Nothing more fun for a guide than to have anglers do well. Especially when they have never had fly rods in their hands before. Adam & Trent (old high school buddies) fished with me on Saturday and we got into fish pretty quickly which takes the mind off the casting part and puts the focus on the catching part. A bit of gentle coaching on the casting part along with some practice and bingo two fishers who look like they have been fishing for years. Good job guys! Outstanding! Lots of fish from Blue Hole up to the dam on various flies such as the Dash-2, Dynamite worms, a new mink fly (been working on this one for the upcoming big water) as well as a sulpher type nymph which is also new from last year and developed by a fellow guide. ( A really good fly this one is).
If you read my post from last week about fishing big water (it is reposted below) then you know some of the guides that were guiding here then are looking forward to fishing big water and actually are excited about fishing some flood gate water again as it’s pretty good fishing. It’s a unique situation this time around as more of us have experienced this situation. It did not take us long to figure out how to catch those babies. Some new flies were invented at that time and this time around I there will be more flies developed just for “hi-water”. It won’t be long before we’ll start seeing some “Big Water” as it began raining on us again yesterday and rained for most of the night and we do have more headed our way. Add to this the fact that both Beaver dam and Table Rock Dam are dumping water as fast as they can and Bull Shoals Lake will begin to rise to the top of it’s flood pool of 695 ft MSN (mean sea level). In 2008 with the flood gates open we had an extra 6 feet of water on top of the 8 generators that were open at the time. You can be sure that the more experienced guides will be prepared with not only flies but tippet and the knowledge to fish these areas.
If this sounds like some interesting fishing to you give us a call 870-404-8906 and book a fishing adventure today.
Jim
Here is my post from last week: April 28
In “2008? our area got a bunch of rain over a longer period of time than we received this time around (10 to 14 inches in three days).White River fly fishingguides got a taste of some extra water coming from the dam twice in the form of flood gates being open and after that a full 8 units of generation for months on end. Sounds bad for fishing right? Actually there was a silver lining in all that generation we had. It was good for the fish and it taught us as guides how to fish lots of water and we all became successful at it by figuring out new techniques and the flies to use on all of this water. What we began to notice in 2010 and in 2011 is that we had some much better fish than we did in early “08?. It’s not like these events have not happened before and in speaking with some of the old guides who have been out here for 30+ years they were eagerly awaiting higher lake levels and bigger flows for the river. Well for the past 3 years we’ve pretty much had some bigger flows and fishing it as a guide isn’t the boogie man it once was (at least with a fly rod). And when all of the water from the dam is evacuated and flows come down again we will be left with some even bigger fish in our rivers. There will be plenty of food for them to forage on and grow and yes we can catch them from our unique White River Jon Boats. At the moment our flows are low as the Corps of Engineers is holding back water to prevent further flooding down stream. The dam is doing it’s job and as guides our job is to put you on the fish and we have learned as a group how to do it under all flow conditions including extra flows and the last time around we did it safely and had a blast and caught lots of fish. Big Water = Big Fish. Book your trip and learn some new techniques and ways to fish some bigger water. Streamer fisherman are going to love the water we are going to see through the next few months.