I Floated a Remote Canyon with the ‘Old Guide,’ Hoping to Catch a Muskie. Nobody Thought We’d Survive It

THE RIVER had us trapped in a rocky eye where it lunged and growled around the stern of our boat. I stood up on a slippery rock, breathing as if I’d just run a record marathon, and looked at the Old Guide. He sat on another rock, his shoulders bowed, as exhausted as I was. The first two days had been rough enough, but today we’d taken our worst beating.

“You can’t convince me,” I said, “that you or anyone else ever floated through this canyon.”

“Hell, yes, I did,” the Old Guide said. He squared his shoulders and dug into a soaked shirt pocket for his pipe. “We floated right through here 30 years ago.”

I looked at the line of timber that marched along the bank, then up the canyon walls, bleak and craggy in the yellowing late-afternoon sun. Thirty years had made a lot of changes in this vast and ragged gash in north-central Tennessee. It had broken tremendous chunks of rock off the vertical walls, and closed the canyon in many places. The gigantic rocks pressed down around us and hemmed us in. We were Lilliputians in a pickle, wedged so tightly in a narrow slot that we couldn’t budge our boat or its load. This looked like the end of the trail.

Our metal craft was tough, but after three days it looked as if someone had worked it over with a hatchet. The paint had gone off its bottom the first day, and we’d left 1,000 rocks behind us scored with bright aluminum. One 200-yard jaunt had required five hours of pushing and tugging to haul the boat and its duffel over boulders massed in the stream. And we’d been a full three days making the first 4½ miles. With the canyon getting rougher as we moved downstream, there seemed not the remotest chance to increase our speed.

Finally I said, “We can’t just sit here. Let’s try to move this hunk of metal and its load again.”

“Lemme finish my pipe,” the Old Guide said. “Why don’t you try to hook yourself a muskie in that water at the foot of the falls?”

The Old Guide’s real name is John Jared, but to thousands of radio and TV fans in the Nashville area he’s known as the Old Guide. That’s the way I usually think of him, too, so I decided to take his advice.

The pool was turquoise, like 100 others we’d seen in the Daddy’s Creek Canyon. Flanked by tremendous rocks, it was backdropped with tall and ancient poplars, pine, and hemlocks. High on their trunks, they showed scars from rocks and logs that had hurtled through the canyon on 40 and 50-foot floods. A few of the forest giants cradled logs high in their branches.

My spinning rod lay across the duffel, rigged with an imitation-minnow plug we’d found effective in the deeper holes. The rock under my feet was as steep as the roof of an English house, but we’d been cautious and lucky enough to wear our felt-soled wading shoes. I inched down to a more stable position and made a cast beyond the flow of water into the hole.

“Bring it in fast,” the Old Guide instructed. “These fish prefer a singing bait.”

The current caught my plug and swept it toward an underwater shelf. Cranking fast to give it the necessary vibrating motion, I saw it disappear in the clear water under the shelf, then flash as it came free. I turned to ask the Old Guide to toss me one of his black, hand-tied, polar-bear jigs that had produced so well upriver, and my plug ran into something solid. Snag or strike, it’s automatic to set the hook, and I set it hard.

I won’t forget the look on the Old Guide’s face. He stared, his mouth open like he wanted to holler but couldn’t. The crash of water behind me brought me around. Above the pool, the air was filled with flying water. Five feet above the turbulent surface hung an eight or 10-pound muskellunge at the height of its jump.

In spite of the thick felt under my feet, I almost skidded off the rock. While I swayed to catch my balance, the long-jawed fish turned over in the air, hit on its side, and streaked for the submerged rock. I applied power-too late. Somewhere in the scrambled rocks, the light monofilament I’d been using for bass scraped granite and parted. Behind me the Old Guide tried to chortle, but his throaty sound was as hollow as I felt. “You didn’t have no minney that time.”

I tried to be casual, and sat down on the roof-top rock to examine the frayed leader. The Old Guide had promised me a muskie in the wild depths of this canyon, and this was the first of the big fish I had ever hooked.

The Old Guide had talked me into this trip by his vivid description of what lay beyond the pavement for guys who had the gumption to tackle it. I’d known him through many seasons of fine fellowship when we fished together for trout, or waved the flag for good conservation practices in his state. For years he’d not only done radio and TV programs over a local station, but had also written a hunting-and-fishing column for the paper, and even worked for the game and fish commission. He had other businesses, too, like manufacturing outdoor equipment.

He had painted a glowing picture of this Catoosa Wildlife Management Area in north-central Tennessee, straddling the boundary between Morgan and Cumberland Counties. The Catoosa, 90,000 acres big, is one of the largest game-management areas owned by the game and fish commission of the Volunteer State. The commission had acquired it as tax-delinquent land from a coal-mining and lumber company.

What intrigued me most was not the Old Guide’s account of the area’s top deer and wild-turkey hunting, but his enthusiasm about the streams-Daddy’s Creek, Obed River, Clear Creek, and Otter Creek, supposedly loaded with smallmouth bass, walleyes and muskies.

I’d fished for muskies from Canada to the Tennessee River watershed, but had never caught one of the big fish. Stream muskellunge sounded like something new, unusual, and exciting.

We picked the first week of July to make our trip. And of all the potential streams, the Old Guide chose Daddy’s Creek as the most scenic and productive. I was skeptical about the timing. “Well,” the Old Guide said, “I’ll admit the best times for big jacks-that’s what they call muskies up here are spring and fall when the water’s cooler. But if you’re worried about having Fourth of July angler competition on that creek, forget it. We won’t see another boat or fisherman.”

What he said was true-but he didn’t tell me why. It was only after we got our free permit from the area manager’s office in Crossville and proceeded to the canyon bottom that I found out.

Ralph Plumb, who manages the Catoosa Area for the game and fish commission, had put us in the creek at Antioch Bridge, where an ancient and narrow dirt road angles down the bluff and crosses on an old bridge. Wednesday morning, shortly after daylight, we loaded grub, sleeping bags, fishing tackle, and other gear in the center of the boat to balance our load.

“It’s 7½ miles to the bridge where I’ll meet you,” Ralph told us.

I glanced at the deep, blue pool stretching under the Antioch span. “You’d better hurry then,” I said. “We should be there for lunch.”

The area manager grinned. “You may find the going rougher than you think.”

Before we left Antioch, we also made plans to meet Ralph and a couple of his friends the next afternoon, the Fourth, at the mouth of Yellow Creek, only about 3½ miles downstream. Ralph promised to have a fire going and the grease hot. We would bring in enough fish for an old-fashioned fish fry.

As we started our trip, the sky was cloudless, a gentle breeze drifted down the creek, and water tinkled over the rocks around us. When we drifted into the first long pool below the bridge, I’d already selected half a dozen lures I knew the smallmouths would like. I threw my No. 1 bladed lure under the overhanging bushes, where the current poured against a bank. A smallmouth, hardly larger than a pound, smacked it. For a moment we had a merry waltz around the head of the pool, before I got him close enough to shake off.

“Reckon we won’t start saving up for the fish fry till late tomorrow,” the Old Guide commented.

The pool yielded three more small bass, about the size of the first. Then we paddled through to a series of shoals, where we had to drag our boat.

For the rest of the day we dragged and fished; the pools between the rocky parts of the creek made our efforts worthwhile. They were loaded with bass-mostly a half to 1½ pounds-but they jumped on the bladed and skirted lures like rainbow trout.

We camped our first night on a shallow rock beside the creek, with the stars blanketed above the canyon and a half-moon riding high. Try as we might the next day to reach the mouth of Yellow Creek in time for our scheduled fish fry, we didn’t even come close.

That night we camped near a purple pool under a shellbark hickory. We got as much pleasure out of that hole as any we found in the canyon. I was gathering wood when a muskie swirled lazily in the lower end of the pool. The Old Guide and I dropped our camp-making chores as if we had a prearranged signal, and raced for the boat. I manned the paddle and put him within a long cast of where we’d seen the swirl. He tried a top-water frog, close to the rocky shore, fished it 20 feet from the bank and let it lie.

In the lavender shadows I was sure I saw the water swell behind the frog. The Old Guide raised his rod tip and twitched the lure lightly.

I was so tense that I jumped when an explosion tore the pool. My partner set the hook. What a disappointment. It was a two-pound smallmouth.

That commotion must have put the muskie down, for we couldn’t make him take either a top-water or sinking lure. No luck either next morning before breakfast.

It was noon on Friday before we reached Yellow Creek, a day behind schedule. There on the bank we found a note in the end of a split stick. Ralph wrote that he’d waited until sundown, and that he’d see us Saturday tomorrow at the Old Bridge road.

For several hundred yards below Yellow Creek, we made good time. We paused to fish several of the deeper holes. I tried the heavier muskie tackle, but it was the Old Guide who hooked two muskies that afternoon-one that threw his lure, and another of six pounds or better that chewed his monofilament in two. He’d warned me that the muskies in Daddy’s Creek were generally small, but dynamite. But it was the smallmouths and rock bass that kept our tackle busy.

The farther we pushed past Yellow Creek, the rougher the going became. The canyon walls drew in and towered over us. Late in the afternoon of this third day, we stopped at the head of an eight-foot waterfall. The creek poured from two angles through a rocky slot, and there was no way to go over either fall without having water from the other fill our boat. We had no choice but to portage all our gear around a couple of huge rocks and try to float the empty craft over the falls.

As we expected, our boat filled with water. The air pockets under the seats saved the craft from diving 30 feet to the bottom of the pool under the falls. We hung by our knees on a narrow rock and bailed it out with pans.

It was at the next waterfall that the force of the river had our boat jammed tightly in the crevice, and where it now seemed that we’d come to the end of our rocky trail.

The one brief bright spot was the muskie I’d just had on, but he was gone with the lure. I laid my rod aside to see what we could do about the wedged boat; every one of these tight spots in the river needed special treatment.

With its load, the boat was much too heavy to pry loose from this rocky eye, so for the second time in half an hour-we had to unload the grub box, duffel bags, and other heavy gear. Our aim was to dislodge our craft enough so that we could slide its bow up the roof-top rock. Then we could clear the stern and maybe float the boat down the rocky niche to the next pool.

We set our heavy gear on one of the slanted rocks, and got our footing. Heaving forward with all the sinews that were still operating, we felt the boat slide, stop, and slide again.

“Hold it,” yelled my partner.

His warning came a fraction of a second too late. The boat dropped under the waterfall and the river poured through it, washing out raincoats, boat bags, tackle, and all the lighter gear we’d left in the boat.

I had no idea how deep the pool below the slot was, and didn’t have time to wonder. I jumped off the ledge and sank shoulder deep before my feet hit a rock. Gear was streaming by; I grabbed the Old Guide’s movie camera just as it started sinking. In seconds I had both arms full of raincoats, tarps, our gasoline lantern, and a small bag of reels. The Old Guide had dived into the boat at the other end and saved our air mattresses and rods. Some of the fishing tackle got away, along with his shoes, an electric lantern, and three packs of exposed films, which certainly must have contained some of our finest pictures of the trip.

The current had cleaned our boat, and now the craft was wedged more tightly than ever, with the weight of the river holding it down. I found the ax, climbed into the timbered fringe, and cut a heavy pry pole. With this we managed to jar the front end loose. Inch by inch we turned the boat on its edge, then slid our craft over the high rock and into the pool below. We just lay on a rock, winded and dripping before we tried to repack.

Late that afternoon, while we cast one of the deep, blue holes in mammoth hunks of stone, a plane flew over the gorge several times. Shadows had already climbed the sides of the canyon, and we watched the plane from a shadowed rim of the pool.

“I think that’s one of the department’s patrol planes,” my partner said. “Helps them check forest fires, illegal hunting, and find lost hunters.”

“Maybe they’re searching for the remains of two fishermen,” I joked.

We chuckled, but later learned that the pilot was doing exactly that. Our trip through the gorge had been a topic of conversation in nearby Crossville; the odds were no more than even that we’d make it.

On Saturday morning, the plane came over again while we were buried in another jumble of rocks, trying to get our boat through. When it appeared a third time Saturday afternoon, it suddenly dawned on us that the pilot might actually be trying to spot our boat or our bodies. The boat-wherever the paint hadn’t been scraped off-was green, and we were dressed in dark clothes, making us almost impossible to spot from the height the pilot had to fly above the canyon. The third time he came down the creek, we laid white handkerchiefs on our fishing caps and waved a paddle. He saw us then and circled a couple of times before he flew off. He’d caused quite a stir in Crossville by an earlier report that he’d seen us floating in the creek.

Up to the last day, we planned to do more late-afternoon and early-evening fishing. The Old Guide said that these muskies hit best in twilight. But each night we were so exhausted from the grueling hours in the canyon bottom, that the only enthusiasm we had left after eating was for the sack.

Even though Sunday was even more punishing than Friday had been, we still managed to salvage some fishing out of the deep holes. On Sunday morning the Old Guide caught his largest smallmouth within an ounce of three pounds. Like all the others out of that clear water, its markings were very dark. My partner also hooked his largest muskie, fully as long as the eight or 10-pounder I’d tied into. He got one tremendous jump out of the big fish before it shook loose.

In spite of the limited fishing, we caught some of our best smallmouths of the trip. We found most of these bronzebacks hanging in the current where the water poured into a pool, or at the tail end.

As we rounded the last rocky curve and came in sight of the pool at the end of the road, the Old Guide hooked a small bass and played it toward the boat. Maybe I should have kept fishing, too, but the stone-and-wood bridge looked so welcome that I broke out my camera and took a picture of it.

On the rim of the pool we met two local fishermen, Clyde and Kenny Cooper. They told us that for as long as they could remember, they’d caught ‘jacks’ out of Daddy’s Creek, and that now the fishing in this creek and others in the area was better than ever.

Clyde eyed our boat. “I don’t see how you got that thing through,” he said. “We don’t cover much of the creek-you can catch all you want near this bridge. Them holes in the canyon are a lot easier to reach on shoe leather.”

I recommend Daddy’s Creek to any angler who’s got the kind of physical stamina Jack Dempsey had in his prime. But my recommendation leaves out boats. It would certainly be easier to float through the canyon in an inner tube with a canvas seat, or wade with a light pack, either upstream or down. If you take your time, the odds are that you’ll catch a muskie. Ralph Plumb says that he’s seen them up to 20 pounds. But if you ever fight a 20-pounder to a draw in that stretch of boulder-strewn water, it’ll be hard to tell who caught who.