Fall runs

Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman, he thought. But that was the thing that I was born for. —Earnest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

As Fall settles in, I find myself reflecting on the rivers bounty from the year gone by. Not just this year, but all the years and all of the seasons given in 40+ years of fishing the Ozarks rivers. 

I'll try to help you conjure images of these places via words, but words alone will not do them justice. If you know where they are, then you've been with me on a trip, or you know the rivers I am describing well enough to decipher my personal colloquialisms. 

So, without further ado, here are some of my favorite runs.

The Miracle 1/2 Mile, James River, somewhere between Hootentown and Marble Grounds. 
Stay left at the rock wall. The current wants to pull you into the shallow gravel, but you know better. This run gets deep on the other side of the river, and if you allow her to pull you in, you'll get beached, or worse, run over the fish below. Dig. Hard. The sweet spot is far right, the one that will deposit you (almost) perfectly in the seam. Below the rapid, river left is cane and willow. River right is gravel flat and timber. Spin your boat and paddle up into the back eddy. If this were a battlefield, it would be the kill box. The riffle has dug a trench 300 yards long. One side is 18 inches deep, the other, three plus feet. It winds like a serpent, digging into the bank river left, until it flattens out and becomes more uniform. From start to finish, it's all kindred sized gravel, with sporadic depressions from the river's chaos carved out like shallow graves. At the end it turns hard right and will put you squarely in harms way if you are not attentive.
In each of the past 5 years we have managed at least one day on this run with multiple 18 inch fish. As recently as this summer, in early June, we caught a 19.5 inch, an 18 inch and a 17.5 inch fish from the first 200 yards of this run. And I with the remnants of a treble hook in my right forearm. That one required surgery and 5 well-earned stitches..

Rep Your Water

Alex Zwicky. USMC.

Stacked Rock run. CreekX. (and yes Lance, that's all I'm saying)

Alaskan Bush pilots call small, sunshine filled breaks in dense clouds "sucker holes". They look great and make you feel safe, until you fly through them and there is more dense cloud on the other side, with no escape. 

The hole above Stacked Rock fits this description perfectly. 

Deep, with good flow and full of structure, it looks like the perfect lair for a big smallmouth (or two). Until, after 30 fruitless minutes of fishing it, you look beyond the house-sized sycamore stump at the bottom and see Stacked Rock. 

I'm still not sure how Stacked Rock keeps as much water in it as it does. When you are in the pool looking upstream you see three narrow chutes of water that enter the long, languid pool that is Stacked Rock. None of these chutes are floatable in normal flows. The pool is a deep, lazy run with Volkswagen sized boulders strewn across the bottom. These rocks seem out of place in the karst landscape surrounding the creek. But brother, those rocks hold fish. Big ones. And more than a few of them. 

If you've played the morning right, you'll be in Stacked Rock by 9 am. Just in time for the last of the topwater bite. You drag your kayak across the left chute, get back in and shake the pea-sized gravel out of your shoes. Paddle up, slowly, and begin the symphony of cast, retrieve, repeat. You're the maestro in this concert and you know from experience that with proper cadence comes results.  There is a Jetta-sized rock right below the middle chute that always holds a good fish and if you are quiet, he (or most likely she) can be yours for a moment. 

The Gauntlet. Osage Fork, somewhere between Dry Knob and Davis Ford.

There are fish that haunt my dreams. Smallmouth that when I close my eyes, seem as big as fresh-run Atlantic salmon. 

One of these apparitions lives in the Osage Fork, about two miles below Dry Knob access. 

You enter the Gauntlet tentatively. Trees are strewn haphazardly across the creek. Like giant fingers, they reach out and try to grab your kayak, threatening to spill your possessions into the current while you watch, soaked, as they float into the abyss. 

You find the seam between the fallen Sycamore, Oak and Hickory stumps, turn your boat to face upstream, and begin working the slot. If you hit it right, you are on auto-pilot until the pool drains into the next run. Miss it and you are correcting more than fishing. 

Assuming you get it right, you are rewarded with fish on about every other cast. Most are chunky, 10-14 inch smallmouth that fight well beyond their size.  They seem to be custom-built for the river they haunt. Cast, retrieve, repeat. Then it happens. Your cast is good, the bait hits a sycamore stump softly, sliding off and into the depths. One, two, three. Bottom. But this "bottom" is swimming up stream. When you set the hook, you know; big smallmouth. Big smallies do not fight like their smaller brethren. Using their weight, they bore to the bottom and then head for cover. And this one is heading for the big strainer he was hiding in when you so rudely interrupted his meal. 

Side pressure, good gear and a lot of luck coax the fish into the small open space in the Gauntlet, and you are reaching for the folding net you are so proud of. You know, the one you found at the outlet store that was marked down 75 percent. Then you see the fish. Good god, that can't be a smallmouth? Holy shit. Keep calm, you've been here before. Unfold the net. Or at least try to. Damn thing is stuck. Shake it. Still stuck. That's a big fish. WHY WON'T THIS NET UNFOLD!!! Keep calm, he's at the kayak. You got this. The net unfolds and then..Collapses as you get under the giant, simultaneity knocking the fish loose. And he just swims away. Biggest smallmouth you've ever hooked and he's gone, like a dream you can't quite recall...

You look at your buddy, who is trying not to laugh, and send your bargain net sailing, tossing it into the deepest part of the run. Just like that beast of a fish you lost, it sinks out of sight, never to be seen again.

Osage Bronze

The Bridge Run, Finley River in Christian County, MO

The slab where I caught my first smallmouth has been replaced with a new, fancy high bridge. The remnants of the slab are resting in the same pool they provided passage over in years past. I'd like to think that the contractor was a fisherman and realized they would make incredible fish cover, but that would be a stretch. Still, they do hold some really big fish, and help anchor the creek bottom. Good intentions or coincidence? Doesn't matter.

This run is really two pools separated by a quarter-mile stretch of striated limestone we refer to as "bustyourassinite". In mid-summer, you have to walk the bank. This stuff gets so slick it's like walking on ice. 

The upper pool, with the bridge, almost has to be wade fished. Park your Kayak on the island and approach it carefully. It's gin-clear most of the time, and the good, cover producing current is on the far bank. Get below the bridge, cast up stream and expect a fish on every cast. It doesn't always work that way, but you've been here enough when it does that you aren't surprised when it happens. 

Until this spring, the second pool was 100 yards long and a nearly uniform in depth from bank to bank. The floods pushed mounds of gravel into the pool, shifting the channel river-left, and really decreasing the fish holding area you'd gotten used to. 

Six years ago I caught an eighteen inch smallmouth at the top of the pool. She had a gimpy pectoral fin and was missing several spines on her dorsal. Later that summer, I caught her again. The next spring, again. And in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016. Same fish. Same malformed pec. Same missing dorsal spines. The last time I held her, she was nineteen inches and change, still full of fight and closing in on four pounds. I briefly had her hooked this spring, on the Thursday before the skies let loose for a week, and the pool was forever altered. When I close my eyes, I can see her massive tail as it made one final attempt at freedom and snapped my line. 

After the flood waters receded, I took a walk to the pool and looked for Oscar. I've fished for her several times this year, all in vain. The romantic in me wants to believe she is still swimming, finding a still spot in the raging flood, waiting on Mother Nature to relent. My realistic view is that she is lost. I take consolation in the fact that at her size, she was most likely 12-15 years old and had many seasons to spread her good genetics in the river. Chances are I will tangle with her offspring many times in the coming years...

Oscar-2013

Oscar-2016

There are literally hundreds of good smallmouth runs in the Ozarks. We are truly blessed with a resource that continues to provide quality fish year in, year out. These four happen to be in my home waters range. I have a paternal instinct to watch over them. Like the fish that we chase, they need constant care and feeding to survive. 

See you out there.

Free. The. Fighter!

Good Enough

"If I fished only to capture fish, my fishing trips would have ended long ago." Zane Grey

The sun is just now fully in the sky as I’m standing in a city park staring out over one of my favorite Smallmouth creeks. Nicci and I were already rigged up and she was casting into the first hole as I stood on the bank checking my camera equipment and waiting for a friend to meet us there. We had never fished together before but thanks to the wonders of the modern era (and fishing groups on Facebook) it soon became apparent that between proximity and a shared interest in stomping through creeks and chasing finny creatures, it was an inevitability. He had found plenty of success chasing trout but had never landed a long-rod Bronzeback of his own. This, as they say, simply would not do. With all the arrangements made and proper flies purchased, all that was left was to actually catch a fish. As I listened to the birds chattering about whatever it is birds chatter about, (bugs probably? girl birds? Maybe neither. Probably both.) I was trying to concentrate on the relevant information I would need to convey to my friend to ensure he had the best chance of success. Instead I found myself thinking, as I have a bad habit of doing lately, about the circumstances that had led to me being a person people would even consider asking questions about Smallmouth Bass on the fly. I wondered if I, as a fishermen, was good enough.

I started fly fishing for Smallmouth almost accidentally. I had gotten a fly rod to chase trout as, in my eyes, it was the proper way to do such things. The only problem was, when it came time to actually learn how to use the damn thing, I found myself far too embarrassed in front of all the professional looking old men in their Gore-Tex waders and a million gadgets hanging off their vests to do any fishing. As I do with most problems to this day, I solved this by finding a creek and going fishing. In the muddy waters of northeastern Missouri I spent hours throwing the most hideous casts, untangling line, and pulling my flies out of every tree branch and bush within two mile radius. I caught a few fish but mostly I casted and casted and casted and casted. I knew that Smallmouth lived in these creeks, I’d caught them on gear, and that’s why I was here. Eventually I had gotten the basics down well enough to cast and retrieve a Clouser's Minnow or Woolly Bugger with what, I was proud to realize, resembled mild competence. Finally, I started catching Smallmouth and as my skills grew, (slowly) the fish came more often ( albeit still slowly). Over the next few years I spent more and more time in creeks and rivers I knew held Smallmouth and my spinning gear started to accumulate a fine sheen of dust. I devoured fly fishing media on the internet and my Facebook feed (and photo albums) were eventually taken over by fish. While I was getting south to chase trout as often as possible the vast majority of my time and skills were put into chasing Bronze. Before too long I had become the “fish guy” to my circle of friends, maybe a little weird and obsessed but nice enough.

I started dating a girl a few years back and after a few months I invited her to the annual trout fishing trip we took for my father’s birthday. This would be an important milestone for our relationship because as John Gierach once said “Creeps and idiots cannot conceal themselves for long on a fishing trip.” and in the same vein a bad relationship doesn’t survive cold nights in a tent, fishing at the break of dawn, and whiskey for lunch. She hadn’t fished since she was a kid and throughout the weekend I got to watch her light up as she caught trout after trout. I bought her a fly rod shortly after and (incorrectly) assumed that the best place for her to learn would be fishing for trout. The fire I had seen for fishing started to wane as tangles and collapsing casts mounted up.
Finally one day we were at a local pond together and I was harassing Bluegills on my new 3 wt. She eventually wandered over and asked to see the rod. I couldn’t have gotten it into her hands fast enough and within a few casts she was landing fish after fish. For the next few months we haunted that pond and she poured herself into that 3 weight. One day I came home from work and a tube shaped package from Cabelas was on the porch. She had ordered her own rod and before too long we were back on the trout streams and she was landing her first trout on the fly.
We spent the next few months splitting time between trout and panfish and she slowly developed an affinity for streamers and poppers when the revelation hit me. It was time for Smallies.
Earlier this year we were exploring a creek I had gotten the tip off for from a friend. The February sky hung heavy above us looking like it was ready to dump snow but the weather had been unseasonably warm for weeks. Cabin fever had driven us both out of the house and into some water. We worked our way down the creek, soon sinking into the rhythm of casting that occurs when you don’t expect to catch much but just enjoy the spectacle before you as the world takes its first stuttering steps out of winter. As almost always happens when you aren’t anticipating it, a sharp tug on my line snapped me out of my reverie and moments later a chunky ten inch Smallmouth was staring back at me. A few moments later I heard a shout from just upstream and looked up to see Nicci’s rod doubled over as she stood at the head of a pool. I sprinted through a riffle and by the time I got there she had landed an absolutely beautiful Smallie. All this year we have traveled around catching fish and she has caught more trout and Smallmouth than I can count, but I personally have never been more satisfied than I was seeing the look on her face as her first Bronze swam away on that grey February afternoon.

Talking about fishing is one of my favorite things to do. If I’m not fishing or working chances are pretty high I’m in one or more fishing related conversations through text, or on one of the fishing groups I frequent on Facebook. As I’ve made more and more friends throughout the far flung reaches of the internet, more and more people have reached out to me to talk about Smallmouth fishing, fly fishing, favorite spots or all of them combined. I’ve made some fantastic friends from the area and we have built a community between each other that has not only increased my fishing knowledge but helped me become more comfortable sharing what I know.

I wish I could tell you my friend Ross showed up that day and we caught dozens upon dozens of Smallies. I wish I could write about how 18 inchers were the norm that day and Ross left to get Small Jaw tattooed across his shoulder blades. The reality is that we had a decidedly average day of fishing and we spent most of it talking, catching Longears, and wondering what the bass were eating. He did catch his first Smallmouth that day and a few weeks later another new friend of mine managed his first Smallie on the fly with me under the towering bluffs of the Big Piney River. All told I’ve managed to help 3 people catch their first Smallmouths this year and I hope in the years to come I can help many more.  I’ll probably never be a guide or make a living exclusively from fishing. I simply don’t have the temperament, skill or patience for it. But if fishing a ton and writing about these amazing fish will help me make new friends and show them the wonders of fly fishing for Smallmouth Bass. Well hell man, that’s probably good enough.