This Isn’t Déjà Vu — But It Sure Looks Like It
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link.
DAVE’S WORLD
By David Howell
If you picked up last week’s paper and had the feeling you’d seen part of it before, you were right.
We managed to time travel.
Pages 4 and 5 in last week’s edition were from a February paper. That one is on us. No excuses, just a mistake, and we appreciate the patience from everyone who called, texted or just shook their head and kept reading.
The rest of the paper was correct, but we knew that wasn’t good enough, so we opened up the online edition with no password so readers could see the proper pages.
That mix-up also created another issue we wanted to fix.
Two columns — Hill Country Living and the Chamber Report — were intended for last week’s paper, and while some folks read those online, many of our print readers never got the chance to see them. Both included touching tributes to Zandra, and we didn’t want anyone to miss that. This week’s Hill Country Living includes last week’s column minus a few paragraphs about the upcoming Casey Jones Music Festival with this week’s column about the festival.
So yes, you are seeing them again this week — and this time, they’re exactly where they’re supposed to be.
Now, on to something a little more fun.
Some of you may remember a column I wrote about a tagged crappie in Grenada Lake that kept showing up again and again. My step-son, Charles Martin, caught this big female white crappie the first time on Feb. 26, 2024, weighing 3.02 pounds at 15.5 inches. He was on a guided trip with T.J. Shands, and the common practice among the guides is to tag and release three-pound-plus fish. The guide encouraged Charles to either mount the fish or tag her, and Charles said it was an easy choice.
It showed up again more than a year later when Bobby Mann brought it to the Magnolia Crappie Club scales on March 8, 2025, where she weighed 3.43 pounds. About a month later, on April 8, 2025, Trent Goss caught the same fish again, and it was back down to 3.02 pounds after laying her eggs. She measured 15.75 inches long.
At the time, it had been caught three times, which was impressive enough.
That same fish — tag No. 907 — has now been caught a fourth time.
That’s right. Four.
On March 14, 2026, Davy Ross brought tag No. 907 to the scales during the Crappie Masters Tournament, where she tipped the scales at 3.79 pounds.
Same fish. Four different catches. Over two years. And still going.
For those who like to keep score, that fish has now been to two different tournament scales, traveled miles across the lake and continues to survive, grow and get caught again.
I guess it is a good thing that No. 907 hasn’t been caught by the wrong person. Daryl Burney and I were in agreement – if we were fishing at Grenada Lake and caught that lunker, she would be in trouble.
