Relaxation at the Little Red

Those other important things in life have kept me away from fishing, hunting, and fly tying recently.   Last week, though, I had a great opportunity to sneak away from Memphis for a couple days and I took it!  Then it took me over a week to post this.  Oh well.

My co-resident Brandon has a family cabin on Greer's Ferry Reservoir in Arkansas and we were invited to join him and his wife, Caroline, there for a couple days.  We accepted!  We met Brandon and Caroline after work at their place in Memphis and caravanned to the cabin, arriving late at night. Although it was dark and I couldn't tell where the water was, I could tell their cabin was out on a peninsula.  I couldn't wait until morning to explore. 

The next morning we awoke to rain, but even in through the drizzle, the setting was amazing.  Besides having a beautiful cabin, the location was perfect.  The cabin sits on a peninsula with water 270 degrees around it!  Talk about paradise!  They generated 2 units on the Little Red until 12:00, at which point they cut it back to 1 unit.  Even though it was raining, we knew that was as good as it was going to get, so Brandon and I loaded up our stuff and headed to the dam.

When we arrived at the dam there was only one person fishing, and it was pretty obvious that he wasn't the most experienced fly-fisherman in the world.  As we got our waders on he came over to talk to us.  "Did you have any luck?" I asked.  "Yeah, I caught about 40," he said.  "Forty?  Wow!  That's really good.  What were you using?"  He opened his box and pointed to a beat up hare's ear and some green caddis pupa.  "I don't know what these are called, but I caught a bunch on them.   I also had some hits with this one," he said as he pointed to an approximately size 2 Clouser.  "They had a hard time eating it, though." "So where were you fishing, if you don't mind me asking?"  I asked the question, but I already knew the answer.  "It's funny, they are all right of the end of the boat ramp."  "Yeah, that's funny," I said as I shot a look at Brandon.  We ended up chatting for another ten minutes about work and fishing, and then he went home to his family.  (FYI I only ask questions like this to people who want to talk about it.  I respect people who don't.  If I find a winning tactic/location through my own trial and error I often want to keep that to myself, and I respect that in others as well.  This gentleman clearly wanted to chat, though, and we were grateful!)

When the other fisherman left I smiled at Brandon and asked, "So do you want to do some real white trash fishing?"  "Why?"  "Because there is only one reason there are a pile of fish at the bottom of the boat ramp: the stocking truck was here this morning!"  "I don't see why we wouldn't fish there."  "I don't either, but let's make sure our hooks are good and de-barbed and we get the fish right back in the water."  "Okay."  So it was decided, we were going to pursue fish that had been swimming in a concrete chute less than 6 hours ago. 

I'll admit it, I'm a wild fish (especially native fish) geek.  Fishing for planters doesn't usually excite me.  I'll also freely admit, though, that Brandon and I had a riot.  We were laughing for much of the next three hours!  It wasn't a challenge, it wasn't an accomplishment, but it sure was fun!  After a couple dozen fish I realized that a small streamer was the ticket.  We cast down and across and stripped it erratically in.  One, two, ... , six fish would swipe at it, and then one would finally eat it.  Every cast.  You could see it all.  I would laugh every time I hooked up.  Finally we got out the camera and took a few shots. 

Brandon on the hunt.  I was going to crop out the boat ramp, but why?

We were having a blast!



Brandon's "trophy".

When Brandon grabbed the camera to take pictures of me I told him, "Get ready, you're only going to get one cast!"  Well, he waited for two casts - but I caught fish on both.  I kept track after that and I caught 8 fish in 10 casts.  Now that's good fishing!

Strip set - don't horse 'em now!

Ugly fisherman, ugly rainbow.  We were made for each other.

At 4:30 the horn at the dam sounded and soon the water was coming back up.  We picked up our things and watched as the water silently but quickly crept higher and higher.  We had caught more than our fair share of fish, and we returned to the cabin happy.

The next day they shut generation off completely at around noon, so we brought our wives with us.  Cheryl and Brandon fished while I "played guide" and took care of the C-ster.  Fishing was much tougher than the previous day (duh).  Cheryl was unable to get any takes and Brandon only caught a couple fish.  I was a bit more lucky.  In the 10 minutes before the C-ster woke up I quickly rigged my rod, tied on an elk hair caddis, and caught a small brookie.  It was my first brookie from the Little Red, and it was very pretty.  Much prettier than the brookie I caught on the Norfork in December.

My first Little Red brookie.

I then took care of my fatherly responsibilities.  After watching Brandon fish a streamer for a while, I decided to give him a little pointer. I put the C-ster in his car seat (right by us) and showed Brandon a little trick.  It must be a good trick because I caught a fish on the first cast!  "Don't tell Cheryl I just did that," I told Brandon.  "She hates it when I do that."  From a hundred yards away Cheryl yelled, "I can hear you, and I saw you catch that fish.  You're a jerk!"  Yes, yes, I am.  Later, as Cheryl was feeding the C-ster before we left, I had ten minutes to fish and caught two more fish. I was really lucky.  This was Brandon's first time fishing with me though, and he was impressed!

All in all we had a great trip with a great couple.  Thanks Brandon and Caroline for sharing your family's cabin with us.  We had a great time!