Last week I got to break away from work and head down to Mountain Home Arkansas to fish with Ham and my daughter. You would think that heading down that way we were sure to be fishing for big trout on either the Norfork or White Rivers or stripers in Lake Norfork. Nope! We were going to go for multispecies and to get some new micros on the list. If we are to hook into a big trout that's just gravy!
Livie and I got down and met with Ham and got all of our gear transferred to his truck and down to the White. We were going to fish sloughs or tributaries and used the White as our access to those waters. We started fishing one slough right away. Ham was fishing his Zig jigs and Olivia had on a trout magnet microjig. Ham had the first bite, a rainbow that did not get landed. Then both he and Livie hooked up on small largemouth bass a little further up the slough. It was at that point that the trash talking began! With most of it directed at me since I hadn't even finished rigging my rod. It continued when I decided to just go with a 1/64 oz jig with a piece of worm to just catch a few bluegill while they were both at three species a piece, largemouth, longear sunfish, and bluegill. Due to shallow water and no new species being caught Ham moved us back towards the mouth of the slough. I finally caught a small Largemouth on a green/black trout magnet jig. Livie switched to a 1/16 oz olive/black marabou jig and was having trouble feeling the bait. She did get a trout to bite, but it came unbuttoned soon after the strike. Just caught a glimpse of it. Could have been either a brown or a vividly colored rainbow. So I am still behind on the species total with just two. I couldn't even get a longear to sniff my baits . I had just switched to a 1.8 oz tri-olive zig jig, when Ham mentioned that he had a hit right at the lower edge of the confluence. I cast into that seam just below the point and got bit soon after I started my cadence. I knew from the fight that it was likely a trout and couldn't tell if the pull was from the size of the fish or the current. Once we got a good look at the fish it was pretty obvious that the pull was more due to the size of the fish. My third species was this 19" brown trout !
I would love to say that I caught more trout, but this would be the only one that I would catch on the whole trip. If you are going to only catch one, it was a pretty nice "one" to catch!
We left that spot and ended going upstream in another tributary. We went from a cold water to a warm water fishery real quick. We were seeing some carp cruising. Ham sight casted and caught the first carp using an unweighted circle hook with a worm.
He also caught several smallmouth bass with that same set-up. The surprise came after we were just discussing whether you could and how unlikely it would be to catch a catfish in this stream, which was almost immediately followed by Ham catching a channel catfish. We fished a couple more spots without catching any more carp. One spot we had seen a larger carp and another smaller one. I was able to sight cast to the smaller carp with the circle hook/worm combo. As I set the hook, Livie got bit by the bigger carp. We had a double. Here is my carp and you can see that Livie was still fighting hers behind me. Unfortunately, that fish had one last surge and popped the line at the hook just as I was moving the line to get the fish netted. Since I had “leader” I was considering that fish (ca. 24” and 5 lbs) to be a caught fish and it went onto to Livie’s species total as her first carp.
After that double we moved up into cleaner and shallower water to wade fish for micros. As soon as I looked over the side of the boat, I immediately recognized whitetail shiners swimming around us. I mentioned these shiners to Ham. OK maybe I might have squealed like a teenage girl a little bit. When I fished with Ham last summer I was looking for this species and we never found any. Livie got out of the boat and was the first to land a whitetail shiner!
Then I caught a larger male shiner, my first for this species!
Ham wanted to catch one too but ended up with this small smallmouth bass! He did catch a whitetail shiner soon after landing this bass.
When we were all wading there was lot of “have you got the bag” or “what is this one” or “look at these guys” as we were fishing different parts of the creek. Lots of whitetail shiners, duskystripe shiners, carmine shiners, and a few darters (with at least one or two greenside darters) were seen and many were caught before we had to head out. There were many cries of dismay as one of us landed yet another longear sunfish while trying for a different fish (this would be a recurring situation). On the way back downstream we spotted a couple more cruising carp, no takes but stopped next to a fallen treetop that was swarming with fry. Ham saw a few larger fish in the branches and he tried for those while Livie and I looked for more carp (still trying to get her a photo of a landed carp). We never got onto any more carp, but Ham did land a couple of redear sunfish. Ham ended up with ten different species and I believe three new life list species, whitetail shiner, duskystripe shiner, and carmine shiner. Livie ended up with six different species and three new lifers, common carp, whitetail shiner, and duskystripe shiner. I ended up with seven species, including the whitetail shiner which was my new life list fish on this trip. Had a great time and was already looking forward to the next day.