The summertime crowd of canoe and kayak paddlers disappears from the Elk River in autumn like leaves vanish from a colorful maple.
Visitors can number in the thousands on a summer weekend. The Elk is a different waterway in the fall, downright lonely, it seemed, during a canoe float on Oct. 30.
Float the Elk River
A popular 6-mile trip for paddlers on the Elk River is from Pineville, Mo. to the Mt. Shira public access. There is a public access on the north side of the river at Pineville, or outfitters offer fee access.
The Elk River is a Class I stream, suitable for beginners.
Information: Big Elk Camp, 417-223-4635, www.bigelkcampcanoe…
Herons are often the only dwellers seen along the shore when the weather cools. Peace and tranquility await the few paddlers who visit the river during autumn.
Elk River meanders westward through McDonald County, Mo., past the towns of Pineville and Noel before flowing into Grand Lake in eastern Oklahoma. The float plan for this trip was to canoe from Big Elk Camp at Pineville to a low-water bridge five miles downstream.
Russ Tonkinson of Rogers loaded paddles, lunch, life jackets and fishing gear into the canoe. The river was lower this trip than Tonkinson had ever seen it. Yet the flow was adequate to keep the boat moving nicely along.
Oh, to be on a lovely Ozark stream in the splendor of autumn. An overcast sky caused the colors to look more vivid.
"To me this is the best thing the Ozarks has to offer, these rivers," Tonkinson said.
Rounding one bend, we saw a flock of 10 wild turkeys on a gravel bar. They didn't fly away, but ran into a stand of tall grass turning a golden hue as fall marched toward winter.
The temperature was 45 degrees when we shoved off and didn't budge much. There was drizzle and rain. Deeper into fall and winter, it's wise to carry a change of clothes in a dry-bag, in the unlikely event of an upset. It's easy to keep a canoe upright on gentle rivers like the Elk.
Floating and fishing were on the agenda. Pat, who staffed the counter at Big Elk Camp, filled us in on the fishing before we launched.
"Fishing's been good for the spin fishermen," he said. "Fly fishermen wish they'd brought something else to use."
Fifty-fish days are the norm during spring and summer. It's different in the fall. A mile of river was behind us before Tonkinson caught his first fish, but it was a memorable one.
Never before in years of river floating had Tonkinson ever caught a sucker fish. They're bottom feeders that don't normally take a lure. A sucker had bit the small light-blue grub he cast. Or maybe the sucker accidentally ran into the hook. Whatever, it was hooked in the mouth.
But Tonkinson was after smallmouth, which wait to ambush food in their lairs of timber that has toppled into the river or rock gardens of boulders. Tonkinson felt a tap. When he set the hook, a dandy 13-inch smallmouth rocketed from the water in a ruckus of spray.
After lunch, these Elk River bass had an appetite for tube baits. Tonkinson used a brown one about 2 inches long. His buddy in the stern cast a larger tube, but Tonkinson had the hot hand, catching three fish to his friend's one.
Every bass caught was a smallmouth. That's no surprise to Rick Horton, fisheries management biologist with the Missouri Department of Conservation and an avid stream angler. It's customary to check in with a fishing report for Horton after every Missouri float trip.
Used to be the Elk River bass population was 80 percent smallmouths, 20 percent largemouths. "Now it's more like 85-15," Horton said by phone from his office in Neosho, Mo.
Good water quality, excellent habitat and lots to eat make the Elk River one of the Ozarks' finest smallmouth streams.
Crawdads are a key forage, but Horton said there are lots of minnow species for bass to eat.
Any lure that imitates the two ought to get bit by a hard-fighting smallmouth.
"I have yet to find a lure I can't catch a fish on," Horton said. " If you're looking for lots of action, small plastic crayfish are good to use. They'll hit a little 4-inch plastic worm."
It's possible to catch fish even in winter. A jig and pig is a top winter lure. Horton recommends fishing it slowly. Don't forget that dry-bag of extra clothes in case of a dunking, he added.
A lonesome train whistle sounded downstream, signaling the end of our trip. There's a railroad trestle over the river just above the low-water bridge take-out. At the end of the day we'd caught about 20 smallmouth bass and one sucker. That's par for an Elk River fall fishing float.
Flip Putthoff may be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter@NWAFlip
Sports on 11/24/2015