Eleven Point River Trip Report -- 12/08/07

[Matt Tucker]

The path to hell is paved with good intentions. At least that must have been the weatherman's motto as Brent McClane and I discussed taking the drift boat down to the Eleven Point this weekend. Earlier in the week, the forecast was for a high in the upper 50's / low 60's and cloudy on Saturday but the weather report slowly degraded to a high in the upper 40's for Saturday by the time we rolled out of St. Louis around 5:30pm on Friday.

The trip down was pretty uneventfull in terms of travel. We made good time and stopped off in Rolla for dinner at the steak joint off of Hwy. 63 directly across from the Rolla Lion's Park. Don't waste your time. It wasn't very good, and definitely not what I would call a steak place; it was more along the lines of a Ponderosa.....but not as nice.

We met up with Brian Sloss (one of the owner's of Eleven Point Canoe Rental) around 10pm on Friday night at Eleven Point Canoe Rental to arrange for a shuttle and to pick up some of his choice flies (sorry he was out of MOAT's so no photos) and get the latest fishing report. Here is where I got to give props to Brian -- he could have just told us to come up to the shop on Saturday morning at 7am to fill out the shuttle paperwork and what not; but instead he met us at his shop and opened it up (selling us a few flies) got us hooked up for the shuttle and even had us follow him to Rose Cottage (the place we were going to stay for the weekend......an UNBELIEVABLE deal at $45/night for 2 guys). McClane even commented that it was the nicest fishing cabin he has stayed in; and trust me there was no cabin about it, as the place was just darn nice. After getting settle in and watching a little TV, we ended up hitting the save around 11:30pm.

(Above is an image of the rig sitting on the Alton town square as we left Grandma's Kitchen after a very tasty breakfast)

Up at 5:45am on Saturday morning and a quick stop off at Grandma's Kitchen for breakfast (a great little restaurant on the square in the town of Alton....with some nice deer mounts on the wall) and we were at Greer Access by 7am (the only car in the boat ramp parking lot....other than a guy hiking the Ozark Trail that pulled up as we were rigging the boat) and on the water shortly after that.

After debating on what to wear on the river, I was glad I threw on the long johns in addition to the fleece as only two words can describe the day we had on the river -- COLD and WET.

The fishing was not as good as my previous trip to the river but we did catch enough to keep us interested. The flies of choice were a beaded SJW, bh gold ribbed hare's ear rubber leg, Don's Crawfish, and little cream colored fly that McClane ties. We also threw black stoneflies, but didn't pick up a fish on them.

(Above photo is of McClane and his dog Tucker with an Eleven Point River rainbow caught near Greer Access)

I can't say enough about Brent's dog. He is just a good dog plain and simple. This was his second trip in the drift boat, but he is welcome any time. He toughed out the rain and cold better than Brent and I did, and was wiped out by the end of the day.

(Above photo was a typical scene throughout the day, as Tucker would "kennel up" on the bow of the drift boat.)

The river was lower than my last trip, and according to Brian Sloss, this is the lowest the river gets. It was definitely lower than my first trip down during Eleven Point Canoe Rental's Ozark Fly Flinger's event.

Floating the Eleven Point in places makes the White River look like a walk in the park, with several areas being tough to fully extend my 9 1/2ft oars.

(Above photo was taken along one of the 4 or 5 islands we came to during the float.)

Because of this the boat got a few more battle scars -- both that the hands of me and McClane during his first time on the oars. However, in the immortal words of Shane Falco "Pain heals, chicks dig scars, and glory lasts forever." They aren't anything that a little Goop SuperMend won't fix......a couple of boxes of it. We definitely left a few white marks on the rocks for sure. A few of them were definitely our fault; as there were a couple that began with a "oh come on you can make it" or "man I think we should go left and not right as Brian told us" but we got more laughs than cringes out of it and after a few of them I definitely am impressed with the durability of the fiberglass......and we will just leave it at that.

(Above photo is a shot of one of the "many" rocks we did battle with...you can just see it in the bottom right of the frame.)

We spent way too much time fishing the upper river, and since we really didn't have a good way to gauge how far we had to go to the take-out we pushed it pretty hard during the later part of the day.

(The Eleven Point is full of just "good looking" runs such as the one in the photo above. We spent a TON of time exploring this area.)

(Here is a photo of Brent and Tucker in the drift boat coming down the first island.)

As the fog settled into the valley and stole what little light we had on the river -- it was around 3pm or so when we made it to Mary Decker Shoals. We spent the rest of the time trying to row out before we lost light -- but did make time to stop and fish to a few fish that we spotted along the way.

(The photo above was shot just above Mary Decker Shoal and is a great section of river to fish.)

I definitely think that the Eleven Point is the most scenic trout stream I have been on in Missouri. We saw a ton of fish in the river this trip, more than the last trip, and even saw a couple of 20"+ fish which was very cool to see. The fish are some of neatest colored fish you can see anywhere and they had a ton of color on them this weekend.

We fished all day, and only saw one other person (the guy that we ran into hiking the Ozark Trail). Which was actually fairly funny, to give you an idea of how long we fished the upper section of the stream (we saw this guy and the first words he mentioned was something along the lines of asking us if we planned on camping at Mary Decker this evening...we ran into him in the afternoon). We pulled off the river just a the daylight began to fade, and by the time the boat was squared away and we were out of our waders we were using the light from the truck and driving out with headlights into the Ozark fog.

Brian left me a note in the car about meeting him and his business partner Ryan for dinner at the Possum Grape in Alton and after a quick call we were set. While they have a real limited menu, the food is generally pretty goods and the pork chops that we all ate were some of the best that I have eaten anywhere. It was over dinner that we learned of the impending ice storm that was supposed to hit somewhere north of I-44. After kicking around the idea, checking the radar and hazardous weather warnings, and making a few phone calls -- we decided to drive back to STL on Saturday night (after fishing all day). We left Alton around 8:00pm or so and rolled in to my driveway and iced up vehicles and trees around 12am this morning. After seeing all the ice on my driveway and trees / grass this morning, we probably made the better decision.

I haven't seen the video or McClane's photos yet, so we will see how they turned out and I will post them later. Thanks for reading.

--Matt Tucker

[Danoinark]

As always Matt very nice report of your adventure...but I must know what it cost you to have McClain name his dog Tucker????

Dano

[Mark]

Nice report - we talked about going to the Eleven Point last weekend but the weather scared us a little.