Threadfin Shad Trickling Through – Public Meeting

Generation this past week has been heavy with up to 7 and 8 units in the morning and dropping as the day warms up.  It appears as though the C.O.E. has been running to get the lake levels back down after a heavy rain last week. This heavy generation has brought some shad through the dam which is something we look forward to happening most years.  Two weeks ago some came through and were floating on the surface but mostly they came through alive as you could see the balls of shad making their way down stream with the current.  It did turn the river on to white and shad flies for a bit.  The past few days some more shad have been coming through but not very many and they are not making it very far down the river, perhaps a hundred yards are less.  Orange eggs however are working quite well on long leaders bounced on the bottom.  We are close to the normal pool elevation of 654.00  The C.O.E. ran it down to 653.5 the last time we saw some consistent no generation but who knows what they will do this time around.  It is raining now with more headed our way which could bring the lake level back up again so we could continue to see generation because of this rain. That would of course depend on how much we get.

This from Jeff Williams. Trout biologist.

All,We are planning to hold an informational meeting for Bull Shoals and Norfork Tailwaters on February 23 rd from 6 -7:30 pm in the McMullin Lecture Hall on the campus of ASU-Mountain Home. This meeting will provide us (AGFC) to update the public on current monitoring efforts (population samples, creel survey, etc.) of some of the management strategies implemented in 2007-2008 when we developed the management plan. We will also discuss plans for upcoming projects. The first half of the meeting will be a presentation of our monitoring data and the second half will be an opportunity for attendees to ask questions.I think this will be a very informative meeting and I encourage everyone to attend. We will be advertising this through the normal media outlets, but feel free to pass this e-mail on to anyone that may be interested in attending. Thank you.

Jeff

Jeff Williams

Trout Program Coordinator

E: j_williams@agfc.state.ar.us | P: (870) 424-5924 ext. 432 | M: (870) 404-0503

Arkansas Game and Fish Commission

Mountain Home Field Office

201 East 5th Street

Mountain Home, AR 72653

P: (877) 425-7577 | F: (870) 425-6596

www.agfc.com

This picture taken by Mike Martin of Arkansas is a great shot I though I’d share with you.

“Thought you might like to see a few photos I caught of bald eagles recently on the SWEPCO Lake near Gentry, AR.  I shot these with a canon 7D camera mounted to a 500 canon f4.0 lens.  The middle photo is of two juvenile eagles fighting for a prime perch tree limb. ”

Enjoy and thanks Mike.

Off to go catching now.

Stay Fishy My Friends.

Jimmy T.

Riding The Rise-River Report-White River Arkansas

The past few mornings generation has started at 8:00 am with three units and ramped up to 6 in short order and a full 8 units by noon.  OOoohhh! this hot weather sure makes for some good rises just like the old times when the water was shut off during the night and then ramped up in the mornings to create a sort of flash flood that stirs up food and turns on the fish.  It’s not the perfect 4 to 6 units that I really like but I’ll take the first three that I do get. After Besides the second three will catch up to the first three eventually.  After lunch we are running upstream to get out of the mossy water.  The fish you see above was caught by Michael B from Dallas on a rising 7 1/2 units of water on the GFW fly.  Outstanding job Michael.  You did everything perfectly while fighting that fish.

I don’t know how long this pattern will last.  This morning the water was turned on at 6:00 am which is still good to get on the rise by catching it around the Gastons area.

Note:  I don’t think it’s just me but does it seem like the water is coming up faster?  Seems to be.  The river in a few spots is a bit narrower in some places like The White Hole where the gravel has narrowed the river on low or no generation water.  The same thing at the state park where the shoal channels are narrower than they used to be.  In Cane Island the ledge chutes have filled with gravel.  At three chutes some gravel has piled up on the right side of the river and has caused a new drop off.  There are more changes as well but what I think (guess) is happening is that these changes are causing the water to move down the river a bit faster than is used to because of these constrictions.  I’m sure that over time some of this gravel will flatten out and some of the channels will score out with pushes of water generation as well as on low water periods which will cut out some of the gravel chutes.  Time will tell.

Book your August and Sept fishing adventure now by calling 870-404-8906

Stay Fishy My Friends.

Jimmy T.