Recently I wrote about floating the Roubidoux River as boy, working as a fishing guide for newspaper editor Lane Davis. Lane liked to fish that river because he felt it received less fishing pressure and might have more fish, if not bigger ones. I always wondered, what the Roubidoux River was named after. The French name ‘robidou’ means “son of Robert”.
It was a great river then, but not so much now. Deeper eddies there have been filled with gravel and sand… so much of the fish habitat is gone. And the water flow is much less now than it was in the 60’s, because dozens of small springs that fed the river have dried up. Modern Ozarkians do not realize what a water crisis our country will experience in another fifty years or less. Our Ozark rivers will become creeks.
Back in 1960 there were no aluminum river boats or canoes, but dad had built a couple of 14-foot wooden johnboats that you could use to float small streams. They were heavy but better to fish from than anything made of metal. The wood bottoms were slick enough to slide over the rocks and gravel and so easy to handle even a kid could paddle one.
Boy, those were the days… not so much because there were lots bigger bass and goggle-eye and green sunfish, but because there were so many more of them.
The biggest smallmouth I have ever seen caught from the rivers of the Ozarks was a 23-inch bass I know would have weighed six pounds. It was the summer of 1959 on the Big Piney, guiding a Houston man and his wife, Joe and Katy Richardson. I was 12 and it was my first paid trip as a float-fishing guide in one of those old wooden johnboats. I was paid 50 cents an hour and Joe gave me a five-dollar tip at the end of the day. I told my dad that I had found my life’s profession!
Back then I had no landing net, so I got out in the water up to my knees and landed Katy’s huge bass by hand. She was a fine lady and fisherman and no one deserved a fish more. I still have the black ‘Heddon River Runt’ she caught it on and her photo with the fish and the lure are on display in my Big Piney nature center. I remember it like it was yesterday and I have never seen a smallmouth like it from a river. It was a dark chocolate brown with almost no markings. I am going to use a picture of the fish to have a replica made for the nature center.
As to the nature center… on May 10 we are going to have a big yard sale there too help pay for some additional work that needs too be done and some displays. Hope many of you can attend. We have lots of stuff for sale, some guns and fishing gear, and hundreds of lures, a boat trailer and a kayak or two.
And I also wrote about brown trout in a recent column. Here is more about that species of fish…
Brown trout were introduced to American waters in 1883, from the British Isles and Eastern Europe. The western U.S. had several species of trout, but there were no brown trout. Missouri stocked a quarter million of them in the Ozarks in the late twenties and early thirties. Arkansas followed at a later time.
The brown trout has been stocked and today thrive successfully in Missouri’ Meramec River, the Niangua River Taneycomo Lake, the Current River and the North Fork River. In Arkansas, they are stocked in the White River below Beaver Lake Dam, Bull Shoals Dam, Norfork Lake Dam and in the Little Red River below Greer’s Ferry. There is evidence that they have actually had a few successful winter spawns in the Arkansas White River.
Brown trout eat almost anything when they are smaller, from insects and crayfish to minnows, sculpins and shad. The larger they get the more likely they are to eat larger prey…from small rainbow trout to small ducklings to mice.
Outdoor writer Jim Spencer tells of catching a brown trout near Calico Rock on the lower White that he believes was larger than 30 pounds. He nearly landed the fish but he couldn’t get it in a net he had. There are many browns in the White that are 20 to 30 pounds and most guides there know where to find them when the water is low. Some have been caught and released.
I hope readers will check out my websites, larrydablemont.com and larrydablemontoutdoors. You can email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com.
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