Crooked pleasures

Time on Ozark stream good for bruises, aches, smallmouth

Rusty Pruitt of Bryant tries to catch a smallmouth bass Thursday at the Snow trestle on Crooked Creek. While low water conditions turned much of the float trip into back-breaking work, plenty of smallmouth bass were caught.
Rusty Pruitt of Bryant tries to catch a smallmouth bass Thursday at the Snow trestle on Crooked Creek. While low water conditions turned much of the float trip into back-breaking work, plenty of smallmouth bass were caught.

YELLVILLE — Thursday’s float trip on Crooked Creek was one of the roughest, most tiresome trips ever. But for fun and great fishing, it’s easily in my top five.

It was an impromptu affair for Bill Eldridge, Rusty Pruitt and me; not quite a “Lightning Strike,” but a hastily arranged day trip on a part of the creek we’ve never fished. I mentioned it to Ray Tucker, host of Ray Tucker’s Arkansas Outdoors, It’s a Natural, a radio program that airs Wednesdays at 7 p.m., on KABZ-FM, 103.7, in Little Rock. After the program ended Wednesday, I invited him to go and, to my surprise, he agreed.

Tucker is not a morning person, but he was waiting when we showed up to get him the next morning at 7 a.m. You never know what to expect when you add a new person to an established group, but one day with him in a canoe earned his status as a permanent member in good standing.

Our first challenge was to decide on the venue. Crooked Creek was our first choice, but it was very low. I suggested Spring River, but I was voted down, with Tucker abstaining.

“That’s almost to Missouri!” Eldridge protested.

“Like Crooked Creek isn’t?” I retorted.

Crooked Creek won.

The next decision was which section to float. We went from George’s Creek to Kelley’s Slab last time and had a fabulous trip, but we wanted to see new water. We settled on the stretch from Pyatt to Snow.

Finally, we had to decide whether to take our own canoes or to rent them. We took our boats to Crooked Creek last time, but it was imprudent to try to repeat Eldridge’s unconventional shuttle arrangement for that trip. We were not familiar with any outfitters on Crooked Creek, but a quick internet search revealed Crooked Creek Canoes, a Yellville business owned by Becky Walker.

Have you ever met somebody for the first time and felt like you’ve known her forever? That’s how it was with Miss Becky. Before we put a paddle in the water at the Pyatt Access, we knew all of each other’s who-begat-whoms, her family history with the creek and the recent death of her beloved husband and partner Jimmy, and the recent loss of my son Daniel.

“He was with us for one of the greatest hours of smallmouth fishing of my life about five years ago,” I said. “It was at the Snow trestle, and I brought some of his ashes to leave there.”

Miss Becky teared up and gave me a big hug.

As soon as we left the deep pool at Pyatt Access, it was painfully clear that this was going to be a rugged, knuckle-busting, ankle-turning cuss fest of a float trip. The first three miles were basically wet rocks. We pushed and pulled, jerked and shoved. Tucker complained bitterly about the the rocks slashing his soft-soled water shoes.

If that wasn’t enough, a big tree blocked passage through a narrow run. The only way around it was to portage over a gravel bar. Unwilling to unload all our gear, we carried the fully laden boats, much to the dismay of our aging backs and shoulders.

While water was in short supply, smallmouth bass were abundant. We caught them from the beginning, along with longear sunfish, spotted bass and green sunfish.

As always, we used Zoom Tiny Lizards and Tiny Brush Hawgs, but color did not matter. We caught them in six different colors, from the lightest to the darkest. I also caught a few on Zoom flukes, and Tucker caught fish steadily with a 2-inch Rebel Crawfish crankbait.

We had our best success fishing narrow troughs next to the bank in the shade. Those with some type of cover held the most fish, like the small, submerged log in a narrow pocket that surrendered four smallmouths on four consecutive casts.

The fishing was good enough to distract us somewhat from the oppressive heat and humidity. It was so hot that my sunglasses fogged whenever I tried to wear them. They dangled from my neck for most of the trip, and since they are prescription shades, I spent most of the trip as part of an interactive impressionist painting.

When you can’t see, you cast purely by instinct and feel. I become enmeshed with my rod, line and bait, and the water feels alive. Seldom have I fished more efficiently, and every nerve in my hands and wrists were hypersensitive. I loved every minute of it, except for the glare.

Finally, we could stand it no longer. We beached on a gravel bar at the main fall line at the end of the first really long, deep pool. We plunged into water that wasn’t much cooler than the air, but at least it washed the salt and grime from my eyes.

“I’m going to do a cannonball!” Eldridge yelled.

He backed up about 20 yards, charged forward and launched himself into the water. He came up groaning.

“Busted your ass, didn’t you?” I asked.

“I jumped a little too soon and didn’t get out deep enough,” he said. He complained about it the rest of the trip and all the way home.

As expected, the fishing got better as we floated through deeper water. Eldridge caught the fish of the day above a riffle, a brawling 17-inch smallmouth with dark bars and a fat belly.

As often happens, we hit the best water too late in the day to fish it thoroughly. We cast and retrieved rapidly as we powered through the pools, but we were determined to get to the Snow trestle in hopes of reliving a day four of us caught smallmouths from 19-22 inches.

Eldridge and Pruitt got there long before we did, and I could tell from their postures that the big boys weren’t riding the train that night.

Tucker and I pegged our canoe on a rock so solidly that it wouldn’t budge. We both leaned back without touching our rods.

“Man, I am beat,” I said.

“Me, too, B. Me, too,” Tucker said.

“The ramp is about a halfmile from here,” I said. “I say let’s get off this rock and get out of here, but I need to do something first.”

I reached in my dry bag and retrieved a jar of ashes. I walked to a deep spot and reminisced aloud about the day Daniel, his brother Matthew and I tumbled down the trestle embankment, walked across the field and caught all those giant smallmouths.

“You’re a part of this place forever now, Dan,” I whispered.

I unscrewed the lid and poured.

Miss Becky was waiting at the ramp when we arrived, and not the least impatient with our late arrival.

When I told her about the ashes, her eyes teared up, and she gave me a long, motherly hug.

We’ll be seeing a lot of her in the future, I suspect. When you find a great outfitter, you always come back.

Upcoming Events