PENCIL BLUFF - Maybe it was overkill, but the smallmouth bass fishing on the Ouachita River demanded an encore performance.
Like a reserve quarterback coming off the bench to save a big game, the Ouachita stepped in last Tuesday when the Caddo River was on the injured reserve.
Ray Tucker of Little Rock and I learned it the hard way on June 7 when we stopped at Lucky's Canoe Rental in Glenwood for our annual summer float on the Caddo. The parking lot, which usually teems with vehicles and excited river revelers this time of year, was empty. Lucky arrived, and his mood was dour.
"We ain't got no water," he said. "I'll put you in if you really want to go, but I'm telling you, you're gonna do a lot more dragging than floating, and the in what little water we got, the fish have seen fifty million lures thrown at them."
We insisted and Lucky acquiesced, but he continued to try to talk us out of it as we loaded our gear in his bus.
The light finally clicked in my head. I turned to Tucker and said, "You ever been in a restaurant and asked the server about the chicken parmigiana, and and didn't have anything good to say about the chicken parmigiana?'
"The more he badmouths the chicken parmigiana, the more you want it. And he's like, 'Listen to me. You REALLY don't want our chicken parmigiana!'
"Do you kinda get the idea that maybe we ought not order the chicken parmigiana?"
"I think you're right, B," Tucker said.
Lucky nodded assertively.
"You're paid up," Lucky said. "I'll make good on it next time you come, but call me first. If we don't get some rain, we're gonna be in a world of hurt."
And then allowed that the Ouachita River was floatable. Borderline floatable, but floatable.
We called M&M Canoe Rental in Pencil Bluff and were happy to hear that the Ouachita River was indeed floatable. Within 35 minutes we were on the water for a 7-mile float on what is quickly becoming my favorite float fishing stream in Arkansas.
We started the trip by walking our canoes down a long rocky run to a long pool. We learned from our last visit here a year ago that it was pointless to fish that pool. We started fishing at the pool beyond, where Tucker, Rusty Pruitt and I caught nearly 30 smallmouths down the length of a thin rock ledge in a near gale.
The water was a lot lower and slower on this trip. The wind was slack, the water was slick, and the fish weren't active. Still, we caught a few, and we fished with great intensity for the next four miles.
Since fall I have thrown only topwater baits, and I got a lot of good strikes in the riffles and rapids. Some fish hit at the top of the rapids and some hit at the bottom, but some surprisingly big fish hit right in the middle, in mere inches of water.
Keith Green, director of the Arkansas Bass Team Tournament Trail, wasn't surprised. He said that when the weather gets hot and still, bass move to the most oxygenated water they can find. It's cooler, it's sustaining, and baitfish concentrate there.
The heat and sun glare were brutal, but that changed at the midway point when a storm boiled up from the west. The sky turned slate gray as thunder rolled and a light sprinkle dimpled the river. The storm bypassed us, but the temperature cooled about 10 degrees, and a light tailwind chopped the surface.
The cooler temperature and the evening's disappearance of the sun energized the bass. They savaged my topwater lure.
Tucker, who had a tough day to that point, finished strong as bass smashed his plastic lizard when retrieved quickly upstream. We caught some decent bass, but the biggest ones seemed to tail-slap the lure instead of munch it.
Meanwhile, the low water had taken a serious toll on Tucker, who had to walk his canoe down almost every ice-slick riffle. He said that his FitBit said he took 11,000 steps that day, which is equivalent to about 6 miles.
I caught about 30 fish, and Tucker caught a good mess, too. It was the best day I've ever had on the Ouachita, and that prompted a return trip on Tuesday. My mission was to upgrade the video I shot on the previous trip. In addition to this article and the photos that appear in the print edition of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, I also shoot short videos that accompany the articles and color photos on the arkansasonline.com website. I studied the various clips that Tucker shot and knew I needed to up my game.
Pruitt accompanied me on that trip, and our hosts put us in at the midway point so we could fish the more productive water close to the terminus. We started catching fish immediately, but not in the same numbers as before.
About a quarter of a mile downstream is when I experienced one of my customary Hendricks meltdowns. I don't know when it will happen or why, but it will happen, guaranteed.
It started when a big smallmouth broke my line and stole my expensive topwater lure. I pulled to the side and waited. About 15 minutes later, the lure bobbed to the surface, and Pruitt recovered it. At that point, he floated down to the next pool.
That style of lure twists line terribly. I remedy that by using a swivel and a short leader. I reeled the swivel into the rod tip guide and cast, followed by a snap as loud and sharp as the crack of a bullwhip. I watched my lure sail an impossibly long distance and perch high in a tree on the side of a bluff.
I steadied my canoe under the tree, stood on my tiptoes in a wobbly canoe and used my other rod to loop a crankbait over the snagged lure. I yanked the first lure out of the tree and retrieved it, but I broke the crankbait off in the tree, which required a prolonged gymnastics routine to free it.
Most of my lures are not that loyal, and so I continued using it.
Meanwhile, Pruitt caught a succession of 14- and 15-inch smallmouths on a Zoom Tiny Lizard, a pattern that I long ago abandoned on the Ouachita because it never works.
It certainly worked for Pruitt. He caught an 18- and 20-inch smallmouth and lost several others. I had gone far ahead and didn't see them, but he took photos.
And I got my videos.
Sports on 06/17/2018