Thus far August has been a relatively cool month with a few days with highs in the 70’s.  Last week our highs were in the 80’s and this weekend Labor Day weekend highs expected in the 90’s with a chance of rain showers for today the 29th and for Saturday the 30th.  Later mid week the temps are forecast to be back in the mid to upper 80’s.  For those of us in the tourism and fishing guide business the current storm Gustave in much on our minds as the last event we need is for this storm to head up our direction and dump a bunch of rain on us to bring up our lakes and flood our streams.  Our current lake levels on Bull Shoals lake as of 6:00 am this morning is 680.44 and dropping roughly a third of a foot per day.  The lake level on Norfork lake is 566.85 and is dropping 2/10 ths of a foot per day.  The Norfork dam is generating during the day with mostly one of it’s two units and Bull Shoals is generating with all 8 of it’s units; however these units are not at full capacity most of the time and fluctuate anywhere from 5 1/2 alnd 7 1/2 units of water with the occasional full 105 % of 8 units later in the afternoon.  At this rate of drop the C.O.E (Corps of Engineers) is predicting October 20th as the date to hit normal pool elevation.  For fly fishers wishing to wade fish this is an important date to watch.  

Fishing Report:  Fishing with various types of flies such as Sow Bugs, Leonards Roo Scud, San Juan worms as well as caddis larvae on a log 13 to 16 foot leader with a bb and 3/0 shot along with a thing-a-ma-bobber indicator are working well for my fisherman as we are hooking near 60 fish a day with this rig and landing the occasional brown trout.  Mostly I am working the upper end of the river from the dam down to wildcat shoals a total of about 10 miles.  I watch for the subtle rises in the water and ride them down stream as these fish tend to turned on by these small rises.  The heavy moss we were getting earlier in the year has gone and the river is clean, cold and clear.  Perfect high water fishing conditions.  Our fish are looking good as they are fat and sassy and are pulling well.  The O2 levels are good as well.

 

Here are some of the links I use to facilitate my decisions on the what, where and whens of fishing.

This is the link for water quality or Oxygen Levels.http://www.swl-wc.usace.army.mil/water_quality_data.htm

This is the Norfork graphs link for precipitation, flows in CFS and the lake levels.

http://www.swl-wc.usace.army.mil/WCDS/plots/WEB/nor.htm

Here is the graph links for Bull Shoals

http://www.swl-wc.usace.army.mil/WCDS/plots/WEB/bul.htm

This is the link for predicted generation scheduling for all of the S.W.P.A lakes in the 24 dam system

http://www.swpa.gov/generationschedules.aspx

Here is the link for State Wide flows and levels for rivers and streams in Arkansas.

http://waterdata.usgs.gov/ar/nwis/rt

These links should help with planning a fishing trip to our state.

 

Here is a 19 1/2 inch brown trout we caught this past tuesday.