With an invitation like I received earlier this week from Brian Wise, I was really looking forward to heading down to the North Fork of the White River for a float. The weather was supposed to be really nice (although, we could have done away with the bluebird skies), and any day on the river is a good day. So I took off after work on Friday, and rolled into the metropolis of Gainesville, Missouri about 10pm.

Up early and a 6am breakfast at Skeeter’s (where the waitress revealed that there was no “gravy” to be served this morning; gravy is like coffee for me….so my morning didn’t start off as I had hoped….but it wasn’t bad), and we were rolling into the Kelly Ford access on the North Fork of the White River. We were met by two guys who had their truck parked and were camping on the “boat ramp”, prior to launching their canoe for a day of fishing. In truth these guys probably didn’t know any better, and we were able to slide the boat down over the tree roots, but backing the trailer up with the longer wheel base durango was a little bit more difficult. They were trying to be helpful, offering up fly suggestions as we were rigging our rods and what not; and with that I popped my first Stag beer of the morning (Stag is a highly under-rated beer).

Brian and I decided to switch off rowing after every fish. I was up front first, and within the first 10 minutes or so I had a fish on. It was a dink, but it was a wild rainbow and it fell pray to rubber leg and prince nymph dropper under an indicator about 7ft deep. And like that, I was on the sticks and Brian was up. He popped 2 or 3 fish rather quickly and we swapped out again just as McKee bridge was coming into site.

The day pretty much consisted of the same rubber leg / prince dropper combo with lots of weight and deep with plenty of fish brought to hand (including a sucker….caught by your’s truly).  With switching on and off the oars.  I think I might have even impressed Brian as I rowed him through the “Rock Garden” with so much as a tap of a rock — at the bottom he offered a triumphant fist bump of his approval.

The only excitement came when I started to throw a sink tip and a Galloups Articulated Fat Head Minnow and got a big dark shadow to appear on my fly and then disappear.  I did manage one other strike, but with the bright skies, we weren’t expecting much of a streamer bite.  I guess, the other excitement came as Brian hopped out of the boat in an effort to net a sucker I had caught and took a bath.  I am not sure if it was the actual act of hoping out of the boat, or the Stag Beer we were drinking, or the fact that I hooked a sucker which caused the excitement but either way we had a good laugh.

As the day warmed up, there was a pretty large caddis hatch that was coming off (with big caddis…close to a #12 or so) and I actually got to see ALOT of fish rising in the North Fork of the White River, which was cool; but we didn’t have a single dry fly among us (less some Turk’s Tarantula’s….which are always good to have).

There were alot of people on the river, as we were floating down along the road to Kelly Ford there was a raft with a fishing frame driving in. So in total, we weren’t on the water more than 20 minutes and had already seen 2 more boats. The weather was nice, and that trend continued as we saw several canoes and at least 5 separate pontoon boats, and Tito and a buddy brought their Hyde over from the Eleven Point for a float as well.

Tito received a Hyde Contender series drift boat for Christmas.  He and his buddy put in just below the Parker Bridge access and floated to the James Bridge takeout.  His boat is a high side drift boat like mine, but his is a walk-around model (where mine has bench seats).  I have to tell you, I was impressed with his boat.  The only issue is getting under the bridges at McKee and Patrick with a high side drift boat….not going to happen at 650CFS for the Patrick bridge.

We floated from Kelly Ford to James Bridge, which essentially covers all of the trout water on the North Fork of the White River.  As stated earlier, the water flow was about 650 cfs, and that was the max for getting Brian’s lowpro clacka underneath the Patrick Bridge.  He actually had to walk the boat under the bridge and hang off the bow of it to get it to fit under the bridge.  My Hyde would not have made it under the bridge, without filling it with water to make it float lower, and then bailing the water once on the other side.

This was also my first time fishing the water below Patrick, and I was impressed with it for sure.  This section of the water is mainly a stocked brown trout fishery, and this is what we caught mostly in this section.  I would definitely fish this section of river again, as the river gets wide in this section, but there is a variety of water to fish between Patrick and James Bridge.

I can’t say enough good things about the North Fork of the White River.  This river is awesome and fishes extremely well from a drift boat.  Every fish we caught today came while floating, if we would strike on a fish we would row upstream (in spots where that was practical) and float it again and pick up another fish.  Numbers wise, we boated between 20 and 30 fish which made for a great day in the boat.

We finished up our float about 5pm and headed back to Gainesville to drop off the boat and then to West Plains for dinner at El Charro before I drove back to St. Louis for my daughter’s 8th birthday on Sunday. Rolled in to my driveway at 10:45pm dead tired, all in all a great way to start a weekend.

We were staring down the tail-end of the trip as we woke up in our hotel room in Ava, Missouri.  We had three streams we needed to knock off today, so that would mean a lot of driving as we fished our way east across the bottom of the state.  The first stop on this leg of the trip was Brian’s home waters, the North Fork of the White River near Dora, Missouri and the Blair Bridge Access.

The North Fork of the White River is a fly-fisherman’s nirvana.  This stream is what every trout stream in the state wishes it could be (well maybe not the Eleven Point..).  I rigged up the rod, and there was something about this morning that I just knew I was going to have my ass handed to me on this river…again.  Brian Wise couldn’t save me as I had my first take only to not get a solid connection and like that it was off.  The more I threw the 12ft long indicator, #4 rubber leg stone, #14 psycho prince dropper rig the more I became frustrated with this river.  The more I became frustrated, the more I loved it.  It is a vicious cycle.  But all good things come to an end, and we needed to get moving, so after the berating I was taking from Brian on the stream I quickly handed him the rod and he hooked up with a dink brown just as we were walking out (but he too….had to work for it….eggs really do catch fish anywhere).

As we rolled out of the access, I marveled at the ridiculous concrete work that the access had just received.  This must be the biggest MDC waste of money, since stocking trout in Hickory Creek.  Of all the things to spend money on, turning a perfectly good gravel parking lot into a concrete parking lot is not one of them.  Hell, I would rather see another boat ramp or the money go to raising the bridges at McKee Bridge and Patrick Bridge.  At any rate, I digress.

We had thought about adding the tailwaters of Arkansas on the trip, but I had really wanted to get back to the Spring River, as I hadn’t been on it since October.  So we set our sites across Hwy 160 towards Hwy 63 and headed south to the town of Mammoth Spring, Arkansas.  I didn’t have the Bayou Access marked on the GPS, but we found it just fine.  Bayou Access is one of the nicer sections of the Spring River with plenty of different habitat to fish.  The water was up, and the wading was very limited, so Brian grabbed his rod and headed upstream to give it a shot.  He worked a section of stream right in front of the access and was rewarded with a rainbow on a psycho prince.  It had started to rain a bit (the first time on the trip), so it was time to put the camera gear up and with that, we found a drive-through for lunch and headed towards the Eleven Point River having just fished 20 streams in 4 days.

What can I say about the Eleven Point River, it is a beautiful untouched jewel of an Ozark trout stream.  The Eleven Point has always fished well in my previous trips to it (I wonder why I don’t fish it more), and this trip would be no exception.  The thing about the river is that it is a river that needs to be floated (moreso than any other river in the state).  Unless you are willing to hike the Ozark Trail, the wading opportunities on this stream really are not that present.  We pulled in to Greer Spring Access, we met up with one of Brian Sloss’s newest employee’s, Tito.  He was a really good guy, gave up a handful of his personal flies and pointed us in the right direction and after some general chit-chat we were off.  The Eleven Point held true to form and I was rewarded with two fish pretty quickly while fishing a 12ft indicator rig with a rubber leg stonefly and an egg dropper (both fish took the rubber leg).  Just as we were heading back to the car, Brian Sloss (Eleven Point Canoe Rental) rolled in and we stood around as we de-wadered and recounted the trip we had just completed.  It was good to catch up with Brian and had we stood there much longer, I am sure the beers would have been opened and a campfire would have been found; but we were haunted by th skunk on the Current River and needed to head north back to the Current River and towards Rolla (our original starting point).

On the drive north on Hwy. 63 we stopped just south of Licking, Missouri and had to have one of the finest dinners I have ever had on a fishing trip at Black Forest Grill.  The ham steak that I had, was simply amazing.  If you are looking for a great place to grab some eats when around Licking, I would definitely check them out.  After dinner, we headed towards the Scenic Rivers Inn to sort through video and photos and gear before hitting the Current River in the morning.