![]() ![]() Then we waded upstream and fished the pools and riffles in reverse. 270 Bridge in Glenwood and clipped the bow ropes of our canoes to our belt loops. Instead of doing a one-way float, we put in at the Hwy. ![]() CADDO RIVERĪn obscure stream in the Ouachita Mountains, the Caddo River is intensely busy during the summer, but it also changes personality in September when the crowds go home.įor years, Alan Thomas of Russellville and I held an annual “End of Summer Celebration” that began with a dove hunt on an Arkansas River sandbar and ended with a smallmouth float on the Caddo. I counted to “Two Mississippi” and set the hook on a 3-pound smallmouth, the biggest of the trip. I started retrieving it and heard what sounded like a beaver slamming its tail against the water. I cast a Whopper Plopper as far as I could into the pool downstream. After supper, Eldridge and I went to the point at the end of the gravel bar. Before supper, we spread out and wear the bass out for about 90 minutes after we make camp. One of the best evening fishing spots is a long, deep run that flows beside a particular gravel bar. I am most successful with the aforementioned topwaters or a 1.5 or 2.5 series squarebill crankbait.Ībout two hours before dark, bass move into the riffles to feed. Bass come out for the evening feed, and this is when big fish are most active and most accessible. In the late afternoon, the sun’s rays are aslant, and the light is richly saturated. The bite will be subtle, and you must react quickly, but it’s a dependable and effective method that we discovered by accident. It might take a while, but a smallmouth will always come to investigate. With our canoes stationary, we cast a lizard and let it soak on the bottom. ![]() Pruitt and I usually lash our canoes together and duck into a shady eddy to chat and enjoy a cold beverage. If you have another rod loaded and ready to go, you can pitch a lizard or a jig into the melee and catch a broad-shouldered bass.īass often are inactive for a few hours in the afternoons, but they’ll still bite if you are patient. If you hook a small bass, one or two brutes will dash in and try to steal the bait from the hooked fish. If you doubt that big bass are in a pool, this scenario will change your mind. As a fish-finding technique, I drag it through channel troughs while I drift. I use a Zoom Mini Lizard or Tiny Brush Hog in pumpkin/red flake or cotton candy with a 1/8-ounce bullet sinker. To catch them, you must be slow and deliberate. When the sun gets high, the bass go deep or hide under cover. If bass are feeding aggressively, they will hit either of those baits for much of the morning. I alternate between a white Booyah Pond Magic buzzbait and a Whopper Plopper. I float slowly past and work a topwater as fast as I can cast and retrieve. I’ve found that bigger smallmouths and Kentucky bass prowl the big rocks and water willow next to the bank. They usually start the morning by catching six to 10 smallies in the 10- to 13-inch range. They beach their canoes and wade knee deep to the edge of the fast water, where they drift Zoom Mini Lizards in cotton candy color on Texas rigs with 1/8-ounce bullet sinkers. Eldridge and Kubler love to fish riffles, so they dash downstream to the first bottleneck. Mornings begin with a lazy drift away from the previous night’s campsite. It’s hard to keep a canoe stationary long enough to keep from dragging a bait out of the strike zone. ![]() It’s the presentation that’s tricky because even though the river flows gentle in September, it’s still moving water. Big bass keep to themselves under rocks and other deep cover during the day, but they’ll bite if you put a lure into their lairs. Fish generally don’t move between pools, but where they are in a pool depends on time of day and moon phase. Like all streams in the Ozark and Ouachita mountains, the Buffalo is a chain of pools separated by rapids and riffles. ![]()
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