Old Boats, Old Times

Norten and Larry in the canoe he used to guide float fishermen for more than forty years.

 We’ve picked up the lumber for the White River johnboat we are building this weekend. The yellow pine log, cut at the Arkansawyer sawmill near Yellville, came from the watershed of the White River, and the boards are 21 feet long, 16 inches wide. What a boat that will be when we finish it! I am hoping for cooler weather next Saturday, there on the White River, where once upon a time there were nothing but wooden johnboats.

Rick Eastwold, the owner of Bull Shoals Marina, at Lakeview, Arkansas, says he has found a submerged White River wooden johnboat in Bull Shoals Lake that is about 60 feet deep when the lake is at normal stage. It may be nearly 100 years old, probably there when the lake filled in the early 1950’s. Because it has been underwater for all these years it should be fairly well preserved, but he is trying to figure out how to bring it to the surface without damaging it in anyway. I told him when he does that, I want to be there watching.

I am not sure what we will do with the johnboat we are building, but perhaps someone will want it for a museum or something of that sort. If you want to join us, we will be there, at the east end of Bull Shoals Dam at the State Park Pavilion, under big oak trees looking out over the lake, all day long this coming Saturday. There will be food and soft drinks, iced sassafras tea, and a couple or three old river guides who once paddled wooden johnboats down the White River for float fishermen from all over the world.

Today the White River is known for trout fishing, and right now they tell me the trout fishing is great because there are six generators running, keeping the river full. Usually this time of year there are low water conditions which makes trout fishing tougher. Fly-fishermen love the low water stages of course, but those who want to cast, or have a shot at the big brown trout on the river below the dam, like to see plenty of flow. Bull Shoals is very, very high right now, and they would be running more than six generators if they could, but the flooding on the Missouri demands that water be held in Ozark reservoirs as much as possible to keep the lower White and the Arkansas River from pouring so much water into the Mississippi.

Those who fish Bull Shoals Lake itself say the high water is great for future fishing, and if you know how to fish the lake now, you can catch plenty of bass, walleye and white bass. Some big walleye are now found in the White below the dam because they were emptied into the river with the huge releases of water necessary a month or so back. A guide at Gaston’s resort caught a big walleye recently on a night crawler right near the boat dock there, and the walleye had a 12-inch trout sticking out of it’s gullet. The trout in turn, had a hook and line in its jaw, so they theorize that the walleye took the trout from some fisherman who was fighting it on light tackle. That fisherman must have had some story to tell.

That guide I talked to said he has never seen so many walleye in the White below the dam as there are now. Norfork and Bull Shoals lakes, once known for bass and crappie and catfish, are becoming known now for some of the best walleye fishing in the Midwest. And there’s news this week of a new Missouri record striper taken recently by a Bull Shoals fisherman who had never caught a striper in his life… a sixty-pound-plus whopper.

Saturday, we’ll take time out from building that johnboat to listen to fish stories, and maybe tell a few. There will be pork sandwiches and baked beans, and potato chips and dessert, and cold soft drinks, even iced sassafras tea. I don’t know how many folks will be there selling paddles and old fishing lures, and wood-carvings of fish and wildlife, but there will be several. If you want to come and sell something relating to the old days in the outdoors, we have room, just call me and let me know what you want to sell. And if you have built a wooden johnboat, we’d love for you to bring it and show it off. We will also be giving away free issues of the Lightnin’ Ridge magazines, and I will be selling and signing my books. There’s a big visitor center-museum on the west side of the dam you want to be sure and visit too.

If you know any old timers who guided fishermen on any rivers in wooden johnboats, we would sure like to have them at this upcoming event as honored guests. We are bringing lots of old photos of those days that I think people will enjoy seeing, plus old magazines and posters from the 20’s to the 50’s. One fellow who will be there hand carves old wooden lures like the ones from those days, duplicates of the Heddon Lucky 13, the Bass-Orenos and others.

I am hoping my Uncle Norten might be able to come. My uncle guided his first trip in 1934 for 50 cents a day. For years thereafter he paddled wooden johnboats for fly-fishermen. Casting gear began to come on in the 1940’s, but you had to cast pretty good-sized lures to use those old reels and braided line. Uncle Norten guided fishermen every year of his life on rivers of the Ozarks except for the two years he was overseas during the war. That makes a total of 74 years of guiding through 2010. Who do you know that did something they made a living at for that period of time? I moved to Harrison, Arkansas in 1973, and Norten lived at Rogers at that time. We got together and took fishermen on trips on the War Eagle, the Kings, the Illinois, the Buffalo and Crooked Creek in north Arkansas until the late 1980’s when I moved back to Missouri. Uncle Norten moved up here in 2003, and we started guiding together again on the Niangua and Gasconade.

We used 19 foot square-sterned Grumman canoes, and sometimes were on the river for two or three days at a time, with camping gear and four fisherman between us. He guided on a regular basis for a dozen different fishermen who went fishing with no one else. Today they are all gone, and Norten survives them with great memories. The canoe Norten used was one he bought in the 1960’s, and he took his last trip in it last year on the Niangua.

Last week his wife and brother sold that old canoe, against his wishes. I tried to buy it and give it back to my Uncle, but to no avail. The new owner will never know the history and memories that old canoe holds. I seriously doubt if there is a river-boat or canoe anywhere that put so many miles of river behind it. We talked about those memories the other evening as my Uncle smoked a cigar and relived the old days, with tears welling up in his eyes. An era has ended. Another old guide will lift a paddle no more! He may well have been the last of them… except for me.

For information on this coming Saturday’s johnboat building day, call me at 417 777 5227 or email me at lightninridge@windstream.net. Information can also be found on my website, www.larrydablemont outdoors.blogspot.com