When you need a fast smallmouth fix, it's good to have a cure that's close to home.
It was a bonus that Miss Laura wanted to go, even though she later protested that she didn't know fishing would be part of the deal. She said it made us miss a dinner party with her sister who was visiting from Atlanta. She knows better than anyone that you don't get on a river with me if you have somewhere else to be.
It was an obligatory protest. She didn't really seem to mind.
After finishing our work for the day, Miss Laura proposed an afternoon float last Friday on the Caddo River from Caddo Gap to Glenwood. The words scarcely had left her mouth before the kids had our boats and gear lashed to the trailer. The fleet included our well-traveled Buffalo canoe, a Perception Keowee kayak and an Ocean Kayaks Scupper sit-on-top. I rented an extra boat for myself because it was almost as cheap as a shuttle fee without the rental.
We launched just as a storm boiled over the mountains. Rumbles of thunder followed us the first mile or so through the Narrows. We stopped at a gravel bar for a swim and a light lunch before going our separate ways. For Laura and our two youngest daughters, that meant sampling all the swimming holes and body surfing through the rapids. Daughter Brooke accompanied them in the Ocean Kayak, while Amy and Matthew fished together in a canoe.
Amy's interest in fishing has revived over the past year, and Matt has been her mentor. He teaches her fishing knots and the finer points of fishing various lures, how to read water and how to identify cover.
When they were very small, I used to take them bluegill fishing at a pond in the city park at California, Mo. It was a great bluegill hole, and they alternated catching fish. After Amy caught one, I'd unhook the fish, refresh the bait, cast out and hand the rod to Matthew. Amy didn't want to wait her turn. I had to pry the rod out of her fingers and then restrain her so Matt could fish in peace. Otherwise she attacked him and tried to wrest the rod away from him. It was like trying to subdue an angry bobcat.
As we reached the confluence of the South Fork of the Caddo, I was happy to see that the tacky signs that suggested that canoeists might be subjected to the type of abuse that Ned Beatty endured in the film Deliverance had been removed.
As usual, I started catching smallmouth bass in the deep hole above the South Fork. This is a great place to catch big smallmouths and Kentucky bass in the winter when the water is higher. It's rare to see big fish there in low water, but you can still catch good numbers of small fish.
There was an inordinate amount of trash in and along the river. We turned the event into an informal cleanup by filling our mesh bags with empty drink cans, plastic bottles and other flotsam. I even dredged up the lower half of a broken canoe paddle, as well as a full six-pack of unopened Mountain Thunder soft drinks.
I caught fish steadily with a red/pumpkin Zoom Mini Brush Hawg, but Matthew and Amy had outstanding success catching all manner of fish with a large yellow Rebel Crickhopper. Matt's biggest fish was a 16-inch smallmouth.
I had my best luck in the long, rocky pool downstream from the Flag Hole. I caught two chunky smallmouths behind a certain rock where the pool deepens. That's a guaranteed spot regardless of the season. After a few fruitless casts with a Zell Pop topwater plug, I switched to a Luck-E-Strike RC Freak crankbait and caught a 16-inch smallmouth of my own. That lure worked very well until a big spotted gar stole it. I was powerless to stop it. The fish materialized from the deep behind it and clamped down in a death grip. With a few mighty thrashes, it broke my line and swam slowly away with the lure still in its teeth.
"I had forgotten how much I enjoy the Caddo," Laura said at the end of the trip, after lodging the complaint about missing dinner with the sister.
She hadn't floated it in 19 years.
As close as it is to our little corner of Hot Spring County, she won't wait so long to visit again.
Sports on 06/29/2014