

Oh, and I caught a lot of fish, some nice channel cats included.

Wasn't sure which angle you were going with the title of this post. Here is a differant direction.

Back in the eighties my dad lived in south Texas and worked with two guys that went in together and bought an offshore boat. They started a "guide business", which was just a guise to help pay for their fishing habit. Now, according to my dad, these guys were pretty colorful and somehow one of the "boat captains" was invited to an elementary school for career day to give a "lecture" to the students. He does this and, afterwards, has a question and answer session. One little girl asks him "what do you use for bait?" To which he replied " a puppy". The little girl, with a look of shock and horror on her face asks " whaaaat???" The guide say's " oh yea, we tie a puppy on to a big saltwater hook with some rope and toss it overboard. The puppy swims pretty good at first but, after a while, gets tired with that big hook tied to him and he starts going under. About the last time he goes under, and you see the trail of air bubbles coming out of his nose, WHAM! A big Marlin hammers him!"

Somehow, the guide was never invited back to career day.

I did think of that, but he was too big. :-)

For the record I only blew coke out my nose once and laughed once. I don't condone using puppies for live bait, lmbo it's just wrong to type it.... Puppy Iives matter peta

You'll need at least a 10 wt...