Friday, April 24, 2009

Arkansas Ozarks, Norfork Lake Fishing Report

It has been a couple of beautiful days on Norfork Lake, but very, very windy. The wind is supposed to keep up for the next several days with temps in the 80's. Too windy for me to fish, hopefully it dies down this evening. The forecast is still calling for 15 - 25 mph winds.

The lake level is rising slowly at 554.1 which is 2 feet over normal. This warm south wind is warming the lake temp and it is ranging from the mid to upper 50's. Still minimal generation.

I went baiting with one of the guides the other day and learned a lot. But still it is more work than I am looking for, so I guess I will stick with artificial baits, which is my preference anyway. We fished a little, but only got two striper hits.

A group of our guests (4 guys) went striper fishing with a guide and did OK, but not great. They caught several nice hybrids, a couple of striped bass, a walleye and some white bass. The guide was using live shad and was fishing the dam area. Yesterday the same group went to the river with two guides and caught so many rainbows and browns that their arms were starting to ache. During the early hours two generators were running and they caught some really nice sized fish. Once the generation stopped and the river level lowered, they started catching the smaller fish, but got a fish on every cast. They all had a blast. Hopefully I will get some of their pictures and post them later. I believe they fished the White River up from the confluence with the Norfork River.

The word is out from many fishermen that the largemouth are sitting and making their beds. I have also heard that the smallmouth are finally coming up to shore to feed. Soft plastics (3 in. grubs) are working with a slow retrieval. Largemouth are hitting soft plastic, spinners as well as crank baits. I guess you throw what you are comfortable fishing, they are hitting them all.

To all the Basscatters that are traveling soon have a safe trip and see you all soon.

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