netboy

Sorry, not much in to baitcasters anymore. Gave most of them away to friends when we left Corpus Christi.

Nice fish but looks like the guy was next in line for a root canal.... fishing is supposed to be fun?

The heaviest one I have is a 6wt and it works great.

Also here is link to the reels... Aventik Fly Fishing Reel CNC Aluminum Trout Large Arbor Freshwater Fly Reel | eBay

They used to be $30 bucks, but with China prices going up I just checked and they have gone up a bit to $39 (free shipping too). Here is link... still a good fly rod for a reasonable price. Maxcatch Fly Fishing Rod 3/4/5/6/7/8/10WT Graphite IM7 Fast Action All Sizes Rod | eBay

The wrap one on that rod is 17" to the end closet to the reel so the brown was between 19 and 20", not huge but great fun on a small dry fly. That is one of my $30 China rods, which by the way casts great. I had a friend from Colorado up last week and he flew in so I told him not to bring any equipment. He has Orvis and other high end rods and reels and he was very impressed with the rods and $17 reels. I do have one Orvis Battenkill Disc reel that I found in the trash can at Cotter access a couple of years ago when I was dumping some trash the idiots left behind.

I launched the boat at White Hole this morning and the water was quite a bit lower than it has been. It looked to be around 2 units so I ran downstream to the Narrows and got the waders on. There were lots of small tan mayflies coming up along with the usual midges. I tied on a size 18 tan elk hair caddis and had some good action for a couple of hours and then the water came up and the bugs disappeared. I switched to an egg/midge combo and caught a few more. Ended the morning with a couple dozen rainbows and 3 browns. Here's a picture of the biggest brown on the elk hair...

Wow, that sounds like combat fishing. Glad we are on the Bull Shoals tailwater of the White where there are no "outlets" and plenty of room to spread out. Very rarely have anyone wading within site of me unless at the dam C&R area and there everyone respects your space.

How about some details???

I launched the boat around 7:30 and headed upstream to a shoal that has been producing some decent dry fly action. There were lots of small mayflies and a few sulphurs coming up when I first got there. Got the waders on and had some good action on a size 16 parachute sulphur dry fly. That shut down around 9:00 so I moved to another shoal and switched to a ruby midge under an indicator. The midge worked great for the rest of the morning. Strange thing was I caught more browns than rainbows this morning. Usually its mostly rainbows with a few browns in the mix. Here's a picture of one of the better browns with the ruby midge in his jaw...

The day I wrote that I launched at Wildcat; which is in Baxter county.. The next couple of days I launched at White Hole which happens to be in Flippin and Marion county (which also has been providing some great sulphur dry fly fishing). Same amount of empty beer cans, McDonald's empty food bags and Walmart corn cans left along the bank. Took all of 2 minutes to pick them up and dump them in the Walmart gas station trash can on the way home.

Well that all sounds good, but I don't think our Flippin police department has a Flippin forensic unit so I guess I am Flippin out of luck....😁 Guess I will continue to pick up the trash cause I hate seeing it there and the trash fairies have yet to make an appearance.

So you are saying I shouldn't pick up the 6 beer cans and other crap the slobs left at the Wildcat access picnic table and I should call the Baxter county sheriff to come bring the forensic team to gather the evidence and get fingerprints???

Back in Corpus Christi they were known as bay snapper. The meat was as good as red snapper and sold for $8-$10 a pound filleted. The drum down there fed mostly on small clams they got out of the bottom. Easy way to find where they were feeding was to look for what they called "drum noodles" those were many small dimples in the bottom where the drum would blow out sand when they scented the clams. Looked like a bunch of small craters.

When we lived on North Padre Island (Corpus Christi) we used to catch quite a few saltwater black drum. We liked the meat better than redfish or speckled sea trout. There is a thriving commercial market for them down there. They are not considered a game fish like the redfish and speckled trout so it is legal to sell them. The commercial guys catch them on long trotlines. They were fun to catch on a fly rod as they feed in very shallow water and it is mostly a stalking game and then sight casting to them. As Johnsfolly said, the larger ones (over about 25") are not worth keeping as the meat is coarse and they typically have worms in the meat. I have never caught a freshwater drum, but I don't see why they wouldn't be great eating.

Those are some weird looking fish... We used to see them swimming around our underwater lights at our house on North Padre island and they looked like birds flying in the water.

A simple solution to help is take a couple of trash bags with you and pick up some of the trash. Our local Trout Unlimited guys have volunteered to take care of some of the accesses here on the White river and we have 2 stretches of roads, the entrance to Rim Shoals and about 2 miles of Denton Ferry road around Wildcat that we clean a couple of times a year. Yes there are a bunch of slobs up here but you can do something to help. Take out more than you brought in.

Gotcha

Yeah, I just watched the 2 videos on Taney. I doubt he gave away any super secret spots at the outlet. 😁

I launched the boat at White Hole access this morning and ran to a large weed bed that has been providing good sulphur dry fly fishing this past week. They were running around 5 units so the water was too high to wade. I anchored the boat above the area and drifted a size 16 foam body sulphur dry fly back to the rising trout. Had a fun morning with a couple dozen to the net and probably missed another dozen. Had one really nice brown that broke the 6x tippet. It was mostly rainbows, but I did get these two pretty browns...

I clicked the follow button. Good to see kids interested in fishing and the outdoors instead of sitting in the basement on their "devices". I watched his video on fishing the outlets at Taneycomo and was blown away by the underwater sequence at outlet 2. I have only fished Taney once and did not go to the outlets. Are the fish really stacked up there like that? Must be a real zoo if that is the case.

Cool.... We have one cast iron skillet that I use every now and then. We have a Meyer commercial grade stainless 14" fry pan that we use most every morning for eggs or saute cooking. Also have a nice Lodge enamel Dutch oven for the slow cooking stuff.

Wow, you must really like cast iron.🙂

The movie event was a great evening. We started with our local TU chapter meeting under the pavilion in Cotter Park and then moved to the area under the Cotter Rainbow bridge for the movies. They raised $4,000 to help complete the Roundhouse Shoals access project and our TU chapter sold all the remaining raffle tickets for the Jackson Mayfly kayak. The winner was announced and congrats to him. I think he was from Memphis?? Also funny that the big door prize which was a full day fly fishing trip with Steve Dally was won by our TU head GURU Bill Thorne. That should be a great trip as Bill and Steve are are probably the best two fly fishermen on the river. I am sure we will hear some stories on this one. Here is a recap from Dally's website... AWESOME EVEING: f3T UNDER THE BRIDGE – The Ozark Fly Fisher Journal (wordpress.com)

Maybe MDC should take some lessons from Arkansas Game and Fish on how to manage their cold water fisheries. What a shame that the North Fork of the White took such a hit from the floods a few years ago and they won't stock trout.