We knew fishing would be tough when the wind blew a towboat against the shore at David D. Terry Lock & Dam.
Ricky Ellis of Cabot and I teamed up Thursday for a second attempt at a late-winter crappie fishing story. Poor weather and water conditions shut us out at Lake Maumelle two weeks ago, so we regrouped for a different take on the Arkansas River. Ellis enjoyed great crappie fishing earlier in the week, but we scheduled the do-over before we knew about the approach of torrential rains that drenched much of the state on Wednesday.
At 10 a.m., Thursday, the river raged. It flowed about 81,000 cubic feet per second through the spillway, but was driven by a west wind of nearly 19 mph. By 1 p.m., the flow increased to more than 87,000 cfs.
The towboat mishap delayed our launch by about an hour. Pushing multiple barges, the tow approached the lock, but the wind rammed it against the riprap bank with a crash. A Jeffrey Sand tug managed to push the tow off the rocks, and its pilot adroitly guided it safely into the lock.
We finally launched at about 11 a.m. into the teeth of churning, wind-whipped froth.
"I've got a place that's sheltered from the wind," Ellis said. "We caught 32 crappie in there the other day, but the water was clear. I don't know what to expect after all this rain."
We crept through the narrow inlet to Ellis' spot, but conditions were disadvantageous. The water was deeply stained. Current poured into the top of the backwater and drained out the bottom end, but the wind blew the other direction to create opposing surface and sub-surface currents.
Ellis's Lowrance HDS-9 graph showed a lot of crappie suspended at about 15 feet.
"These river fish aren't as sensitive as lake fish are," Ellis said. "The river changes all the time, and they're used to it, but these conditions might be too much even for them."
It certainly proved too much for us. We used 1/8-ounce jigs with plastic tubes, but the current made it nearly impossible to keep the jigs at the right level. After about 90 minutes without a bite, Ellis took us to another backwater downriver.
It was even more windswept than the first spot, except for a sheltered cove in the back.
"To heck with these crappie," Ellis said. "There'll be bass in the back of this pocket."
The water temperature was about 53 degrees near the river, but it rose to about 55 degrees at the back. I threw a double willowleaf spinnerbait, and Ellis threw a chatterbait with a black creature-type trailer.
Despite an abundance of promising cover, only one bass, a healthy male largemouth, came out to play.
"They ought to be about ready to spawn," Ellis said. "We've been catching them right on the bank."
Our next stop was an isolated backwater farther downstream. As soon as we entered the cut and left the main river, the wind practically died. It still howled through the treetops, but the water was calm. Bankside bass cover was plentiful, but Ellis said that crappie might be present, too.
"What's this place like in the summer?" I asked.
"It's dead in the summer," Ellis said. "When it gets real hot and the river gets dead low with no current, all of the fish go out into the river and get on the sandbar drops."
I marveled at the solitude of this backwater.
"My daddy used to bring me back in here when I was a kid," Ellis said. "There's places like this all up and down the river, and the fishing is different depending on the character of each backwater.
"That's what makes the Arkansas River such a fantastic, dynamic fishery," he added. "The backwaters are in play at certain times, but the main river has its times, too. That's why so many of the best fishermen in Arkansas are river fishermen."
On one bank was a long stretch of impregnable bushes that extended about 8-9 feet into the water. Their mesh of branches made the water inaccessible to the bank.
"They've got a lot of this same kind of stuff in the inshore salt in southwest Florida, except down there it's mangroves on shell islands," I said. "You can pull up to the edge of it like we are now, and there's all these great big snook in there feeding, and there's not a thing you can do about it."
As if on cue, the water inside the bushes erupted with fish breaking the surface.
"Like this?" Ellis asked.
"Yep, just like this," I said.
At first we thought they were Asian carp spooked by the pulses from Ellis' trolling motor. A closer look revealed that they were spotted gar, hundreds of them.
"On the smallmouth streams I fish, our rule of thumb is if you see a bunch of gar, you can forget about catching bass," I said.
"It's like that here, too," Ellis said.
A dike near the back of the backwater was irresistible, in part because the water temperature was 58.8 degrees. Ellis caught a couple of fat male largemouths from various bits of cover, but there was no pattern.
I caught a largemouth from the base of a bash.
"Did he hit it pretty hard?" Ellis asked.
"He did, but I was working the spinnerbait along the bottom as slow as I could make it go, dragging it kind of like a jig."
"Well, that's a pretty valuable piece of information," Ellis said. "They want it slow."
Exiting the backwater at about 2 p.m., I suggested we try the first spot again.
"The air pressure has changed a little bit," I said. "The crappie might bite this afternoon."
They didn't, but we did catch a handful of healthy white bass. A crappie or a sauger would have completed a triple play, but with Thursday's conditions, a double play wasn't bad.
Sports on 03/17/2019