This year's first visit to the Ouachita River began with a photo-sharing session with an associate at a Hot Springs outfitter.
I stopped in for a look at the inventory, and my eyes fell upon a small bin of flies for smallmouth bass. They were crawdad imitators, rust colored with subtle brown highlights, with a bead head and curved feathers that look like pincers.
"Where you been fishing?" asked the associate, prompting me to show him a photo of an 18-inch smallmouth I caught a couple of weeks ago on the Caddo River. The associate showed me a 20-inch smallmouth he caught on the Ouachita River.
"It's on fire right now," he said.
"Which stretch?" I asked.
"All of it," he replied.
"You caught this on a fly?" I asked.
"Yep. That's all I do. I don't fish any other way."
The next step was to organize a fishing party. Bill Eldridge of Benton suggested going Saturday. Rusty Pruitt, who's been out of commission for several months rehabilitating a shoulder, volunteered, as did Ray Tucker of Little Rock, who has self-isolated for several months to minimize exposure to the coronavirus.
M&M Canoe Rental, the major outfitter on the Ouachita River, is just starting to get up to speed after being shut down for most of the spring. The shutdown was kind of a wash because the river was too high for floating due to frequent heavy rains. On Saturday, however, it was almost perfect. The water was high enough to clear most rocks, and it was unusually clear.
Wearing masks while concentrated at the put-in, we shoved off and immediately started catching fish, albeit small fish.
"This is a first," Tucker yelled. "We've got the wind at our backs."
We wished he hadn't said it, for the words had scarcely left his lips when the wind freshened and shifted almost 180 degrees. It was now squarely in our faces and remained so for the rest of the trip.
It is roughly 8 miles from Pencil Bluff to Rocky Shoals, and time prevented us from fishing as thoroughly as we wanted. As usual, we spent too much time fishing the Memory Hole beneath the big house on the bluff. Pruitt, Tucker and I caught about 30 smallmouths there the first time we fished it several years ago. It hasn't performed that well since, but there was the one time on a subsequent visit when I caught three or four nice bass within sight of a crew doing some roofing work on the big bluff house. I was very theatrical about it, whooping and hollering with every fish. Two of the roofers threatened to quit work and go fishing.
With that much distance to cover, you must pick your spots and fish them thoroughly. That means beaching the canoe and wade fishing because big fish were probably in deep water. Pruitt and I were willing to do it, but Eldridge moves quickly and fishes hard only at the shoals. We followed suit to keep the group together, but I did linger at one pool long enough to confirm my suspicions. I attached a small worm to a Ned rig and let it soak in the middle of a deep seam. My two biggest fish of the day bit the lure as it sat motionless, a consistent technique in moving water.
The sky was extremely hazy. The harsh, gray light was terrible for photography, but it did keep the temperature down. The haze was rumored to be dust from the Sahara Desert that had blown across the ocean.
"People in the know say that dust carries the cure for covid, so breathe deep," I said.
"I don't wanna cause no trouble, I just wanna do the covid shuffle!" Pruitt rapped.
When we reached the midpoint, Pruitt and I paddled close to the bank to look at a dead buck with an impressive rack in velvet that had been shot. A canoe outfitter waiting for a group of kayakers to arrive was livid about it. At that moment, a pack of dogs chased a deer all over the ridges skirting the river.
We never got on a bass catching pattern, but Eldridge caught an impressive number of longear bream, which earned him relentless grief from Tucker.
This trip was less about the fishing than it was about the fellowship of a group of friends that was happy to be back together after such a sad, stressed out spring. I haven't laughed that much in ages.
OPINION Arkansas Sportsman