Hoppers And More! Video Included...

OKFlyFisher44 · July 27, 2012

The crew and I made 2 trips to the White/Norfork rivers this past month to chase some trout with the foam bug! We got to spend quite a bit of time on both tailwaters over both weekends. Good times....

Trip #1, 7/7 - 7/8

This trip was kind of a last minute, throw it together, and wing it kinda trip. Gotta love them! We had to change our plans 2 different times thanks to the weather and generation. We ended up on the Norfork on Sunday to run a morning float and an afternoon float in hopes of getting on a hopper bite. The morning float was pretty good for the foam. We had a bunch of eats and put some fish in the boat. No BIG fish to the boat minus an 18" brown and an 20" rainbow. Both were real chubby footballs, healthy as could be! Everything else was stocker rainbows and a decent little cutthroat for a bonus fish! We completed our float in the morning and then hit up the local dining establishment (Norfork Cafe, pretty good FYI) for some hot food and cold A/C. We hit the river again in the early afternoon and it was HOT! The bite was really slow for us on this float. My buddy Cole did a TOAD brown blow up on his hopper, it was an awesome take. Easily over 20", no doubt! The weather totally changed on us shortly after that and some thunderstorms moved in that basically blew us off the river. It was pretty wild for a bit. We finally made it to the take out and headed for home!

Trip #2, 7/14 - 7/15

Our 2nd trip was a little more prepared and typical for 1 of our weekend expeditions. The generation schedule did kinda screw us so we had to chance the falling water and float the Rim to Buffalo City secton of the White on Saturday. We had foggy conditions and then cloudy/rainy weather the rest of the float so the hopper bite was a bust for us. We finally started chuckin' the bobber and put some fish in the boat. All stocker rainbows but at least the float wasnt a bust. Afterwards, we loaded up to hit the Norfork for an afternoon float to end the day. Once again, we started with the foam bugs but wasn't getting any love. With the overcast skies we switched to streamers and had an awesome streamer bite for the remainder of the float. Put some quality browns in the boat with tan being the hot color. Not a bad way to end the day.

The next day, we floated our favorite section of the White, Wildcat to Cotter in hopes of a good hopper bite. We were met with really low floats and skittish fish. It was a pretty slow bite till we got about a mile from Cotter where we bit the bullet and dug out the bobber rigs again. Mayfly stuff and midges produced some stocker rainbows once again to save the float for us. Seen some really nice fish in the low clear water but never got a shot at any of them.

For a more detailed report, check out our blog at Chasing The Dream!

http://okietroutbum....ber-or-two.html

We also brought along a GoPro for both trips and got some pretty good footage. We had a few head in rear-end moments with the camera and missed getting footage of some of our fish but were able to get some fish on film. This is my 1st shot at creating a video so please give me some feed back!

http://youtu.be/8snuINiXNXk