Arkansas Trip Report
- This topic has 8 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated Jan 13, 2009 at 11:03 pm by
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It was an off year on the Cumberland and it seems to have been an off year on the White.
I beg to differ with you on the Cumberland. I ran over 125 commercial trips there this year and all were quality trips.
I had a wonderful season there. Once the water was turned off around Mothers Day, up until the water came back on in middle December. My season was spectacular there.
Mothers day caddis was an intense hatch and the fish were on them. So I started my Cumby season fishing dry caddis, that were backed by hatching sulfurs later in the month. IT’s hard to be unhappy when your catching dry fly fish.
The 17 year Cicadas happened on the Cumby this year, and it was on from the dam, to Tennessee. 75 Miles of water with huge terrestrials slamming the surface and monster fish taking advantage of them. June – July proved to be the best time for the Cicadas, even though we heard them in the trees for a month before and a month after their emergence.
After the Cicadas went away, the hopper fishing was phenomenal up into October. Big old hoppers wiggled and twitched along the banks got plenty of explosive rises from some very nice fish.
The spawn went off as usual. The main difference this year was that the spawn was well publicized and a lot of people came out to harvest big fish on the redds. The big rainbows that usually hang behind spawning browns were left hanging on stringers instead. Other than that, the spawn seamed just like other years with low water.
Now I will agree on the fact that the White River system did have an off year, due to all the rain that they got.
Hey Rocky –
I would have liked to have fished the Cumberland in the Mother’s Day hatch. I made a few trips in Oct-Nov and while we found fish, it wasn’t like it had been in the same time frame the years before. We probably just missed the window a little bit. It was still hot when I was there even though it should have been cooling way off.
As far as the fish being hit pretty hard, I don’t know that I would say it was a symptom of being “well publicized” so much as “completely obvious.” With the water in the river having to be held at record lows, it’s really no surprise that every one in the area would be out there trying to fish to those rainbows up there eating brown trout eggs. That’s just part of it; as soon as they get the dam repaired and/or a little more water flowing as the drought eases up, it’ll probably fix. I blame the weather more than anything else.
Zach
Incidentally, here are some pictures from those trips to the Cumberland, along with a bit of an edited report:
The biggest fish I landed on the camping trip was twenty inches (taped). Caesar landed one that was about nineteen. I hooked and played one for a while that was substantially bigger – he ran me almost into my backing, then I got it all back, then he went downriver into a logjam/riffle. I controlled him until he jumped there and I lost the battle. That fish was somewhere between 22-24″, I’d say based on the size of his head as he came out.
We caught an abundance of little fish. I didn’t even bother keeping track of those. Almost everything came to hand on red blood midges, Y2K bugs (a weird kind of egg), and a few traditional eggs. No luck on stoneflies this week.
Mae came, and got her first up-close smell of a trout.
Heavy indicator fishing. I use balloons, Caesar had a big white yarn puff. Size BB split shot.
Biggest one we landed at 20 inches.
Moonlight is amazing stuff. It is white enough that it will expose colors properly, if the shutter is left open long enough.
Zach
Stop it Zach…
www.dsaphoto.com
A picture is thousand words that takes less than a second while a thousand words is a picture that takes a month.
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