The wife has every Monday off for the rest of the year so I decided to take a day off too. We talked and decided that we should go back to the Chambers Spring Road Access to the Illinois River in Arkansas and the Elk River outside of Noel Missouri. Neither one of us had caught Smallmouth bass in Missouri so we made a day of it.
We stopped at Chambers Spring Road Access just to see if we could get access to the river and wade-fish here. Yes we can! At least if we head upstream. We ended up catching 5 fish here before we decided to head on up to the Elk River. Our goal was catch smallmouth in Missouri and we weren’t going to get it done by fishing in Arkansas.
It didn’t take us long to reach the Mount Shira Access on the Elk River.
It was a good trip and we had fun. We both caught Smallmouth bass in Missouri so that was great, which brings my total up to 4 states that I’ve caught Smallmouth in this year. The total catch of the day was 17 and 2 of them were decent. The sun was intense at 94F and we are both tired of summer. This access point gets a lot of traffic and we picked up 2 bags of trash on the way out. Even Zip spent an inordinate amount of time swimming in the river and he slept most of the way home.
I have a couple of gear review updates coming soon so stay tuned for those.
Velox Seeker 
I’ve gone on A LOT of trips to Missouri but I’ve never fished those very-fine-looking rivers. Of course, I’ve always been seeking trout.
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I definitely need to spend more time there fishing. I have a list a mile long of places I’d like to fish so I might as well add Missouri
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Definitely add MO. The scenery alone is worth it. My favorites are the “blue ribbon” sections of Crane Creek, Little Piney Creek, Current River, and Eleven Point River. Also, the trout parks can be fun in the winter.
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