Back In Mo, Back On The Creeks

[Al Agnew]

Well, I've been back in MO a couple of weeks after most of the summer in Montana, anxious to get back into the stream smallie fishing. Things haven't been going too well--my first time on the river was this past Tuesday, and circumstances forced me to float a stretch of river that I don't really like. The upper half of this float is much better than the lower half, which I REALLY don't like, but a rain the night before had the river close to muddy in the upper half, and I caught few fish. The river cleared enough by midway through the float, and I caught some fish in the "bad" water, but caught less than 40 fish total and none of them over 15 inches.

Not only that, but I made the mistake of not drinking enough liquids on that hot day, and was sick that night.

Friday evening I did a short wade trip on one of my favorite small local creeks. It was also murkier than normal, which may have affected the fishing, but it just seemed like the fish weren't there like they have been the last few years. I caught a dozen or so, biggest about 14 inches. One interesting thing was that the creek was absolutely jammed with 4-5 inch young of the year largemouths. I suspect they had been washed out of a couple of large private lakes in the watershed. Just about every cast I'd have a wolf pack of little largemouths nipping at the lure.

So my brother called me and wanted to go somewhere this morning. There is a float I've been wanting to do for a while, hadn't done it either this year or last year. It's a stretch that is marginally floatable at best this time of year, and a good 7.5 miles, but we decided to try it, planning on putting in a daybreak, fishing the best water through the morning, paddling through the last mile or so which is very poor water, and hopefully getting off the river by noon, to beat the worst of the heat.

The stream was not as low as it had been the last time I floated it, a couple years ago. Then, on a solo trip, I basically walked every riffle (and even some of the pools). This time, the two of us in the tandem canoe were able to float most of the riffles, though almost never without scraping bottom. I'd say the stream was flowing about 20 cfs.

It was an odd day. The morning stayed cool and mostly cloudy, with one small thunderstorm threatening for a bit but never getting to us. The river was clear in the moving water and a bit murky in the bigger pools. What usually happens in these conditions is that everything you catch is in the shorter pools and at the heads and especially the tails of the larger pools, and the fish are often in very shallow water. The last time I'd floated this stretch it had been like that and I'd had a 100 fish day.

This time, the pattern held, but the fishing was hot and cold. We'd go through water that SHOULD have produced a lot of fish without much of anything, and then go through a stretch no better that was non-stop action. Like one time when I had probably gone a half hour without a fish, and then caught 4 nice fish on five casts. The other odd thing was that we caught considerably more largemouths than smallmouths, highly unusual for this stretch.

But when it was good, it was fun. Buzzbaits and topwater lures, along with my homemade spinnerbait fished fast enough to make a wake on the surface, were the order of the day, and it was a morning of watching wakes coming from 10 feet away in the shallow water to blast the lures, or having fish hit the very instant the lrue hit the water, like they had seen it coming and positioned themselves under it like a center fielder. And the largemouths were averaging 15 inches, with a couple going up around 17-18. The smallmouths were chunky, and we caught three of them that were in the 16 inch class, along with a lot of 13-14 inchers. Total for two of us was 60 some-odd fish, and considering we only caught fish out of about half the water we could have, had the fish been consistent we would have REALLY had a great morning.

We finished the float at 12:30 PM, almost on time. It was great to fish with my brother again, and great to have the kind of day I expect to have on an Ozark creek!

[creek wader]

I always enjoy reading your posts, Al.