Reba and I went to the tiny eastern Washington town of Moses Lake to go fishing and see Robby and Gary one last time before we go. Gary and Robby run quackers guides, the outfit that everyone in my family uses for fall and winter duck hunting. They are also fishing guides, and just all around good friends of the family. Gary has been trying to get Reba and I to come up for a fishing weekend for a couple of years, and we wanted to do one before we left, so last weekend was the time to go. He set up two expeditions: on Monday, we went to a private lake on a farm near Moses Lake, with Robby providing the boat and fishing expertise. Sadly, Gart couldn’t come because he had to work. I thought that I could convince him to take the day off, but that didn’t work out. Robby showed us how to tie “Carolina” and “Texas” rigged lures, which are well suited to bass fishing. The secret with bass fishing is that the bass hang out in very shallow water with lots of sticks and plant life growing up and out of the water. Tree roots, cattails, beaver lodges, etc. are all good candidates for a bass haunt, which makes the job of casting a lure with a hook that much more difficult: lures tend to get caught on the plant life, and then you have to restring a new lure. As you typically are casting the lure and bringing it back into the boat 2–3 times a minute, there are plenty of opportunities to hang one up on something. The risk of doing this is mitigated by the Carolina style lure, which consists of a small weight threaded on the line, a hook, and a rubber worm impaled on the hook. The big trick is to thread the hook through the worm’s head and back into the body, so that the sharp part is inside the rubber. This way, the hook is protected from catching onto stuff, but can pop out into the bass’ mouth when they bite.
“carolina rig”
We caught and released a number of largemouth bass, and I took the grand prize by getting two 20” bass one right after another. Robby, Reba and I all got smaller bass as well, but the 20 inchers were the best by a long shot. 
That night, we went to Gary’s house for a bbq. We hung around with Gary, his wife Marilyn and his daughter Sarah, who also happens to be studying at WSU, my alma mater. The highlight of the evening was driving Gary’s “new” tractor. Gary works in road construction, but I suspect that if he had his way, he would be a farmer. He has a few acres behind his house that he uses to grow vegetables, and always has hogs or chickens or sheep or some other livestock. There are semi-wild cats everywhere, and of course Bobo and Susie the Labrador retrievers. His most recent addition to the farm is a 1942 International Farmall Tractor with frontloader attachment.
me and the farmall
This is a fairly large machine from a far gone era, incredibly simple and lacking the electronic bells and whistles of modern farm equipment, it seems to have been built somewhere around 20 minutes after the invention of combustion engines. Gary let Reba and I drive it for a bit, an endeavour which requires a good deal of effort: steering wheel attached accelerator, old fashioned clutch, non-power steering, etc. It was a total hoot to drive that thing for 15 minutes, but I have gained a great deal of respect for those old farmers who had to plow fields 10 hours a day on that monster. Yikes.
reba and the farmall
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