2024 Beaver Lake survey report

[Quillback]

Found this, no 2025 yet.  

Beaver Lake_popular_2024.pdf - Google Drive

[Blll]

Good morning!  We've lived here for 11 years and Beaver took some getting used to from fishing northern lakes with weeds. I've learned enough to rarely get skunked but by no means an expert. There seems to be plenty of fish, plenty of forage and good water quality. I just don't understand why the bass just don't seem to grow here. That survey I just looked at showed less than 15 bass over 3 lbs, out of almost 700 fish. About 2%. And zero 5-6 lbrs! That seems amazingly low for a southern lake, heck any lake. A 4# largemouth is not a monster fish!  I understand the time of year and location of survey makes an impact on the #'s. You would think Table Rock is a similar body of water and yet I have the impression there are many more quality bass there, with much more pressure.. The striper argument confuses me as they should have little effect on Largemouth growth rate. I've fished with guys on several other Arkansas lakes, and we almost always have several 3# fish in a day. Crappies grow big, walleyes hold their own and stripers do well. When the FLW quit coming here I thought there might be an improvement in quality but my small small sampling doesn't reflect that. Maybe I'm just fishing where only the little guys are lol. Are you guys around the 2% mark on fish over 3#'s?

[Quillback]

Beaver has never been as good as Table Rock when it comes to bass fishing.  There are some good bags caught in tournaments, but no easy feat for sure.  

The BPT is coming to Beaver in April, it will be interesting to see how they do.  Lots of live coverage to watch.

[razorbackfan4life]

I will add to this.  

Whether it's just luck, or a sign of things to come, I've caught one over 6lbs , three over 5lbs , and four over 4lbs in the past 1.5 years.  

I've also caught two smallmouth over 4 in that same time period.  

Two of the 4lb blacks I caught within 5 minutes of each other.  There was a bunch of shad moved in a creek I was fishing.  Thought I was about to win the fishing tournament, but the Striper nudged in on the area I caught the bass, and the bass just quit being aggressive.  I tried everything I could think of to catch one more, but it just didn't happen. 

 

Beaver is weird, you will catch a lot of the 2-3lb largemouth certain times of the year, but the bigger ones are harder to come by at those times.  Seems like winter up to pre spawn is when they are more available to catch.  Which is typical on most lakes.  So we know that there are quality bass in Beaver, but not the #'s we'd all like to see.