Post by jonbo on Sept 9, 2015 7:11:27 GMT -6
I'm going to say the Little Red River in Arkansas is not local to the LMF. Anywho, I went there with my better half for the Labor Day Weekend. On the way, going through Little Rock, we stopped at Bass Pro. I was trying to pick up some Maxima Chameleon monofilament. There's recipes out there for tie-your-own leaders that call for it. I wanted to try it out. Nope. I can't seem to find Maxima anywhere. So I stuck with buying a couple of 7 1/2 ft 2x machine-tapered leaders to which I put tippet rings on, then tippet. The cabin we rented was downstream a little ways. It was beautifully kept up. Great hostess. It had river access, and kayaks we could use. We didn't kayak. They were sport kayaks, not good for fishing as no room for gear. The dock was a little funky and the wife declined to try and get into a kayak from it, so we ignored the kayaks altogether. Bummer in that with a fishing kayak I could have kayaked to a really good shoal (supposedly) downstream, Mossy Shoals, I think. LRR is one of the tailwaters where you want to fish a shoal, or shallow area, unless you're drift fishing, maybe. In between shoals, the river's kind of a big, deep pond with no wade access at all. There are only about 4-5 public access "shoals" altogether, but they're pretty good spots.
So, Saturday, because we ate breakfast, I got out kind of late. In the water at the nearest public-access shoal, Libby, about 8. There were already several fishermen. The water averages, at no generation, about 2 1/2 feet deep there. There were no rises. Well, I tried every nymph combo I could think of por nada. Eggs with midge trailers didn't work, scuds no, pheasant tails and other mayfly larvae types, no, caddis type things, no. Meanwhile it's getting more and more crowded with bank fishermen and canoes, kayaks, river boats. A few bank fishermen seemed to catch a couple of trout on Powerbait I guess, but that was it. So Saturday was a bad day for trout. I did get to try the Sage TXL-F 4 wt I bought used on EBay. It's beautiful at casting a soft-hackle, and probably a dry fly, very accurate and smooth. It's not so good with a big, heavy nymph rig, but it's not designed for that. I never fished in the evenings, any day. Hung out with the Mrs and played Scrabble, Yahtzee and cards.
Sunday, I drove to the "Swinging Bridge", or Barnett Access (official name). That's a really long wading shoal. You can wade down about a mile. Well, again, lots of people in the water. I had switched back to my BVK 10 ft which is quite suited to this somewhat larger, open water. I had no action on nymphs, but kept moving downstream. Finally, down around the corner, I saw a few rises. I put on a "Pueblo Emerger" I had tied up, a 20, I think, in BWO, and started getting bit. I had a number of short strikes but managed to catch a couple of smallish browns. On the way back up I saw a guy nymphing catch a couple of rainbows. Barnett Access is a really great access point with a lot of fishable water, probably best fished on a weekday after Labor Day.
So, having resigned myself to a nice cabin stay with my wife, on Monday I went out early for one last try at the closest shoal, Libby. I had gone to the local fly shop the day before and bought some stuff (he didn't have Maxima Chameleon either.) But he did sell me some sowbugs which were a little different from the scuds I had tied myself, more of just a drab gray. This matched what I had seen in a couple of puddles along the bank. After trying some other combo I finally tied on one of those drab sowbugs. The water just before the sun came over the trees had little glare and with my polarized glasses the fish were quite visible, kind of like at the old Evening Hole. I was trying to sight fish, but nothing was interested, yet, though they were moving around quite a bit. Then I saw a flash in front of me, then another. I thought, "I think that's a fish feeding". I laid the sowbug out 5 ft in front of him. A few seconds later, he took it! Then he ran. "Whoa! It's a big one!" He took line about 5 or 6 times. Finally I was able to walk him up an inlet into some grass. He was about a 19" brown.
So tough as the fishing was, understandable at Labor Day Weekend, it paid off in the end. The moral of the story? (Eddie says:) "Support the local fly shop!"