For a moment, I almost had to pinch myself Thursday to make sure I wasn't in northern Minnesota.
I was fishing on the north side of Lake Maumelle at sunrise with U.S. Magistrate Judge Joe Volpe. Not another person was in sight. Before us was seemingly endless forest. All around us, the tremolo wails of common loons pierced the still morning air as the males churned the water like tiny sternwheel steamboats in their vigorous pursuit of females. It was like camping in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, where loons cavort all day and night.
Of course, the shores of Lake Maumelle have hardwoods in contrast to the coniferous forests of the Boundary Waters, but if you keep your gaze to the north, east or west, you could persuade yourself for an instant that you are in the wilderness.
Little splashes of color are beginning to wink in the woods, and I breathed in the perfume of morning as Volpe trolled around a point following a grass line where we hoped to catch some spotted bass. The open view through the leafless woods prompted me to reach in my pocket and extract a diaphragm turkey call. I slipped it into my mouth, positioned it along the roof and belted out a few yelps and cackles toward the woods.
"Now you're talking," said Volpe, also an avid turkey hunter. "What kind is that?"
"A Woodhaven Red Wasp," I said. "It makes a great cackle, but it's a little too high and clear for my liking."
"What do you think Coronavirus is going to do to turkey season?" Volpe asked.
"Nothing, I hope" I replied. "I don't know what might come down in the way of travel restrictions and stuff like that, but they can't take turkey season away from us, man. That would be utterly demoralizing."
I thought for sure that we would catch some bass over the grassbeds. Nicking the tops of the grass with a small spinnerbait, chatterbait or even a small swimbait is usually money this time of year, but we didn't get so much as a look. I relayed this by way of text message to Mike Romine, my frequent fishing fishing partner at Lake Maumelle in the spring.
He texted back to say he fished a few hours at Maumelle on Wednesday.
"Caught one on the second cast and then nothing else," Romine said.
White bass have been biting up Big Maumelle Creek, so Volpe and I motored upriver and found boats stacked up in the cove on the west side of the Arkansas 10 Bridge. They were maintained appropriate socially isolated distances. One fellow puffed serenely on his pipe as he fished. Fathers and their children appeared to be enjoying their time together immensely. One boy caught a white bass, but otherwise socializing seemed to be the only thing going on.
"They were stacked up above the Highway 10 boat ramp when I was here a week or so ago," I said. "Let's start up there and fish our way back to the lake."
The water was a lot lower, a lot slower and a lot clearer than it was for my last visit. Many anglers were fishing, but they reported that it was slow. One guy fished from an Ascend FS12T kayak, which was my first serious fishing kayak. I loved mine, and I told him so. This pleased him. His partner had a Perception fishing kayak with every accessory, including a pedal drive.
"Now right there is a man that knows how to party," I said, prompting a friendly laugh. Kayakers love talking about their rigs, and he was no exception.
Upstream from them we encountered an Arkansas Game and Fish Commission electrofishing crew that was doing some sampling work. They told us later that they didn't shock up many fish.
Volpe finally caught a largemouth bass, which turned out to be the only fish of the day.
Passing the boat ramp, we let the wind push us back downriver. It was warm, sunny and very nice as Volpe and conversed of many things. About 50 yards in front of us, a wild turkey flew across the river.
"That was a gobbler!" Volpe said.
"Sure was," I said. "There's probably four or five more behind it."
There was only one more, another gobbler, and seeing them was worth more than a boatload of white bass.
I considered them a harbinger of hope in these troubled times.
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Sports on 03/29/2020