It’s way too late to report this … but here goes anyway.
Last weekend (May 16-18), I made the long, boring trip through west Tennessee and eastern Arkansas before finally landing in the fishing mecca of Heber Springs, Ark. Despite the projected aggressive generation schedule for Greers Ferry Dam, I was hopeful to salvage a few hours of wade fishing the Little Red River.
The Corps proved to be friendly to me, cutting off generation at midnight on Friday, leading to a 4 a.m. Saturday wake-up call and a trip to the section of river almost immediately below the dam. My Dad and I carefully negotiated the slicker-than-owl-**** rocks down to the river – a feat that was helped immensely by the head-lamp I purchased at Cumberland Transit on Friday morning (a couple of real helpful guys in the fly-shop steered me to the proper lamp … and shared a few fishing tales to place me in the right frame of mind before heading west -- ‘preciate it, fellas).
Side note: The residents of central and northern Arkansas have “enjoyed” a spring of near biblical proportions, as a steady stream of powerful storms have dropped an incredible amount of rain on the area. As a result, the lakes are nearing flood-level and the famous tailwaters – the White, the Norfork and the Little Red – have paid the price with phenomenal amounts of generation. The only saving grace for our fishing plans was the Little Red flows into the even-more-swollen White, requiring the Corps to hold off on placing too much flow from Greers Ferry Lake in order to avoid flooding the White downstream. The trade-off for this, however, is that Greers Ferry Lake is extremely high – to the point that it’s nearly inaccessible to boaters. On Sunday the 18th, it was 85 degrees and sunny. While driving across the dam and looking out over the lake, it was amazing to see a lake completely devoid of watercraft. A friend of the family told a story of trying to launch their boat from one of the flooded boat ramps, only to clip their lower unit on the top of a submerged stop-sign.
As a result of the high-water, the fish have not had received a lot of fishing pressure, and the ones below the dam were very accommodating. Before the sun rose, I caught a dozen or so quality rainbows on a muddler minnow fished on a sink-tip line. But, once the stream was fully lit, I switched to a dead-drifted black zebra midge and enjoyed similar success. Downstream, my Dad fired away with a variety of woolly buggers and caught fish for a solid five hours. Only one fish was truly photo-worthy – a 20-inch bow that was absolutely beautiful, ripe with spots and a maw that would have made a brown jealous. It was not meant to be, though, as the fish squirmed its way out of the net before I could click the camera. But, it’s etched in my mind and will probably end up on a piece of watercolor paper in the near future.
At 10 a.m., the dam horn sounded, and two generators cranked up immediately (Center Hill’s 10-minute advance warning is personally preferred). We safely scampered back up the ridge to our car, where we talked with several other anglers who had enjoyed a tremendous fish-catching morning.
Absolute gluttons, we traveled downstream a ways and waded a riffle-hole-run section downstream from Winkley Shoals until generation caught up to us a few hours later and ended our fishing day. The fish – mostly rainbows with a few small browns – were just as cooperative as by the dam, only their main diet seemed to be focused on dead-drifted sowbugs (No. 16, olive or tan with a small bit of flash).
On Sunday, the Corps repeated their generation schedule, but I just couldn’t do the 4 a.m. wake-up call two days in a row. So, I waited until about 10:30 a.m. to wade the same spot we fished the previous afternoon. Fishing remained spectacular, as the sowbug worked its magic throughout the day. My biggest fish – a 19-inch, skinny rainbow – munched on a EH caddis indicator; the only fish of the trip that ate “up top.”
Just before the two-gen-flow hit, a midge hatch began, leading to some short-lived success with emerging midge patterns. Fish were
very cooperative to say the least.
The high flow ended the weekend’s fishing, but I was pleasantly worn out from a pretty damn good weekend. As always, there was a lot of stuff going on aside from the fishing. Geese and ducks had little ones in tow all around us, leading to these non-fishing shots. Sadly, I have no photos of fish (too busy catching and releasing), but I did catch one of Dad netting a sowbug-fooled rainbow.
Topic: 5.17 and 5.18 on the Little Red (Read 1787 times)