July and August in Arkansas can be brutally dry sometimes. And that makes it really tough for river floating around here. 2021 Summer was especially bad, with the dry season extending well into late September. We can usually find a dam-fed river to float, but even some of those have been generating less water lately. So what does that leave us with? Spring-fed rivers. There is the Spring River near Hardy. It’s a fun river if you like to party, but it does get really crowded and rowdy on the weekends. I actually like the river, but I’m over the crowds there. A while back my brother asked me, what about floating the Eleven Point River in Arkansas? The Eleven Point? In Arkansas? Maybe I’m the only one, but until recently, I didn’...
The 2021 Spring has been a crazy float season in Arkansas so far. The rain has been even more unpredictable than usual. I’ve cancelled more floats this year than ever due to water being either too high or too low because of the crazy rain. We’ve even had some cold weather all the way into mid-May! This can be frustrating, but it also presents opportunities to float sections of rivers that are rarely floatable. One of those sections I finally got to float this Spring was Norman to Caddo Gap on the Caddo River. I have made countless Caddo floats from Caddo Gap down to Glenwood.. And it’s till my favorite float on the Caddo so far. But I like to float as many different sections of rivers as I can. So when Norman to Caddo Gap on the Caddo River was finally floatable on a day ...
For the past two summers, I have joined up with my paddling friends in Hot Springs to go floating and fishing on the Upper Ouachita River. I have written about floating the Lower Ouachita before. Even though this is the same river, it’s an entirely different float. What I call the Lower Ouachita runs from out of Lake Catherine down to Malvern and beyond. But what I call the Upper Ouachita is the western portion of that same river, running into Lake Ouachita. The Upper Ouachita is very different from the Lower because it is not fed by a lake. So the water level gets pretty low. I really don’t recommend this river in mid-summer for anyone looking for a fun float with good flow. But I DO recommend it for anyone looking for a place to float and fish. It is great river to catch some...