GLENWOOD -- Sunday was, as my grandmother used to say, hotter 'n the hinges of Hades, but it was perfect for an old-fashioned baptism on the Caddo River.
Rex Nelson, a chronicler of the southwest Arkansas lifestyle, posted a photo of the event on his Facebook page. I passed through that section of the Caddo too late to see it, but I experienced some tremendous smallmouth fishing.
The water was like bathwater and offered little relief from the sun. I didn't believe bass would be active in those conditions, but I was wrong. They bit even better than they did on Crooked Creek a few days before, and that's saying a lot.
Miss Laura, flush from a three-day dash down the Buffalo River with our son Matthew, assembled this trip on short notice. The lineup included our four daughters and Matthew, but my son Ethan also joined us, as did our son Daniel and his girlfriend Tessa Tackett. Our neighbor Martha Roark completed the crew.
We left a shuttle vehicle at the Amity public access and launched at the Glenwood public access eight miles upstream. While I waited for Miss Laura and Miss Martha to return, I observed a diverse collection of people enjoying the day. Families picnicked in the shade, and children frolicked in the water.
One young man leaped from the old railroad trestle into a deep hole next to one of the concrete pilings. The trestle is high -- maybe 100 feet -- and it seemed like the fellow took a long time to reach the water. He screamed and windmilled his arms all the way down.
The river at Glenwood was in a regrettable state. The weedbeds lining the river were full of plastic bottles, Styrofoam cups, aluminum cans, fast food wrappers, diapers and other flotsam. Paddlers are required to carry mesh trash bags aboard their canoes and kayaks, and we wish other visitors to the river would show it more respect.
A few hundred yards downstream from Glenwood, in a shady eddy, a human body appeared to be snagged in a tangle of tree branches on the waterline. It was a young man, eyes closed and motionless, with the current cutting a wake around his head. As Daniel and Tessa floated past, Daniel asked loudly, "I wonder if he's there voluntarily?"
The man opened one eye in a slit to give Dan an icy glare.
We continued to a long, shallow pool with several deep creases and a vein of rocks in the shade of the south bank. As a procession of kayakers and tubers floated past, as I assembled my gear.
I tied on an old bait in a new color, a Zoom Tiny Brush Hawg in root beer/pepper/green. It's a little lighter than the pumpkin/red or watermelon/red that I usually use in streams, but it matched the color of the rocks and substrate here a little better. I also gave some to Daniel, who went upstream to fish a riffle.
I cast into the shade and hopped the Brush Hawg across the bottom. About halfway back, the bait hung on something substantial that yielded slightly when I hauled back on the rod. I thought it was a stick until it disengaged, and I suspected that I had missed a strike. Only a big fish hits that way.
I didn't sting the fish with a hookset, so I cast to the same spot. This time there was no doubt. I set the hook hard on a wrist-jarring thump. My rod bowed over as the fish dragged line off the reel. I hit the record button on my GoPro just as the fish made the first of several spectacular jumps.
A family on a raft of inner tubes stopped to watch the show and chattered excitedly as Tackett cheered me on. It was 17-inch, smallmouth bass, bigger than any I caught on Crooked Creek. A few minutes later, I caught another that measured 16 inches.
Daniel, meanwhile, slayed them in the riffle.
"I'm catching them all before they get to you!" he yelled.
"Not all of them," replied Tackett, who stood behind me, shooting photos.
I try to float this section of the Caddo at least once a year, but it has changed a lot since this time last year. Logs and flood flotsam have closed off one major rapid, requiring a portage across a gravel bar. That's about 100 yards upstream from a line of low bushes along a narrow run that flipped my boat last year while floating with Matthew and my brother-in-law Mike McNutt. I lost two rod-and-reel combos and a bunch of other gear in that wreck. Matt and I found most of it a few days later, but not the rods and reels.
The bushes grabbed another of my most prized rigs and yanked it off my kayak before I could grab it. It was a Lew's Speed Spool baitcasting reel on a Falcon Lowrider rod. Miraculously, the hook snagged a limb, and the rig dangled by a thread.
Not far downstream was another run that was almost cut off by flood debris. A giant tree and rootwad forms a wall in front of a round, deep hole that makes a 90-degree turn. The passage is open, but the pool is too small to turn a boat. My kayak plowed into the branches, so I had to get off, extricate the boat and turn it by hand.
That's tricky in deep, swift water, but it was even trickier after my leg became entangled in a mass of barbed wire on the bottom. The boat held me afloat, but if it got momentum the wire might shred my leg or worse, pull me under. I was able to lift my leg high enough to unwrap the wire before the force of the boat in the current pulled it taut.
From there, I paddled only in open water and walked the boat through rapids and riffles. It was well past dark when I reached the takeout.
In its present condition, portions of that stretch are almost unnavigable. A chainsaw brigade would do it wonders.
Sports on 08/02/2015