Last week-end’s trip to trout fish the White River in Arkansas was beautiful. Just gorgeous. The temps were low 40’s cool in the morning while the trees were probably in mid-range of fall color.
My nephew Simon and I hooked up with our guide Captain Dave Brown at the Mountain View Country Store and Resort at 7:30am on Saturday morning and began our voyage on one of America’ truly iconic trout rivers. Our launching spot was about seven miles west of Eureka Springs.
This was my fifth trip with Captain Dave and the first time since Covid-19 that we’d hooked up. He filled me in on how he made it through Covid with his barber shop in Eureka Springs being closed for just about a year. What Captain Dave did was brilliant in fact. After the Feds closed down his shop…he basically got a federal job with the Department of Land Reclamation in the state of Arkansas. Brilliant… if the Feds close you down…then you go get a federal job with retirement benefits at the age of sixty-two.. Bravo, Captain Dave.
I filled in Captain Dave on my Stage 4 cancer journey and also informed him I am now the closest living descendant of Jesse James since the last time we saw each other. No bullshit there at all….I kid you not. My great grandmother on my paternal side was the daughter of Sue James who was the sister of Jesse and Frank James. This in part may explain my borderline outlaw behavior at times and the fact I needed to be banned from the Daily Thunder messageboard for life by the minimalist millenials.
Captain Dave is a huge Jesse James fan and claims to have been a French pirate in a previous life…so what I’m saying here is Mike J is treated like gold-plated royalty by Captain Dave.
My father Bob Jackson in fact was the guest of Queen Elizabeth at one time because she was a Jesse James groupie of sorts. And another time Bob J was on the ABC Good Morning America show with Charles Gibson on one of the Jesse James grave exhumations.
So moving forward… the fishing was great. Simon and I both caught our limits by 12:15 or so. Plus…we both lost three or four fish. The limit is five trout per person and the rainbows were all basically in the 12-13″ range. We didn’t catch a big brown trout or walleye, but we didn’t really try very hard either.
We used ultra light gear with 4 lb. test line and with that type of gear a 13″ trout is a trip to catch. You don’t haul in trout like some of these redneck knuckleheads do in surface hauling in black bass. No…you enjoy the fight the fish gives you and the experience you will rememeber forever.
Usually…I’m a catch a release guy all the time, but this was a rare occaision and both Simon and I wanted a few fish to cook at home…so we kept our five fish apiece this time around.
Capatain Dave gave us a bonus forty minute trip about four miles up the river to the dam where water had just been released from Beaver’s Bend Lake at noon. This is not hyperbole on my part…I have never seen a more beautiful stretch of earth than those four miles. They will forver be etched in my memory. Thank you, Captain Dave.
‘Almost heaven, Arkansas
Ozark Mountains, the White River
Life is old there, older than the trees
Younger than the mountains, blowing like a breeze.’
That will about do it for me today, but I will blog tomorrow on my take on the OU-Texas game. Life does not end with one football game. OU was horrific in the closing seven minutes of the first half….HORRIFIC. Coming into this season with the schedule OU was given by the SEC… I thought 8-4 would be a very solid season. 8-4 is still in play if Deion Burks can get back in the lineup and some tweaks are made to the offense.
Love on this awesome Oklahoma fall weather while you can.
Eternal love and peace,
Mike J