Don’t forsake fishing during hunting seasons

As autumn rises, there is still plenty of savory fruit to pluck from summer’s tree.

Some prominent hunting seasons have already come and gone, notably archery bear season and alligator season. Early teal season, for many a tuneup for the main duck season in November, has passed. Some people take it seriously. Joe Volpe of Little Rock, for example, traveled to Oklahoma for a successful combination hunt for early teal and dove.

Archery deer season has started, and some hunters have already salted away the makings of a memorable deer season.

Even though hunting seasons are in the high revolutions of second gear, there is still a lot of great fishing left. Some say the period between Oct. 1 and Christmas offers some of the best fishing of the year.

If you like fishing small and medium size streams for bass and trout, now is a prime time. If you’re a newcomer to streams like the Buffalo National River and the Spring River, a summertime visit on a weekend might have been enough of a circus to scare you away for good. Fear not. The party crowd abandoned our waterways after Labor Day.

Also, rivers are low and slow due to drought. That makes floating and paddling difficult in headwater stretches of our streams, but it also confines fish to smaller areas where they are feeding ravenously to condition themselves for the rigors of the coming winter.

Some of my finest fishing trips have been in October. Several stand out, including one on the Buffalo River from Baker Ford to Tyler Bend many years ago with my brother Brad and my late son Daniel. Chunky smallmouths hit topwater plugs and Yum Craw Papi crawdad imitators with abandon.

A few days later, the Buffalo treated my son Matthew and me to an encore performance. By then, a cold front had come through and festooned the Buffalo River Country with its mid-autumn trim. The mountains were ablaze with color, and the temperature plummeted when the sun dipped below the ridgetops. Fish bit aggressively, but Matthew had to don a coat in the early evening.

A couple of years ago, Ray Tucker and I enjoyed a superb mid-October trip on the Buffalo. Instead of floating downstream, we put our gear in a canoe and towed it upstream from Tyler Bend. We didn’t catch much with our usual lures for the first mile or so, but that changed, as it often does, with a minor adjustment. Tucker tied on a stickbait and hooked three big smallmouths in rapid succession.

I never use stickbaits on a river, so I didn’t have one to use. Tucker had one extra. He lent it to me, and we spent the rest of a fabulous day catching big smallmouths almost as fast as we could release them.

Every year, a group consisting of Bill Eldridge of Benton, Ed Kubler of Benton, Rusty Pruitt of Bryant, Matthew Eldridge of Dallas, Texas, float for three days between Spring Creek and Rush. The beauty of the scenery is unrivaled, the camaraderie is inspiring, and the fishing is always memorable. As the years mount, these trips are increasingly meaningful to us all.

There are so many other fine fishing streams to enjoy besides the Buffalo. The Spring River is always fun, as are the forks of the Spring. The forks of the Saline River between Paron and Benton are superb. Some forks of the White River have superb bass fishing, and of course the White River has world class trout fishing. The White is friendly in the fall because hydropower generation at Bull Shoals Dam is usually light. The same goes for the Norfork Tailwater, the Beaver Tailwater, and also the Little Red River below Greers Ferry Dam.

October is also a great time to fish the remote lakes in the White River National Wildlife Refuge. There are scores of old oxbows and side channels in the woods that teem with largemouth bass, crappie, redear sunfish and bluegill. It reminds me of the Boundary Waters in Minnesota. You can fish the White River NWR lakes with a canoe or kayak and portage to the next lake in the chain. These lakes are lightly fished, and their fish are aggressive in the autumn.

There is plenty of time to hunt deer and ducks in our generous seasons. You’d be crazy not to squeeze in a few days of fishing.