Canoes, V-bottoms and a lone fisherman floating in a tube while fly-casting backwater pools for white bass drifted by that afternoon. I found myself lost in the camera’s view finder caught up with fishing scenes framed by blooming red buds and wild plums with promises of dogwood snow storms budding in the background.
At my request, Robert Magee reached for a trailing stringer and, with his partner’s help, hoisted a string of white bass aloft. He and his First Mate, Clarence Hackleman, hailed from Eldorado Springs, Missouri. I took advantage of the photo-op before Magee’s arm gave out.
My hosts were Jack Rowland and Cocoa (an Australian Shepherd), managers of Green Mill Campground on J Road West of Greenview, Missouri. Actually Rowland manages the campground. Cocoa manages Jack.
This trip had been on and off for a month. A late spring crossed up nature’s usual order that year and white bass spawning activities werecounted among the many resultant delays.
Once, I cautiously waded a hundred yards out on a submerged gravel bar in hip waders with expensive camera and lens dangling from the neck. The current’s persistent pressure constantly warned of impending disaster but a scene begged to be recorded.
A nameless fisherman, floating down-river in a tube, expertly fly-cast 
quiet back water pools on the opposing bank. He hooked and released several white bass while I shuffled/staggered closer.
The youthful smile under the snow on his roof was quite evident as he hoisted a white bass aloft. His exuberant visage belied his late 60’s or early 70’s in age. I watched as he released it and then, with a wave, continued his float downriver. When the white bass run in the Ozarks, boys will be boys.
An old Chinese proverb alleges time spent fishing is free time. Hours and days so spent do not subtract from one’s life span. Therefore, one is encouraged to participate as often as possible. Confucious alledged that the experience fed the soul as well as the body.
Whether the proverb is credible or not, the “old fellow” tubing down the Little Niangua’s chilly Spring waters made a good case for practicing more of it.
Fishing was actually slow that afternoon. Winds gusted to 30-miles-per-hour but had a warm comfortable feel. Wind chill wasn’t a factor that day. The sun peeked through the occasional cloud cover. Air currents carried promises of Spring commingling scents of the various blooms surrounding us.
For the present, fish on a stringer were not high priority. Emotions were focussed on views through the camera’s lens until, fortunately, recalling previous sharp instructions from home about a scarcity of fish in the freezer.
Rowland’s spring white bass technique saw him fishing one-thirty-second-ounce crappie jigs (mostly white though occasionally with different colored collars and red heads) under a white top water lure. The technique reduces hangups while drifting over the Little Niangua’s shallow gravel bars and submerged snags and rootwads where fish congregate.
He casts into backwater pools, slowly twitching the rig into the current allowing it to drift naturally until starting to drag. The action of the top water lure easily signals a pickup. Visibility is the reason he prefers that part of the rig white or some bright fluorescent color.
White bass often strike the top water lure. Rowland leaves the center treble hooks on it for that reason and removes the rear hooks to tie the jig there.
His homemade anchor, a farm machinery disc welded onto a good sized window sash, was remarkably efficient in the Little Niangua’s gentle but persistent current. Holes blown in the disc with a welding torch reduced resistance permitting water to pass readily through when drawing it up.
When heaved into the river, the disc bit into gravel and mud bottoms. When tiring of a spot, we tugged the disc out of the bottom material and drifted to a new view and renewed fishing action.
Cocoa sounded the alarm with severe vocal disapproval if drifting into shallow water or too near a bank. Bumping either disturbed her peace and she, in the best fish-wife’s tradition, threatened ours if we interfered with hers.
This annual trip would not be the same without Cocoa.
When under way, she navigated balancing her front feet on a forward gunwale occasionally reaching precariously outward to drink from or bite a wake exploding from under the bow - whichever mood suited her at the time. When fishing, she usually lay quietly beside Rowland or on him - once again depending on her mood.
Towards sundown, my lady had her fish fry and I washed my soul with an experience sorely needed. As we approached the takeout point, ospreys wheeled and hovered overhead.
Suddenly, one peeled from its hover, folded its wings and plummeted into a steep twisting swan dive from a hundred feet up finally crashing into the river.
It emerged from the spectacular dive with supper in its grasp. It struggled to get airborne with its weighty prize and flew to a snag on a nearby bluff to dine. (A table with a great view I might add.)
I set a course for home to do the same.