I've been debating how to best present our four day Memorial Day family/fishing trip to the White River area in Northern Arkansas. I've decided to break it up into four separate posts, one for each day. Each day was unique and fun, and each day the fishing was refreshingly successful. Here is the short version for those of you who just want to look at the pictures:
Friday: Lots of smallmouth.
Saturday: I caught my new personal best brown trout (yeah baby).
Sunday: Trout with the wife and baby in the morning and bass in the evening.
Monday: Bass with the wife and baby.
We were joined on this trip by Cheryl's sister Lindsey, her husband, Jason, and their six month old and two and a half year old sons. We were all busy, but we all had a great time.
Friday, May 24 - Small Creek Smallies
I finally got to fish a creek that I have been hearing about for a long time. The creek is certainly no secret, but I will refrain from using it by name as smallies react poorly to fishing pressure. Northern Arkansas has received very little moisture this spring, and the creek was very low, but we were just able to get a canoe through. Joining me for the trip was Jason, my brother in law. Jason has not fished since he was a kid, but he was really excited about going, and we had a great time.
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| The biggest smallie of the day. Beautiful fish - and man do they fight! |
Somehow we got breakfast eaten, the shuttle car to the take-out, and the canoe in the water by 6:30am. I started fishing a popper on the fly rod, but it was a green sunfish magnet. I soon put it away and opted for the spinning rod with a tube jig. I had to at least figure out how to catch them to help Jason, and although I am a fly fishing addict, I have no issues throwing spinning gear. We caught a few more bream and I even caught a couple little smallmouth.
Then it happened: I cast the tube jig in the hole in front of the roots of a downed tree, the jig drifted a couple feet and stopped. I set the hook and felt weight. I had an instant smile. After a lot of anticipation, I had a good smallie on. The fish fought stellar, bending my light spinning rod to the cork. When I got it in I admired my catch. A 13" river smallmouth. It was worth the wait!
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| My first nice smallie of the trip. I was stoked! |
For the next hour or so we continued to catch some decent smallies. Jason got in on the action too.
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Jason with a decent smallie. He did catch a really nice one, but it was hooked
deep and as soon as I got the hook out I revived it and let it go. |
Eventually we had to move down as neither of us had a watch and we didn't know how far we had gone or how far we had to go. As the day warmed the fishing slowed. I eventually got the flyrod back out and proceeded to bother the green sunfish. Eventually I caught a couple smallies on a black/brown/white craft fur clouser. Finally, I got a good hit and brought in a reasonable largemouth. It wasn't large, but it was as big as we caught in the afternoon - and I caught it on the flyrod.
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| Largemouth on a clouser. |
Overall we had a great day. The fishing was good in the morning, but slow in the afternoon. We never saw another canoe, and the creek was FULL of life: smallmouth, largemouth, sunfish, Ozark bass (more on that later), suckers, minnows, catfish, and a pile of other fish I couldn't identify. Anywhere you looked there was a school of fish. We had a run in with a large water snake in a log jam we were stuck in, but that is another story. Amazingly, the next day things only got better!
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