Photo Essay: White River, Arkansas
- This topic has 5 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated Oct 25, 2010 at 2:14 pm by
.
-
Posts
-
Hey guys –
This will just be a short photo essay; it’s actually from last weekend. I had business in Springfield, Missouri, so my boss and I took the weekend and hit the White. One of our trips fell through so we got an extra day on Friday.
Here’s what the Narrows looked like with fall coming and summer going:
That would have been a nice occasion to have my GND Singh-Ray filter handy; the sky was a rich blue to complement the leaves and flowers, but the camera couldn’t quite capture it.
Our first two days were badly marred by high water and a Ryan Mallett concussion. 🙁 We caught the snot out of stockers on Norfork, but I didn’t land any fish worthy of being photographed. We hiked all the way from Handicapped to the top of McClellan’s; close enough to hear the horn sound, which caused us to high tail it back out. I hooked and lost one decent rainbow, maybe 18-20″.
Strangely, there was a notable dearth of brown trout on Norfork. Perhaps even stranger, some of the rainbows were spawning. That’s what you get on a weird tailwater, I guess (over here the wild rainbows spawn in the cold months from late December through mid-March).
On Saturday we hit the White despite some one-to-three unit generation and a hell of a lot of boat traffic. I saw some of the ruder behavior I’ve ever seen (boats running repeatedly through my run, motor open, then floating down to do it again). I had forgotten just what an a-hole a true Arkansas redneck can be. They look on fly fishers as beneath their notice, and the regulations don’t say anything about civility so they get away with it.
I swung the spey in all that water and landed a few fish. My abilities were somewhat limited by (a) lack of skill with the spey and (b) having forgotten my balloon indicators, which can survive spey casting. Had a nice conversation with a professional hunting dog trainer out of Texas; saw him at both Norfork and then staying at Fulton’s later. I wish I could remember his name; he was a nice guy.
We caught a few trout for lunch; the first time I have eaten my catch since 2006. After a slow morning, as soon as the boat bubbas went in for their midday country buffet banquet/feast (and man did that river smell like frying oil), the trout fishing picked up. I tied on a red pheasant tail I’d originally tied for the Hooch and almost immediately landed a brace of stockers. I walked them up to the cabin, where Richie, who is a mean hand in the kitchen, had fired up our smoker. That made him jealous so naturally he strung up and immediately landed a two and a half pound fish, the largest of the trip, plus a dink stocker like mine. (Sample dialogue: “How about we eat something other than cat food for lunch, hey, Zach?”)
Turns out a relatively large smoked trout tastes a lot like salmon: delicious!
That night we night-fished in medium-high water below Bull Shoals Dam. I caught one sixteen inch brown on the spey rod. Man I wish I could have had some low water there!
On day three we got the good word from my old internet buddy Jimmy T (who I met for the first time; also a nice guy and a good guide). We headed over to Rim Shoals for a half day and waded to the island with the generators at 3200 cfs.
Now I say without overly puffing out my chest that I am a pretty fair wader. My boss it turns out is also a good wader; unfortunately he’s about two inches shorter than me. We nearly bit off more than we could chew getting over to the first island at Rim. In fact, he took the shuttle back.
We did finally find some browns at Rim. They were up on the shoals staging for their eventual spawn, chasing each other around. As soon as the sun hit the water though, they moved out to deep water. God I’d like to night fish there. I did have a nice sized bruiser crush my indicator; he could have been anywhere from 20-24″. I have never had a big brown rise and eat an indicator like that.
Not having any streamers to entice the aggressive ones, I managed to limit myself to only one fish, which in retrospect was pretty pathetic. Pretty guy though:
The good news is I have just learned that I’ve got some open dates on Nov. 7-10, so I’m going to head back and fish mid-week. My thirtieth birthday is Nov. 6 so this will be a nice little present to myself.
Zach
ZM
I’ll bring the Clacka and row you when you are up in November……..My Wife takes chemo on Wednesday’s in Harrison………flexible otherwise if you want to go…..Let me know
Jeff
I’ve only fished that area once….pulled the driftboat out there and had a blast. I just wish that drive was not so dang long. Zach…I’m assuming you go 20 west to BHM and then up through Tupelo and Memphis?? Is there a shorter way? How do you “shorten” the trip with regard to restaurants/sights along the way?
Thanks for posting….I want to go back as the weather cools and after turnover.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.