Possible Float

[Gavin]

Sunburst lost their entire campground. Nothing left but foundations and the main house, Riverhouse, Shower House, Camp Store, & Barn are all gone. ROLF experienced a devastating loss as well. Tree houses are gone for sure, cabins on the hill probably did OK. Certainly lots of damage to all the private homes along the river too. Its a horrible situation and its very sad. It will take some time for them to clean up enough to host primitive tent camping and there is no telling what river access will be like with Hammond & James bridge washed out.  

 

[Ham]

Awful

[bkbying89]

Photos posted by ROLF showed devastation and more devastation. Very sad way to start the season. I hope they had insurance.

[Al Agnew]

The North Fork probably had the highest over the record flood of any stream in the state, so it's no surprise the amount of devastation.  Two friends of mine have houses on the river.  One lost his garage and everything in it, but the house was barely spared.  The other had water up to the second floor of his house.  First time that's ever even come close to happening with both of them.

[creek wader]

Wow, sounds like most of the Ozark streams took a pounding. Looks like I picked the wrong year to get back into float/smallie fishing. I see there's more rain on the way. I guess my May trip may have to be postponed. Is there any smallie streams that didn't get a gully washer? 

[Al Agnew]

None that I know of, however, the upper Black River got a little less water than most, as did the Bourbeuse River.  Both still had flooding that wasn't far below record level.  Expect a lot of freshly downed trees, channel changes, and far more difficult than usual floating once the rivers go down to normal levels.  The fish evolved to handle these occasional huge floods, so they should still be there, but this was a bad one as far as timing for bass, since the fry have probably just hatched in the last couple of weeks and the really little ones don't handle the massively powerful current like the adults can.  This may be a lost year class, though if the weather gets back to normal the rest of the month there will probably be some late spawning going on to furnish some fish for this year class.

[Jeff_L]

The Buffalo River got hit, but not as bad as some others.  It went to 18' at Ponca, which is really high, but not record height, and is almost back down to floatable now.  It isn't very good fishing all the way up there, but once you get past Kyle's, it gets decent.

Twin Bridges on upper N. Fork is still operating.  I have a group trip there in a couple weeks and they assure me we are OK, although I have my doubts about the length of the float.  Can probably at least do Hebron to there, but who knows.  But there's always fire and beer and stories.

[Ozark Sweetwater]

It looks like Patrick bridge might still be there. It's still tough to tell for sure. I was told that McKee bridge is still there.

[fishinwrench]

1 hour ago, Ozark Sweetwater said:

It looks like Patrick bridge might still be there. It's still tough to tell for sure. I was told that McKee bridge is still there.

Well of course it is.  ?

[JoshK]

Trying to plan a trip on the river with a drift boat.  Looking at going from Kelly Ford to Patrick. Is there enough room to go under McKee bridge in a drift boat with the knee holders. Thanks