Hawaiibassfishing Forum

Some of my first memories were of growing up on a farm a few miles NW of Yantis, TX... Birch Creek flowed through our farm. My dog and I spent many happy hours hunting rabbits and squirrels, and fishing in Birch Creek.

On my last visit to Yantis a few years ago, I visited the old homestead. The pastures and bottom land along the creek are now under water. Birch Creek bottom is a part of Lake Fork. Brick homes and boat docks line the shoreline of what was once our farm. Imagine what that lake front property would have been worth if we had still owned that farm?
I guess you've seen this picture going around the internet? It was with a special interest that I read about the alligator that was captured in what was once my back yard. There were no alligators along Birch Creek in the 1950s. We had deer, wolves, bobcats, snakes, raccoons, and of course rabbits and squirrels... but no gators. I guess they moved in after Lake Fork filled up.

Makes you think about reaching over the side of the boat to lip that bass doesn't it? And you can forget using a belly boat or going skinny dipping off your boat dock on a warm, moonlight, summer evening......

I wonder if this picture was taken on what use to be the farm I grew up on?

I remember our guide, Tom Redington pointing out a gator to me on Lake Fork a few years ago. If he hadn't told me exactly where to look, I wouldn't have even seen it! It's scary how they can hide within the vegetation.
I also saw a HUGE wild hog along the shoreline with her piglets. I didn't know they could grow that big! Everything is bigger in Texas! Lol!

When I lived there in the 50s and 60s, there were no wild hogs... Everyone raised them on their farms, but no wild ones. Now days there are so many they are a pest.