Fishy at USPS

Once again, the government of the state of Arkansas has blessed me with an interesting bit of literature. This time it is an opus produced by the Arkansas Game and Fish commission entitled Arkansas Outdoor Atlas, a sportsman’s guide to public access facilities in Arkansas. As the name would seem to imply, it is a book of maps, of every county in the state, showing the location of every fishing hole, stream, lake, river, creek, wildlife management area and federal refuge in the Natural State.
The maps go into some detail and show the private holdings within state and federal lands. For those of you, gentle readers, who might have heard the name of a specific lake or hunting or fishing area but aren’t sure what county it’s in, there is a handy index in the back of the book that lists specific areas and bodies of water by name and tells you what county map on which you can find it.
Like any tome of this kind, there is bound to be an error or omission of two in it. I haven’t examined it minutely looking for mistakes, not that I’m any authority on such things but I did happen to notice one thing.
During the years I lived in Forrest City, I spent a good deal of time at Bear Creek Lake near Marianna. It’s a productive spot for bream, crappie, bass and catfish and a pleasant place if you don’t mind a few thousand water moccasins. Honestly, in all my years of fishing the waters of Arkansas I have never encountered a body of water that produced so many poisonous snakes, including Indian Bay, although that particular body of water runs Bear Creek a close second.
Anyway, according to the information contained in the atlas, Bear Creek Lake is not controlled by either the AG&FC or the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Instead, it operates under the auspices of the United States Postal Service. I have to believe this is a misprint. But in the index on page 151, under Lakes, the listing reads Name: Bear Creek Lake; Owner: USPS, and the map of Lee County which shows the location of said lake is on page 74.
To my knowledge, the nation’s postal authorities have enough to do getting the mail delivered and dealing with all the competition they get from Fed Ex, United Parcel Service and the Internet. They don’t need to be spending time checking the water and rough fish levels in lakes in Lee County.
As I said, surely this is a misprint, although if the information is accurate, it would explain a few things. For instance, have any of you folks who get your newspaper delivered on rural routes, noticed a faint aroma of live bait on your copy of The Grand Prairie Herald or DeValls Bluff Times when it arrives in your mailbox? If so, I can guarantee it didn’t come form here at the newspaper office. We’ve got some powerfully aromatic stuff over in the gift shop side of the building, but none of it carries the scent of minnows or earth worms (although if a market ever materializes for minnow scented potpourri, I’m sure Aromatique or one of the candle companies will jump right on the band wagon).
Another bit of evidence. I know for a fact that it takes the folks in St. Francis and Lee counties at least two days longer to get their paper in the mail than it takes subscribers in southern California to get theirs. If you accept the proposition that all the papers leave the Hazen Post Office on the same day, you’d have to figure that the postal employees in the vicinity of Bear Creek Lake have other responsibilities that slow down their delivery of our humble newspaper. Could those responsibilities include checking fishing licenses at Bear Creek?
And what about all those water moccasins? Is their high population level a product of some natural phenomenon or are they involved in a classified government project to produce auditors for the Internal Revenue Service?
I’m just asking.