The alarm clock was buzzing in my ear and as I reached for it to throw across the room I noticed that it said 4:00 a.m. "Now why in the world would it be going off at 4 am" I asked myself. While trying to silence the annoying buzz the fog in my head started to clear. The last thing I remembered from the night before was trying to tie up as many stones as possible. "Why? Oh, yes", I remembered, "I'm fishing today. The North Fork of the White with motroutbum and Brian Wise. Brian, hmmm, he is that guide over there that wanted to take a test run on the river with the water being up as practice for his up coming season with clients.
We're fishing from a drift boat today. Cool."
As I stumbed into the living room I find motroutbum in his usual spot on the morning of a trip.
I kicked him a few times untill he started to move and told him, "Come on. We gotta go."
The North Fork of the White is about 2 hours drive from my house and we needed to be there by 6:30 a.m.
Just as we got to our rendavous place with Brian, dawn was starting to crack
We followed Brian to River of Life Farm on the North Fork of the White and proceeded to launch our vessel for the day.
After securing the boat we had to shuttle a vehicle to our final destination on the river. Blair Bridge access
We then car pooled back to River of Life Farms where the drift boat was waiting, geared up and loaded the boat for the day. Fishing gear, a 6 pack of Mt Dew and a bag of corn nuts.
We drifted down to the 1st set of riffles and got out to fish the seams.
Motroutbum was on fish almost immediatly.
He pumbed the fishes stomach to find out what they might be eating
Lots of partially digested stones.
We kind of looked around in the water to see what else might be available as food sources. Almost ever rock turn provided a stone, scud, or sowbug. Lots of sculpins, darters, on other minnows in the water too.
We had a few more fish to hand at the first riffle, I think it was called the "Cave Riffles" before we decided to get back in the drift boat and work our way down to the next wading hole.
Fishing was good in the drift boat too.
Motroutbum and I both managed to bring several to hand
We continued to fish from the drift boat in the slower waters and wade to fish the riffles.
Accourding to Brian, the best time to wade fish is around 400 cfs and we were pushing 700 cfs, so the water was a little high, really fast in the riffles and just a little color to it.
We let Brian fish and he was getting into them too.
The fish in the North Fork of the White have and orange tip on thier dorsal fin that makes for some interesting markings
The fish were non-stop all day
From the boat and while wading
It was in the 70's yesterday in southern Missouri. The turtles were out and short sleeves would have been enough by afternoon.
Its hard to believe we are having freezing rain right now and predictions 6-10" of snow by morning.
Think I'll go fish Taney tonight.
duckydoty