I’m Busch and I’m not here to waste anyone’s time. Actually, that is pretty much exactly what I am here to do. I am a man of many words and very few thoughts. You may remember me as a bit player in the 4 part saga of the Show Me Fly Guy’s trip to the Lake Taneycomo back in the mid-aughts. Tyler Dykes: Editor in Chief, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons, Fisher of Fishes, Angler of Angles, First of his Name: invited me to write a little about a recent trip I took to Branson to fish the unpredictable and volatile tailwater known as Lake Taneycomo. (Invited is probably not the right word, I created, applied for, and accepted the job in a single email to Mr. Dykes. That shows initiative, right? We’re still discussing compensation. 50-50 on the sweet, sweet profits sound good, Boss?)
I’ve a long and (now) storied history with Lake Taneycomo. It is by far and hands down, my favorite place to fish and this will be the first time my daughter will be fishing the lake with me. I have been into backpacking for awhile, but have really taken to it in the last year (which means I read a lot of articles on the internet, think a lot about the strategy, load out, et cetera and do very little actual backpacking). Well, in the backpacking world, the buzzword is “ultralight” so you get to thinking about the weight and necessity of everything in your pack. I’ve come to the realization that this applies to life as well. Every memory, flaw, asset, experience, and so on weighs on you in some way. To put it in perspective, if my trips to Lake Taneycomo were backpacking trips, I’d pack a cast iron stove, California king bed, 3 sledgehammers, 17 frozen turkeys, and would probably forget the backpack. So I guess this my attempt at ultralighting life.
Ok, so here we go:
So they call me Busch, a nickname I earned by being born with a ridiculously long and confusing last name along with a first name given to roughly 90% of boys in the late 70s . I do sometimes turn the lights off, breathe deeply, and yearn for a long and sordid story resulting in a sweet nickname Such is life. At least I’m not a big guy called Tiny. Of course, if I met a big guy called Tiny, I would tell him that his nickname is just the best. While not known for their creativity, big guys named Tiny are known for pounding faces and I’m too pretty to take chances.
My family’s been staying on the lake since the early 80s and it always confused me as to why it was called a lake in the first place. In my mind, if there is a current, it is a river. Once Al Gore invented the internet, I looked it up and a lake is defined as a large body of water surrounded by land. I still have issues with this definition in relation to Lake Taneycomo, as I am a strongly in the Swift Current River camp. Also, Swift Current River Camp sounds like a delightful place to view wildlife in the African Savana.
If ya didn’t know, Taneycomo’s name comes from the fact that the entirety of the riverlake is contained within Taney County Missouri (Taney-Co-Mo). I was about 12 when I discovered this information and remember it like it was yesterday. There I was, reading a sign at the Shepherd of the Hills – not the hatchery, but the Shepherd of the Hills Outdoor Theatre and Homestead. The sign gave an introduction to the area and history. When I read the construction of the name, it was as if a light were shone down from heaven on me. However, the feeling was, ummm, not great. I felt both immense stupidity and enlightened. I mean, I knew that I was in Taney County and it was not that far of a leap to figure it out on my own. So I accentuated the enlightened part and downplayed the stupidity part in sharing my discovery with others. The responses ranged from, “well, yea” to “it’s ok, little buddy, we’ll get you checked out when we get back home”
I guess I had always believed that Taneycomo was Cherokee for ‘Abandon All hope, ye who enter here:” After about 25 more years of fishing there, I am pretty sure the Shepherd of the Hills sign is wrong and the Cherokee definition is correct.
Also, some people remember important events in their life with as great of detail. This is what I remember in stunning Technicolor.
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