One with a gut-bug- casting preacher, Then load up the canoe

Looking for a
knee-slapping-fun
fishing odyssey?
A F i e l d & St r e a m A dv e n t u r e . . . One with
a gut-bugcasting
preacher,
...sort of
a “canoe hatch”
of beer-fueled
float-trippers,
B y T. E d w a r d N i c k e n s
and maybe even
the smallmouth
of your life?
Then load
up the
canoe,
leave your
trout-park
prejudices
behind, and
head for the
hills of the
Ozarks
N
Trout Camp From left: Hagen family friend
Bill Holeman, with Patrick, Vicki, Nate, Jarrett,
and Brandt Hagen at Montauk State Park.
p h o t o g r a p h s B y c o l b y ly s n e
ate Hagen is feeling the pressure. It’s 6:29 a.m., and in less than 60 seconds the trout
siren at Montauk State Park in Salem, Mo., will sound. Dressed in flip-flops and a T-shirt with the arms
cut off, Hagen, a small-town preacher from Illinois, is watching over a small army: his wife, Vicki; their
three sons, Jarrett, Patrick, and Brandt (all under 10 years old); and longtime pal Bill Holeman. They’ve
claimed a coveted position at the Social Hole, a slick, mossy pool just a few hundred feet from where the
Current River bubbles out of the ground. • “Come on, honey,” Nate says to Vicki. “We just got one
minute left.” • “Calm down, honey,” Vicki replies. Her face shaded by a straw cowboy hat, she sits in a
camp chair surrounded by kids’ fishing rods, boxes of Little Debbie Nutty Bars, and a block of Velveeta.
White-bread crusts are heaped at her feet. Her mama cut off the bread crusts for her own cheeseball
baits, Vicki tells me, so it’s only fitting that she do the same for her kids. • Vicki simultaneously unsnarls a fish stringer from Jarrett’s legs, rigs three hooks with cheeseballs, and ties a “gut bug” to another line. At Montauk, trout are cleaned streamside and the heads and entrails flung back into the
water. The gut bug, a small jig tied with red and white feathers, mimics, I learn, a piece of trout bladder or a chunk of stomach. As this revelation sinks in, the trout siren screams, and the Hagen family
launches into action. • “Go, go, go!” Nate hollers to his kids. It’s the first of a series of instructions and
exclamations: “Watch your bobber, Patrick!” “Jarrett, he’s on! Pull, buddy, pull!” “Vicki! Patrick needs
more cheese!” “Watch your hook, Brandt! It’s gonna stick in Jarrett’s coat!” “Vicki, can you get that hook
out?” • The feed is on. • It’s easy to poke fun at a trout-park scene—grimy water ringed with anglers
whose fishing permits flop from hat brims like hounds’ ears. I came to Montauk with a full load of
hang-ups and prejudices about what a trout park could possibly offer. I was soon shamed. It takes just
a few minutes of hanging with the Hagens to wash away my misconceptions in the Ozark’s healing—
and slightly discolored from all the rotting fish carcasses—waters. In fact, during a weeklong Ozark
f i e lda n d st r ea m .co m
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smallmouth and trout road trip, hardly anything turned out the way
photographer Colby Lysne and I thought it would.
Sandwiched between Branson, Mo., and the Mississippi River, this
region of rolling, wooded hills and spring-fed rivers seems to live by its
own set of rules. Lysne and I would fish with one guide who preached
the virtues of a flyfishing technique from the former Czechoslovakia.
We would witness a wild and scenic river be transformed into a streaming hoedown by thousands of hard-partying weekend paddlers jamming the water. And I would develop a sinful case of jealousy of the
Ozark natives who live smack-dab in some of the best freshwater fishing on the planet.
But first I would have to change my mind about Velveeta.
A m u s e m e n t Pa r k At Montauk, $5 buys you a day pass,
and for every pass sold, 2.25 trout are stocked that night for the next
day’s frenzy. The Hagens are joined by hundreds of anglers who line
the Ozark’s famed Current River, rods loaded, waiting for the 6:30 a.m.
siren. The fishing, to say the least, gets a little crazy. The Social Hole is
particularly known for combat fishing. “Ten minutes past the buzzer
and it’s like a big cheese and corn casserole flowing through the woods,”
one old-timer warned me a few days before my trip. “Wear a helmet.”
When I shuffle up to the Social Hole there’s a crowd waiting: whitehaired old men and tow-headed toddlers; anglers in camouflage pants,
and one in a Curious George T-shirt; a young man without a shirt who
has a bass rod in one hand and his girlfriend’s hand in the other. Four
feet away stands a fellow in Gore-Tex waders and a fishing vest rattling
with nippers, scissors, knot-tying tools, and fly floatant.
After the siren screams, every other cast brings in a fish. Within a
half hour, heavy stringers of trout snake into the water. There’s a fourfish limit at Montauk, so the Hagen clan can walk away with 24 trout.
They’re in no hurry.
“We scratch some money together and come down for a week each
year,” Nate says, reaching over to help 2-year-old Brandt hold his
Finding Nemo rod. “We camp right here and hit her hard—on the
water from siren to siren unless we’re eating lunch.”
It’s only later, after the cheese froth has died and breakfast has lured
most of the Social Hole’s anglers back to the campground, that I rig up
my own rod. Preacher Hagen wanders over for a chat.
“Fishing is biblical, you know,” he says, as I thread monofilament
through the eye of a ridiculously small treble hook. “First thing Jesus
ate after He arose from the dead was broiled fish. Book of John, I believe.” It’s a gently delivered bit of the Gospel, but here at the Social
Hole, where folks tend to lay their differences aside, Nate has no intention of a hard sell. “But at some point, you know, God invented beer
batter. Nothing’s been the same ever since.”
F r o m C z e c h o s lova k i a W i t h L ov e I’m starting to
feel a bit of cultural whiplash. In just a few hours I’ve gone from downhome, trout-park wholesomeness to heavy-metal flyfishing with our
guide, Brian Wise (riveroflifefarm.com), a former rodeo kayaker who is
about to school me on an Eastern European nymphing tactic. These
hills, I’m learning, are a place of extremes.
“This is what keeps me up at night,” Wise says. Wiry and energetic,
with a crewcut and a soul patch puffed out with Copenhagen, the
28-year-old guide stands in the pulsing flow of the North Fork of the
White River. “Nymphing in this river is hardcore, technical, up-closeand-personal. It gets in my head and it’s all I can think about.”
The North Fork’s deep, swift runs, Wise explains, are tailor-made
for Czech nymphing. Born in the secretive warrens of competitive angling, the technique came to light in 1986 when a Czechoslovakian
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| f | june 2009
named Slavoj Svoboda won
the World Fly Fishing Championship in Belgium with a
fast-sinking, multiple-fly rig
anchored with a heavy
Hare’s Ear nymph. Over the
last few years, Wise has
made the technique a main3
stay of his fishing.
1
Early in the day he gives
MO
us a lesson. With Czech
2
4
nymph­ing, a heavily weighted
nymph bumps along the bottom, dragging the other flies
behind. Wise’s rod is loaded
The trip started at Montauk
with a garish threesome: a
State Park (1) before the author
San Juan Worm up top, a big
headed southwest to flyfish the North
Red Fox nymph tied to the
Fork of the White River (2). Next, he
worm’s hook shank, and a
chased smallies and trout in the
heavy Golden Stonefly
­Current (3) and Eleven Point (4) Rivers.
nymph as a dropper fly. I
raise my eyebrows.
C H E A P T H R I L LS T I P
Wise ignores any hint of
moral outrage. “You lead the
Outfitters are constantly
rig with a rod held low,
shoring up their fleets of
keeping direct contact with
canoes and often offer deep
discounts on used boats.
the anchor fly,” he says. “You
A new canoe costs around
feel everything. I know it
$1,000, but don’t be surprised
looks crazy, dragging all that
if you can talk an outfitter
crap through the water. But
down to half that. ­Before and
how else are you gonna get
after the season, see if
all the way to the botyou can make a deal on a
tom? Think about it
you
dinged-up but perfectly
Save
like a fish, and sudserviceable craft. —T.E.N.
denly nothing makes
more sense.”
I wade to the edge of the
run and dredge Wise’s Czech rig a dozen times. A dozen times I come
up empty. Then, on a drift that looks exactly like every other drift, a fish
strikes so hard it nearly jerks the cork out of my hand. The rest of the
rod bends toward a fat wild rainbow.
Wise hoots in delight: “That’s the beauty, man. You think you’re
wasting time, then bam! You can’t see down there, but all hell’s breaking loose underwater. Those flies are going somewhere a little bit different with every drift.”
For the next four hours we pound the North Fork, wading deep runs
as we dredge for rainbows. Lysne loses two big fish and spirals down
into that dark place anglers go when they’ve been bested by creatures
with brains the size of pinto beans. “I feel like a dry-fly fisherman
turned inside out,” he says. “This is every bit as techie as trying to
match the hatch on a glass-slick run.”
With daylight fading quickly, I want to get it exactly right—and I
want to do it by myself. At a place called the Rock Garden, the North
Fork braids through a helter-skelter of ledges and boulders. I pick the
gnarliest run and pound it with a Czech rig weighted with split shot.
After two dozen casts I’m ready to quit, but Wise sidles up behind me.
“Keep at it,” he says. “Just a couple more. Trust me.”
I shake my head in frustration before lobbing my mess slightly upstream, exactly where I’ve been fishing for 15 minutes. Nada. I pull the
flies out, flick them back into the run, and lean so far out that I’m sure
Ozark Odyssey
$500
“When I shuffle up to the Social
Hole there’s a crowd waiting:
white-haired old men and
tow-headed toddlers; anglers
in c­ amouflage pants, and one
in a Curious George T-shirt.”
o z a r k m o u n ta i n b r e a k d o w n
Montauk State Park
“Nymphing
this river is
hardcore, technical, up-closeand-personal.”
North Fork of
the White River
“We’re into
­smallies like
­nobody’s
­business. Every
other cast
brings a strike.”
the next sensation I feel will be a
face-plant into the North Fork. I
can feel the stonefly tic-tic-­ticking
Eleven Point River
over rocks and pebbles, then—
doink! I wrist-snap the rod straight
overhead and pull a 15-inch rainbow out of its hideout.
Wise whoops it up. “Casting junk into the junk—that’s what some
folks call it,” he says. “But that fish don’t look like junk to me.”
S l a m m e d o n t h e C a n o e Hat c h Despite the worldclass fishing found in the Ozarks, the pursuit of trout and smallmouth
bass may not be the region’s favorite pastime. The Current River has
been called the most popular canoe river in America, and on summer
Saturdays a so-called canoe hatch of thousands of rental boats clogs the
river south of Montauk State Park. So far, Lysne and I have avoided the
worst of it, but we can’t shake a certain sick urge to catch a glimpse of
the tawdry side of the Ozarks.
We’ve been fishing hard since an hour before dawn, so we’re already
a little monkey-eyed when we pass the Lula Full Gospel Church and
turn into Pulltite Landing at 4:35 p.m. on Saturday. Lysne hits the
brakes and sends an open box of Cap’n Crunch spewing. Neither of us
says a word. Pulltite is a zoo. I count 13 old school buses lined up, each
one pulling a huge canoe trailer. In the shallows, waves of hard-­partying
paddlers crash onto a gravel parking lot. Scores of sun-­blistered boaters
stumble onto the beach, some so drunk they can hardly walk. It looks
as if a train loaded with inflatable pool toys, water cannons, beer coolers, and straw cowboy hats has wrecked and tumbled into the river a
few miles upstream.
I open the car door and hear the hip-hop grunt of the rapper Nelly
blasting from a boom box shoved into the bow of a rental boat:
It’s gettin’ hot in here
So take off all your clothes!
By the looks of it, a few folks have taken the hint. Beer guts, teenyweeny string bikinis, and some highly impressive lobster-red farmer’s
tans seem to be the Pulltite dress code.
I’ve read about this scene. Revelry on the Current River got so out of
Triple Play Clockwise from top left: A successful angler at the Social Hole;
Wise guides the author down the White River; the author with a choice smallie.
hand that in 2007 the National Park Service banned beer kegs, beer
bongs, “Jell-O shots” made of grain alcohol, and all other “volumedrinking devices.” Mardi Gras beads were nixed as well. (They’d been
used to entice women to shed their tops.) Park officials insist the
cleanup is working, but I’d say there’s more ground to plow.
I try to chat up a few paddlers, but it’s pretty apparent that I’m the
only nerd at a frat-house rush party. Instead I buttonhole Marcus Maggard, who’s shouting orders to a couple of guys throwing 80-pound
canoes on their shoulders as if they were empty bags. In 1945, he tells
me, his grandfather, Buck Maggard, bought five canoes from the Sears,
Roebuck catalog and started Akers Ferry Canoe Rental. These days,
Akers is permitted to put 418 canoes on the Current River each day,
and it’s just one outfitter among many.
“What would your granddaddy think of this scene?” I ask Maggard, who shakes his head.
f i e lda n d st r ea m .co m
| 67
o z a r k m o u n ta i n b r e a k d o w n
me about your childhood!” Within seconds,
we have a line of willing models. A few can
actually stand up.
About an hour later Lysne and I pull away,
howling with laughter. Lysne shakes his head
and says, “So that’s what it’s like after they
tighten the rules?”
T h e O z a r k s ’ T ru e W i l d S i d e
“Hey, y’all! We’re from
Field & Stream, and we wanna
take your picture!”
Current River
“Not in his wildest dreams,” he says.
My chances for scoring introspective interviews about the value of
wild waters in modern society are exactly zero, but Lysne smells
blood. “Hey, y’all!” he hollers. “We’re from Field & Stream, and
we wanna take your picture.”
A chorus of rebel yells and “Hell yeahs” puts Nelly’s music to shame.
I outline a square with river rocks. “Step in the box,” I shout, “and tell
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| f | june 2009
The first big pig spits up a dead crayfish as I
reach for his lip. He’s a 4-pound chunk of
wet bronze that hit a tube jig plunked like a
depth charge into a tangle of sycamore limbs.
As I wrestle him out of the branches, a half
dozen other smallmouths swarm the bass,
striking at the jig dangling from his mouth.
Lysne grabs a rod and runs for the head of
the pool.
We’ve been on the Eleven Point River for
all of half a day when we paddle into a lefthand bend where a pair of springs empties
into the river. Recent floods have tumbled
trees into the water against a steep 12-foothigh bank. We divvy up the structure and
send tube jigs bouncing over the boughs.
We’re into smallies like nobody’s business.
Every other cast brings a strike, and we snatch
smallmouths out of a heap of limbs and trunks
and sodden leaves. Within a half hour we lose
a dozen jigs, then wade ­shoulder-deep into
the treetops to untangle our precious
­remaining lures.
“What a pig trough!” Lysne shouts from
upstream. “These are Canada-size smallmouths! What are they doing here?”
“Living the good life!” I say. “Until now!”
Alone—finally—in the Ozark wilds, Lysne
and I keep score by laughing and screeching
each time we hook a fish. Suddenly, I hear a
shriek. Lysne’s spinning rod has snapped—
simply split in two at the third rod guide. He
storms to the canoe, shaking his head, and
mounts an ultralight spinning reel to a
6-weight fly rod. The catching never stops.
For an hour and a half we swap smallies, the
smallest one larger than any other fish we’ve
hooked in a week of Ozark madness.
It couldn’t have happened on a better
stream. The Eleven Point River changes personalities every few miles, going from a trophy
smallmouth stream to blue-ribbon trout water as frigid springs dump
cooling flows. Paddle a few more miles, and it’s back to smallies again.
We leave the pig trough with three dozen fish landed and precious little
time to find a camp. We pinball back and forth between 100-foot rock
bluffs and wooded ridges rounded like the coils of a verdant snake.
Stroke by stroke, fish by fish, Lysne and I inch across the Ozarks.
O n t h e S e v e n t h Day… I’m not sure I could devise a
more perfect ending to a week in the Ozarks. It’s our last night on the
Continued on P. 75
Eleven Point, the tents are up, and as the light
Ozark Mountain
Breakdown
Continued from P. 68
falls, black-crowned night herons wing
overhead to roost. My arms are sore
from paddling, loading and unloading
canoes, hauling bags over gravel bars,
and casting tube jigs, Czech nymph
rigs, and even a shrimp-colored spoon
fly I offered to the Eleven Point when
the storms came and the bite went flat
after yesterday’s breakfast.
Just downstream of our 2-acre gravel
bar, a hard current seam cleaves the
river. Tendrils of fog swirl off the water
like cigar smoke. Lysne cinches down
his belt and waves a fly rod. “This is the
sword,” he declares, “with which I will
rule my kingdom.”
I wave him off with a spatula.
For the next half hour I trade rainbow trout and smallmouth bass nearly
cast for cast, running back and forth
between the river and a frying pan.
Cast, strip, run, flip. Then suddenly, as
if turning off a switch, it’s over for me.
I’m done. Fished out, plain and simple,
after seven hard days on the water.
I lean my rod against the canoe and
sprawl out on the ground, firelight
flickering on Ozark stones, gnats pelting my face like a hard rain. A symphony of crickets trills in a chorus almost as loud as the sizzling fish, which
is almost as loud as Lysne’s cackle as he
stands in the dark water, two-handing
a trout. It’s almost dark, and I can
barely make him out in the fog, like
some figure in a photograph that’s
faded in the sun.
A few stars wink overhead, and for
the first time in a week I think about
the fish and the fishing behind me, instead of plotting and planning and fretting about the fish and the fishing
ahead. I lie on the gravel bar, deep in
the Ozarks, listening to the water that
FS
has taken all I had to give.
fieldandstream.com/ozarktrip
Go online for more photos (including
“canoe hatch” outtakes!) from this trip.