The summer of 2017 I had a day off and I was fishing on the lower Mississippi River near Osceola, Arkansas.

I was anchored in the water below a sandbar when a summer storm started brewing.

I watched it for a while, trying to decide what track it was going to take, whether to run from

it or see if it would go around me. I knew it wasn't going around me when the wind hit me, swinging

the boat on the anchor line right into the current.

I gathered my gear and reeled in my lines, knowing that wind was bringing a nasty storm with it.

I started the motor, and I went up river away from the storm a couple of miles until I found what I was looking for.

On that part of the river, the banks are separated from

the main channel by small islands and places. Most are just old sandbars, but I knew about one

with some trees at the upper end. They might block the wind and the low overhanging willows is a place

I could park the vote and avoid some of the

rain. I tied off and I wrapped a tarp around myself just as the rain started and I hunkered down to

wait it out. I looked up into a cove created by the island and I noticed something moving on the bank

200 yards away. I'm only guessing,

but it looked like it was eight feet tall. It was dark and it was hairy. It walked down the bank

until it was waste deep in the water and then slowly began walking around, indifferent to the rain

and wind, and it was working its way toward the

end of the cove. I was wondering what the heck this thing was doing and what I was looking at,

when I realized what it was doing. Now, Asian carp are an invasive species in the river.

If they're startled, several will jump straight out of the water.

Sometimes they'll land in your boat.

This thing was scaring the carp so that they would jump and then he was swatting them

...