MAHFS photo by Mac Arnold
My brother-in-law Mike McCauley trails the boat in his canoe during one of our fishing gigs last summer on the Monongahela River in West Virginia.


By Mac Arnold
MAHFS Editor

Sure is hot out.

When I went to my car during a break at dusk, I thought to myself that it would be nice to be in the canoe casting just outside an eddie of flotsam on some quiet part of a river.

And when I'm thinking a river, most likely it would be a West Virginia one.

Not because I prefer to fish there necessarily, but because that's where I usually vacation during the summer with the in-laws being there and all. And when I vacation with the in-laws, what we would do is bass fish.

Of course, bass weren't the only fish on the agenda for this glory hound. I also would pursue "the fish of a thousand casts," otherwise known as the muskellunge, at least when we were on the Monongahela  River or Dunkard Creek.

But this summer will be different. That's because my father-in-law Fred McCauley passed away this spring.

Anyone who has kept up with this saga will remember he was swept down the Monongahela River in Star City, W.Va., in February.

He was just found about two weeks ago near Point Marion, Pa., which is about 10 miles away from where he fell in at off the fishing pier in Star City.

The memorial service is Sunday. I will make the trip.

It was supposed to be the following weekend on July 1 but the miners he worked with for many years complained they would be gone on vacation that week and wanted to be there.

I thought that was pretty cool.

I'm looking forward to meeting some of them and hearing their stories of what he was like in the mines -- he worked nearly 36 years under ground.

He never said much about it other than it "wasn't for most people." Isn't that the truth?

There was one story he told about how he went to pick up a electrical cable that was laying on the track and turned out to be live. Fred said it knocked him off his feet and sent him backward about 10 feet.

Wish the circumstances were different because I could use a vacation.

Doubt there will be an opportunity to fish but you never know. I was hoping to do a memorial outing on the river because that's the way I like to do things.

It'll probably have to wait until later in the summer.