My Annual Special Creek Float

[Al Agnew]

As long time readers here may remember, I float a section of a certain stream for three days late in the summer every summer, always solo. In the past it has been probably the best stream fishing I've ever had in the Ozarks, with 100+ fish days typical, and multiple fish over 18 inches. It's a stream that is floatable in the spring, but gets very low in the summer, and usually by August is flowing less than 40 cfs. It's wild country, and though plenty of locals are very familiar with it, in the past it just hasn't seemed to have gotten much fishing pressure in the late summer.

I usually float sometime toward the end of August, and this summer one of the reasons I came back from Montana in mid-August was to do my float, which is always one of the highlights of my fishing year. But I was unable to do the float the week I got back, then my dad fell and broke his hip and that shot the next week, so Labor Day weekend came and went before I was able to make the trip this week.

I put in late in the morning on Wednesday, and noticed while putting in that the creek had a little more water flowing than it normally would; all the rain we had over the summer had apparently kept levels up some even though we haven't had any rain in three weeks or so.

Last year, the fishing was not nearly as good as it had been in the past, and I was interested to see if the trend continued. Back in the good ol' days, I would catch a couple out of the pool at the put-in, and a few more small ones in the next couple of tiny pools, and then my first couple of good fish, usually 15-16 inchers, in the first decent pool below. Well, I caught one 10 incher in the put-in pool, and didn't catch another fish until another 10 incher in the first good pool downstream. Not good.

I also immediately noticed that there was PLENTY of people sign. Gravel bars tracked up, fresh canoe scrapings on the rocks in the riffles, litter on the bars. It looked like Labor Day weekend had been crowded on the creek. It didn't bode well for my fishing prospects. I began to alter my expectations. I was fairly sure I wouldn't encounter anybody mid-week after Labor Day, and the creek is absolutely gorgeous, and the weather was slated to be perfect for floating, if perhaps not for fishing. Still, one of the great things about this float in the past has been the spectacular fishing, and it was a little disappointing to not only have slow fishing, but to not even see many decent fish. The creek was it's usual clarity--visibility good enough that there was almost nowhere you couldn't clearly see the bottom--so usually if the fish are there you'll see some.

With the somewhat greater flow than usual, and the almost total lack of wind, floating was a laid back affair. The pools are short, the riffles long, and I just fished hard where it looked good and then leisurely drifted, often without making a paddle stroke for a while, soaking up the solitude and scenery.

And so the first day passed. I didn't see a single person, but I saw deer and a turkey and lots of turtles and whole flocks of vultures riding the thermals above the bluffs and perched on snags on the gravel bars. The fishing remained slow. I know some here don't think much of how I count the fish I catch, but this time I decided to not only keep a count of total fish, but also the number of fish over 12 inches I caught. Well, that first day tallied to 50 fish, with only 10 over 12 inches. The largest was maybe 16 inches, not even big enough to measure against the marks on my paddle blade, let alone take photos.

When I'd started out, one of my homemade walk the dog topwaters was producing about as well as anything, with my twin spin doing okay as well. I had decided that I was really going to give buzzbaits a good try, since they had been producing a bit on my wading trips lately, and I had somewhat gotten away from using them in recent years. I had a double, counter-rotating props buzzer that I really liked the sound of, and I was determined to give it every opportunity to catch fish. But in the first four hours or so, it produced nothing. Then I picked it up in a nice run and immediately caught four smallies in a row on it. So I kept fishing it for the rest of the afternoon, and caught several more fish.

By about 5 PM, I'd gone as far as I wanted to go for the day. With the greater water flow I'd actually covered the miles more quickly than usual, and although I usually float until an hour or less before dark on this trip, I picked a good gravel bar and set up camp, then fished a bit more in the pool in front of the campsite. I sat down and ate my supper of cold pork steak and potato salad--I never take a stove on these summertime solo overnighters--took a few photos of the bluff across the river with the last sunlight striking it, and then read my book until too dark to see. Still, it was only 7:30 or so. That's one problem with overnighters as it gets later in the year...it's a longer time between dark and bedtime. So with a few mosquitoes biting, I retreated to the tent and continued reading until my eyelids drooped.

I was up in the gray of dawn the next morning, and quickly struck the tent, loaded the canoe, and started downriver, wanting to get that very early morning fishing. The fishing started a lot better. In fact, while the day before I'd caught only 10 over 12 inches all day, on this morning 10 out of my first 12 fish were over 12 inches, including the biggest fish of the trip, a 19.5 incher that attacked a Sammy with wild abandon and fought about as hard as any big smallie ever does. I was catching fish on both the Sammy and the buzzbait, and although the fishing still wasn't as fast as I had known before, it was still pretty darned good until about 10 AM, when it began to slow. I started trying some other ideas, including hair jigs, a Ned rig, Superflukes, even a crankbait, although I almost never try cranks in water this clear. Nothing much of all those things worked, though I did catch some little ones on everything.

Having gotten the experimentation out of my system for the day, I went back to what had been working, the WTD topwaters, the buzzbait, and the twin spin. I caught a 17 incher on my homemade WTD. Another 17 incher on the twin spin. A third one on the Sammy. A few 16 inchers. I ended up covering a bit more water than I'd planned, and still stopped again for the evening by 5 PM, having caught a total of 80 bass, with 32 of them over 12 inches. Other than the improved fishing, the highlight of the day was sighting two otters playing in a pool. I know that we anglers are supposed to hate otters, but I still like the critters. And I'm not blaming them for the poorer fishing on this stream, because they've been on it through all those years when the fishing was great.

The gravel bar where I'd stopped was the remains of one that I'd camped on many years ago, earlier in the summer one year. Then, there was a long pool in front of it, it was a huge bar, and at the head of the pool there was a backwater that had been absolutely full of bullfrogs and green frogs, which had basically kept me awake most of the night with their constant calls, along with splashes and grunts. It sounded like the biggest frog orgy on earth.

Sometime during the intervening years, the river had changed course and cut through the middle of that bar, so that the upper part of the bar was now on the other side of the river, up against that old backwater, and the lower end was a small, high bar alongside a much shorter pool. But the big bluff across the river was the same.

As I was setting up camp, I happened to glance upstream at the other side of the old bar, and there was a black dog sitting on its haunches, watching me. It sat there as I carried all the stuff up from the canoe, and although my tent site was behind a screen of brush, every time I'd look around the brush the dog was still there. This spot is more than a mile from the nearest road or house, so I figured the dog was either feral or had been abandoned or lost. I sat down within plain sight of it to eat my supper, and as it watched me eat, it began to very quietly bark, which soon became loud and constant barking. I was thinking that if it kept this up, or crossed the river in the night to raid my camp, it was going to be very aggravating. But as soon as I went behind the screen of brush to my tent as it got close to dark, the barking stopped, and I never had any problems with the dog the rest of the night. It was a somewhat strange encounter, though.

I did have one visitor in the night, which announced itself with heavy crunching of gravel approaching my tent that was loud enough to wake me from a light sleep. Figuring it was the dog, I shouted for it to "git". It got. But I'm not sure whether it was the dog or something else, and it did sound heavy...and the only black bear I've seen in Missouri was not very far from there. It makes you think a bit.

Today was a short day, only about 6 miles to float, and I again got a daylight start. But the fishing was far slower than the day before. The habitat gets worse and worse as you progress downstream on this creek, and this last few 6 miles only has about 6 pools that could be considered deep. There are long stretches of gravelly riffles and very shallow, coverless runs. Something that makes me thing this lower section is getting pounded is that the few good pools produced almost no fish, while the fish I caught mainly came from little obscure pockets and pieces of cover in the very shallow runs. The biggest were only a couple of 16 inchers. The water had gotten amazingly clear, so clear that in those few deep pools, which were up to 15 feet deep, you could still see the bottom clearly.

There is a run in this final stretch that has produced several big fish over the years. It isn't a typical "big fish spot". In fact, in most streams, it would be a place where I wouldn't expect to catch much. There is a big gravel bar on one side, and the bank on the other side, though wooded, is unstable, so there is a steep, gravelly mud bank dropping to the water, and a few new trees and brush along it, with no old logs. I've usually found that those unstable banks with transient cover seldom produce much on most rivers, and this one is no exception, except for this one bank, for some reason. The current is moving but slow, and the depth is 3 to 4 feet all the way down it.

I caught a couple of decent fish near the head of the run, then nothing for a bit. I was fishing a Gunfish as I approached a little pile of brush toward the lower part of the run, and I made a fairly long downstream cast, landing the lure within a foot of the upstream side of the brush. I immediately began working it fast and splashy, and on about the fourth twitch, the biggest smallmouth I've seen in several years erupted completely out of the water, seeming to hang in the air for seconds. The picture of that fish in mid-air, the lure flying off to the side, was etched in my brain. The lure landed three feet away as the bass splashed down, and I immediately began twitching it, hoping the huge fish would come back to eat it, but no dice.

I'm convinced that these big fish sometimes attack a WTD topwater to stun it, and then come back to eat it. I've caught plenty of them by pausing it for a second or two and then continuing to twitch it, and they come back to take it positively. But in water as clear as this was, it usually does no good to pause the lure, because then the fish simply gets too good a look at it. The only reason they attack it in the first place is because it's moving so fast and splashily that they can't see it well, and it's all a reaction strike. So you have to hope that they come back if you keep moving it. In very clear water, that just doesn't happen quite as often as it does in water with some color.

I backed up, parked the canoe, ate my mid-morning breakfast of Little Debbie's donuts, and then tried that fish again, but nothing happened.

How big was it? Well, admittedly I only got the one glance, which only seemed to last for seconds. But I've seen a lot of big smallies in mid-air, and you know how a 20 incher looks considerably bigger than an 18 incher? Well, this fish looked considerably bigger than 20 inches. I'd have to guess 22 inches on the low end, and amazingly wide-bodied at that. Missing or losing big fish usually doesn't bother me for more than a few minutes at most, but I thought about that fish for the rest of the morning.

I reached the end of the float at noon, having caught 25 fish the last day, with 13 of them over 12 inches. All in all, another great solo float on my special creek, even though the fishing wasn't up to past years.

[LittleRedFisherman]

Great post as always Al, I could almost see what I was reading! Those big ones that get away make for better stories later usually, would of loved to see you land that possible 22 incher tho, wow that would of been a dandy!

[fishinwrench]

Yep, that was a good read. Pushed me over the edge to hitting the forbidden stretch of one of my favorite creeks. If I suddenly seem absent I may have gotten shot or thrown in jail.

Wish me luck

[Jeff Tief]

Might have been older brother trying to sneak up on you again.

[Mitch f]

Great story Al, Even a guy with ADHD can enjoy that story.

Couple of things, I would have done the exact same thing you did by pulling over and waiting a bit for a fish like that, up to 30 minutes if I had time. This wasn't your first rodeo, or the fishes either, for that matter! Second, I might have followed up with a tube or worm (maybe that's what you did). Gosh, I wish you would've caught that hawg, I would've loved to have seen that picture!!

BTW, what size gunfish were you using? Also, you mentioned something that's very noteworthy....you got the big girl to hit after the forth of fifth twitch of the rod tip. Seems like all my bigger topwater fish hit within the first 5 ft or so. That's proving how good the element of surprise can be with a good WTD bait. Which is why getting the cadence started quickly on those baits is so important. This is why I like that new KVD sexy dog. I've never seen a bait get the cadence started so quickly. It also rides a little lower in the water, which is good. But I would like to try the gunfish.

[Greasy B]

Great story Al, Even a guy with ADHD can enjoy that story.

Yep,

[Al Agnew]

Great story Al, Even a guy with ADHD can enjoy that story.Couple of things, I would have done the exact same thing you did by pulling over and waiting a bit for a fish like that, up to 30 minutes if I had time. This wasn't your first rodeo, or the fishes either, for that matter! Second, I might have followed up with a tube or worm (maybe that's what you did). Gosh, I wish you would've caught that hawg, I would've loved to have seen that picture!!BTW, what size gunfish were you using? Also, you mentioned something that's very noteworthy....you got the big girl to hit after the forth of fifth twitch of the rod tip. Seems like all my bigger topwater fish hit within the first 5 ft or so. That's proving how good the element of surprise can be with a good WTD bait. Which is why getting the cadence started quickly on those baits is so important. This is why I like that new KVD sexy dog. I've never seen a bait get the cadence started so quickly. It also rides a little lower in the water, which is good. But I would like to try the gunfish.

Mitch, it was the Gunfish 95. I've used the smaller one but it's really small and tricky to get to walk. The 95 is very easy to walk. And I agree that getting the cadence started immediately is important, especially in clear water. Quite a few fish hit them on this trip on the first twitch.

It was tough to choose what to throw at that big one on the second try, but I didn't opt for something slow because I'd been trying the slow stuff off and on the whole trip with nothing but a few little ones to show for it. So when I came back to it I made a few really precision casts with the twin spin because it had been producing more and better fish. The casts were perfect, but not good enough.

[Mitch f]

Those big fish are just too smart. After thinking about it for a while, If I thought the fish was strictly attacking the lure for "get the heck out of my territory" reasons, I might have tried the special bomber long A, since the bigger profile might just tick him off.(forgive me for suggesting just really into it) But in reality I would have done the same thing you did. Please go back and get him!!!! I want to see the picture!!