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TOP JOBS

Three years ago Dustin Cole saw the light.

“I and my grandfather (Bobby Cole) decided to go to Lake Fork and go crappie fishing off a public pier at night. We were fishing and I saw a huge airboat come by with all these lights. They stopped and were shooting a bunch of fish. I told my grandfather that is what I wanted to get into,” the 16-year-old Quitman youth recalled.

Cole went home and talked his stepfather, David Hagler, about what he had seen. In a Field & Stream, he learned the details of the equipment he would need to become a bow fishermen.

After obtaining the Browning Barracuda bow the article recommended, Cole and a supportive Hagler pieced together a bow-fishing boat out of a small flat-bottomed boat and a spotlight and off they went.

“On the second night out I shot a 45-pound carp,” recalled Cole, who will be a junior at Quitman High School.

And it didn’t end there. Although Hagler and Cole are every-weekend partners, Cole’s mother, Molly has also climbed aboard.

“She is one of the better shots,” Cole noted.

While Lake Fork continues to be their home base, Cole said the family tries to fish other waters including the Sabine River, Martin Creek and Lake Winnsboro.

“We shoot mainly short-nosed and spotted gar, common gar, smallmouth and largemouth buffalo and bowfin. We occasionally will get a suckerfish, ‘gator’ gar and needle-nosed (longnose) gar,” Cole said.

The alligator gar is one of the biggest trophies for bow fishermen, and Cole’s best is a 5-7, 85-pound fish he took on the Sabine last summer. Cole shot the gar in a flooded field, but because of an equipment malfunction it became a major struggle before he was finally able to land the fish.

Not all of Cole’s targets are rough fish. He and his family have also taken catfish, a species that will be off limits to bow fishermen again beginning Sept. 1. Cole’s best is a 50-pound blue taken in May on Lake Fork. Although the state record is a 59.3-pounder taken on Moss Lake in 2007, Cole’s fish did qualify for Texas junior state record and both the overall and junior lake record.

Along with weekend sportfishing, Cole and Hagler have also become regulars on the bow-fishing tournament circuit. The family has stepped up to a larger boat featuring an eight-foot deck and more importantly a 20-horsepower fan prop engine to get through shallow water.

Cole competed in his most important and successful tournament June 21 on Oklahoma’s Lake Fort Gibson where he scored three firsts and two seconds at the Youth World Bow Fishing Championship. He finished the one-day event with a first place in the Boys 16-18 division, biggest fish and biggest gar. He finished second overall in boys and second overall for the world championship, falling just four pounds short of the title. The tournament included 260 anglers.

Hagler, who Cole gives great praise for his support, operated the boat for Cole during the daytime tournament. The lake is on the Grand River, which at the time of the tournament was 20 feet out of its banks. That gave the two a chance to fish flooded grain fields early in the morning.

“The first two hours we didn’t see a single fish. We thought we had scouted the wrong spot and then it was like someone turned a switch on,” said Cole.

He quickly boated a common carp and then a large smallmouth buffalo before they had to make a move and search of more fish.

“We started making our way down the lake to where we thought the gar might be. They were in deeper water and were skittish. We kept going through some brush and I saw this big log, but it had scales. I didn’t know they had needle-nosed gar that big,” Cole said.

He took aim at what he estimated to be a 40-pounder, but shot four feet under the fish. He spotted several more equally large fish, but continued to miss.

It was then he realized that his arrow had been bent on an outing the night before. It was also then that Cole and his stepfather became very lucky.

Cole tied on a new, straight arrow and quickly got off a shot at another gar. Although smaller than the ones he had been shooting at, this time Cole made the arrow stick. At least, sort of.

“He was pulling drag and pulling drag. What I didn’t know was that he only had one barb in him. If a scale would have popped out, I would have lost him,” Cole said.

When they got the 20-pound fish near the boat, he missed the first time he attempted to gaff it. He got it on the second try. It was when the fish was flopping in the boat that he realized how close he had come to losing the fish.

With an hour to get to weigh-in, Cole and Hagler decided to call it a day and head to the ramp. Or they would have if their boat had started. It took about 30 minutes to solve the problem and they coasted into the tournament headquarters just in time.

Besides the 20-pound gar, his common carp weighed 6.5. Having been in the boat most of the day, Cole said the fish had lost some weight. His smallmouth buffalo weighed 14.6.

Adding to their trials, tournament officials initially only credited Cole with a 2-pound gar. After officials discovered the change, Cole’s day finished on a higher note.

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Contact Outdoor Editor Steve Knight at 903-596-6277 or by e-mail at outdoor@tylerpaper.com