Sizzling summer action

Wade-fishing Mulberry well worth effort

— Traveling north in the gathering light of dawn, Alan Thomas and I enjoyed the cool air as we ascended Arkansas 103 into the Ozarks.

“Can you believe this?” Thomas asked. “It feels, dare I say it? C-c-c-c-cold!”

Then, Al slipped a CD into his dashboard player, and John Fogerty reminded us of what was in store with a song called, “A Hundred And Ten In The Shade.”

Our destination was the Little Mulberry River near Friley, where we planned to fish an hour or two before dropping down to fish the main stem of the Mulberry until about 2 p.m. We negotiated the narrow back roads north of Wolf Pen campground until we found a section of the Little Mulberry flowing through national forest land. I snatched glimpses of it with growing skepticism,however, and when we stopped, I yielded the floor to Al.

“There’s barely enough water in this creek for one fisherman, let alone two,” I said. “It doesn’t look more than 6 inches deep, so I’m just going to stay right here and sleep. It’s all yours, bruddah.”

After rising at 3 a.m.

to make this trip, I’d be sluggish all day if I didn’t recharge, so I lay my head against a folded shirt for a pillow and zonked out before Al left the vehicle.

He returned 30 minutes later, and I felt amazingly refreshed.

“How’d it go?” I asked.

“I caught two,” he replied. “They were both about 5 inches long. But at least I got it out of my system. Now, let’s go to Redding and rip some lips!”

A short time later, we launched Al’s canoe at Redding Recreation Area on the Mulberry. The river was running at about 1.4 feet, which was excellent for wade-fishing. The canoe served only to carryour gear, and to carry us through any deep pools we encountered.

Just above Redding is a long, shallow rock garden that plunges into the big pool at the campground.

We stopped to fish the shoal at the mouth of the pool, but on the windup for my first cast, my jig caught the gunnel on the canoe and held fast as I heaved the rod forward. I heard a reedy wheeze as line boiled from the spool on my reel.

“Awww, this is a bad one,” I groaned. Usually I can tame even the worst backlashes by thumbing the spool and turning the handle a few cranks, but that wasn’t going to work this time. This was a job for a surgeon.

And it sorely tested the surgeon’s nerves when Al stepped out of the canoe and immediately started catching smallmouths on a Zoom Tiny Brush Hawg in watermelon/red flake.

“There’s one!” he yelled, and the metallic buzz fromthe drag on his spinning reel proved it.

“Whoa! There’s another one!” Buzzzzzz ...

The faster I worked, the more elusive the little loops in the backlash seemed.

After catching three fish and losing about seven in 20 minutes, Al offered me an extra spool of line in his tackle bag.

“I appreciate that, buddy, but this is now a matter of honor. This thing is not going to beat me.”

Finally, I smoothed out the bird’s nest and resumed fishing with no further incident. Better water waited in the pool above the rock garden, and this is what a true friend does.

“Since you didn’t get any of this action, the next pool is all yours,” Al said.

Getting there was an ordeal. Walking through a rock garden defies physics.

The uneven footing is five times more tenuous when chunk rocks buckle and spin. A diatomaceous slime that coats the rocks is as slick as ice. Trying to walk upstream in such loose cobble against a steady current is like sleepwalking among a forest of upturned rakes and shovels. The only way you can do it is to wear felt-soled wading boots. The last time we fished here was in 2006, when I wore rubber-booted waders. I have never been so bruised and sore and tired as I was after that trip. I bought the Orvis wading boots two days later and count them among my wisest purchases ever.

Mercifully, about half of the next pool was still shady, and it happened to be the half with the best smallmouth cover. I pitched a tube jig, or gitzit, to a small boulder and twitched it into the current. A 14-inch smallmouth hammered it, and I was on the board. I caught another smaller fish, followed by a green sunfish. Al continued catching them, too, including one feisty little 10-inch smallmouth.

“Whoa-ho! Look at himgo!” Al shouted. “Come on, baby, gimme a little jump!”

The fish jumped.

“One more!”

Then, we hit the next pool and encountered the teeth of summer. I don’t know if it was 110 in the shade because there wasn’t any shade, but it felt like 120 in the open water.

“I feel it coming,” Al said ominously. “Don’t think I can hold back. Oh, watch out, now!” He kicked his feet out and plunged into the water. “Oh, yeah, baby.

That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!”

I did the same, and we continued the routine for the rest of the trip.

Otherwise it would have been unbearable. We continued catching fish, however, the last being a 14-inch spotted bass I caught on the gitzit.

Overall, I caught six small mouths, one Kentucky and a green sunfish. Al caught 12 smallies, a shadow bass and a host of green sunfish.

At about 1:30 p.m., we reached another rock garden. Al had been talking nonstop about getting a Wow-Burger at the Diamond Dairy Inn in Clarksville, so we had a decision to make.

“If we go up there, it’s going to take us at least an hour to fish it,” he said.

“It’s almost 2 o’clock, and if we go back now, it’ll take an hour to reach the campground, tie down the canoe and stow all our gear. Your call.”

“Looks like a shortage of places to eat here on the creek,” I said.

“Very limited selection.

Good call.”

The trip downstream was swift, thanks partly to some deft paddling through the rock garden.

A father taking his teenage daughter on her first float trip didn’t fare so well, and we stopped to retrieve their gear when they flipped.

The Wow-Burger lived up to its billing, and the chocolate malt was divine.

Sports, Pages 38 on 06/27/2010

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