War Eagle Area

[hoglaw]

I've always stuck to the creeks and rivers and electric motor lakes. When I was in college my uncle put an old bass tracker with a 25 at his dock in the Rambo area for me to use. I never was very good at the lake fishing stuff. But since I bought my river boat, I've been venturing into new areas. Last weekend it was Shadow Lake on the Elk. This Wednesday I decided to fish the war eagle area before heading to a poker game in Springdale that night.

I launched at sidewalk hole and ran up the river a ways. Not as far as I could have, but at one point I got out of the channel without realizing it. I was running wide open when I realized I was in pretty shallow water. I started to turn and rubbed the bottom. It was just slick mud, but it was only a few inches deep. It scared the heck out of me so I just turned as slowly as I could towards the channel and kept it wide open. My jet was blowing mud out the back like crazy the whole way. Won't make that mistake again.

I only caught five bass. Two were little, two were slightly bigger, and the biggest went maybe 2lbs. I caught two on a jig and three, including the biggest, on a spinnerbait. A slow retrieve around wood was the key. Talked to some guys at the ramp and got some good intel, so I think I'll start spending a lot more time out there. I'm anxious to find out how far I can run up the river from there.

I've got access to a 15 acre pond that's full of hydrilla and big bass that like frogs. It's hard to make myself fish in other places, but once you've caught every fish in a pond, there's something to be said for catching "wild" fish. The bass out there should keep getting better for the next couple of months so I'm excited to do some more exploring. The guys I talked to were crappie fishing. They said they just caught one big one.

[npierceuark]

I've had some dynamite fishing up that arm when the water is right. I like it when you get far enough up that there is a little current, seems to congregate the fish a bit more. Never caught any monsters but always seem to get into some. Very few people way up there as well which is always nice.

[hoglaw]

Hit it again yesterday and pretty much struck out. Caught one largemouth and missed what felt like a decent bite. Fiancee never caught one. We went to the same area, but went as far up the War Eagle as I thought I could go. There's a tree that looks like it's all the way across the creek. There might have been some room to go around it but I couldn't see. It was getting very shallow and I didn't want to get stuck. We fished from about one to six, so I missed the evening hour. Didn't do much other than run banks with a spinnerbait since it was a little windy and I wanted to make sure she could fish too. I saw a ton of small baitfish a good ways up the creek. The surface was alive, and it looked like there were small whites chasing them with the occasional big splash. Acres and acres of bait fish.