A Special Smallmouth

In the middle of the week, on a stretch of river where the canoe renters don’t operate, you can get off to yourself and not see another soul all day. Especially now, while it is so hot. Dennis Whiteside and I figured on that, a week or so ago. So we set off down an Ozark river one morning expecting to catch some big bass on topwater lures right off the bat. I have never been able to figure out why there would be times I don’t catch fish. I have a lot of experience and confidence, and I can put a lure right where I want to put it about 105 percent of the time. I have spent so many years floating down Ozark rivers that I can make most any lure look so good in the water that sometimes it fools me. And I am modest about it too! Dennis isn’t quite as good at it as I am, but he thinks he is, and on occasion he fools the fish into thinking that too.

So why we fished two or three hours with only three or four little dinky bass to show for it, I cannot say. But we did. We stopped in the shade and ate a sandwich and remarked about how hot it was, and how pretty the river was when there wasn’t anyone to be seen on it all day but us. And we argued about why we weren’t catching bass right along that were as long as the boat paddle blade. He had one theory, and I had another. But we weren’t ready to give up, because we both remember those days in mid to late summer when it appears the river doesn’t have a bass in it anywhere, and they just start getting interested in lures all at once. Dennis, who guides fishermen on Ozark rivers all over southern Missouri and north Arkansas, commented about how many times he has seen some great big ol’ bass caught on a topwater lure in the middle of the hottest day of August, and I can recall the same thing.

When it finally comes to pass that the rivers drop to their summer level, and bass begin to clobber topwater lures, you might catch a lunker at any time of the day. That’s because, even though it is simmering hot above the water, it is fairly nice underneath it. And sure enough, about three o’clock that afternoon, we started hooking a few nice ones on topwater lures with propellers on both ends. And we fought a good number of them, losing some and winning some, noticing that when a big bass gets ahold of a lure, he knows just when to jump and just how to throw that lure. That happened a time or two. But a pair of grizzled old veteran outdoorsman like us don’t often admit to defeat. I release all the big bass I catch anyway. Sometimes I release them before I get them in the boat!

Only a few days later, I decided to take Gloria Jean and the editor of my magazine, Sondra Gray, on that same stretch of river, with the help of her husband David. There would be four of us in that 17-foot johnboat, which is a pretty good load. So I put two folding lawn chairs in the middle for the ladies, and David and I paddled from each end. Gloria Jean, of course has caught so many big fish that she often gets to bragging about it to complete strangers. She’ll be found in the local grocery store with some stranger cornered, bragging on me or some big fish she caught, and it just embarrasses me to death. She caught her first smallmouth many years back and there have been many big ones since then, thanks to getting the very best guiding and teaching from her mother and father’s second favorite son-in-law, which is me.

Sondra, learning a great deal about the outdoors in a hurry, has caught her first limit of white bass and crappie this past spring, and some nice largemouth bass, but never a smallmouth. That trip on a hot day last week was to be the day she learned about smallmouth. And, as you might suspect, there weren’t any to be had.
David, riding in the front of the boat, caught a nice largemouth on a topwater lure, and we stopped on a shoal or two and waded late in the evening, to catch more largemouth and Kentuckies. It wasn’t the greatest fishing but it wasn’t bad.

It was getting fairly dusky, and we were a mile or so from the pickup, and poor Sondra hadn’t caught much of anything. You have to understand how fanatical she is about fishing to know what that meant. The lady loves to fish, and when you start talking about how it isn’t so much what you catch, but just enjoying the outdoors, she doesn’t buy it. Sondra is just getting into fishing, and she wants to catch something. She wants to catch lots of them, and big ones at that.

We approached a shoal as the lightning bugs flashed around us, and the last colors of an evening sunset spread low across the sky. Gloria had already quit fishing and was bragging on how good I was at paddling that boat when I saw Sondra cast toward a weedy bank where the water was flowing gently, only a few feet deep. Her spinning rod arced, and she knew she was in for a battle. The fish was no doubt the best one of the day, her first smallmouth. It stripped line against her drag, and came up out of the water.

Well, Sondra has a knack for fishing, and she is lucky. She learns in a hurry. And of course David was waiting with a net. When he missed that fish on the first pass, I just knew he wouldn’t get another chance, but he did, and with the netting, the battle was over. But the excitement wasn’t. Sondra lost her balance and the lawn chair leaned precariously and capsized. I was out of the boat about to take a picture, and I acted quickly. I made a saving grab at my dip net, which was about to be crushed under the lawn chair. Thankfully I saved it, and Sondra didn’t get all that wet. Gloria Jean said I still had the same lightnin’ reflexes I had thirty years ago, and David said he was afraid that lawn chair was beyond any repair. But the bass was still in the boat and just fine, and Sondra was smiling.

It made a great picture, and David and I finally talked Sondra into turning it back, which she did with a great deal of reluctance, only after I agreed to exaggerate the size of it in any future stories.

We drifted silently down the river toward the gravel bar where my pick up waited as the moon rose bright and high above the water. A barred owl hooted in the distance upriver and a small bullfrog was practicing in a nearby pocket. Everyone was happy, including the smallmouth. He doesn’t know it, but he got to be a very special first fish.

See pictures of that bass on my website, as well as our new August-September Lightnin’ Ridge magazine, on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com. The e-mail address is lightninridge@windstream.net, and you can write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613