Rainbows and browns

White River trip full of fun, great fishing

Bill Eldridge (above) caught the first fish of the weekend Saturday on a Blue Fox Vibrax inline spinnerbait with a rainbow trout-colored body.
Bill Eldridge (above) caught the first fish of the weekend Saturday on a Blue Fox Vibrax inline spinnerbait with a rainbow trout-colored body.

— Winter took a short break last weekend, cracking the window wide enough for two fabulous days of trout fishing on America’s finest trout stream.

Every year at this time, Bill Eldridge, Rusty Pruitt and I take a midwinter fishing adventure in north Arkansas. For the second consecutive year, we gathered at Cedarwood Lodge near Flippin, where Ken and Mary Ann Green rolled out the red carpet for us.

The occasion coincided with Eldridge’s 50th birthday, and amid the sumptuous trappings of the lodge, he lamented that we were getting soft. It’s easy to do in a place like this, where a roaring fire in the glass-fronted stove makes you glad you’re not huddled around an open fire on a gravel bar somewhere back of beyond. There is a time and a place for that, of course, but versatility is a virtue, not a liability.

Usually our boys accompany us, but they have gotten too busy to fish. My son Ethan had to work. Daniel is away at Camp Pendleton, and Matthew Eldridge is away at Baylor University. My son Matthew planned to come, but a nasty stomach bug forced him and the rest of my family to their beds hours before departure time. I was like the U.S.S. St. Louis at Pearl Harbor. I hated to leave the rest of the fleet burning at its moorings, but for the sake of self-preservation, it was imperative that I get out to sea before the second wave attacked.

We arrived late Saturday afternoon, right about the time Eldridge’s parents showed up from Branson with a big chocolate birthday cake. After a short visit with them and the Greens, we jumped in Green’s jet-powered jonboat and motored upstream to Shoestring Shoal.

Pruitt got out at the shoal to fly fish, while Eldridge and I motored up to the mouth of Crooked Creek. The inflow from Crooked Creek creates a vast eddy at the confluence. The water flowed swiftly, so we went past the confluence to a boat dock on the left. We tossed out the drag chain and drifted downstream past the confluence.

We started by throwing Blue Fox Vibrax inline spinnerbaits upstream and retrieving them slowly through the eddy seam. Eldridge caught a couple of small trout that way, but the water was too swift to work that lure properly.

After a few drifts, Eldridge switched to a drop-shot rig with three chartreuse Berkley Power Eggs on an Aberdeen hook. With a quarter-ounce weight, that rig gets deeper faster, and Eldridge caught more fish at a quicker pace.

That made a believer out of me. I ditched my Vibrax in favor of a modified drop-shot rig featuring a dandy knot that I learned from Frank Saksa, the incomparable trout guide who operates from Gaston’s Resort.

With a tandem loop entwined with four finger loops, you can attach your dropper line to the main line while retaining 100 percent line strength. I attached a quarter-ounce Sipsey sinker to the end of the main line and a short-shanked, single trout hook to the dropper. And then I broke out the new stuff.

Last year, Berkley sent an entire, self-contained trout fishing package oriented around its new Gulp Alive! trout baits. It contains a 6-6, two-piece Berkley trout rod, a Berkley spinning reel pre-spooled with 6-pound test Berkley line and a selection of Gulp Alive! trout bait. I intended to give it a full workout. Only if it didn’t work would I resort again to inline spinners, stickbaits or fly fishing.

Gulp Alive! is similar in concept to PowerBait, but I like it better. The materials are different. They’re tougher, and they come immersed in small plastic bottles full of pungent attractant that smells very garlicky, with a strong krill overtone.

I opened a bottle of bubblegum-colored worms and put one on the hook. It was not easy to get the hook through it, and it set a lot more solidly than the ultra malleable Power Bait. It won’t cast off, and snagging in moss won’t pull it off. The only way it comes off is for a fish to pull it off.

And that they did, often. The trout liked it a lot. The first cast produced a stocker sized rainbow, followed by another and another. It made a believer out of Eldridge, who ditched his Power Eggs in favor of the Gulp worms. We caught fish after fish until we left to go back to the lodge. We finished the day in our traditional fashion, with ribeye steaks as thick as phone books and as broad as hubcaps. We grilled the one we brought for Matthew and ate it for the next day’s breakfast in his honor.

The weather remained kind to us, bathing the leafless hills in welcome warmth and a gentle breeze. We spent the day at Buffalo Shoal, where Pruitt mined the runs with his trademark Flashback fly while Eldridge and I continued to mine rainbows with the Gulp baits.

The fish definitely preferred the bubblegum worm, but they bit the chartreuse Gulp salmon eggs, too. They ignored the chartreuse Niblet imitators. In mid-afternoon, I hooked a 14-inch brown trout, which to that point was the big fish of the day.

That record held until we anchored at the gravel island upstream from the lodge. Eldridge and I continued using the bubblegum worm while Pruitt, who took a break from his fly rig, cast a Rapala minnow. Eldridge got a big bite from a broad-shouldered rainbow that looked to be around 4-5 pounds. His drag was a bit too tight, however, and after a short fight, the trout yanked its head and snapped the line.

My record was safe, and Eldridge was distraught.

“First, I lost that big smallmouth on Crooked Creek, and now this,” he said. You could practically see the rain cloud gathering over his head.

“Now that you mention it, Bill, I am starting to see a pattern here,” I said. He laughed, sort of.

Winter returned Monday. It was bitter cold, driven by a fierce wind. It was clear early that the fish weren’t going to bite. However, we did see one thing we’ve never seen before.

While we fished on a flat, a bald eagle perched on a tree on the hillside across the river. Soon, another bald eagle landed beside it and chattered with a series of loud, shrill chirps. He must have had a good line because he soon hopped on her back and did the deed in a quick flurry familiar to anyone that raises poultry.

“Yo, Sammy! Get a room!” I yelled.

The male eagle launched from its perch and glided upriver, looking quite pleased with himself.

Sports, Pages 29 on 01/27/2013

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