My Arkabutla Lake Trip

[sandbc]

Well for starters.......NO LUCK. Seems like everything was against us. The night before we got there they had a mean cold front go through that was followed by 2 inches of cold rain. A rain the week before and that rain raised the lake level 18 feet. That pretty much tells the story. The three days we fished were beautiful days but had negative features such as bluebird skys, muddy water, and east wind. The first day I caught a nice 14 incher full of eggs followed by a 13 incher then a 11.5 incher and that was it for the day. Day 2...... same conditions with a little more wind and only caught 2 11.5 inchers. Day 3 .....same conditions and more wind yet. caught 1 13 incher. We quit at noon. There were very few boats on the lake any of the days and we only saw one other fish caught. The locals must know that they cant be caught when the lake speads out that much. When we arrived in the area friday afternoon, we drove out to the lake to preview the area and check out the boat ramps. There was not one vehicle at the two ramps we drove by. Bad indication. I am not totally bummed out on the trip. I talked to a few fishermen that has had great success on that lake and feel that there will be a world record crappie come from that lake. I was very impressed with the lake area which is a corp lake. Everything was very neatly kept up with lots of camping and public picnic areas and beaches. The boat ramps were nice but they did not have docks. I assume the reason for that was that the water levels change so dramaticly that they would constantly be sliding them in and out. Its a little hard on the boat bottom. I am going to plan on the same trip next year now that I now know more of what to look for ahead of time. In the mean time I am back ready to hunt some gobblers and get back to stockton and chase some crappies. Good luck all. Stacey