What A Tough Day...

[Al Agnew]

Unfortunately, I'd taken my water thermometer out of my tackle box, and so I don't know what the water temperature was. All I know is that it was a whole lot warmer than the air as my brother and I pushed the canoe off and started down the creek. Fog was lying thick above the water surface, and the sun was just touching the top of the bluff, so it had no power to begin to dissipate the mist. The temp gauge on the dashboard just before I shut off the auto engine read 36 degrees, which was a bit of a shock after all the warm, even hot weather we'd been having.

This was the same creek where last summer Don and I had caught so many fish. It's small, and it apparently didn't get much of the rains that had hit the area and made some other local streams rise 1 to 3 feet. There was enough water to float, but it was probably not even as high as it normally is this time of year.

Don started out using one of my homemade crankbaits, and I was using a twin spin. The first nice pool produced nothing. A couple runs with rootwads came up empty. Then in the second good pool, Don tagged a nice largemouth, about 16 inches. Okay, it might be a little slow, but we could catch fish. Maybe. We got one more strike, missed, in the next mile.

We began to come up with all the reasons (excuses) why we might not do well today. Cold front. Mist on the water. Two cold days in a row. Bluebird skies. High barometric pressure. Clear water (visibility was about 8 feet). Full moon. Too high up on the creek and the fish hadn't moved up here yet.

It was time to start experimenting. In the next mile, we tried topwaters, buzzbaits, spinnerbaits, jerkbaits, soft jerkbaits, jig and pig, and finesse worm. The mist finally cleared, but the problem was that we simply weren't even seeing many fish. Except redhorse suckers. Thousands upon thousands of redhorse, all moving purposefully upstream.

Then in a rootwad at the top of a decent pool, Don tossed in a "french fry" type worm and his line started moving sideways. He set the hook into a very nice smallmouth, the first smallie of the day, and as he played it in a bigger one was following it. I tossed a lure to it but it spooked and darted back under the rootwad. Don's fish was a 17 incher.

So...a pattern? We began to hit every rootwad carefully with the finesse worms and french fries. I was using a 5 inch hand pour on a small football jig head, a pretty worm that I'd found and bought because I liked the colors. It was brown on the back, had a black stripe down the sides, and lime green on the belly. I finally caught a largemouth, not very big, then a smallie that was even smaller. Don caught a 14 incher. But that was after fishing about 50 rootwads and every other spot that had deep water. What few fish we were seeing were all deep, and we still weren't seeing many. We'd fish a good looking spot, staying well away from it, then paddle over it and maybe see one or two fish that had apparently totally ignored our baits. So the finesse worms weren't exactly magic. We started experimenting again, going back to old faithfuls. I'd throw the twin spin for a while, throw a Sammy for a bit, go back to the finesse worm, try the jerkbait. Don was doing much the same. Once in a while one of us would catch something, and Don was doing okay on size, catching a couple more in the 15 inch class and a 16 incher. I was pretty much catching 10 inchers until I finally got a couple 14 inchers on the worm.

The float is ten miles of spectacular scenery and mediocre habitat. I was in the back of the canoe, so after a while I was content to soak up scenery and watch Don fish. We'd stop once in a while to stretch our legs and wander up the bank to check for morels. And then one of the highlights of the trip occurred. I was looking up at a towering bluff, streaked with black and blueish hues against almost white limestone, when a hawk swept over the top of it into view. It was a redtail, but it was nearly solid white! From beneath, it was pure white all over, but as it banked once and I could see its back, there were light buff tones on the back and tops of the wings, and the tail was very pale pink. What a unique and gorgeous bird!

Not far below, we came to a big heronry. Three big sycamores were dotted with great blue heron nests, with herons on the nest and probably 20 more winging around and squawking at us. We heard turkeys gobbling. The banksides were full of songbirds. The weather had warmed into the comfort zone, at least.

I kept trying to figure something out about the fish, and as the sun was now high in the sky, we could see down into the water well. We were seeing more fish, including some very good ones, but they simply had very little interest in whatever we tried, and for the most part were about as spooky as I've ever seen stream smallies be. They might come out from a hiding place and look at a lure, but if the canoe was close enough for us to see them, they quickly saw us and darted back under the log or rock they'd come from. And we were finally seeing groups of smallies, especially in the first deep pocket below the head of a pool, so we'd fish those pockets carefully from a good distance away...and catch nothing, and then float over the pocket and watch a half dozen to a dozen smallmouth swim out of it and dart downstream. They were there, they just weren't having anything to do with our lures.

In the last couple miles Don and I switched places, and from the front of the boat, I continued for a mile or so using the finesse worm and catching almost nothing. So I decided in the last mile I'd just throw the Sammy, even though I'd fished it off and on all day without getting so much as a swipe at it. Didn't look like anything else was working and the Sammy is always fun to work.

Maybe the high sun (it was about 2 PM by this time) had finally warmed the water enough. Maybe the lower end of this stretch just had more fish. Or maybe they just decided to turn on. I caught a nice 15 incher on the Twin Spin in a spot where there was too much current to fish the Sammy effectively. I had a follow from a bigger fish on the Sammy. And then we were approaching the take-out. Two pools to go. I made a quick cast into the head of the first pool, where the riffle dropped sharply into 8 feet of water with a log right at the drop. A big fish swirled beneath the lure, then came back and started to take it, but the canoe had floated too close. Next cast, a 14 incher took the Sammy positively. A few casts later, at the last good log in the pool, a 15 incher decided it liked that topwater.

Darn it, only one pool to go, within sight of the bridge, and the fish were finally eating topwaters. The last pool is a nice one, deep and rocky. We fished about halfway down it without a nibble, but I could see a big sunken log ahead and I thought, "That's where the big fish will be." I made a long cast in back of the log and against the bank and started playing the lure out. It came over the log and I saw a big dark shadow surge out from the back side of the big old tree trunk. It slapped at the lure, but I knew that game. I didn't set the hooks, just kept walking the dog. The shadow reappeared as the lure progressed another three feet, charging into it in a powerful take. This time I set the hooks.

A 19 inch smallmouth was a very nice way to end a tough day.

[kirbydog]

Great accounting of the day on the water-I felt like I was there with you.

[Mitch f]

A big bass on topwater! Nothing better!

[LittleRedFisherman]

Felt like I was there as well, another well described day of fishing. I fished a deep hole in a field today where a levee broke last year, it's full of fish, but they to where biting slow today.

[Mitch f]

A 19 inch smallmouth was a very nice way to end a tough day.

No pics?

[Al Agnew]

My brother took pics of the bigger fish on his cell phone camera. My workhorse waterproof point and shoot just threw craps the other day, so I didn't have a camera along. I would have loved to have my camera with the big lens when I saw the white hawk, but I don't carry it on Ozark float trips.

[Mitch f]

My brother took pics of the bigger fish on his cell phone camera. My workhorse waterproof point and shoot just threw craps the other day, so I didn't have a camera along. I would have loved to have my camera with the big lens when I saw the white hawk, but I don't carry it on Ozark float trips.

Man, you need to get a smart phone, but watch out! I sent some pics with my phone and the GPS coordinates showed up with the fish pics to the recipient. Thank goodness it was Smalliebigs and not someone else.

[Chief Grey Bear]

Thank goodness it was Smalliebigs and not someone else.

Oh yeah..........

[Mitch f]

Oh yeah..........

LOL

[MOsmallies]

Man I wish my tough days included 17"-19" fish... Great read as always Al