Fishing on the King's River

This Saturday, despite warnings from the National Weather Service, friends, and family about the approaching rainstorm, Konah, a couple of friends, and I loaded our canoes and went for a fishing trip on the King's River in Northwest Arkansas. The river flows from near Fallsville north where it empties into Table Rock Lake. The river is class I downstream of SH 74 and is a gentle ride with the only hazard being a lot of down trees from the recent flooding and root wads that have been there for a longer time.

We floated and fished the section from Rockhouse to Trigger Gap after stopping at King's River Outfitters to look at the radar with Ernie. We waited for an hour under the bridge to let the rain pass, knowing that another storm was developing in Eastern Oklahoma that had a nastier reputation than the present burst of showers. But we had a window. We paid Ernie to drop us, our gear, and our boats off at Rockhouse and headed downstream for the 7.7 mile trip to Trigger Gap. There are a few large obstacles on this float. The minor one is a large rootwad that diverts flow at a right angle just downstream of Rockhouse. The second is about 7 miles down, just about a mile upstream of Trigger Gap. Here, a large tree has fallen into the river and there is no safe way to maneuver through it in a canoe. There is a gravel bar on river right provides an easy portage.

The sun was out and the fishing was good. My buddies had fished this section the weekend before and had a lot of luck with watermelon and pumpkin colored worms, so we rigged up different configurations of green plastic wigglies and caught several small fish. Had we just been cruising through and not taking out time to fish, we might have missed the storm. We sat through a little rain during the day, but nothing serious enough to pull out the rain gear. Just as we came around the bend with the must-portage-tree, only a mile from the take out, the thunder cracked and lightening started to flash. The rain came down in sheets making visibility difficult. Knowing we were close, we started to paddle hard until we saw large splashes of hail dropping into the water all around us. We pulled up under the trees on the bank and waited a few short minutes. As quickly as it started, the rain cleared and we had blue skies again. We eased through the last quarter mile down to Trigger Gap. My friend caught a pretty two pound small mouth, the nicest fish of the day, and we pulled off the river just before sunset. We were happy about the fish we caught and that it wasn't ten degrees colder.