Norfork Lake Fishing Report

My guests and I have had a lot of fun Crappie and Bass fishing since my last report on Norfork Lake. The current best bite on the lake is for crappie, largemouth and smallmouth bass and bluegill. I have not been catfishing lately so I really can't speak about catfish, but looking back at last year, November should be a great time to catch catfish. The striper bite may be starting to get active so keep checking back to see when it kicks off.

I had a couple of guests out fishing the last couple of days and they caught some really nice slab crappies. A couple of them measured in at 15 inches. They were using live minnows, both crappie minnows as well as shad. The bite wasn't non stop, but it definitely kept their interest. They were catching fish on brush piles close to our resort. The brush should be in 25 - 35 feet of water with the tops around 15 - 20 feet. The fish are suspended on the top of the brush as well as on the bottom. Big thumper bluegill are in the same brush piles and also on the inside of the piles closer to shore.

I also fished this morning and caught two nice 15 inch crappies and several smallmouth bass. I was using a Berkley's 2 1/2 inch T-tail minnow (or grub) with a 1/4 oz jig head. The bass were hitting the jig in 10 - 20 feet of water and the crappie attacked the grub when I started to bring the bait straight up to the boat. I try to keep the boat in about 35 feet of water. Anytime I was sitting on a brush pile I caught a crappie. Earlier in the week I was bass fishing with another guest. The first day we did really good on keeper size smallmouth, but the second day slowed and we just caught a few. I was using my grub and Grant was throwing a Texas rigged worm. Both baits were being worked slowly back to the boat.

Congrats goes out to all the participants in the Mr. Bass of Arkansas Pro-Am Classic. It was held on Friday, Saturday and the finals were today. We did have the winning amateur staying with us. He took home a nice check for 1st Place. Congratulation to Kevin Crow. Kevin said he had all his luck casting a Wiggle Wart. The keeper size bite was tough for all (but plenty of undersized fish were caught) and after the weigh-in on Saturday the top 10 Pros weighed in from 19 - 28 pounds for a two day total. Those top 10 fished today, but I was unable to attend the weigh-in to see how they did. It seemed like they caught keeper bass all over the lake. They were fishing in shallow water in the backs of creeks to deep water bluff lines and brush piles. They were catching fish on crank baits, swim baits, jigs and spinners. It does seem like all fishing techniques are starting to work. This is very typical for bass fishing this time of year.

Striper fishing has still been slow, but all hope that it picks up very shortly. Tom Reynolds of STR Outfitters fished yesterday and landed 3 nice striper and missed two others. Hopefully this is a sign that things are about to change with the striper bite.

The Norfork Lake surface water temperature has dropped to the high 50's to the low 60's. We have some rain and cool weather coming in the next few dasy so it should help to drop the temps a little lower. The Norfork Lake level is at 549.23 and dropping slowly at about an inch per day. The main lake is clear with the creeks and cover starting to clear.

Happy fishing and see you on the lake.