White River 3/20 3/21 3/22

Fished the White Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Friday flow started out at 4000 CFS at about 7:00 at the Dam, then went to 10,000 for an hour or so and then back to 700. I got to Rim Shoals a little before noon and was concerned that I would no more get on the water than get blown out with the high water so I went down to Buffalo City. Water was too murky for my tastes due to Crooked Creek influence but still caught a few. In about an hour the big water arrived and fishing was nothing but a huge pain due to didymo and green algae. If you got three twitches on a jig before it was fouled you were doing good. I did catch a few fish on a hard bait. Nothing remarkable. Called it a day about 5:00 and headed in for dinner.

Saturday was much better. Minimum flow and good clear water at Rim Shoals. Ham met me at 9:00 and we went upstream from the ramp and made a few drifts in the shoal that is at the top of the catch and release area. As usual Ham caught one on the first cast. We were both doing pretty good there. I wanted to go to a little place I know that is upstream from there and since we were in my boat, that's what we did. It's a nice deep bank run with a few big rocks that then runs out onto a flat with grass on one side and gravel on the other. We pretty well fished that area the remainder of the day. Numbers and size were both good. Ham and I both caught a lot of rainbows and a few browns, the biggest brown was 19 1/2" with a couple about 16" or so if memory serves. This fish was number 80 for Ham. Measured 21 1/2". His biggest White River Rainbow to date.

With the minimum flow we were fishing 1/32 oz zig jigs. Olive and Ginger and straight Ginger were working best for us. It was a very nice day and there were a lot of other boats on the water. Parking lot was full.

The day got long and the sun got low so we headed on back down river to fish the C&R shoal one more time. We had a few more there and called it a day. As some of you know, Ham counts fish as he releases them. I think it was somewhere around 105 or so when we finally quit. He outfishes me every single time. But I was doing OK so I'd estimate we probably brought 160 fish or so to hand on Saturday. That's to hand and then shaken off, not given the inadvertent early release. I don't care who you are or where you are fishing, that's a fun fun day.

I always enjoy fishing with Ham - good company there. And Saturday was the usual.

Sunday it rained a little in the morning. Still at minimum flow and same water conditions. I only went out for a couple of hours but the same things were working the same way in the same spots.

That's just a flat out amazing river. Amazing.