Got a call from Mike the other evening wanting to know if I wanted to do a float on Crooked Creek. Mike has an inflatable two man boat. Not ever been on that part of the creek I thought it would be a good time to do it. The float would be from Kelly's Slab to the park in Yellville. It is 3 1/2 miles and Mike was told it would take about 4 hours. More on that later. Mike was at my house about 6:45 yesterday morning and we were on the creek before 8 am. It was a bright sunny day and temps were to get to 80 degrees. The first hour or so we floated to a couple of deep holes and it was dead, no hits at all. I was using a soft hackle and Mike was using a Crawfish fly. After about an hour and a half, I changed over the the Chili Pepper.Made a cast to the bank and hooked up with a big hand size Long ear Gill. It was still slow till we got to the next hole. There was a fast chute above the hole and I made a cast to the fast water. Hooked up with the first Smallmouth of the day. Made a few more casts and no hits. That chute came around and had a swirl of back water along the far bank. I knew there had to be fish in that back water but wading across the chute would be risky. I was able to make some long casts that paid off. In about a dozen casts I took one largmouth and eight Rock Bass. Mike changed over to an Olive Bugger and was able to catch three Rock Bass. Then all quit and we floated down to the next chute. I took a couple more Smallmouths from that water and Mike got one Bluegill. I kept telling Mike to put a Pepper on but he wanted to use what he had. When we got down to the next chute I finally got him to take a Pepper from me and tie it on after I caught five Smallmouths in a row on the Pepper. Mike tied the pepper on and caught two Smallies on a row. We found the day was moving on and we kept thinking the Yellville take out point would be around the next bend. We fished several more chutes and caught some more Smallmouths. Noticed the sky to the south and west was starting to get a bit dark. This is starting to get a bit long so I will not go into some of the other things we ran into on the rest of the float. If we don't get some rain soon, there will not enough water to float that section of the creek. The sky was getting darker and we had no idea how much longer it was going to take to get to Yellville. We passed up a lot of good water at the end of the float. There was more dragging the boat than floating. Finally we were able to see the bridge at Yellville and got to the take out point. The sky was getting darker all the time. Our four hour float turned into an eight hour trip but it was worth every minuet of it. We got home just before the thunder storm hit. I lost count of the Smallmouths I caught it was between 15 and 18, 1 largemouth, 1 Gill, 8 rockbass. The Rockbass were some of the fattest ones I have caught on the creek, The gill was hand size. The Largmouth was only about 7". The smallmouths ran between 7 and 12" with one about 14". I am not sure what Mike ended up with but what ever it was was good. Tony
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