When your favorite smallmouth streams are at flood stage, you can still catch a mess of smallmouths fishing safely from the bank or wading.
Instead of fishing a flooded river, fish its tributaries instead. In the mountains, small tributaries that feed major rivers like the Buffalo, Caddo or Ouachita drain small watersheds. They rage during a rain for about a day, but they go down enough to fish when the water drains from the slopes. They also clear up quickly, which means clear water pushes against the muddy water of the main river and vice versa.
If you stand at the confluence of Clabber Creek and the Buffalo River, you will see clear water push out into the Buffalo's muddy water, and then the muddy water will push back against the clearer water coming out of Clabber Creek. Smallmouth bass prowl these mud lines searching for morsels washing into and out of the feeder creeks. They also venture good distances up the feeder creeks, usually to the last deep pool before you reach the first set of falls.
As Arkansas assumes more of a monsoon climate in the springtime, fishing feeder creeks during floods has by necessity become a staple pattern for me and my creek fishing partners. Bill Eldridge, Matthew Eldridge and I employed it on May 19 after a phenomenal trout fishing outing on the White River. We intended to spend May 18 float fishing on the Buffalo River and part of May 19 wade fishing on Crooked Creek, but torrential rains during that weekend swelled both waterways to flood stage.
Even after a day of catching monster brown trout, Matthew Eldridge said that the trip was incomplete without catching a smallmouth. On the way home, we made a side trip to Rush Recreation Area on the Buffalo National River. When we arrived in the area Sunday, the tributaries were so high that the road into Rush was impassable. On Tuesday, the feeders were back within their banks, and the road was fine.
Our first stop was at the mouth of Rush Creek, which is to the right of the boat access at Rush Landing. The water was dark emerald green and clear, ending abruptly at the mud line of the surging Buffalo. Fishing from the top of a hill above the creek, Matthew Eldridge caught two chunky smallmouth bass from behind a tangle of brush that had piled up in the hole.
I waded into the knee-deep water at the confluence and fished the mudline with a Texas-rigged Zoom Mini-Lizard in green pumpkin red flake. I caught three in that spot. I also got one bite just inside the dirty side of the mudline. It was a sharp thump, but I waited about a second too long to set the hook. The fish spit out the lure and did not not bite again. When that happens, it is usually a big fish.
Matthew Eldridge joined me at the confluence and caught four more little smallmouths before the bite went dry.
About that time, two local guys with a boat arrived. They said they love fishing the feeder creeks from a boat at flood stage because it's the best way to catch monster smallmouths with minnows. They were meat hunters, and though we wished them success, we didn't mean it.
After they left to go downstream, a husband and wife from White Hall showed up to fish with minnows from the bank. After we compared all our "who-begat-whoms," we learned that we know a lot of people in common, including Tony Williams, pastor of Glen Rose Missionary Baptist Church. A chance meeting quickly became "Old Home Week."
Our next stop was Clabber Creek, which flows into the Buffalo downstream from Rush Creek. We hiked through thick woods to a series of high pools, the best of which contained a veritable shooting gallery of bass-rich targets. A deep run plunged into a deep hole. The current diverted to the left past a bluff, and to the right into a violent eddy around a big rock that settled into a deep, clear, gravel-bottom trough. Matthew Eldridge caught four smallmouths and two Ozark bass at the end of the pool, and I caught one big smallmouth from behind the big eddy rock.
It was a simple, unadorned kind of fishing in the kind of places most people ignore or disregard. Their smallmouths made the trip complete.
Sports on 05/28/2020