One Trip Before The Cold Hits...

[Al Agnew]

We got back to Missouri from Montana on Saturday, and when I saw the weather forecast for this week (and apparently next week, too) it looked like if I was going to get in a fishing trip before the cold weather it would have to be today, even though the forecast called for strong winds. Wind is always a problem in the fall because it blows lots and lots of fresh leaves into the river, but other than that it looked to be a great day to be on the water. I started out planning to fish the Meramec, but when I looked at the river gauges I saw it was very low. I THINK I could have run the stretch I wanted to fish, but it wouldn't have been easy. And I figured low water meant clear water as well, and the Meramec doesn't always fish well when it's very clear. So to make sure it was a relaxing trip, even though I didn't expect the fishing to be much if any better because I KNEW it would be clear, I decided to drive down to Current River.

I wasn't in a huge hurry. I got into the vicinity of where I planned to fish about 9:30, and decided to drive in to an access I hadn't been to in many years to see if it was usable. Getting in required fording a creek, which turned out to not be much of a problem, but once I got to the river I saw that the gravel bar launch was going to be a big one. It was simply too shallow for too far out into the river to make getting the boat off and on the trailer anything but very difficult, especially by myself. So I left to go to an access 20 miles away that I knew was a good one.

So it was after 10 before I got on the water. I motored downstream to the first good pool and found the leaf problem to be about as bad as I expected. And the water was very clear, probably 10 feet of visibility. I fished jerkbaits through the pool where I could find openings in the leaves, and got a couple of strikes and several close examinations...the clear water makes the fish picky on jerkbaits. But the water temps were in the low 50s, which just cried out for jerkbait fishing. I finally caught a 10 inch smallie to lose the skunk.

I motored down to the next pool. On a short stretch of sandy sloping bottom in between rocky areas, I found a school of smallmouth and caught a couple of small ones. All of them I had following the jerkbait were in the 10-14 inch range, but there were a dozen of so. I slipped down a few yards farther, and finally saw a big bronze flash at the jerkbait. I set the hook into a pretty, though lean, 18 incher.

That was it for that pool. The next one produced nothing. Running the motor between them was getting to be more and more of a problem as the wind blew more and more leaves onto the water. I was having to stop and clean leaves out of the intake about every couple hundred yards, and had to make sure it was clean before running any shallow area. So when I made it to another bluff pool with a big spring fed slough running off it, I decided that was as far downstream as I wanted to go. I went up into the slough, hooking a nice pickerel and having a bunch of largemouth look the jerkbait over, with a 10 incher finally taking it.

The pool turned out to be shallower than I thought, and only produced one little smallmouth. So I headed back upstream, dodging leaf mats and having to stop again and again to clean leaves out of the motor. I put on a hair jig and re-fished the pool where I'd caught the 18 incher and the sand bank where the school of smaller fish had been, but caught nothing. I finally made it back up to the first pool I'd fished, which is always the most consistent pool in this stretch. The wind was honking upstream so hard that I could work my way up the pool with the trolling motor, against the current, and the jig was heavy enough to drop through most of the leaves, so I fished it carefully with the jig, and was rewarded with a dozen smallies, most of them small but a couple of 12 inchers and a 14 incher. Shadows were covering the whole river by the time finished fishing it, and though I could have gone upstream past the access to another pool I knew held fish, I decided to call it a day.

Hey, 18 or so smallies, no people, several eagles...glad I was able to squeeze in the trip before the arctic blast.

[Chris Barclay]

Sounds wonderful! I spent the day in jury duty...

[fishinwrench]

Sounds wonderful! I spent the day in jury duty...

Ahh the gravy of a defense attorney.... Knowing that the hardest thing he has to do is confuse 6 people who aren't sharp enough to get themselves excused from jury duty.

Sorry, couldn't keep that one in.

[Chris Barclay]

Ha! Yeah, I tried to get out with the whole ''I'm self employed, if I don't work I can't be a productive member of society" sort of thing but I guess I wasn't convincing enough that it'd be a hardship for me. Oh well...