#27 Who took my river ????

Chapter 27

Good Morning World! Who took my River?

Eight a.m. July 23, 2007, a Monday.

At six a.m. sharp, I heard a car drive onto the rock beach about twenty yards from where I was sleeping. I turned over and watched to see what was happening. As usual, after a fitful night, I wanted to go back to sleep rather than get up and deal with the day. As I slowly became fully conscious, I looked about for the canoe. The little Mad River was right where I left it. There was only one problem in the early light, I couldn’t see any water around or under the boat. Hell, I couldn’t see any water for forty yards past the boat. I could see a river of wet rocks and that was it.

Meanwhile the man got out of his Jeep wagon and began to unload his fishing garb. As he dressed in waders, vest, hat and the rest of his fly fishing gear, I decided I had better get up and figure this deal out.

The cover of semi-darkness was appreciated as I was without a great deal of covering of my own. Soon I had pulled on my clothes with slightly wet rain jacket and warm river booties. I started the little Coleman and went down to the river for water for the little teapot. It was getting light now and the scene was becoming all too clear. The White was still not producing any water and the North Fork was damned near dry. The little river only had a small twenty-foot channel on the far side from me. The canoe now sat on dry rocks some fifty feet from navigable water.

The opposite of the expected had happened between two- thirty and six a.m. We didn’t get the extreme river rise I had worried about most of the night. Both dams shut completely down. I decided it should be handled much as Scarlet would have done, “Fiddly Dee, I’ll worry about that later.” Right now I’m going to have my coffee.

The little 1969 REI Seattle teapot had a name. I had never noticed it before. It had Hope stamped on the lid but without a country of origin. She sure had been a good one. It boiled water super fast due to itsy shape. I had long ago decided the best parts about the pot were the lifting handles. They were made of hollow aluminum and stayed fairly cool even with boiling water inside the little pot. I really would like to know who made the pot and where it was made. Maybe someday I would run into more information and figure it out.

While the water was heating I thought I might as well join the wade fisherman and try to even the score with those trout from the previous night. I grabbed the long rod and a little box of Mepps. I stuffed the lure box into my raincoat pocket. The atmosphere was still damp from a slight morning fog thereby making the air a little chilly. I made my dripo coffee and marched into trout land ready to do battle. What else was I going to do? Coffee and troutzilla at sunrise, ah yes, the game was definitely afoot. Seemed like the right thing to do and I did it.

When I got to the water I was standing in what would have been the middle of the North Fork of the White as it emptied into the White. I was standing with my back to the North Fork and casting into the shrunken White. Again where the fly fisherman and I were standing should have been the exact middle of the North Fork, but we were standing on dry riverbed. As I walked out the fifty yards or so from my boat to where the man was fishing, I found two lures and a whole ball of fishing line. I thought someone ought to bring a metal detector out here. I bet you could open up bait and tackle shop with all the stuff you would dig up.

The fisherman was from Michigan and his name was Neimi. I had to ask if he was any kin to my East Side Elementary classmate Shirley Neimi, but he said he didn’t know of any Arkansas kinfolks. Too bad, I really liked the little girl who drew horses on her tablet all the time. She was a good kid and I wonder about her from time to time. I had never met any one else by that name until today.

We chatted a good bit as we cast for morning trout. He said he had caught a few and they had been biting a little. I thought good gosh, the guy hadn’t been down there fifteen or twenty minutes since he woke me up, how could he have already been catching fish. I didn’t say anything just because I was the greenhorn here and I was ready to believe anything anyone told me about trout fishing.

He did catch a couple of small rainbows while I casted not thirty feet downstream from him. He was using fly gear and I was using artificial lures from a spinning rig. Could there be that much difference? Surely not…I fished until I ran out of coffee in my mug. Normally I would have dropped everything and gone back for my second cup, but this guy and the fish were skunking me and it was ticking off my competitive spiritto no end. I fished another fifteen minutes or so without a bite. Defeated once again, I headed back to the coffee.

The Michigander was still catching fish as I drank coffee in my chair. I couldn’t stand it. I had to try one more time. Just as I got back, he had hooked another one. They weren’t big but looked like they would make a hell of a breakfast. I fished a little while longer and got blanked again. So as usual with my attention span and my short patience, both working against staying I decided to start packing up the gear for a portage.

By this time it was seven thirty or so. There was still no help from either dam. I thought one would start generating and that would definitely float my boat. Just a little back up from the White or even one gate from Norfork would do the trick. Nothing, nada, nunja, no help whatsoever. It was time to carry the stuff the forty yards or so and hope a sudden flood didn’t happen about the time I had it halfway loaded.

Another fellow had joined us while we were fishing. He had driven up in a pick up and started his fishing from the new ramp. Soon he walked out to where the two of us were and took a place just down from me. He was a friendly guy who owned a bar-b-que joint there in Norfork town. I asked him if he made pizza in his place and he said he didn’t but had thought about it. I told him about the folks with that great pizza from the night before. You could see his head wheels clicking trying to figure out whom in his small territory could produce a pizza masterpiece.

When I went back to the canoe and started packing up the gear, the Michigan man figured out what I was doing and could readily see what a fix I was in. He pretended to take a break from fishing. At this point he was probably bored because he had caught fourteen to my no bites at all. He didn’t rub it in, he just answered my question when I asked him how he had done.

By the time I had packed all the gear into the river bags, the other fellow showed up. They both came over and asked if I needed any help. I sure did and was grateful. These two were my age or maybe a little older. The Michigan man must have been retired, as he was one of those single men I referred to earlier. He had driven down alone and was staying in an RV campground some five miles away. He said he would be in Norfork about three weeks and does the same routine every year. The other man had been one of those loners who came to fish and decided to start a little bar-b-que joint to support his need for being in Norfork full time. He fished almost daily and enjoyed life much, much better than wherever he came from and from whatever he had done in the past. Hey, Boomers are not dumb. They find a way.

The two of them picked up the stern of the canoe and I grabbed the bow. We walked the canoe out to where the little channel ran along the opposite side of the now dry riverbed. I had removed the little motor and came back for it on the next trip. The two men struck up quite a conversation and I was glad they would now be acquainted and maybe become pals after I left.

I transported the gear bags across the rocks and loaded them into the canoe. I got everything in and I shoved off in the slight current. Paddling backward brought me out to the White in just a few minutes. I must have laid the motor on the wrong side or something because it was flooded. Luckily the current wasn’t bad. Finally, she kicked off and away we went. I had thanked the gents for the kindness. I had doubted if my blown out shoulders were going to let me lift that canoe over my head but that had been the intention before they came along and volunteered.

Nice fellows. People on the river are happy to give, Proud Mary keep on rollin’, big wheel keep on turning, rollin’, rollin’ on the river.

One thing happened that I didn’t mention. About eight a.m. just as we were carrying the gear across the riverbed, my drunk neighbors from the night before came to life. I guess the drunks were up and being loaded into the guide boats for a day of fishing. You could hear them from the time they hit the boat dock till the time they came down the river to pass us in the little channel. Hell, you could hear them as they went off under full power of the outboards. This bunch woke up drunk and loud. I was glad to see they went up stream and away from me. I did not want to float along side that mess all day.

By the time I left the mouth of the North Fork, there were ten or more people lining the same place the Michigander and I had fished earlier. Every one of them filled with anticipation. It was a good day to be on the river. It was a good day to be alive. Thanks be to God.