Eleven Point River Excursion

[Phil Lilley]

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Eleven Point River Excursion

Oct 17-18, 2009

Fly Flingers Weekend

Phil & Marsha Lilley

Our lives are blessedly filled to the brim -- Marsha and I both commit to activities together and apart with the resort, church, community endeavors and friends and family; together and separately we fish, write, manage websites, counsel (even work occasionally . . .) As with everyone else, we find that if we need or want to do something, we have to purpose to put it on the calendar. A full weekend of fishing is one of those things.

But fishing isn't just "fishing," or "piscator non solum piscatur," as the Latin says it. We've made fishing part of our lives for the fellowship and fun, and not just for business. The development of our fishing website, OzarkAnglers, aims to educate people about God' creation and the gift it is to us. After being out on some incredible water for the past three days, I am reminded of that mission. God does leave evidence all around us of His existence, His touch, His love for us in all He's made.

Oddly to say, this was our first time to visit the Eleven Point River. Living in the Ozarks for the past 26 years, it's sad to realize that we haven't ventured very far from our own waters to experience other beautiful fisheries in our own region. Brian Sloss and Ryan Griffin, owners of Eleven Point Canoe Rental for the past five years, host an annual event called Fly Flingers Weekend in October to give anglers an "excuse" to pack up and head to the river -- and make some money for Trout Unlimited at the same time. The guide/outfitters couldn't pick a better season to host a gathering -- foliage on the river was just starting to preview the spectacular autumn color ahead, and their burger/brats barbecue was a full feast to gather us around a fire for a cool fall evening.

The Eleven Point River, one of the original eight rivers included in the Ozark National Scenic Riverways Act of 1968, stretches 44 miles from Thomasville to State Highway 142 near the Missouri-Arkansas state line. The Missouri Department of Conservation stocks about 16,000, 10- to 12-inch rainbows in the White Ribbon section and 5,000 rainbows in the Blue Ribbon section of the river once a year. The department clips their fins to mark which years each trout was stocked, distinguishing them from the wild trout that average 200 to 250 per mile. In 2007, agents clipped the left pelvic fin. Last year it was the right pelvic fin, and the adipost fin was clipped this season.

We arrived Saturday morning early at the canoe livery to be greeted by Brian and Ryan and a small group of anglers ready to hit the water. The air was chilly with all the recently cloudy days, but it didn't dampen our excitement. Marsha and I had driven down to the Greer access Friday evening and saw that the river seemed to be in great shape. It was a little off color -- a kind of a chalky, whitish green color which is normal for rivers in south Missouri after a rain. Gladly, I thought it was very fishable. They had had heavy, flooding rains just 10 days prior. The worry was the river wouldn't be back down and clear enough for the weekend, but our fears were put to rest.

Ryan had graciously offered a spot on their hand-built, wooden McKenzie drift boat for the morning float, so Marsha and I piled in at the ramp at Greer access off Missouri Highway 19, just a short drive from Alton in Oregon County. The group all launched from the same spot, a fleet of six canoes and one drift boat strong. Fishing started immediately -- and so did catching. Several nice rainbows came off the first island, but not by our boat. We floated on down to the next spot to wade what Ryan called the Grave Yard run, so named after an old, private family cemetary sequestered quietly back on the wooded hillside. That's where I caught my first Eleven Point rainbow.

I had packed my five-weight, nine-foot Templefork fly rod loaded with Climax shooting line to try on the rivers. I use the technique known as "chuck and duck" on Michigan and Alaskan rivers and saw no reason it wouldn't work on Ozarks' rivers, as well. It's a rigging system that uses lead core weight to quickly drop the fly to the bottom, drifting it through the run naturally as opposed to using a float and then dealing with current drag. It worked for me -- and then it didn't. The rocks on the bottom of the Eleven Point River are not smooth but are porous and jagged, greedily grabbing hooks and weight. This made using this technique difficult, but not impossible. I did hang up a lot and lost quite a few flies and rigs but did manage to catch several rainbows.

The other technique I wanted to try on the river was a rig I use in Alaska for rainbows and char. It's a bead, pegged above a bare hook. The beads I used were three millimeter in a peach-orange color. I pegged the bead (egg) two inches from the hook using a small toothpick. To our amazement, it caught rainbows! They liked it!! Rainbows on the Eleven Point normally spawn later in the winter, but it seems no matter where I fish, no matter the season, trout will take an egg.

We floated and stopped at Ryan's spots, most of them were at the top and bottom of runs off islands, and there are delightfully many islands on this upper stretch of the river. The Eleven Point actually starts well above Greer access, but most notably, the water from Greer Spring joins the river above a half-mile above the access.

Greer Spring is the second largest spring in Missouri behind Big Spring located at the confluence of the Current River. Its flow averages about 200 million gallons of water per day with an average water temperature of 50-55 degrees. The property is now owned by the National Parks Service. It maintains a parking lot at the trail head located off Highway 19 just south of the Geer access, as well as a wonderful woodland trail to hike about a mile to the spring.

The spring has two exit points -- the first is a cave and the second, the larger of the two, is a vertical vent about 100 feet downstream. The newly formed river flows downstream about 1.4 miles to the Eleven Point where is almost doubles the river's size at that point.

A drift boat has to be the most pleasant way to float a river, that is, of course, if you have a guide like Ryan who knows how to maneuver a drift boat -- definitely giving his muscles a work out Saturday just to give me a few more chances at prime water. It is different than a canoe for sure. Instead of rowing forward, most of the strokes in current are backwards for control and direction. A drift boat is constructed in a way so that it sits high on the water, creating less draft so that the slightest stroke with the oars will direct the boat in the desired direction with ease. The McKenzie drift boat was designed to run the rapids on the McKenzie River in Oregon back in the 1940s and has become renowned on rivers in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, which is where Brian learned its advantages to reach holes inaccessible by wading and better vantage points than by canoeing.

As the day went on, it became apparent that the islands in the river harbored the key fishing spots. There are a surprising number of small and large island on this stretch of the river. Each side of the islands was navigable, fishable water. As we drifted by, Ryan would talk about how trout would hold at the top, in the runs and at the tail end of each island. Pockets and seams were important to note -- trout would hold in these areas, ambushing bugs and minnows as they drifted by.

Pocket water is slack water behind rocks, ledges, logs and root wads, any place where the water slows down. You can usually see pocket water by the smoothness of the water's surface behind these structures. A seam is where fast current meets slow current or eddies. The water outside the fast current still moves pretty quickly but is still slower than the main current. There usually is a definitive line or break between these two currents that is clearly evident.

Fishing these seams and pockets isn't easy, but it's not too difficult either. The first thing to reallize is that every cast and drift is not going to be perfect. That's why we always work these areas slowly and methodically, making a dozen casts to the same area at different entry points, with different angles of the line and swing until we get that perfect drift that puts the fly right in front of the trout to entice the take.

In saying that, the right amount of weight, either incorporated in the fly itself or added to the line, is very important. On the Eleven Point, the guides use a fly called a MOAT which is a stone fly weighted by a large tungsten bead, one that will drop you down fast in fast water. They tie it in olive, brown and black. At least this past weekend, they also suggested using marabou jigs under a strike indicator four feet deep. Sixteenth-ounce jigs are best in olive, brown, black and white. The MOAT are thrown with an indicator also and set to the depth of the water. Of course, cast placement and mending will test your fly rod handling ability among the trees and rocks on the Eleven Point.

Ryan said they do get hatches like any river in Missouri, but the trout don't seem to target the insects. He said they see big hex hatches in August and September, but even then their trout don't seem to take advantage of the easy meal. On our trip, we saw good hatches of caddis and other flies which I couldn't identify. There was a white-winged moth-type fly that was plentiful.

We did see lots of lots of small minnows against the bank, in slack water and around root wads in the river. They are key to the health of a river.

We floated from Greer to Turner, about a 4.9-mile section of river. It took us all of eight hours to make the trip, fishing at various spots along the way. I think it was the perfect distance for fishing, both to fish some spots from the boat and to get out and wade other areas.

The next day, Brian took us in by foot through a little known and private access just below the Greer access. We waded and fished the Grave Yard shoal for about four hours into the evening with good success. Tito, a young man who works for Brian and Ryan, met us there, and between the three of us we brought a couple of dozen rainbows to hand. Brian used a white one-sixtheenth-ounce white jig under an indicator, Tito tried some of his own hand-tied stone and various other flies, and I stuck with my bead, drifting it through the runs out through the island and down from the island into a deeper run. Again, we saw caddis and white mayflies come off the water the whole time which tempted some small fish to rise against the banks.

With the trees in budding colors and the sun peaking through at points, it was a wonderful two days on the Eleven Point River. Many thanks to Brian Sloss and Ryan Griffin for their guidance and help with outfitting our needs on and off the river -- and for their tireless efforts to endear visitors and Ozarkers to the national treasure shimmering wild through the hills.

Special thanks to Ryan Griffin and Brian Sloss, owners of Eleven Point River Canoe Rental and Outfitters. See their site at http://www.11pointcanoe.com/

Enjoy a few videos-

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Greer Springs, upper vent.

Greer Springs, lower vent

From the bridge on Highway 19 looking upstream on the Eleven Point River near Greer Access.

From the bridge on Highway 19 looking upstream on the Eleven Point River near Greer Access.