REA VALLEY -- I love it when a gamble pays big.
It happened Jan. 17 during an annual trout fishing trip on the White River with Bill Eldridge of Benton, Rusty Pruitt of Bryant and Ed Kubler of Maumelle.
As is our custom, we sheltered at Cedarwood Lodge, near the Ranchette Access on the White. We had our usual debate about camping on some stream, but the lodge's warm and rustic accommodations were too cozy to resist.
I must admit that we had second thoughts when we crossed the Buffalo River at Arkansas 14, south of Yellville. The water looked perfect for floating, and Pruitt suggested that we take a day float. I've not had any success at catching smallmouth bass in streams in the winter, so I dismissed the idea silently.
Crooked Creek at Yellville looked just as good. Pruitt suggested a day float there, as well, but my mind was on trout.
I balked when I saw the White River. Four floodgates were open at Bull Shoals Dam, and a torrent cascaded down the concrete slope. Several generators also pulled water through the powerhouse. This amounted to a great amount of water in the tailrace, and the river raged high, fast and wide.
Ken Greene, who owns Cedarwood Lodge, said the Corps of Engineers had advised property owners on the river to get their boats out of the water because of the extremely high, swift flow. That meant we wouldn't be able to use Greene's johnboats, so we brought our own. Eldridge towed a 12-foot aluminum flatbottom with a 9.9-horsepower Mercury, and I had my War Eagle 1542 with a 25-horse Yamaha.
I had no qualms about running the War Eagle in that water. With its deep sides and thick hull, it can handle just about anything, but Eldridge was worried that his rig was not up to the challenge.
We drove to the North Fork River to see how it looked. Even with two generators running at Norfork Dam, there are still enough rocks exposed in places to pose hazards.
While we surveyed the North Fork, we observed a johnboat anchored behind a gravel bar downstream from the mouth of Dry Run Creek. A bald eagle swooped down to the water and snatched a trout a few feet in front of them.
"This is a pretty short river," I said. "Bust a shear pin far enough downriver, and you might get swept into the White. Next stop, Batesville."
Eldridge agreed. The White was our best option, but first we had to find some non-ethanol fuel for our outboards. You'd think it would be plentiful in the lake region, but the only pure gas we found was at a little store in Salesville.
The store also carries a small selection of trout baits, including a small Trout Magnet stickbait painted to look like a baby brown trout. I've got several brown trout imitators, but the Trout Magnet has a vibrant paint job that looks practically alive.
There were four. I bought one and urged my partners to buy the rest, but only Kubler acquiesced. It proved to be the winning ticket.
Meanwhile, Eldridge fretted about the treacherous flow on the White. We visited a public access on Crooked Creek. The water there was adequate for Eldridge's rig, but not mine.
"Why don't you launch your boat at Ranchette and just run it close to the ramp," I asked. "If you're comfortable with it, then I'll launch mine, and we'll just run together in case one of us runs into trouble."
Eldridge warmed up his little Mercury and backed it off the trailer. The current raked it away like a leaf in the wind, but Eldridge roared back to the ramp with power to spare. He and Kubler put on their life vests, loaded their gear and began their voyage upstream.
I was astonished at the river's power. When you run against such a strong current, a small boat wants to tailwalk, and the pulse and surge of the current through the hull can be unnerving.
We chugged over a couple of shoals and went past a collection of big boulders where I usually catch some big brown trout.
"I bet we could troll jerkbaits over these shoals and catch some 'pigs,'" I said. Pruitt, who is very nervous in high water, rejected the suggestion silently.
We eventually found Eldridge and Kubler at the mouth of Crooked Creek. They had beached their boat on the downstream side of a gravel bar and were fishing the eddy behind it.
That's the only place in the river that looked fishable, and there wasn't room for two more, so I took a gamble and turned into Crooked Creek. It's a famous smallmouth stream, and while it's sensible that some trout would be near its mouth, we never caught anything there before.
I was just happy to find some manageable water, and I hoped to catch some walleye and maybe some smallmouths.
For this I tied a Bomber Long A stickbait in rainbow trout pattern to medium-action Castaway rod with a Wavespin DH5000 spinning reel. The water was deeper than usual, so I planned on trolling the lure as far upstream as the water allowed.
The water was stunningly beautiful, a deep cobalt color like that of an old railroad telegraph insulator. Peering into the deep pools was like gazing into space on a moonless night. It was enchanting, and it looked very fishy.
I didn't catch any walleye, but rainbow trout mauled that Bomber. Pruitt caught them on a Tennessee shad colored swimbait, including a tiny brown trout that was too small to have been stocked. We were certain it was wild spawned.
We caught fish consistently for a couple of hours when Eldridge and Kubler came puttering up the creek. They said they caught trout on nearly every cast, but the current washed the gravel bar out from under their feet. They had to scramble to get in their boat before it washed away, as well.
A stiff wind gave a jagged bite to the cold, and we all hit our tolerance limit at the same time.
We continued fishing back to the mouth of the creek, and the return swing produced the big fish of the day. Kubler cast his Trout Magnet stickbait to the base of a small bluff, and a 20-inch brown trout crushed it.
Catching browns and rainbows in a smallmouth stream was not how we'd planned it, but sometimes a longshot wins.
Sports on 01/24/2016