Trip Report - Rush to Shipps

[Mitch f]

Beautiful, that ultra clear water is so tough.

[ColdWaterFshr]

Happy to hear from Ken.  Miss the dude.  Hope you are well my friend.

[Gavin]

Nice Ken, looked like you packed lightly! 

[Forsythian]

Andrew!  Good to hear from you as well.  I'm doing great, hope you and the family are well.  Gavin, I've always liked the gear and the comfort that goes with it, plus I've lost 80 lbs in the last year which leaves me with even more gunnel to work with 🙂

 

[curtisce]

On 10/4/2020 at 5:28 PM, Forsythian said:

I used Buffalo River Float Service, they keep the vehicle there on their lot until your take out day.  80 seemed a little steep, but Eleven Point is up to 60 this year so I guess it's proportionate.  Peace of mind on take out day has value.

Snagged, there were two pair of kayakers who passed me on day 1, after that I saw only 1 other person on horseback in 2 days.  All in all more people than I was hoping for 😐

i was looking on google earth to see what roads you would take to shuttle. I'd say $80 is cheap.

[gotmuddy]

16 hours ago, curtisce said:

i was looking on google earth to see what roads you would take to shuttle. I'd say $80 is cheap.

Very, I use Riley Outfitters to shuttle.  You pick someone up, they ride with you and then drive your vehicle back to their place.  Private property.

[budman]

We got back from our trip from Dillard's to Shipps. The weather was great, water was super clean which made the fishing a little tough. Camped three nights, at Gage Bluff upstream from Rush, Smith Bluff/Fish Trap Shoal then across from Brush Creek at Shield's Chute. All were nice flat spot with small rock gravel bars. The fish would head for part unknown if you got within 30 feet of them so we didn't catch much the first day. Starting the second day I started casting as far in front of me as possible and reeling in as slow as possible and this seemed to be the best method. Caught most everything on a 3 inch soft craw in dark olive. Largest one was a little over 14 inches but most in the 10 inch range. Only caught a few on my fly rod and they were all in the 6-8 inch range and don't think I caught more than one on anything I tried. There were two other guys putting in at Dillards when we started and they were stopping at Rush so we had the river to ourselves until the last morning when several boat motored up from the White. We did pass the AGFC crew on the second day doing a mussel study somewhere above Middle Creek. The nights were clear and cool so we could see the Milkyway and the sleeping weather was great. We saw lots of eagles and a couple owls, there we lots of deer along the river with a couple out in the water grazing on the algae, three flocks of turkeys and lots of Turkey Vultures and we even say a couple otters. We usually try to go light and eat backpack meal for dinner and sandwiches for lunch but this year we took some nice steaks, mashed potatoes and purple hull peas for the first night. Think we started a new tradition. Always love the lower Buffalo for the isolation. Water at Dillards when we started on Monday was 145 CFS and went down to 129 CFS by the time we got off on Friday so we had to get out drag about 6-7 times and the long pools were slow but we had no wind so the paddling was easy. The White was flowing above 16000 CFS so it was backing up the Buffalo and with the only head wind we had the whole trip made the last couple mile a little tough but the 5.5 miles down to Shipps took less than an hour.  

[budman]

None of the fish picture came out sharp but here is a couple more of the trip.

[Johnsfolly]

Sounds like an awesome trip. Thanks for the report.

[Forsythian]

Great report!