No one who has a passion for hunting as all-consuming as mine should feel the least bit emotionally conflicted at this time of the year. After all, it either is now or soon will be legal to hunt every game animal and bird found in Missouri. Moreover, like most of you, I have a painfully inadequate amount of time and resources to devote to this most precious time of the year.

Why then, am I developing an increasingly distracting wish to fish? It makes absolutely no sense, especially since I usually have my fishing tackle stored for the season no later than the end of August.

Perhaps at least part of the blame lies with my new boat. Or, more correctly, it’s where it’s parked beside the garage, a position from which it calls to me forlornly every time I pull in or out of my driveway. Telling that this fall I might really take it waterfowling doesn’t seem to help.

Far worse are the fishing reports I’ve been hearing and reading. It’s too bad I have so many Libertarian tendencies. Otherwise I’d advocate for a law banning any dissemination of information about fishing during the hunting season.

One example of how distracting a fishing report can be is the one I keep getting to the effect that Truman Lake’s white bass and hybrids are “busting shad” off lower lake’s dozens of main lake points. While white bass are quite a ways down my list as table fare, catching them on light tackle ranks near the top of my fun list.

I still remember a November day more than 20 years ago that my dad and I spent battling huge white bass near the mouth of Truman’s Cricket Creek. The air temperature was barely above freezing and the wind was bone-chilling, but the action was so fast and furious we barely noticed. It’s too late to replay that day with Dad, but I sure wouldn’t mind having another day on the lake like it. Well, almost just like it. Slightly warmer weather wouldn’t ruin the experience.

November’s chill can also be counted upon to ring the blue catfish’s dinner bell. In fact, fall can be the best time of the entire year to do battle with a blue cat that’s literally as long as your leg. But be that as it may, the reports I’m getting indicate that blue cats are providing consistent action from one end of the Osage River to the other right now. That’s a siren’s call that’s hard for a died-in-the-wool catfisherman like me to resist.

Rumor has it that the walleye are biting at Stockton and Pomme de Terre. There’s more than enough room in my freezer for a possession limit of everyone’s favorite member of the perch family, and the recent down tick in gas prices has made the cost of venturing farther from home less onerous.

Despite everything I’ve just mentioned, I could probably withstand the temptation to go fishing this fall if fishing and hunting were mutually exclusive. But they’re not. In fact, despite the inherent complications involved in trying to serve two masters, it is possible to fish and hunt simultaneously.

Just about any kind of fishing and waterfowl hunting are a potential combination. Fishermen are such a common sight on lakes and rivers that neither ducks nor geese pay much attention to them–proving that sometimes it really is best to hide in plain sight. Shooting waterfowl from an anchored motorboat is perfectly legal, but it’s illegal to shoot at waterfowl from a moving boat powered by either a motor or sails unless the motor is shut off and/or the sails are furled, and all forward motion has ceased.

According to the regulations, deer cannot be “taken” from any boat with a motor attached. This rule obviously prohibits shooting at a deer from a boat with a motor under any circumstances. However, the use of the word “taken” as opposed to “hunted” implies that motor powered boats may be used to transport a hunter to a landfall from which he or she will start hunting even if this transportation involves beaching the boat after a deer has been spotted by a person had been fishing.

According to the letter of the law, all other game can be hunted from a boat powered by either a motor or sails under the same restrictions applicable to waterfowl hunting. That said, I would go ashore before shooting at a turkey or even a squirrel to avoid any chance of having to debate the fine points of the regulations with an overzealous Conservation Agent.