Little Red River Warm-up

This morning I had to wake up at 3:00am to drive Cheryl and the C-ster to the Little Rock, AR airport.  They are going home to Utah to visit our parents.  I will be following them in a week for a week and a half of fly-fishing, backpacking, and grouse hunting.  The itinerary is still not set, but you can bet I will be trying to maximize my use of the daylight hours!  More on that as it happens.

Since I was in Little Rock at 6:00am, I took my fly gear and made a quick jaunt to the Little Red River.  The midsouth has been very dry this spring and summer, and the Little Red River has been very low.  So were my expectations.  Which was good, because the fishing was quite slow. 

The weather was cool and overcast, which is quite a reprieve from the blazing summer we have been having.  Wet wading was actually a bit chilly!


Light mist on the Little Red River remained for most of the morning.

I did have a little success, bringing a half dozen trout to hand, including a pretty 10" wild brown, and losing about as many.  Overall it was pretty slow though.


In case you forgot, this is what a planter rainbow looks like.

Recently I read a piece on finpusher.com about the importance of harvesting fish that would not survive catch and release.   So this trip I brought a few feet of old backing to use as a stringer and a gallon zip lock bag, just in case.  I had no intention of using it.  I have been experimenting with a new-for-me streamer from finpusher.com called the Provo Hooker.  I was just testing how it looked in the water and surprise! I caught a fish with it just goofing around! The problem was it was hooked through the eye and bleeding like crazy.  I got to use my extra backing and a gallon ziplock and I will be cooking up some trout for dinner tomorrow night.  From now on, I'll be carrying the backing and ziplock in my fishing pack.  It's easy, and I think that it is the responsible thing to do.

Huh? There were about 30 Canadian Honkers flying/swimming up and down the
river.  It really made my right index finger twitch for some reason?

As I was walking out I just about stepped on a large black snake.  The last time that happened to me it was a water moccasin.  This time I couldn't see the head, so I backed off.  When the snake noticed me it moved away, showing me its head, which was clearly the head of a harmless water snake.  Getting startled had me on edge, though, and I didn't notice that I was walking through a small patch of poison ivy.  Rrrrr.  I hope that doesn't come back to haunt me in the middle of my Utah vacation!

Apparently the fish went to sleep with the geese, and I left too!

Next post will be from Utah - oh yeah!