This photo was taken in 1975 on the Big Piney. The eddy below this senseless raping of the watershed was about 8 feet deep then. Today it is less than half that.
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In
Arkansas just the other day I talked to a friend of mine who is a bass-fishing
nut, and all around outdoorsman.
Larry Davenport runs the Buffalo Point Restaurant high above the Buffalo
River. He grew up there. We got
around to talking about Crooked Creek which flows from the Ozark Mountains
south of Harrison into the White River southeast of Yellville.
I
first saw that smallmouth fishing paradise in 1972, after hearing so much about
it from Uncle Norten, who began guiding fishermen there in the 1950’s. It was everything he said it was,
eddies deep and clear; the shoals rough and tumble waters where smallmouth
fed.
Back
then, I floated all the Arkansas rivers, the Buffalo, Kings, War Eagle,
Illinois, Eleven Point and many more.
Uncle Norten and I guided folks on some of them during from the late
seventies until 1990. But I
will tell you right now, as great and as unique as each of them were, Crooked
Creek, not spectacular in terms of bluffs or scenic grandeur, beat them all as
a ‘big smallmouth’ stream.
Today
it still has smallmouth, but it is a shell of the river I remember, because it
has been so badly filled in with sand and gravel, and subject to unchecked
pollution in the eighties and nineties.
A chemical spill there from train derailment right above the water
devastated the lower portion about 40 years ago.
Davenport
thinks many of the once-deep eddies could be like they once were if the gravel
could be removed. Unrestricted
gravel dredging operations back some time ago surely made the filling-in
problem a major one, but it isn’t the only reason Crooked Creeks eddies often
went from 10 feet deep to 3 feet deep.
The
clearing of trees and brush along small tributaries and the river itself
contributed mightily. You cannot
turn a timbered bottomland watershed into bulldozed and barren flat without
having tremendous erosion over the years. That’s exactly what has
happened. Much of the silt and
gravel came from places where there were never any gravel operations.
And
for that reason, Davenport is exactly right, if you could bring in a big dredge
line of some sort and take the gravel and sand and silt out of 10 or 12 big
holes you would see those eddies support some big bass again and lots more of
all kinds of aquatic life… but in time they would fill back in from the massive
flooding Crooked Creek sees quite often.
The
Ozark watershed of a hundred years ago was a sponge that soaked up heavy rains,
because of the timber. Layers of leaves made a soft forest floor that slowed
and held water. Today the Ozarks,
almost all of it, is a brick. Hard
cattle-trod fields sit on slopes, and there is increasing pavement and concrete
likely covering ten times what we had in 1970. And that’s why stopping the gravel companies from reeking
havoc along the stream didn’t stop the degradation of that unbelievable river.
But
what Larry Davenport theorizes, ought to be tried, not only on Crooked Creek
but many other rivers. While
Tyson’s chicken operations have fouled Arkansas’ Illinois, Kings and War Eagle,
there are other rivers where it could be attempted. The Big Piney and the Niangua in Missouri, the Eleven Point
in Arkansas. The removal of
fill-in gravel and silt ought to be tried as an experiment. What could it hurt now?
My
close friend Dennis Whiteside was floating rivers with me in an old johnboat
when we were college kids, only 18 years old. He grew up on the Current River
and he knows the streams and smallmouth bass like no man I ever knew except my
Uncle Norten. That’s because he is
doing exactly what Norten did, guiding folks year round, who want to fish or
otherwise see the rivers before they are ruined forever. As many streams as I have floated,
Dennis has floated twice as many, and he can tell you all about them… dozens
and dozens of creeks and rivers from tributaries of the Arkansas River to
tributaries of the Missouri.
“Tell
me something the Ozarks has that is of greater value than it’s rivers,” he
says. “Men can make almost
anything, but not a river.”
When
you set somewhere and see a bluff towering up above a stretch of flowing,
tumbling water where a big smallmouth and a half dozen rock bass may lurk, when
you see and hear kingfishers in a majestic white sycamore, where a mink plays
along it’s roots, what can we boast of here in these hills that is better? Why
aren’t we doing everything we can do to stop the abuse that is killing them?
Dennis
and another long time friend who floats rivers all over the nation went to a
meeting about smallmouth held by Missouri Department of Conservation biologists
last year. They came back very
despondent.
“They
have no clue!” Dennis said, “They want to base everything on some study they
had on a few miles of one stream.
They just haven’t ‘been there’ and ‘done that’.”
Dennis
points out that in the course of a year, if he and I concentrate on a few good
holes of water in a small to medium stream like Crooked Creek, we could catch
and keep every smallmouth above 14 inches. NOT MOST--ALL!
People like us
who are dedicated to rivers and smallmouth have the answer biologists won’t
even consider… keep no smallmouth ever, from any
stream, that exceed 13 inches, and a limit of
two.
If
you just have to have fish to eat, keep green sunfish, catfish, largemouth and
Kentucky bass, but keep no smallmouth above 13-inches and no rock bass at all.
A smallmouth
bass from an Ozark river is poor eating.
The flavor doesn’t compare to other fish and most have yellow grubs in
the meat. If you take out someone
from the city who hasn’t caught many fish, he might clean and fry a smallmouth
filet. But show him those yellow
grubs, which are sometimes a dozen or more per 6-inch filet, and he will likely
decide he doesn’t want it.
Another
solution is seeing the Conservation Department work with cattlemen to keep
cattle out of the river and to stop the worst of the bank erosion with rip rap
and willows, and a buffer strip of native grasses and planted trees.
A
federal program helps landowners along the river practice these conservation measures
by paying for the planting, fencing and drilled wells to water stock. The catch is, the Soil Conservation
Service must wait until it is all finished to reimburse the landowner and most
landowners can’t afford the initial expense.
If
the Conservation Departments in Missouri and Arkansas paid for it all up front,
many landowners would try this, and the Departments would only be out that
money for a short time before the SCS reimburses them. Missouri’s Department of Conservation
has nearly 200 million a year to work with and vast amounts of that money which
all Missourians pay them in licenses and taxes is wasted, much of it spent for
almost nothing. Recently they paid a retiring employee who was a close friend
of the director 145,000 dollars to write a book about rivers. It will never be written. You could take that wasted money and
repair miles of river somewhere where it is most needed.
A
neighbor of mine, Jim Hacker, has used this program to do preserve a mile or so
of river along the Pomme de Terre. On that river, cattleman David Cribbs saw a
place along his land where the river was eroding barren bank several feet a
year, so he used discarded concrete slabs and huge chunks of cement to stop
it. Now you can scarcely see the
concrete, as willows and other plants have hidden it, and the riverbank is
stable in the worst of floods.
To
see the best of this, go look at the once-terribly eroded banks above the big
new bridge at Galena on the James River and see what was done to stop it cold.
Oh yes, it can be done! Saving our rivers is possible, but we need to want to
do it.
Whiteside
was right, the Ozarks has nothing compared to our rivers, and in a matter of
years our over-used, over-fished, much neglected streams will be nothing to
boast about. Changing what is
coming to them will take some money… but they are worth it.
If
you want to learn more about Ozark streams, I would encourage you to read my
book, “Rivers to Run—Swift water, Sycamores and Smallmouth Bass”. To find out how to get a copy, call my
office, 417-777-5227 or email lightninridge@windstream.net
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This photo was taken in 1975 on the Big Piney.
The eddy below this senseless raping of the watershed was about 8 feet
deep then. Today it is less than half that.
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