The Bass Pro Shops Big Cat Quest Tournament scheduled for Saturday in Memphis has been postponed due to dangerous water conditions on the Mississippi River.

I just spoke with tournament director Ken Freeman, and he said the large chunks of floating debris on the river were the main reason he elected to call off the event.

“We’ve heard reports of trees floating on the river that are half as big as a car,” Freeman said. “Those are dangerous conditions, especially when you have anglers coming from out of town who may not know the river very well.”

The Mississippi River was at minus-1.3 feet on the Memphis gauge earlier this week, but the river is expected to jump to 10.9 feet by Saturday due to recent heavy rains in Illinois.

Such an influx of water almost always brings heavy debris donstream, making the river unsafe for boaters.

It’s often the stuff you can’t see - the debris floating just beneath the surface - that causes the most trouble.

“A lot of people called us and said they really wanted to fish,” Freeman said. “But some of them were coming in smaller boats, and they just didn’t feel comfortable about the situation.

“The Mississippi River can be a scary place even when everything’s normal. Under these conditions, it’s really not safe for anyone.”

Though a new date has not been firmly set, Freeman said Oct. 11 is a possibility.

Visit the Big Cat Quest web site for scheduling updates.

With college football season nearly a month old and Tennessee’s archery deer season set to open on Sept. 27, I’ve been wondering lately how much one might affect the other.

This weekend, Tennessee hosts Florida, Arkansas hosts Alabama, Mississippi State travels to Georgia Tech, Ole Miss plays an upstart Vandy team and Memphis plays host to Nicholls State.

Let’s say Memphis squeaks out a win and the other four lose.

That means the Mid-South’s five most popular teams would be a combined 7-11 heading into next Saturday with the bulk of their victories coming against creampuffs like Western Illinois, Louisiana Monroe, Samford and UAB.

With nothing better to do, many Mid-Southerners might hit the woods just to get a break from football.

It could be crowded out there, so please try to be safe!

With all due respect to the ongoing search and recovery efforts in Texas, I’m thankful to report that our friends from the Mississippi Gulf Coast seem to have weathered the summer’s long line of tropical storms and hurricanes just fine.

I got a note from Sonny Schindler of Shore Thing Charters in Bay St. Louis today, and he said his operation suffered minimal storm damage.

With cooler temperatures now moving in, the Shore Thing crew is looking forward to fishing for redfish and speckled trout in the interior of the marsh.

Sonny says fall is an amazing time to be on the water. The weather is cool, the scenery is incredible and the morning topwater bite can be awesome. Fishing flooded ponds for redfish can be a sight caster’s dream.

If it’s in your budget, you shoul enjoy the trip of a lifetime and help out our Gulf Coast friends after another long, tumultuous summer.

I’m sure there are some people anxiously awaiting the outcome of this week’s monthly meetings of the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission in Little Rock and the Tennesseee Wildlife Resources Commission in Nashville.

The meetings often produce big news. But on the surface, this month’s agendas don’t seem to offer much that would interest the average outdoorsman.

Between the two meetings, scheduled for Wenesday and Thursday in each state’s capital city, the most interesting topic might be discussed by the AGFC on Thursday.

For some reason, the AGFC’s Doyle Shook will talk about a budget increase to cover statewide monitoring of Avian Influenza.

I thought maybe we’d heard the last of the dreaded “bird flu,” but I guess not.

I’ll post an update when the meetings are done.

In the meantime, check out the entire agendas for Tennessee and Arkansas.

As always, the Fourth of July Holiday weekend is likely to be one of the busiest boating weekends of the year in Tennessee, and officials from several state agencies are urging boaters to use caution on crowded waterways.

There have been 70 boating accidents in Tennessee already this year, resulting in 28 injuries and 11 fatalities. Conservation officers from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency have also issued 59 citations for Boating Under the Influence (BUI) in 2008.

It’s important to remember that alcohol and water don’t mix, especially if you’re the one driving the boat. Operating a boat with a blood-alcohol content of .08 or higher is illegal in Tennessee – and it’s easier to reach that level than you might think.

When you’re out in the sun and the heat with the boat rocking underneath you, the effects of one beer can sometimes be equivalent to drinking three beers in a normal, dry-land situation.

I once did an experiment in Columbus, Ga., to see how many beers it took to get me “legally drunk” on the water.

Under the supervision of a Georgia conservation officer and a designated driver, I drank six beers and blew a .09 on the breathalyzer. If I had actually been operating the boat, it would have been a ticket straight to the drunk tank, in handcuffs.

From what I hear, judges don’t view BUI any differently than DUI. So the misery won’t end when the handcuffs come off.

Don’t let alcohol ruin your three-day weekend. Don’t take a chance of hurting yourself or someone else. Don’t allow yourself to become one of those statistics I mentioned above.

When I write about you on the outdoors page, I’d rather you be listed under “High Fives” instead of “Facts & Figures.”

In Sunday’s outdoors story about the ongoing search for northern snakehead fish in Arkansas, I mentioned that conservation officials unearthed a critter known as an “amphiuma.”

Since then, I’ve had several calls and emails from people wondering what the heck an amphiuma is.

Actually, they’re pretty hard to describe.

To me, they seem to be part snake, part eel, part salamander, part fish and part mutant creature from another planet.

Amphiumas are the largest amphibians found in Arkansas.

Sometimes referred to as “Congo eels” or “Congo snakes,” amphiumas have elongated bodies and stubby little legs that don’t serve much purpose on land. They have a snake-like physique and sometimes reach lengths of 3-4 feet. But they’re thicker than snakes, kind of like freshwater eels.

According to Lee Holt, a fisheries biologist with the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission, they spend most their time walking around on the bottom of lakes and streams. That’s why a lot of people have never seen one. They eat pretty much anything they can catch, including frogs, snakes, fish, crustaceans and insects.

They’re creepy looking critters - and if I came across one while wading, I probably wouldn’t be comforted by the knowledge that they’re completely non-venomous and pose no real threat to humans.

Just in case this description doesn’t paint the picture for you, I’ve included an actual picture of Lee Holt holding the one they found last week near Brinkley, Ark.

BASS officials announced Tuesday that the Bassmaster Elite Series’ River Rumble, originally scheduled for June 26-29 on the Mississippi River at Fort Madison, Iowa, has been relocated due to unsafe river conditions.

The new site for the event will be Old Hickory Lake in Hendersonville, Tenn., just three hours from Memphis. But if you’re a local tournament angler hoping to land a spot as a non-boater, you’re out of luck.

Despite the urgent relocation of the event, the co-angler slots filled up quickly. There’s already a waiting list of about 70 fishermen on the co-angler side.

For those who don’t know, Elite Series tournaments feature some of the top names in professional bass fishing - guys like Michael Iaconelli, Gerald Swindle and Kevin VanDam. Those guys are paired each day by random draw with amateur anglers (known as co-anglers) who have no control over the boat.

It’s often a good opportunity to learn from the most polished anglers in the business. But unless you’re already registered, you won’t get that chance on Old Hickory.

Sorry, guys and gals.

If you’re merely interested in following the event, daily weigh-ins will be broadcast at Bassmaster.com. The tournament has been renamed the “Tennessee Triumph.”

Old Hickory, which has hosted BASS events seven times during the organization’s 40-year history, will also host a Women’s Bassmaster Tour event this week, Thursday-Saturday.

Weigh-ins for the women’s event will also be broadcast live online.