By now, the stink bait must be getting pretty ripe, sun-baked in a covered, five-gallon, galvanized pail with a bail handle — what we used to call garbage cans back in the day. If you’re confused, relax, you just aren’t familiar with catfishermen and the bait they use. Aficionados brew special bait for a catfish […]

It’s pushing toward dusk on a pleasant summer evening and I’m returning from my nightly trip to the top of the hill where I run my dogs. I round the corner and approach the scalped, lime-green hayfield where the bales had been removed earlier in the day. There it stood — a solitary, erect, tawny […]

An orange dawn crept in over the faraway Belchertown hills, first a faint hue then a bright sliver that, within a half-hour of peeking over the horizon, burst into a blinding orange sphere. Quarter past 7 on a Whately hardwood ridge. An old idyllic haunt of mine reaching back to my untethered teens, a friend […]

There’s nothing like wood heat for my taste. But if the wood isn’t right, well, it’s another story altogether. Then there’s real potential for problems, which is my current predicament, quite annoying. I’ve just brushed off from a trip to the woodshed, a place where I’ve spent far too much time lately, trying to make […]