Several Night Float/fishing Trip

[jbhunter]

Thanks for the comments, too many options it makes it difficult to make up my mind. What would be a float length for 3 days, say 5 hours a day? Is 5 hours too much float time to get some fishing done? Also, it sounds like getting away for the crowds sometimes takes getting away from the campgrounds with canoe rentals? Does anyone know where you could get canoes that you can haul around on your own?

[Brian Sloss]

One of the reasons I mentioned the Eleven Points upper reaches is that you won't see any crowds. If you are on a week day, you won't see many people on any part of the river. Our Sats can get busy, but nothing like the Current or Niangua. You can still fish here. I don't know anyone who rents canoes that you can haul anywhere you want.

[Al Agnew]

Distance you float depends a lot on how you prefer to fish, and if you're really into cooking. If you plan to cook big breakfasts and suppers like a lot of overnight floaters do, figure that you'll not get going until at least 9 AM and probably closer to 10 AM, and you'll want to stop a good three hours before dark, say 5 PM, and with an hour for lunch that gives you about 6 hours of actual floating and fishing time.

On the other hand, if the fishing is more important than the eating, swimming, and generally goofing off along the river, you can get up at dawn, float and fish for a couple hours of prime early morning time, stop and eat something quick and not cooked for breakfast (I generally eat something like a cinnamon roll or two), fish til lunch and eat something quick then, too (I'll usually have some summer sausage and cheese and crackers), fish until an hour or so before dark and have something good but not necessary to cook for supper(I often pack some KFC chicken, potato chips, and salad makings in the cooler). In that case, you'll have a good 12 hours per day to fish!

Now, if you like to get out and wade, and fish a lot of soft plastics slowly along the bottom, figure a half mile an hour no matter how many hours you are fishing per day. If, on the other hand, you like to fish fast-moving lures from the canoe, figure about a mile or a little more per hour.

It helps to have a plan, based upon what I said above--in other words, have a pretty good idea of where you plan to stop for the night each night, and keep track of where you are on the river during the day. I have topographic maps of every stream in the Ozarks, either paper maps or the National Geographic Topo! software, and when I am going on an unfamiliar river, I either carry the paper maps with me, or print out maps from the software. And since I know how to read them and relate them to what I'm encountering on the river (bluffs, feeder streams, springs, etc.), I just keep track of where I am as I float, so that I know whether I'm on schedule or not. And I know where I'll start looking for a good gravel bar to camp for the night.

You can also use Google Maps (satellite view) or Google Earth to follow along the river before you leave and make notes of where landmarks and good looking camping gravel bars are.

Or you can just wing it and look upon it as an adventure!

[gotmuddy]

Crooked creek would be a perfect float. There is generaly very little pressure. My wife and I floated from Georges creek to the slab last labor day(on labor day) and saw absolutely no one...and it was awesome.

Last august we floated from Rush to shipps ferry which is about 25 miles of Buffalo river then 3-5 miles on the white. We saw one boat the whole trip.