Hail to the Kings

Feisty smallmouths make for memorable trip

Alan Thomas of Russellville admires a chunky smallmouth bass caught Monday on the Kings River. In the shallow, crystal-clear water, many times the anglers could see the smallmouth and Ozark bass approach their lures and pick them up.
Alan Thomas of Russellville admires a chunky smallmouth bass caught Monday on the Kings River. In the shallow, crystal-clear water, many times the anglers could see the smallmouth and Ozark bass approach their lures and pick them up.

BERRYVILLE -- Driving through Damascus, I glanced at the worn Jeep Liberty in the lane beside me.

The driver wore a crash helmet with a visor.

There wasn't a bit of glass in this vehicle. Not even a windshield. It had one tail light and no tag. A ratcheting strap encircled the vehicle to keep the rear doors shut. It smoked, and parts fell from the undercarriage at every curve.

From my experience, a great spectacle always portends great fishing.

It came to be hours later when I joined Alan Thomas of Russellville for a long-anticipated, oft-postponed fishing trip on the Kings River.

Al fished the Kings twice in the past few weeks and reported the fishing to be excellent. He claimed to have caught a 19-inch bass that escaped while he fumbled for his phone to snap a photo. He knows the rule. No photo, no fish. That didn't prevent him from pleading his case.

As we prepared our gear on the gravel bar at the U.S. 62 bridge, Al cranked up Dwight Yoakam's 3 Pears album. One track, "A Heart Like Mine," reminded me very much of The Monkees, with a heavy dose of Mike Nesmith.

I give the Monkees more credit than most, and I've given Dwight Yoakam less. I give him his due now, and those tunes will live forever in my mind as the soundtrack for what became the Great Kings River Smallmouth Massacre.

"We've got fishing kayaks, and we're wearing '47 Gear' Razorbacks caps," Al said, channeling Elwood Blues. "That means two things. The Hogs are going to win 10 games this year, and you and I are going to rip some lips!"

Our plan was to tow our kayaks upstream until about evening and float back down. The river was very low, and first glance made this plan appear dubious. I suspected that we'd probably have to tow the kayaks a good way back downstream, too.

The best water started a couple hundred yards upstream, Al said, but after four hours on the road, I was ready to wet a line. I started fishing immediately, and Al succumbed to peer pressure. We caught a couple of smallmouth bass immediately, and we never stopped.

"This is the start of the trophy section," Al said. "A keeper has to be 18 inches, and this place has got them. You'll freak. The farther we go, the better it looks."

It probably looked better a week or two ago when the water was higher. Knee deep was stretching it on this trip, and it was gin clear. The amount and diversity of baitfish astounded me, and with our Oakley polarized high-definition shades, we could see smallmouths on the bottom a long way distant.

"It's like a bigger version of Sylamore Creek," Al said.

As always, Al threw watermelon/red Zoom Tiny Brush Hawgs. I had several bags of those, but I gave fish a different look with watermelon/red Yum Craw Papis. Both were good choices.

Fishing side by side, we cast to every eddy, to every seam and behind every rock. Almost every fifth cast produced a bite, but it was hard to evaluate the quality of fish because they bit so aggressively. A little smallmouth usually gives a series of rapid tugs. Over time, we've learned to refrain from setting the hook on those bites because we're not interested in little fish.

We didn't get many of those kind of bites on this trip. Most fish struck with the hard, jolting thump of a big bass. Other times they picked it up and carried it across the stream, which also is something that a big fish does. We spent the entire day ramming hooks home on fish that turned out to be 10 inches or shorter.

But my, they fought so hard. I caught one that seemed so determined to escape on a cloud. With every leap, Al and I cheered.

"Whoa! Down goes Auburn!" Al yelled with the first jump.

"Take that, Les Miles!" he yelled at the second jump.

"Rip lips, Saban!" he yelled with the third jump.

That one fish almost got us through an entire season.

In other places, the water was so clear that we watched fish approach a lure and pick it up. We watched the fish get yanked sideways with the hookset, and they astounded us with the ferocity of their runs and surges. It was hard to believe such small fish could strip line from the drag.

In addition to smallmouths, we also caught a lot of Ozark bass. They hit hard and fight hard for one good run before giving up. However, a couple of these Kings River goggleyes battled all the way to the hand.

We arrived at our turnaround point at about 6:30 p.m. The sun was beginning to dip behind the mountains. This was the deepest water we encountered, but the fish had stopped biting. I tried a couple of topwater lures and a crankbait, and Al tried a jointed crankbait.

It was over. With no moon, the fish were feeding in the middle of the day, and sunset was their time of rest. We took a refreshing plunge and secured our gear for the ride back.

Al has a Pelican kayak that you can pick up and carry with one hand. My Ascend FS12T sit-on-top weighs more than a Buffalo canoe, but it displaces scarcely any water. I cleared several shoals that were barely wet, and my keel touched gravel only a couple of times in water that would have grounded a canoe.

Al's Pelican draughts deeper, and he broke his paddle trying to muscle through one shoal, a feat that produced much boasting.

We lost the exact count, but we both caught about 30 fish, mostly smallmouths. The big ones eluded us, but we know where to find them.

With Dwight Yoakam ringing in my years, I savored a crimson sunset as a thin mist rose from Carroll County's verdant hollows. It had a distinctive Arkansas feel about it.

Sports on 07/27/2014

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