Cold rain dilutes Bull Shoals fishing trip
DIAMOND CITY — I don’t remember ever being as wet as I was Monday at Bull Shoals Lake.
Mike Baker of Maumelle and I planned a bass fishing trip to the big White River impoundment on March 12, mere hours before seemingly endless rain drenched the state. Baker, formerly of Mountain Home, had been fishing Bull Shoals frequently and reported catching good numbers of big largemouth bass and Kentucky bass on crankbaits. Then, the coronavirus closures and isolation protocols hit, and we discussed whether we should even go. Baker is quite a bit older than I am, and I didn’t want to put him at risk.
“It’s your call, man,” I said. “I can go anytime if you’d rather postpone.”
Baker, a retired Marine Corps captain, earned two Purple Hearts in Vietnam. His first was a result of a firefight that occurred during an artillery operation. Baker dove into a ditch and took a bullet in the hip that obliterated a C-ration can in his pocket. The can exploded like a bomb and sent C-ration shrapnel deep into his thigh. “I ain’t scared,” Baker said. Mrs. Baker, with a PhD in nursing research, at least did not object.
“You know the forecast shows a …” I started.
“Yeah, 90% chance of rain,” Baker interrupted. “But it looks like it’s going to be scattered. They’re not supposed to get more than a tenth of an inch.”
“Well, if you’re OK with it, then so am I,” I said.
We left Maumelle at 4 a.m. and arrived at Lead Hill at dawn. The rain started when we hit the city limits, and a lot more than one-tenth of an inch fell in a very short time. We stopped under the awning of a derelict convenience store and donned our foul-weather gear. I wore a long-sleeve T-shirt as a base layer under a fleece pullover. I wore my Gore-Tex lined Browning duck hunting parka over that and topped it with a Gore-Tex lined Simms fishing jacket. I wore knee-high, Neoprene hunting boots and water resistant bib overalls.
With Baker in a rain suit, we were ready.
The rain abated, and the sky appeared to be clearing from the south. I thought the band might skirt us, but my Weather Channel radar showed us to be in the middle of the worst of it. It was going to pass over us continually all day.
We launched at the Lead Hill Day Use Area and made a short run to a bank where Baker said the fish had been biting. We tied on crawfish-colored Spro crankbaits, and Baker immediately caught a chunky spotted bass, followed by a chunky largemouth. I caught a spotted bass, and Baker caught another largemouth. We missed a couple of fish, and then the bite stopped on a dime.
We tried another bank where the fishing had been even better, but we didn’t get a bite. I tried a chatterbait without effect. When fish stop hitting moving baits, you should switch to bottom contact baits like jigs or soft plastics. Baker wasn’t having any of that.
“I’m too cold to fish slow,” Baker said.
Rain settled in about then, and several times we faced near white-out conditions. Whenever Baker fired up his outboard, I covered my face and front with a life jacket to buck the wind. The problem was that wind sucked water down my sleeves, which soaked my base layer and the inside arms of the parka. Before long, my clothes weighed a ton, and I was very cold.
Baker was even worse off than I was, and we were both very happy to trailer the boat and get into a warm truck cab.
Four decent bass is an acceptable catch for those conditions, and it merits another trip in better weather.