netboy

They will be coming thru St Louis on Tuesday.... Day 7: Tuesday, March 1 Morning – Depart Sullivan, MO area Evening – Arrive in Indianapolis, IN area for overnight stay

Looks like they will be coming thru Springfield on I44 next Monday. Day 6: Monday, February 28 Morning – Depart Vinita, OK area Evening – Arrive in Sullivan, MO area for overnight stay

Very nice.👍👍

I waded at the State Park yesterday afternoon after the water went down to less than 1 unit. There are still lots of redds visible in the shallows and I saw 3 different pairs of rainbows active on redds. Fishing was good using a peach colored egg with a ruby midge dropper. Ended the day with a couple dozen rainbows and 2 browns. Some of the rainbows were full of eggs as you can see from the first pic.

Norfork was scheduled to be at minimum flow all day today, but they turned on 1 unit at 7am. You just never know what they have up their sleeve.

April will be prime time for the caddis hatch. Hard to beat a size 16 elk hair caddis with a green body. Just cast it and mend the line to make a drag free drift. Nothing better than to see them come up on top and suck it in.

Sounds like a fun day. I have a Euro setup but haven't tried it out yet. It sure was some great weather to be out after all the snow.

I made a quick wading trip to Roundhouse Shoals this morning while the water was still low. Fishing was good with some nice rainbows and lots of stockers. I am still seeing quite a few active rainbows on Redds. With that said, a Y2K with a P&P midge dropper was the best combo fishing to the trout holding below the redds. Here's a couple of the better rainbows...

I have been fishing the C&R area the last few days and doing pretty good. SWPA is running 1 unit in the afternoons which limits the wadeable water, but still allows for some decent fishing. There are LOTS of guide boats up there right now, but very few waders. Best flies have been midges and then BWO's later in the afternoon when a few bugs start to hatch. Here's a couple of pics...

I am doing some fancy French cuisine....

We have seen a few in the yard under our deer feeder.

Wow, you need to come down here and get rid of some of our beavers. They are everywhere on the White and Norfork and getting worse. I'll be happy to show you many areas where they are active.

Nothing much down here in Flippin/Cotter yet. Looks like we get it tonight. Fishing was pretty good at Cotter walk in this morning. Still some trout looking for eggs.

The Dam C&R area has been closed since November 1 for the Brown Trout spawning season and opened back up this morning. I went up there around noon and had a good afternoon. They were running 1 unit and there were lots of guide boats but I was the only wader. Probably caught around 20ish... mostly rainbows, but one 17" cuttie, a 16" brown and a couple of rainbows in the 18-20" range. Best flies were a peach colored egg and a P&P midge. Also a pic of my wife with a rainbow from our trip to Norfork Dam yesterday. Looks like some bad weather the next couple of days.

Here is a write up from the Greers Ferry Hatchery website that explains the process. How We Do It Greers Ferry does not have any adult trout for breeding purposes. The hatchery receives fertilized eggs from other Federal hatcheries, called brood stock hatcheries. The majority of eggs we receive are provided by Erwin National Fish Hatchery, a national brood stock hatchery located in Tennessee. Eggs are received and incubated in the juvenile fish rearing area of the hatchery building from August through March. At this stage the young fish are vulnerable, so biosecurity procedures are followed to protect the fish from disease or harmful biological agents. Only staff are permitted in the juvenile fish rearing area. As the eggs hatch and the yolk sacs are absorbed, the young trout swim up from the bottom of the troughs and are fed commercial fish food 5-6 times a day. When they reach a size of approximately 3 inches (4-5 months old), the fingerling trout are transferred outside to the raceways. In the raceway area, the fish are fed and cared for until they reach the 11-inch stocking size (approximately 20 months old). Each raceway of fish may be fed from one to three times a day depending on the size of the fish being fed. Throughout the year fish are harvested from the raceways and distributed by truck for stocking in suitable tailwaters and in Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma. Greers Ferry National Fish Hatchery produces more than 700,000 trout annually. Maybe one of those trout will be the subject for your next “big fish story.”

Some interesting things I have learned about "brood stock" at our local hatcheries in Arkansas. I have talked with the biologists at Norfork Federal Hatchery, Jim Hinkle State Hatchery at Mammoth Springs and Greers Ferry Federal Hatchery. None of them have "brood stock". They do have a run in the hatchery that hold some big trout, but they are for tourists to feed and see and then they occasionally release a few in the rivers. The biologists I talked to said they get the eggs from Federal hatcheries that specialize in producing eggs. The biologist at Jim Hinkle told me they receive their shipment of fertilized eggs via FedEx in an Igloo cooler on overnight delivery and put them in the glass containers to hatch. Now that may not be the case in Missouri hatcheries but seems to be what happens down here.

That old boat ramp at the mouth of Dry Run creek is where they dumped them a couple years ago when I saw the browns. It's amazing how fast they appeared. Guess it's like ringing the dinner bell.

Here is an article about Dry Run creek from our local TU chapter's Web page... DRC 2021 - Arkansas White River TU Chapter 698

The kid even tied his own fly. The smiles say it all.😄

I don't think there is a published schedule here on the Bull Shoals tailwater since there are so many stocking points. Sometimes they dump them at the ramps and then sometimes they load them into the stocking raft and distribute them downstream.

Always a fun event if you are a fly tier... Sowbug Roundup |

I was at the Norfork Dam a couple years ago when they dumped a load of them at the boat ramp. They were all 5-6" and within a few minutes there were 3 or 4 big browns chasing them and gobbling up as many as they could. I talked to the truck driver and he said they come from the Greers Ferry hatchery on the Little Red.

I use a foam body for all my larger dry flies... Elk hair Caddis, Sulphurs and BWO's. Floats really well.

Yes, it's nice to see a few of them survive the brown trout feeding frenzy when they stock the little guys.

Norfork was scheduled to be at minimum flow all day today so I made a trip over there around 10am after it warmed up a bit. I assumed the Ackerman parking lot would probably be full, so I went to the Dam access. There were only 3 other guys there so plenty of room. Fishing was good and I ended up with a couple dozen, all rainbows except for this PB brook trout. He was 13" which is pretty big for a brookie. I don't think I have ever caught one over 10". The P&P midge was the best fly today but I did catch a few on top on a BWO. Also had an AGFC biologist come by for a visit in his canoe. He was taking a survey of fishing results. The colors didn't show up very well on the brookie. Too much direct sunlight I guess.