A ‘Crooked’ smile: Ozark hot spot produces grand fishing day

YELLVILLE -- Crooked Creek wore its prettiest outfit for Rusty Pruitt and I last week.

It was autumnal, cool and breezy with a bright blue sky. The milieu differed from fall only in the color of the leaves and the sound they made in the wind. Autumn leaves cast a yellowish tint, and they crackle in the wind. Summer foliage is deeply verdant. It rustles, like a whisper.

Otherwise, there was no difference. Pruitt and I had the creek to ourselves until late afternoon, when we encountered a young local couple enjoying a short float on tubes between a couple of private access points.

We last visited Crooked Creek last summer with Karl Schmuecker, general manager of Wapsi Fly in Mountain Home. We floated the same stretch, from the Pyatt Access on U.S. 62 to Snow Access. Pruitt and Schmuecker used inflatable pontoon kick boats. I used a canoe and spent most of the day shooting photos and videos.

Schmuecker couldn't make this trip, so Pruitt and I rode tandem in a canoe that we rented from Crooked Creek Canoe Rental. After signing the necessary rental papers, our hosts left Pruitt and me on the ramp to begin our preparations. It's a routine. We rig our lines and debate the proper weight of bullet sinker to use. The water level was fairly low, but with a moderate speed. One-eighth ounce was sufficient.

Pruitt rigs his fly rod, which he alternates between sessions with his spinning rig. We apply sunscreen, and then we shove off amid great happiness and anticipation.

I went off script for the next few hours. Usually we float quickly through the first mile or so and begin fishing earnestly at the first deep water we encounter. This time I exited the canoe at the first bend and walked. The water is shallow there with deep seams that follow the banks. The water in the seams is a deeper green than along the flats, and it flows over chunk rock, gravel and boulders. That is classic smallmouth bass habitat.

Since we had arrived at an uncharacteristically early hour, we had plenty of time to fish it correctly. Fishing a stream correctly means fishing slowly. Work small patches deliberately, with multiple casts from at every conceivable angle from the same position. I quickly discovered that I got the overwhelming majority of strikes while standing in the middle of the creek casting upstream parallel to the bank.

I have simplified my kit considerably over the years. I used to carry several bags of stuff, mostly soft plastic lures in all colors from multiple manufacturers. However, I only use a few things. My favorite lures are the Zoom Baby Lizard, Zoom Tiny Brush Hawg and a dwindling supply of Yum! Craw Papi soft plastic crawdads. I use 1/0 offset worm hooks and 1/16-ounce or 1/8-ounce bullet sinkers. I carry a small number of 1/4-ounce sinkers for fishing really fast, deep current. I use watermelon red or pumpkinseed red Tiny Brush Hawgs. For Baby Lizards I use watermelon red, cotton candy, junebug and blue smoke. I keep a pack in my right side shorts pocket. My sinkers are in a pill bottle in my left pocket. I keep a small packet of hooks in my shirt pocket.

In the canoe is a small Flambeau waterproof box with the spare packs of Zoom baits. The box contains one Lucky Craft stickbait, a Whopper Plopper, an Excalibur Zell Pop and two crankbaits.

My rig is a 6-foot Falcon Lowrider baitcasting rod mated to a Lew's Speed Spool baitcaster with a 6.4:1 retrieve reel. It works for everything.

Pruitt uses the same soft plastic lures on a spinning rig. For fly fishing he used a 3-weight Sage rod and a chartreuse/white Clouser minnow.

With Pruitt fishing far behind me, I worked slowly down the creek, hitting every foot of water from every conceivable angle. If I got snagged in deep water, I swam to the snag and freed it. That ruined the hole for that moment, but the fish settled down by the time Pruitt got there, as demonstrated by the first big strike of the day.

I thought I had caught most of the fish in a particular hole, and I finished it off by swimming out to free a snag. I was far downstream when Pruitt yelled for me to come. I slogged back upstream to find him fighting a 3 1/2-pound smallmouth on his fly rod.

"A bunch of big fish followed him out," Pruitt said. "They're stacked up in there between that root wad and that boulder up there."

We didn't catch another fish there, but Pruitt continued catching really nice fish alternating between his fly rod and spinning rod.

My day wasn't too shabby, either. I steadily caught small to mid-size smallmouth bass. I also caught a couple of largemouth bass and a Kentucky bass. Pruitt caught quite a few more than I did, and his fish were conspicuously bigger.

Eventually the water got deeper, which prevented us from fishing as far apart. We fished the deep pools together in the canoe, and we caught several doubles.

There's always a magic stretch and a magic time on a creek fishing trip. It occurred late in the day as we sat in the canoe while beached on a gravel bar. It was to be a short stop while I untangled a backlash from my reel. Casting downstream in fast current, Pruitt caught three very large smallmouths in rapid succession. The pace of the bite slowed down considerably after that, but the size of the bites stayed large.

Two things happened late. I hooked one giant smallmouth beside a gravel bank. It rocketed high out of the water and suspended in midair as its body shook from lip to tail. It glowed bronze in the late afternoon light, with every brown stripe and spot so bright and so well defined that they looked like freshly inked tattoos. With one last head shake, it threw the lure and crashed back into the water. The whole scene imprinted like a video. I will remember it in my dotage long after I have forgotten my name.

I finally landed a big one about 30 minutes later.

The big fish of the day didn't give us a chance. As we came through a riffle, a fish that looked as big as a beaver lolled in the current. It swam a short loop and repositioned itself in the heart of the current. It was every bit of 4 pounds.

We beached the canoe about 30 yards downstream and crept up the gravel bar. When we reached the place where we last saw it, the fish was gone. But we saw it. It is there. Maybe we'll see it on our next visit.

For scorekeepers, I caught 27 bass. Pruitt caught at least 37.

Upcoming Events