Report - 5/15

[OKFlyFisher44]

This past sunday I finally got to take my drift boat out on the Elk River for its maiden float trip. After speaking with Jean Ann (sp?) at Hog Heaven, I decided to do the Pineville to Mt. Shira float in hopes of finding some smallies on the fly. My good fishing buddies, Donny and Corey, decided to join me for the float and we hashed out a plan.

We launched the boat at 8:00 at Pineville and began to float our way to Mt. Shira. We stopped a few times to wade fish some areas, but mostly just fished from the boat. The river was in great shape and the level was perfect for floating. We only found 2 places that we drug bottom and only 1 place that we decided to get out and walk the boat through the area due to tricky currents and lots of trees in the water. Fishing was pretty good, especially the 1st half of the day when the sun was out but after the clouds moved in for the 2nd half of the day, the bite slowed down quite a bit. We still managed to catch a bunch of smallies, nothing big, with fish being in the 1/2lb to 2lb range. Lots of fun on the fly rod. Hot flies were big wooly buggers, various articulated streamers, and crawdad patterns fished on a sink tip line. All the dinks were right up against the bank while the bigger fish were found in deeper water, especially along the edges of gravel bars that dropped off to deeper water.

Not sure what stage the smallmouth are in. Pre-spawn, spawning, or post-spawn? Any of you local guys have a better idea? Didnt see any beds that we could identify. Still learning the patterns for these river bass.

We reached our take out around 5:00 to end the day. Just a side note, the bank area around Mt. Shira is washed away so we were unable to take out because the bank was too steep. We drove over to Shady Beach and used their beach to take the boat out. Thank you to the elderly lady at Shady Beach for allowing us to take out there, made our lives much easier!

Also...a big THANK YOU to Russ and Jean Ann @ Hog Heaven for shuttling my truck/trailer from Pineville to Mt. Shira. That was a huge help to make our float trip happen. I will definitely be using you guys again, you were very helpful and accomodating!

[eric1978]

Nice river, sweet boat, and smallies on the fly...can you beat that?

[Guest]

Hog Heaven is top notch.

[wacky worm]

wow great pics

water looks great

next time you guys come up here we can take your trailer to two sons campground for easy launch

thanks for the great report and compliments

next time i want to float with you guys

thanks again

keep floating

Russ