The annual solo float, 2016

[Al Agnew]

People who have been on these pages for a while may remember that each year I post a trip report of a solo 2-3 day float I do in mid to late August on an unnamed creek that is one of the most seemingly remote streams in the Ozarks.  I wait until late in the summer, when it is usually so low that hardly anybody else would think of floating it, so I will have it to myself.  In the past it has furnished some of the best smallmouth fishing I've ever had in the Ozarks; my best trip was back in 2006, when I caught 335 bass in about 30 miles of stream, with seven of them from 17 to nearly 20 inches.  My worst trip was in 2013, when I "only" caught 155.  Last year I caught 179, with three from 18 to almost 20 inches.  The creek does seem to be declining in fishing, but I wouldn't miss doing this float for the sheer beauty and solitude, if nothing else.

We always come back from Montana sometime in August, mainly so I can do my float on this creek.  This time we left Montana last Friday, planning on three days to get back to Missouri.

Friday night, just before we reached our hotel for the night, I got sick as a dog.  At first we thought it was some very rare hamburger I'd eaten at lunch, but we decided it was probably a virus.  I was hunched over the toilet much of the night, and the next morning, though my stomach had settled a bit, I felt horrible.  Mary drove all that day while I tried to sleep in the passenger seat.  By that evening, when we stopped in Lincoln, Nebraska, I was feeling somewhat better, though I still didn't want to eat much.  Sunday, however, I felt almost back to normal.

We figured out for sure it was a virus when Mary got it on Monday.  I was on a tight schedule for my annual float; it almost had to be this week, and when I'd looked at the weather forecast it looked like Tuesday through Thursday would be the days.  But when Mary got sick on Monday, those plans went on hold.  She was still sick Tuesday, so there was no way I was going to leave her home alone.  Tuesday night she still felt bad, though she was improving.  It looked like the trip window had closed.

I woke up at 7 AM yesterday morning.  Mary was up and stirring around, and she said she felt back to normal.  She said, "You ought to go fishing somewhere today."  I had just been lying in bed thinking about it; I could cut about 7 miles off the 30 mile float and do it in two days...if I could get my stuff together and be away from the house in a couple of hours.  I suggested that to Mary.  

"Uh, no, the guy is coming to fix the water problems we've been having at 8...you gotta stick around until he finishes."  

He should be finished by 9 AM or so, I thought.  So I started rushing to get my stuff together.  I'd have to stop at a grocery store along the way to buy my food, but everything else should be easy to gather up and get packed; I have all the camping stuff stored in a big cedar closet.

Cooler with plenty of frozen water bottles for ice, check.  Dry bags, check.  Tent and ground cloth, check.  Pads and sleeping bag...wait a minute, the wall on which I hang the sleeping bags and pads is bare!  I couldn't imagine where they could be...uh oh, our niece had gone on a camping trip last week.  Had she borrowed all our stuff?  Mary texted her at school, and eventually she answered.  Yes, she had borrowed all of it for her and her friends.  Mary asked her where it was in her house, just a few miles away.  Um...she'd left it at a friend's house, 20 miles away, and the house was empty and locked during the day.

Ordinarily I take a 2 1/2 inch self-inflating foam pad, with a closed cell foam pad beneath it for initial insulation from rocks, and my summer/fall weight sleeping bag with soft sheet insert.  That was all missing.  All I had was two 1-inch Thermorest self-inflating pads that I'd had for more than 30 years.  They both had slight leaks.  And an uninsulated ground "bag" in which those pads fit, meant to be used as the bottom "pad" with a sleeping bag zipped to it for when Mary and I sleep together on camping trips.  And I could take a fleece blanket we used sitting around the house in cooler weather in case I needed more warmth.  Grumpy but undaunted, I kept packing.

Unfortunately, at 10 AM I was still waiting to leave.  Should I even bother?  I wasn't going to be on the creek until after 1 PM at this rate.  There was no good way to shorten the distance any further, I'd still have to cover 23 miles in a day and a half.  But, I knew the creek had a lot more water this year than normal; I figured I wouldn't have to do any dragging.  So I left for the stream.

I arranged the shuttle and picked up the groceries, which wasn't much.  I never take cooking gear on this trip; it's usually so hot that I don't want or need hot food.  Typically I take cold fried chicken or smoked pork steaks for supper, Oberle sausage, cheese, and potato chips for lunch, and some snack cakes for breakfast.  The steaks were out, I'd have to go into Ste. Genevieve to pick them up--wrong direction.  Rushing through the supermarket, I found they wouldn't have fried chicken or anything similar ready for another half hour.  I ended up with a hunk of the sausage big enough for both supper and the next day's lunch, the cheese, potato chips, potato salad, and a container of pudding for breakfast, along with some cookies.  It wasn't going to be gourmet eating.

Finally, I got on the creek, pushing off about 1:20 PM.  I figured I'd have to float about 8-9 miles during the afternoon, which would give me a doable mileage the next day of 14 plus miles.  The creek was, as usual, air-clear, but flowing a good 100 cfs; it usually flows 40 cfs or less this time of year.

The fishing started off well, with several decent fish hitting both topwater and the twin spin in the first couple of pools.  Then I came to a better pool, one that used to produce my first really good fish of the float.  Nothing.  That would be the pattern for the trip.  The better the water looked, the less likely it was to produce.  The upper half of this float is excellent looking habitat; deep, rocky pools everywhere.  They just didn't produce many fish, and the few fish I did catch from them were always at the very head or very tail of the pool, even though there was enough current throughout the pool to hold fish.  That wasn't the way it used to be; in the better years I'd catch fish throughout these pools.

I tried a lot of stuff.  Several WTD lures, both big and little, noisy and quiet.  Whopper Plopper.  Buzzbait.  Homemade Subwalk.  Homemade crankbait.  Mitch's Craw.  Superfluke.  But the topwaters and twin spin were to be the main producers.

About 4:30 PM, I passed the last possible access for a number of miles.  There were a couple swimming at the access, the first two people I'd seen.  A mile downstream I came upon another couple, sitting on the bank and fishing, apparently having waded down that far.  A mile farther along...

The fish was only about 10 inches, but hit a Sexy Dawg Jr.  I was beginning to unhook it when it flopped, hard enough to free itself from my lip grip, and the rear treble sank into the pad of my left hand ring finger as the weight of the fish imbedded it.  Yep, well past the barb.

I'd hooked myself once before on this trip, but that time it was in my calf, and it was easy to remove with the string trick.  This time, it wouldn't be so easy.  You almost need two free hands for the string trick.  it's one of those things that you take your chances, floating solo in remote areas.  I was two miles downstream from an access, with no guarantee there would be anybody there by the time I got back up to it.  I was on my own.

I got the fish unhooked and released, and paddled one-handed over to the bank after unclipping the lure from my line.  I carry a multi-tool with a decent side cutter feature, but the hook was on a split ring so I figured I could just work it off the ring.  My fingernail was too wet and soft to get the ring open, but I used the pliers to open it enough to get the hook off the lure.  Now what?  The eye of the hook was pointed toward the tip of my finger, in fact, it stuck out slightly past the tip. Well, I'd figure it out.  First, I needed some string of some kind.  No shoelaces--I had on sandals.  Ah, but I'd brought a fly rod.  I could cut off a length of the fly line, perfect.

Now I had two choices.  I could tie the other ends of the line to something solid, use my right hand finger to push on the eye of the hook toward the buried barb, and yank my whole hooked hand away from what I'd tied the line to.  Or...I could put the eye of the hook against a log, push my hooked finger toward the eye, and jerk the loose ends of the string with my right hand.  That's what I opted to do.  it wasn't the perfect set-up.  I wasn't sure I was getting the eye pushed well enough to stretch the opening in my skin for the barb to emerge.  But I took a deep breath and yanked HARD.  Plink.  The hook was out, and disappeared somewhere.  Hurray!  I got back to fishing after a bit of bleeding stopped.

Camp that evening was a smallish gravel bar with one small spot of fine gravel level enough for the tent, with a big bluff across the creek.  I set up camp about a half hour before dark, sat and ate my sausage and potato salad, and right at dark I made a few casts with the topwater in the rocky run along the bar, catching four nice smallies that brought my total for the day to 69.  I'd caught one 17 incher and a couple more slightly under that length.

I read a book on Kindle on my cell phone outside the tent, but a few mosquitos ran me inside.  I kept reading, while listening to both a pair of barred owls and at least three screech owls calling.  Then I turned the phone off, and went back outside to look at the stars for a while, figuring by this time, about 10 PM, the mosquitos would have given it up for the night.  There was not a cloud in the sky and the stars were amazing, the moon not yet risen...

But wait, was that a flicker of lightning?  I'd been sure, from the forecast, that I wouldn't have to worry about nighttime thunderstorms, but now I could see those barely visible flickers of lightning.  There wasn't a cloud that I could see, but the big bluff blocked out the whole northern quadrant of the sky.  There must be a storm to the north, and judging from the almost constant flickers, it was a substantial one.  I hate thunderstorms at night when I'm in a tent, on a creek that has the reputation of flash floods.  Now I was freaked out a bit.  No chance of sleep yet.  I went back into the tent and continued reading.  Engrossed in the book, I finally realized it was midnight, and the lightning flickers seemed to have disappeared.  I breathed a sigh of relief and immediately dropped off to sleep, awakening in the gray light of dawn, the fog thick on the creek.

The fishing started off hot, for about a half hour, and then stopped.  Fish became few and far between.  I came to the one other intermediate access in this stretch, and to my dismay, I saw a truck parked at it, tailgate down, nobody around, fresh canoe drag marks on the gravel bar.  Somebody was ahead of me.

I wouldn't see them until near the end of the float, but the thought of having anglers fishing "my" water ahead of me was in the back of my mind all day.  The fishing was hot and cold, mostly cold.  I did catch a 12 inch smallie and a goggle-eye at the same time, a first for those two species together for me.  I counted five cottonmouths.  Herons, including a green heron who was perched on a dead limb and let me paddle right beneath it, so close I could have touched it with my rod tip.  Hawks.  A whole flock of vultures hanging out on and around one gravel bar. Deer.  No humans.  Gorgeous scenery that I never get tired of seeing each year.  Fun little rapids with the increased water flow.  All in all, a greeat day.

I finally came upon those other floaters with a mile to go in the float, passing them as they were sitting on a gravel bar.  They had been fishing, sure enough.  I'd caught sixty five fish fishing behind them, though none quite made 17 inches.  It was not to be a trip for big fish.  After I passed them, I caught 11 more in that last mile.  Seventy six fish altogether today, 145 for the shortened trip, a little better numbers-wise than last year.  

The big pools never did produce much.  The last miles are long stretches of very poor habitat, interspersed with a few deep pools.  I was catching fish from runs less than two feet deep, flat, gravel bottomed, no cover.  There would be one pod of fish with a half dozen or so decent ones in it in nearly every one of those runs, but I didn't even see many fish in those pools.  I'm wondering...are the pools simply getting all the pressure?  Is somebody going down the creek with a speargun or something, killing off fish in the pools?  It's weird, but it's been that way for at least two years now.

I got off the creek at 4 PM and started the long drive home, tired but as happy as always after the yearly solo float on my secret creek.

[Smalliebigs]

Sweet read as always :)....that creek is getting hammered like it never has before. There is a local contingent  there that keeps fish trust me on that... It's  a shame really as I like to say ....the Internet, destroying good fishing spots since 1998.

Also I hate hooking  myself while alone like that ugh....at least the owls were chirping 

[Greasy B]

Proof it always pays to bring a fly rod. ?

[DADAKOTA]

I never tire of reading your adventures Al.

[MOPanfisher]

Thanks Al, not quite as good as sitting on the riverbank myself, but I could a most hear the owls calling, and the river gurgling.

[Hog Wally]

Your a lucky man. 

[joeD]

I thought you always fished solo. I'm waiting to read about a trip with another human.?

Still, well written and enjoyable, as usual.

[rmokeefe1s]

Awesome write up Al, I enjoyed reading it.