A Spring Smallmouth Float

[ozark trout fisher]

Just a story I wrote a little bit ago....

There's not a cloud in the sky, and the temperature is in the upper 80s. I'm knee deep in the blue-green water of the river, wet wading even though it's only late March. I've been fishing hard most of the day, but at the moment I'm just taking in my surroundings. All around me is the beauty and grandeur that defines the Ozark hills in the spring time; redbuds, dogwoods, and new leaves on the trees all around me, the river banks carpeted with wildflowers of all colors. Here the river is lined by gentle hills, but just a short distance upstream I passed under some of the imposing bluffs that make this float so attractive to me, and a clear reminder of just how old this river is. I'm in remote country, about five miles upstream from the nearest public access, and I've only seen one other canoe since I put in. I live for days like this.

This is a fine smallmouth river, justifiably considered by many to be one of the four or five best in the state. The fishing today is a little sub-par, the bass seemingly confused by the rapid increase in temperatures. But a below average day on this stream is still a very good one. After trying a few different things, I've settled on a Rebel Craw, which unsurprisingly is working much better than anything else. I am catching fish in a wide variety of areas from the long, slow holes to fast riffles, which is encouraging, and some of them have been pretty good ones. The numbers are a little off, but on a day like this and on a river like this one, who is going to complain about that?

I'm back in the canoe now, trying to fish the lower end of a riffle while controlling the canoe at the same time. These are the moments that are a little frustrating about float fishing, when you can't give a run the kind of attention it deserves while floating and you don't really have time to stop and work it over. But I cast out anyway, trying to fish and paddle at the same time, and not doing either particularly well, my Rebel Craw trolling behind the canoe. As I'm reflecting on the futility of multitasking, I'm interrupted by a tightening of my line and a strong fish surging to the surface. A few moments later, I've got a 15 inch smallmouth in my net, and a strong feeling that I probably didn't earn that one, though I certainly didn't mind it one bit.

I'm out of my canoe again, wading. This is my favorite hole on the river, plain and simple. Here a fast, churning riffle that would do justice to a western trout stream dumps into the one of the deepest, greenest pools on this entire float. The fish tend to hold right at the very defined drop-off where the riffle drops into the pool. I've been working this run for fifteen minutes, and I've either caught a fish or lost one on about every other cast. Many of them have been smallmouth, but I've also hooked into goggle-eye, largemouth, and more of the gaudy longear sunfish than I can count. I'm not sure this pool fishes much better than any other part of the river; it really is all so good. But I guess the reason I love it so much because it just looks right, the deep water, the big rocks on the bottom, the aquatic grass along the banks, and the fast, rocky riffle to provide the oxygen and food. It wouldn't look out of place on a magazine cover.

I can see the bridge where I take out just a few hundred yards ahead, and although I've been floating and fishing for about ten hours now, I'm still not ready to be done. This is one of those rivers that I never want to leave, that I always find myself thinking about when I can't be on it. I suppose that I'll be able to get back to fishing my normal haunts, the marginal, slightly polluted streams where I'm forced to do my day to day fishing, but it's hard to imagine wanting to be anywhere else after a day here.