Beaver Creek, MO

Today (Monday 8/12/13) we decided to head down to Beaver Creek.  The last time that I checked the weather we were looking at about a 30-40% chance of rain and scattered thunderstorms.  The gauge was showing a little above 4' prior to heading out.  We used Beaver Creek Canoe Rental to shuttle us to our put in at AJ highway and take my Sierra back to Brownbranch.  I wound up leaving my river shoes at home and wound up floating the higher than normal water in flip flops; not something that I was terribly comfortable with.  But I had my paddle so I wasn't too upset.

The river was moving very moderately initially.  It was pretty nice fishing for the first hour or two.  I caught around a dozen smallmouth and my friend caught 3 or 4.  The smallmouth here were beautiful.  They were a vivid bronze hue with deep dark stripes.  Most of the fish were in the 11-12" range but we caught a couple that were 14"+.  This felt pretty good as the guide seemed to think the smallmouth fishing was fairly poor.

A few hours into the float the skies began to darken all around us.  It started behind us and rapidly crept up our left side as it started to completely blot out the sun.  We grabbed our rain gear and spray skirts and started donning our lightweight armor.  No sooner than I put my rain jacket on it started to rain, and it was absolutely pouring!  We got lucky though and holed up under the only bridge on the entire float about 1/4 mile down river.  We paddled against the current for about 45 minutes to an hour before the lightning finally let up.  We started back off in the rain but luckily, no lightning.

The river really began to pick up speed up at this point.  We were a little disappointed that the water never got terribly exciting, just faster.  It wasn't long before the crystal clear waters turned muddy brown.  The debris from all the log jams was starting to keep pace with me.  Things got a little sketchy towards the end as we you could not see anything in the water, even logs and large rocks just below the surface.  It became a test of reading the water only and it was fun.

Upon returning home we found that the water level had rose 2' while we were floating.  It will be a good fish float around the 4' mark but was moving too fast to fish much at 6'.  Unfortunately it was not a terribly exciting float, which is what we had been hoping for.  Next time it rains like this we will probably head to Bull Creek or the Swan again.