The first time I floated the Eleven Point was with my Dad about three weeks after I graduated from high school in 1973. About 10 days earlier I had caught the largest trout in my life--a 5lb 14 oz. rainbow at Bennett Springs. Caught her on one a crudlely tied #12 "weighted wooly" (it would be called a wooly-booger now) with lead wire around the hook, covered with brown yarn and a short brown marabou tail. I was throwing this home made fly with an ultra light and two-pound test line. She was caught in the pool above the dam, while I was standing on the dam. It was a three-ring circus trying to land her, I almost went over the dam! Fortunately, my little brother was there with a net and we managed to get her in. Anyway, I digress...Back to the Eleven Point....So my Dad and I hit the river early on a Friday morning at the Highway 19 access. No one was at the access and we had the river to ourselves, except for a group camped next to Mary Decker Shoal. It was a beautiful early summer day, not too hot and mist was rising off the water. What a beautiful Ozark stream. We caught a few fish here and there, enough to keep our interest. A little ways past Mary Decker Shoals, we hit a nice stretch of deep, moving water with plenty of cover. I made a few casts, throwing a small brown jig. Nothing. I made one last cast as we drifted through, and as our canoe started to drift down stream from my line, I began reeling fast in order to get my line back in the canoe so that we could paddle down to the next hole. The jig was about 10 feet from the canoe, skittering across the surface when this HUGE rainbow came "out of nowhere" and slammed it. I screamed to my Dad, letting him know that I had hooked into a lunker. He maneuvered the canoe into the middle of the stream, so that I would have best chance to land the monster. After about a two-minute fight, she broke off. Lesson learned though; I had failed to switched my line from the Bennett Springs trip, and still had 2 # test in my reel. Never made that mistake again, but of course, I've never again hooked a rainbow that big again either. We've been back to the Eleven Point off-and-on over the years. I did catch a three pound rainbow there once, sometime in the late 1970s. I think our last trip was in about 1992. The fishing was slow then, and we haven't been back, but would like to again some day. It is, in my opinion, the "wildest" and most beautiful stream in the state.
