Jack and I floated Crooked Creek in north-central Arkansas on Saturday, June 19, 2010, a designated Arkansas "Blue Ribbon Smallmouth Bass" stream. We had a blast on this beautiful gem, catching about 30 smallmouth bass with a redhorse sucker and a few other species thrown in! We floated the 10.5 mile section from Snow Access to Kelly's Slab, an excellent section for fishing and floating. The scenery is great, a mixture of wooded hills, bluffs and bottom land farms. The water is clear, mostly class I-II with enough rapids to keep things interesting. Jack caught the largest smallie, estimated at 17", using a pumpkin colored Gary Yamamoto Fat Craw on a 1/8 ounce jig head.
I definately have a serious fisherman in the making, and he's competative! It took us 10 hours to float the 10.5 miles with a little swimming and shore fishing along the way. I even used my "survival kit" to start a fire on the river bank and we cooked hotdogs for lunch. Most of our fish were caught while I was paddling and steering the canoe, so I was unable to fish most of the good fish holding spots, such as boulders, downed trees and eddies. Many bass hold in the rapids and we caught several as we cast behind the canoe into the completed rapid run. Jack did well learning the nuances of his Shimano Symetre 3000 spinning reel and became fairly proficient at casting the soft plastic baits. We plan to return to Crooked Creek in the fall for more smallie action, but we'll float a shorter section of river so we can concentrate on fishing instead of paddeling! We saw many large carp in the river that got Jack's blood boiling for a return trip with carp bait!
On the way back to Kansas City, we made the obligatory stop at the original Bass Pro Shops in Springfield, MO to pay homage to Johnny Morris and purchase a few needed catfish and carp baits. They had a cool albino alligator and some huge alligator gar in two aquariums!
