WestCentralFisher

The more or less annual three day Eleven Point float and fish trip is coming up towards the end of next week. We always do the usual Greer to Riverton run. Which is absolutely incredible, but the wetter summer this might make the stretch above Greer floatable. So we're considering changing things up and going Cane Bluff to Whitten instead. While it is beautiful, the stretch between Whitten and Riverton is usually the only place where the fishing is only OK. Some smallmouth, some trout, not a ton of either unless you happen catch the stocking schedule just right (I did once, it was fantastic). So my question is this: the person I'm going with, and who will need to help with the shuttle drives a sedan with really low clearance. As someone who has spent a lot of time on Ozark gravel roads (and Whitten Access especially appears to be pretty far down one) I don't want to make any assumptions. Are those roads relatively maintained in general? I don't expect perfection but 2 foot deep ruts would make for the sort of adventure we're not looking for. If it doesn't work, nbd. A lot of worse things than a stretch of beautiful ozark river with only decent fishing.

I fished Hayden Meadows a few years back and did pretty well. It was runoff in a very heavy snow pack year and didn't really appear fishable, but I did pretty well anyway with the flashiest streamers I had in my fly box. The backdrop is as pretty as any place I've fished in the west. Would love to try it some time in more normal water conditions when wading is actually possible.

Yeah, I thought about that too. Just didn't get the sense that he'd be receptive to that discussion

Fished below the dam yesterday afternoon. Tried fishinwrench's advice from the previous thread and it worked pretty well. I didn't tear it up or anything, but caught a pretty decent number of whites and got broke off by what I'm assuming was a good sized hybrid. Several freshwater drum and a very aggressive green sunfish also made it to the shore. Fishing started off dead but then they started to run water and it got good for about an hour, which was when I basically caught everything for the day. As you can imagine the day before the 4th, there were plenty of people enjoying the river. But it wasn't all that bad. The only thing I found mildly entertaining was the guy who said "Hey, what you do that for?" or something similar just about every time I released a fish. I told him I was about to head out of town for awhile and didn't feel like cleaning fish (all true), but I think the whole thing offended him pretty bad.

Arkansas: White River/Bull Shoals Lake, rainbow trout, brown trout, largemouth bass, various panfish Colorado: Too many bodies of water to name, rainbow, brown, cutthroat, and brook trout, northern pike, smallmouth bass, channel catfish, probably others Connecticut: a creek I don't remember the name of, stopped while driving through. Brown trout Florida: Everglades and Pensacola Beach. Numerous nearshore saltwater species. Georgia: largemouth bass and rainbow trout. I was a kid and don't remember water body names. Idaho: cutthroat, bull trout (accidentally). Small streams I won't name Illinois: largemouth bass. Private strip pit ponds. Indiana: all black bass species, all common catfish species, rainbow trout, panfish, etc. Too many bodies of water to list. Iowa: rainbow, brown, and brook trout. Upper Iowa watershed. Kansas: catfish, largemouth bass, rainbow trout, panfish. Arkansas River watershed, ponds, Wilson Reservoir. Kentucky: rainbow, brown, and brook trout, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, various panfish. Mostly Red River watershed Maine: brook trout, numerous saltwater species. Tiny Creek I'm not naming and Atlantic Ocean Massachusetts: smallmouth bass, mid-sized river I stopped at passing through, name I don't remember Michigan: rainbow, brown, and brook trout, smallmouth bass, rock bass, yellow perch, catfish, panfish. LP: Pere Marquette, Manistee, Little Manistee, Muskegon River, UP: Sturgeon River, Bay de Noc (Lake Michigan). Missouri: Almost every common game fish species and many non-game species, too many bodies of water to name Montana: brown, cutthroat, brook, and bull (accidentally) trout, yellow perch, whitefish, smallmouth bass. Too many bodies of water to name. Strangely, zero rainbow trout. New York: rainbow, brown, and brook trout, landlocked salmon, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, yellow perch, rock bass. West Branch Ausable, East Branch Ausable, Boquet, Saranac River, numerous other Lake Champlain tributaries Out of time for now lol. But there are more

I think there is truth to that. But you have to be careful on who. One of my formative experiences as a fisherman was telling a family member about a small pond that officially speaking was a fishless pond, but in reality very much was not. I'd been releasing the fish I caught since it was so small and I only requested if he acted on my info that he consider doing the same. He responded to that information by taking his buddy the next weekend and filling a giant cooler to the brim. It was a very small pond, basically an oversized pothole. The fishing never recovered from what they did that day at least until I moved out og the area. Ever since, I'm very careful naming any small body of water that isn't already marginally on the radar. Even to family.

Yeah, I get it. I won't name the stream. It flows into one of the large reservoirs in the Osage watershed. That narrows it down to probably a dozen or so streams that roughly match my description (if not more), which I don't think is enough info for anyone who isn't so dedicated that they'll probably stumble upon it anyway.

Revisited my old friend this weekend, this time armed with a fly rod and a bunch of streamers. I discovered several different things: you will still catch freshwater drum and catfish with fly gear, just marginally fewer, a ~4 pound drum is a heck of a fight on a 5-weight, which I lost, and stream crappie fishing is very much a thing. I found one deep bluff hole absolutely loaded with 8-11 inch crappie, which was super fun. I suspect these fish ran up from the lake it flows into, but who is to say. Definitely the highlight of my day. Did hook into one largemouth bass that broke a bad knot, maybe 16-17". Overall a good day wading in a creek.

This is a long term goal for me, minus Florida, which seems to not have any (google mentions one private pond, but let's be real). But I'm only at 22, so a lot of work to do. I have checked off some of the "Wait, there are actually trout here?" states, including Indiana, Ohio, Kansas, South Dakota (kinda pushing the definition, the Black Hills are loaded with trout) along with some of the usual bucket list ones like Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, etc. But all the states directly bordering the Pacific Ocean including Alaska are still out there. My favorite somewhat below the radar trout fishing area was hills/mountains of eastern Kentucky, where I worked for a summer. It's not like the Smokies or Blue Ridge where every creek holds trout. In fact, most of them don't, but every once in awhile you'll come on a spring-fed reach of stream that is loaded with big fish and completely under the radar, likely because you have to hike long distances through trackless countryside in pretty brutal terrain to get to it. A lot of public land in the Daniel Boone National Forest and some very secluded reaches of streams. Some great smallmouth fishing in that area too.

Copy that, thank you!

Hello all. I'll say right off, I'm a lifelong creek/small river/small lake type fisherman. I know how to fish them, can read them, and even on a new body of water I can usually do ok. But the Truman Tailwater is a challenge I'm trying to take on with let's say mixed success. I'll say right off I'm pretty much limited to bank fishing. Massive disadvantage, I know. With that said, I've figured out how to catch catfish pretty well. Drift fishing close in for pansized channel catfish, casting way further out for fish that will break me off way too often (I've since bought heavier duty gear. To me, a medium action with 12 pound test WAS heavy gear, but it became clear that I was out of my league here by orders of magnitude.) Anyway, it's the other stuff I can't figure out. At all. I'll see white bass, wipers, etc busting the shad plain as day, often in casting distance, cast every shad imitating crankbait/jig/soft plastic/ spoon I've got, and it's just absolutely nothing, not even really stray missed strikes. This time of year, is chasing anything other than cats up there a fool's errand, or am I just massively underthinking it, or what? I'm willing to admit when I'm beaten or just don't have access to the watercraft I need, but it isn't all that often I've seen fish actively feeding within range, have what would seem to be the right lures for what they're seemingly feeding on, and have just absolutely zero success.

It's not far northern Missouri, but one of the most polluted streams in Missouri, and north of the Missouri River at that, has several random pockets of legitimately solid smallmouth bass fishing. The first time I caught one I did a literal double take.

I think you are onto something with the first bit. The Little Niangua is my go to stream when I have a bit more time on my hands, but even the lower sections of it are hit and miss for presumably this reason. Not that it isn't a good place to fish, I love it, but it took me awhile to figure it out.

It's in that part of the state. I feel a bit silly being secretive since I doubt there is going to be a big run on a stream with apparently nothing but drum and pan-sized catfish. But a buddy showed it to me and explicitly asked I keep it on the DL, so I should probably stop providing hints at this point. Plus I'm fairly sure said buddy visits this site periodically. I will, however post a couple photos (tried to yesterday but it didn't work)

I have caught a couple tiny smallmouth in a tributary creek to this one, but I wouldn't say based on that they necessarily have easy access to the stream I'm talking about. Between the section of tributary creek I fished and the confluence, there are multiple low water crossings that would stop any fish migration in most (but not all) water conditions. More importantly the last couple miles of that feeder creek is extremely wide and shallow with zero shade and basically no habitat, so I doubt a lot of fish move through there regularly. I have it on pretty good authority (older locals who used to fish it) that it used to hold smallmouth. Perhaps most importantly, it terminates in a large reservoir. While this exact section of stream would only be directly flooded by the lake in pretty major-league flooding events, I'm told it has happened before, and also while I don't claim to be an expert in such things, I know that suddenly having a lake at the mouth of a stream can have some pretty significant effects even on the section upstream that can take decades to fully manifest. In addition to the usual land use changes in any Ozark watershed. To address another reply, sadly there is only one public access to the stream, so the accessible section is where you can wade or paddle a kayak from there. I've ventured as much as I can within that constraint, but barring something unexpected I'll probably never be able to check out other reaches of the stream.

That I do not know.

It's pretty strange. It's not like I can't drive 15 miles and one watershed over and be in some of the best smallmouth water in the state anyway, but I just find it interesting. I've found good pockets of stream smallmouth fishing in places people would absolutely never expect (think like the entirely wrong region of the state), so I guess finding a seemingly perfect smallmouth stream in a place they should be with none of them is the flipside of that.

Copy that. Leaning towards hitting the 11 Pt this time around and circling back to the North Fork in the fall.

The stream is crystal clear and cool, with the only color a blue-green in the deep pools. There is a cave along the bank and a couple little seep springs, gravel bottom everywhere. I can wade across it without getting my knees wet in the riffles, but the pools would see me up to my neck if not more. I could probably put a kayak on it if I really wanted to, but it's pretty clearly a wading stream. It's on the northern edge of the Ozarks, but pretty unambiguously within them. In short, it looks like an a combination of every little Ozark smallmouth stream I grew up fishing. Until the first cast, that is. The first strike comes almost immediately, but it's just an overaggressive bluegill. The second comes in a deep pool by a fallen sycamore, this one much harder. But it doesn't flash green/bronze like a smallmouth bass, or even the slightly lighter green of a largemouth. It flashes silver, because it's a channel catfish. Because this creek isn't what it appears. It's a stream with the fish population of a slow prairie stream, in the body of a classic Ozark stream. By my count, I caught and released 14 fish this morning, truthfully without trying all that hard. I tallied 8 channel catfish, 4 freshwater drum, 1 bluegill, and 1 longear sunfish. This is a typical day here. All in a stream that could easily pass for the Little Piney or the Little Niangua or a tributary of the upper Meramec. Not one black bass among them, let alone a smallmouth. I believe in two years of fishing this stream, I could count the number of bass I've caught on two hands, despite the fact that I spend at least some time targeting them each trip. Only the longear sunfish (of which there are many, admittedly) appear to belong. I still like it. I get all the experience of wading and fishing Ozark creek, and likely because of the weird species mix, almost no one else bothers with it. But it's just such a strange mismatch of appearance and reality. I don't think I'll ever walk down to the creek for the first time in the morning and not think this will be the time I find the hidden population of smallmouth bass that should be there. But in reality, it's just fine as it is.

Thanks. I know it's not the best timing, but it's the timing the works. Very familiar with the 11 Point. I lived in Winona for a couple summers, so I know the blue ribbon section of that one like the back of my hand. My favorite trout stream in the state. Just never been over to the North Fork somehow, and I'd love to check it out. We've fished a ton on the other notable trout streams in the state and somehow the North Fork keeps getting pushed off. Hopefully with the wet spring, the springs will be well charged into the summer and water temps will stay reasonable. One can hope. In any case, we'll give Sunburst a call since that seems like the consensus. Thanks again.

Perfect, we'll give them a holler. Thank you!

Hello there. Quick question in regards to floating/fishing the North Fork of the White. Ideally, we're wanting to rent canoes for a couple days towards the latter part of July and fish for trout. The slight issue we're running up against is that it seems most or all of the floats with shuttles available (listed publicly) don't really feature the best trout waters heavily. They either seem start at Hammonds Mill and end with just a couple miles of trout water or start below the end of the Blue Ribbon Area. So I guess the question is, does anyone know of a canoe/kayak outfitter that will shuttle a float that centers around the best trout water more? Not to sound whiny, it's no problem if not. Smallmouth are fun too and we're also looking toward the 11 Point if we can't figure it out for the NFOW. Thanks either way.