Honestly I don't remember any particularly large fish but at the time we were going to Taney, The White and Norfork quite a bit. And those were the hay days of the tailwaters and big fish. Back then a lunker was 5 pounds and we caught plenty of them on the tailwaters. What I do remember is you could go down there and catch nice fish and plenty of them without going into the parks. It wasn't unusual to have 20-30 fish day for a couple guys.
What we really talked about was not only the decline in that area starting in the 90's, but how quickly the fishing below Scott's Ford declined. Which we thought happened overnight it seemed. We probably fished below Scott's Ford as much as the Cardiac Access. We would catch browns, rainbows and smallies out of the same hole. Lots of them and nice ones. And then it just seemed to be over. Not that you couldn't do the same thing today but not nearly the quantity and quality like it was before.
In the late 80's my buddy had a Toyota Tercel 4 wheel drive wagon and I would lift the cable at Cardiac and he would drive under it and down to the river. So we could drive out at the end of the day. We did that many times until one day the owner and the sheriff were waiting at the top of the hill for us. We did some real talking that day to keep our butts out of jail. Apparently we had slipped away several times before he could the sheriff there. At one point in the conversation I even tried to get personal access but he wasn't having it.