Mark

Nice report - we talked about going to the Eleven Point last weekend but the weather scared us a little.

Good report Al. You're always welcome to join the SG boys on our Eleven Point trips.

Thanks again Brian. My friends and I always check for your reports and appreciate them.

Welcome - glad to have another canoeist aboard. Where do you float/fish?

Actually, Brian, we thought about stopping by, but felt kind of uncomfortable crashing the BBQ when we aren't fly fishermen and not fishing with you guys. Yeah, they do have nice accomodations, as well as Dave and Rosemary Case with their cottages in Alton. I believe both are relatively new in a business that was sorely needed in the area. We like camping also, but sometimes it's nice to be able to come to the area on a short trip, pack lightly, have a nice comfortable place to stay, and spend the day fishing. We've been coming to the Eleven Point a couple times a year now for the past 11-12 years, and it's just been in the past year that we have found houses to stay in. Really great for older guys like us.

Our annual fall float/fishing trip was great with beautiful weather and plenty of good fishing in the white ribbon area from Turners Mill to Whitten. The action was great on Friday with little boat or canoe traffic. Our first time Eleven Point fisherman, Joel from Cape, was awful impressed with the beauty of the river and the amount of fish he was able to catch. We also discovered great accommodations in cabins owed by the Hollis' right off AA about midway between Turners Mill and Whitten - about a 15 minute drill to either access, making shuttling ourselves very convenient. On Saturday, the river was a little more crowded, but it was such a beautiful weekend, that was to be expected. But the fishing was still active. I won the contest for biggest fish with an 18", thanks for the $10 Del! Remember Del, it's not a competition.

Please keep us posted on the water conditions with rain forecasted midweek.

Snap, I, and 3 others are heading down for our fall trip, but we are just fishing white ribbon area, although we may stop by the shop to meet some of you guys to put some faces to names. Don't frown on us too much as we are your basic ultralight and powerbait crowd! LOL

Hope it don't get too crowded, vandelay. HA We're are also coming next weekend with a group of 5 from Ste. Genevieve, Memphis, and Cape. We will probably stay in White Ribbon area. If you see a square stern Old Towne with a 2.5 HP Mercury on it, give us a hollar. Where you fishing and coming in from?

SSSHHHHHHH, Altonite, that is Snap's Honey Hole!!

Thanks once again Brian for the update. I'm looking forward to fishing the Eleven Point again next week on our annual fall trip. We're bringing along a first timer from Cape. I always love seeing someone's reaction to seeing and fishing the river for the first time. Hope we catch fish!! Is the river a little low? I see the gage at Bardley is about 1.6 ft. I thought the 1.7 was the norm. Thanks, Mark

My friends and I have been going to Eleven Point for many years, but always access the river from Turner South because that is easiest for the canoe rental folks. Doing some sight seeing last summer, we checked out Turner North for the first time. Wow, were we amazed. What a neat place!!

I still can't believe in 2007 that we still allow farmers to use OUR streams as a watering hole for livestock.

On my previous post about my summer on the Eleven Point, I forgot to mention the day on the river that my friend Del and I will never forget. It was around June 15 when we put in at Whitten in my trusty new Old Towne canoe with a 2.5 Mercury motor. It was around 1pm with overcast skies and a forecast for spotty showers throughout the day. A light rain began no sooner than we took off. We stopped at the first gravel bar above White's Creek to fish that hole. Immediately the rain picked up, so we pulled out the lawn chairs to sit under the trees until the rain slowed down. As luck would have it, we ended up getting a pretty good 1/2 hour shower. As the rain brought a drop in temperature, a light fog began to settle over the river. It was quite eerie how fast the fog developed as the rain began to turn to sprinkle. The river looked just like you would expect it to look at 5 o'clock in the morning. As the rain lightened, we continued our trip down the river at a leisurely pace, stopping at every hole to get out and fish from the bank. The conditions were perfect for fishing, as we began to catch some decent trout to put on the stringer. The rain had completely stopped and the sun actually tried peeking out a time or two burning off the light fog that had developed. Now my buddy Del is known as a bit of a procrastinator and I found myself reminding Del several times that we needed to make some time if we wanted to get to Riverton by dark, even mentioning that the rain could pick up again and I didn't want to be on the river late in the evening if the fog moved in again. Del would continue to reply, "Let's just fish this hole a little longer" as I patiently waited for him to get ready to move on. It was probably around 6 pm when I had my limit on the stringer with all in the 15-16" range as I continued to drop hints to Del that we needed to be moving on. His reply was always, "Just a couple more casts". Sure enough, shortly after 6pm, it clouded up again, the temperature dropped and the fog began rolling in. We were easliy 3-4 miles from Riverton. Within minutes, the fog became quite heavy and visibility was no more than 40-50 feet. Our motor was virtually useless and we didn't dare proceed faster than a snail's pace. Del had 3 on the stringer and wasn't about to give it up until he had his limit too. No way was he going to call it a day without his equal share. I began getting quite nervous. I have been on that stretch of the river countless times, yet as visibility dropped, suddenly I wasn't sure what might lie ahead at any moment. I knew we were approaching Halls Bay Chutes, which I normally avoid by walking the canoe around the side chute just so I don't lose any gear. But with visibility now barely 20-25 feet in front of the canoe, the river looked totally foreign to me and I had no idea what was ahead at any given moment. Interestingly, we began seeing more fish swim by than I had ever seen. I believe that the fog was making it difficult for the fish to see us coming too, and we were on them before they could get spooked. We saw several fish bigger than anything I have ever caught swim right by the canoe in 18" of water. The spring at Boze Mill dropped the temperature more and the fog increased even more. We made it through the side chute at Halls Bay and continued on at our snails pace, cracking jokes nervously, knowing that at any time we could be in danger of getting in trouble and dumping. We easily spent the last 2-3 hours inching our way along, not knowing what lie ahead. We managed to make it to Riverton by 9:30 pm. Although we had let several fish go throughout the day as we caught fish all day long, Del ended the day without ever getting that 4th fish on the stringer. It was an experience I will never forget and don't want to repeat any time soon. The Eleven Point can be a scary place when you can't see where your going.

Come on, give us a ballpark figure

Thanks to Brian and others for getting involved and keeping us informed. I don't trust the state or federal governments protecting our forests, public lands, and natural resources. I hope we are kept informed on matters and nothing is ever sold or passed in legislatures without the general public's knowledge, but as many of you also suspect, I wouldn't put anything passed our government.

What ever became of President Bush's scheme to sell of parcels of national forest? It seems like parcels included land in the Irish Wilderness and surrounding areas. Is it possible that all this could take place or already has taken place without much fanfare or public awareness? I don't trust the Bush administration and could see them pulling a fast one on people.

Glad to hear Mike is doing well. He does a great job and is always willing to do whatever we ask of him. Personally, I wouldn't be interested, we were just talking about how it's a wonder someone hasn't commerialized the area more with places to stay, such as Van Buren, for instance, and how my friends think it's a gold mine for someone with those aspirations. I, personally, hope it stays the same but can see where the day may come when the Eleven Point becomes more commercialized simply because Oregon County is not a wealthy area and maybe the tourism dollars would be good for some people.

It certainly is a special place. The Ozark Scenic Riverway has established a stretch of river without commercialism or private property owners destroying the natural beauty of the river. There is no where else in our part of the world like the section of river that we float from Turner's Mill to Riverton. I always get the feeling of going back in time a couple hundred years and seeing the area as it was back then. One can almost imagine the Osage lurking from the nearby woods at some of the first visitors. Having said all of that, some of my friends and I always have this debate about the area. They are convinced that Hufstedlers' land where the store is at the Riverton bridge is a gold mine in the waiting. The land and business is for sale, although the store and 2 house on it are run down. They have talked about what an investment for someone to come in and level everything and put up nice cottages/rooms/retreat type places with all the conveniences and what a $$ maker it would be. We have found some nice accomodations in Alton (kudos to Dave and Rosemary Case for their cottages in town - nice places) but it's not the same as being within walking distance to the river. On one hand, I think somewhere nice to stay close to the river with all the modern conveniences would be great, but I would also hate to see the area lose it's wilderness appeal. There are very few places left in our part of the world where you can go and get that feeling of losing touch with the modern world.

In the spring, after a couple of years of talking about it, a couple of friends and I invested in a brand new square stern Old Towne canoe and a 2.5 Mercury motor. With a new toy, I managed to spend a total of 16 days this summer on the Eleven Point. We are the type of fishermen who like to wade and not spend much time in the canoe, rather, we just use the canoe to taxi from one fishing spot to the next. Although we have been fishing the Eleven Point a couple times a year for the past 10-11 years, we are by no means master fishermen, none of us fly fish or worry about catching a trophy fish. Personnally, I haven't floated the Blue Ribbon area from Greer to Turner's Mill in over 20 years. Now some of you master fishermen may frown on us novices, we know, but derive our greatest joy from our Eleven Point trips from just catching enough keepers for supper. We use basic ultralight rod and reels, usually PowerBait eggs, worms, and actually discovered a great bait this summer - little frozen salad shrimps for about $1.50 for about 30 shrimp. Fish loved them and they fit on a hook nicely. Having our our canoe has allowed to shuttle ourselves and giving us much more freedom to put in when and where we want. We made our first trip on the lower river from the HWY 142 bridge to the Myrtle access on the 4th of July - a big mistake going on the holiday. Lots of BIG boats that have no concern for any canoes on the water. We spent most of our time holding on from the wake of big jet props that sped up and down the river. I was amazed at all the nice cabins, houses, and weekend getaways on the lower river. Some really nice places. Now the only part we haven't floated is the section from Riverton to the HWY 142 bridge. Definitely will have to do it next summer. If anyone has ever thought about investing in a canoe, I would recommend the place on the square in Alton called Ozark River Canoe. Our canoe retailed for $1,600 and we bought it for $900, although it was called an "irregular" for some minor blemish, we could not find any flaw. The 2.5 Mercury motor was bought new in St. Louis for about $750. It has been a great investment and we are sure if we use it as much as we did this past summer, it will more than pay for itself Mark

Expect to see lots of law enforcement this weekend on the river with the new crackdown on "Mardi Gras type atmosphere". Last year, we camped on the river and saw more than we had ever seen on the Eleven Point before, so expect more of a presence this year. While we are well behaved, we had several nervous moments when we were visited by Forest Service, game warden, and sheriff's department, because we did have some glass bottles with us. They were definitely looking around camp to see if they could spot anything. We knew the regulations, but had never worried about it, we were told that if you don't give a reason for them to bother you they won't, and we haul all of our trash out. We met a group of 8 guys on a bachelor party from Memphis who were busted for glass (and other things) and accumulated $1,600 in fines, including $200 for a little bottle of tabasco sauce. We learned our lesson, we'll pour our tequila and vodka in plastic milk jugs now on.

I am going to be floating Cane Bluff to Greer with a group on Memorial Day. I have a question; We will have a couple of beginners in Kayaks, one a 14 year old girl. Will they be all right in this stretch of water. Any trouble spots you give me a heads up on would be appreciated , I haven't floated this section before. Also, any sights to be aware of would help.

Thanks, Dave.

Read previous post, not much in way of answers.

Can anyone give me some info on the Salt River? A friend has hunting ground around New London and we are wanting to make a trip this summer. Is it big enough for a canoe or bass boat? Is it gravel bottom or mud bottom? Wadeable?