Season Finale

HUNTSVILLE — Hard-core river rats can float almost any stream no matter how low the water. It depends on how much they’re willing to walk.

Wading and walking kept muscles limber and feet cool during a canoe trip down the War Eagle River Friday.

The War Eagle, Northwest Arkansas’ backyard stream, looked as low as we’d ever seen it. The trickle of water at the War Eagle Mill didn’t faze us. The lower the water, the better the fi shing.

Our five-mile float was the perfect way to observe the last day of summer and anticipate the good things autumn brings to the outdoors.

Alan Bland of Rogers and I bumped our way along gravel and asphalt to the Gar Hole low-water bridge five miles upstream from the mill. We’d fish, paddle and walk our way downstream to a private takeout near the mill.

Our record for getting out and walking the canoe is 19 times on a War Eagle float. That was in November 2009. We knew we’d be walking a lot that trip so we decided to count.

We missed 19 by one walk on Friday, walking the canoe 18 times in five miles, thanks to the dry summer that’s kept streams at record lows.

Neither of us mind the ankle-deep walks. We stretch our legs and cool sandled feet in the refreshing, clear water.

Nor did we pay much mind to new road blocks across the river in the form of freshly fallen trees. All the more exercise pulling the boat around some toppled timber or carrying it past a tangle of brush.

This last day of summer wasperfect and we were in the perfect place - the river.

Bland reveled in the wooded and rocky shore, the gorgeous water and being immersed in the wild.

“This is what I like the most,” Bland said, putting his paddle down. “Just nature and enjoying the scenery. Hear those crickets?”

A woodchuck popped out of a crevice in a shelf of rock to look us over, saw enough and vanished back inside.

Low bluffs cradle the War Eagle on its 60 or so miles through Madison and Benton counties and a slice of Washington County. Bright gravel bars are fine spots to beach a canoe or kayak to swim, have a picnic or wade and fi sh.

OUT AND DOWN

The half-mile run immediately below the Gar Hole bridge is a gnarly stretch of snags and thin water. That got our count of walks off to a quick start.

Finally we drifted into the first deep pool, under a canopy of trees and welcome shade.

Paddling the War Eagle is joy enough. Superb fi shing is the frosting inside the Oreo. Fine smallmouth bass fishing is its angling claim to fame, with catfish and all kinds of sunfish in the mix.

No. 1 lure out of the box for Bland is always a Zoom Tiny Brush Hog, a soft plastic creation that imitates a crawdad.

Pools produced several sunfish and average-sized smallmouth bass for Bland. Fish ignored the tube bait I was tossing and Bland was putting the spank. Another bite salted the wound.“That one hit hard,” Bland said, playing the fi sh. “Look there! He just coughed up a minnow.”

The plastic canoe hull scraped the pebbled stream bottom and signaled another walk. None of our 18 strolls were lengthy, maybe 30 yards max.

With no passengers aboard, the canoe fl oated in an inch of water. We gently pushed it along.

Halfway through the trip we were up to walk No. 10 in low water occasionally blocked by trees.

“This maple’s still got leaves. It must’ve just fallen,” Bland said.

He pushed the canoe under the thick trunk and popped it out the other side.

FISH EATS FISH

Our lunch stop beneath a tall bluff beckoned, but not before we fished one of the best pools on the War Eagle.

A tap on my tube bait meant a knock from a fi sh. We watched a hand-sized Ozark bass, or goggle-eye, do battle in the clear water.

It wasn’t this fish’s day. Not only was it hooked, buta mammoth smallmouth bass, at least 20 inches of mean, tried to eat the goggle-eye on my line.

Bland about fainted.

“He was trying to eat your fish. He thought it was hurt. That smallmouth was every bit of 3 pounds,” Bland gasped, almost hyperventilating.

“He had to be to go after a 5- or 6-inch fi sh.”

Could be that goggle-eye didn’t want to be released when I tossed it back into the water.

Missing that smallmouth wasn’t much heartbreak. The one that got away came after lunch, in a pool that’s round as a washtub.

A big smallmouth ambushed the white buzz bait I reeled across the surface. My bronze trophy reared up, shook its mighty head and was gone.

THE LAST SHOAL

Squadrons of wood ducks took flight while we drifted toward the last shoal beforethe backwater of the War Eagle Mill low-head dam.

I studied the shoal and planned a route through it while Bland fi shed.

Movement flashed in the shallow water about 50 yards downstream. A critter bolted from shorae, but it wasn’t a buck or doe.

It was a bobcat and I’ll swear on a stack of fi shing magazines it was. There was no mistaken its pointed ears and big body, three or four times the size of a house cat.

Before I could alert my buddy, the big cat vanished into a tangle of shoreline brush.

That’s only the second bobcat I’ve seen in my life. The other was years ago, deer hunting from a tree stand near Garfi eld.

So low was the water and our pace so relaxed that we arrived at our take-out two hours later than usual.

No need to rush on a beautiful day, the last one of summer.