Lower Buffalo River (rush To Buffalo City) Report

[Clay Goforth]

Some friends of mine and I floated the lower buffalo this past weekend from Rush to Buffalo City. We were doing a combo turkey hunt/smallmouth trip. The turkey hunting was great with lots of toms sounding off. The smallmouth fishing was a little slow relative to how I have seen the bite in the past. This part of the river was dingy green to slightly brown in some spots and was moving faster than I like to fish. Still we managed to catch around 25 smallmouth in the 2 days which was actually more like 1 day of fishing because the forecast ran us in early. We actually probably only got to fish for roughly 4-5 hours between turkey hunting, camp set up, and motoring on the river. The hot baits seemed to be a texas rigged 4 inch green lizard, green and brown gitzits, and a few different combinations of hula grubs. The problem with the hula grubs is finding the place to slow fish them around submerged rocks without the current taking you off too fast. Each time I could the boat in a position to fish a hula around a big sunken rock in an eddy pool, there was a bite. We unfortunately didn't really take any pictures on the trip, but big fish was caught on a hula grub, black with red flakes, fishing around a rock. The fish was a big female full of eggs and weighed around 2.5 to 3 lbs conservatively.

[hoglaw]

Did you guys get a bird? Was the current so strong that it was just blowing you through the whole thing, or did some of the pools slow down?

[Clay Goforth]

Two guys out of the four of us got birds...they killed them at the same time because they came in strutting together. Pretty incredible story: We get camp set up on Friday afternoon around Horseshoe Bend and are debating about whether or not to even go out. We decide to, so me and another guy set off in one direction and the other two guys go another direction. We walk into the woods maybe 100 yards and start calling and get a bird to answer so we move a little further and set up. We can also faintly hear the other two guys calling. All of the sudden we hear the gobblers hammering off back at them and then 2 minutes later 2 shots. Our bird quits answering so we make our way back to camp and the two other guys show up, birds in hand. One was 22lbs 9.5 inch beard and 1inch spurs. The other was an older bird, 10 inch beard but worn out spurs and weighed about 18lbs. From the time we left camp until they showed back up took all of about 15 minutes. Ridiculous. We only got to hunt two more times, once the next morning in which we called a bird in from 400-500 yards away all the way up to 50 yards and then a circling bald eagle sounded off above us and the turkey took off.

As far as the fishing went, it was pretty fast everywhere unfortunately. The big pools were even running. Great for floating but not good to fish in. The only relief were the backsides of some of the islands where we could get into an eddy pool and slow fish. The smallmouth bite was one that seemed like whenever we got to a spot where we could slow down the presentation we could get a strike. If I had it to do all over again I would have brought the stuff to carolina rig lizards for them because you can drag that down stream a little slower than you have to work a bait in from the side of the boat.

One of the guys that killed a bird sent me a picture so, here it is.

[hoglaw]

Nice birds. Don't call this a turkey hunting forum or I'll be covered in boats next weekend.

It looks like we're going to have a little lower water than you guys had, but I'm going to rig up something to slow the drift in my solo canoe. Was there quite a bit of traffic before you got close to the White? This is my first time on that part of the river and I think our conditions are going to be great. Nothing but sun from today through the weekend. The highs on our float days are 83, 83, and 83. Did you see any other campers?