Arkansas Sportsman

Creek fishing about right choices

If you could put the ideal creek fishing day in a bottle, Saturday would have made a powerful potion.

The occasion was the first stream fishing outing of spring with Alan Thomas of Russellville. Our destination was the Mulberry River at Redding Recreation Area, near Cass.

We discussed possible venues at length the night before. We wanted to wade fish, which limited our options. One of our favorite destinations is the Buffalo River between Ponca and Steel Creek, but it was a little too high and fast for wading because of recent rains.

Same for the Big Piney near Russellville. We always have a good time at Sylamore Creek, but that was a little farther than we wanted to drive, although a pepperoni calzone at Tommy’s Famous A Pizzeria in Mountain View is a strong incentive. Then there were our more obscure haunts, like the South Fork of the Spring River and the Strawberry River. We didn’t know what shape they were in, and they are too remote to visit without accurate intel.

“Fowl Al,” as identified by his vanity license plate, strongly suggested the Mulberry River. It was a tad high Friday evening, but Thomas predicted its hour-by-hour levels.

“And you know, we’ve never had a bad trip there,” Thomas said. “If you wanna know … come on, say it with me…”

“You gotta go,” we said in unison.

We strode into the big rapid above the Redding pool Saturday at about 10 a.m. Getting there required a short stroll down a faint trail through a lowland I call the Mosquito Farm. Scores of new broods rose from the muck as we passed, but they vanished when we reached the Mulberry.

The river was swift and cloudy, which meant that smallmouth bass would probably be prowling in the open in search of crawdads and other goodies displaced by the current. That somewhat mitigated my disappointment over missing the topwater bite at dawn. The first plunge to the waist made me gasp, but it was quite comfortable once I got used to it.

Fishing the Redding Rapids is very technical. The casual angler would bypass them because they appear too rough and shallow to hold fish. They actually hold a lot of fish. The trick is to cast a soft-plastic lure above big rocks so that the current washes the lure into the eddies behind the rocks. Bass lurk in the eddies to ambush prey without having to fight the current. They’re usually small, but not always.

Here’s how it works. You fish upstream until your lure snags in the rocks. You move upstream to free your lure and keep fishing from snag to snag until you reach the next pool. All the while you have to do a crazy little dance that we call the “Mulberry Shuffle” through the slick, jagged rocks. It would be easy to break a leg if you fell while your foot was wedged between rocks.

Thomas’ favorite creek fishing lure is the Zoom Tiny Brush Hawg in watermelon/ red. I prefer the Zoom Tiny Lizard in the same color, but Saturday the Brush Hawg got twice as many bites. That also could have been because Thomas fished ahead of me most of the day.

We reached one long pool that had a small, grass-covered ridge in the middle with an old snag in the water above. Bass hit our lures eagerly, but our casts were so long that it was hard to set the hook. I switched to a Luck-EStrike square-billed crankbait and quickly caught two 10-inch smallies next to the snag.

Bites were sporadic until we reached the end of a long, deep pool about a half-mile above Redding. Bass were in the deepest part of the hole, and we caught one about every third cast. I finally got up to speed by abandoning the watermelon/red lizard and switching to watermelon/ candy. That color has never worked for me before, but it was the ticket Saturday.

Eventually we burned up our breakfast calories, and our Gatorade couldn’t keep pace with our ergs. It was nearly 5 p.m. Together we caught about 30 bass, including a beautiful 14-incher that Thomas caught. We also saw a fair number of canoes tump over, as well as some spectacular pileups.

We finished the day with a fine steak dinner in Ozark.

The whole day was worth repeating. Soon.

Sports on 05/15/2014

Upcoming Events