High water, high times

COTTER — If White River trout fishermen could have been granted one wish Friday from the wizards within Bull Shoals Dam, it would have been more water.

It would seem that more water would be the last thing anglers would want during this soggy spring. But strong water releases, up to and including the opening of the 17 spillway gates for the first time since 1982, have produced great trout action from the dam to about 25 miles below.

With four generators online Friday morning, a jump to the maximum of eight would have made the already good fishing even better.

Not that there wasn’t plenty of water falling from the skies during the drive to Cotter to fish with guide David Capps and his good friend Jerry Gifford.

In the dawn’s early light, the fat, gray clouds had merged with the tops of the ridges to form a dark wall dimly visible through my rain-spattered windshield. Later, the wind-driven rain would rattle like birdshot against the hood of my parka as we launched at Wildcat Shoals.

Nevertheless, visions of excellent trout action prevailed, thanks in part to a video Capps sent via e-mail last Thursday chronicling a guided trip from three days earlier.

In the background of the video, the Bull Shoals Dam was visible with all 17 spillway gates open, creating a solid curtain of white water spilling down the face of the dam to add to the flow of the eight generators going full bore.

In the foreground, Capps’ client was fighting rainbow trout up to 20 inches and browns up to 24 inches in the course of catching more than 80 fish from high, clear and swirling currents.

Upon meeting Capps and Gifford at Sportsman’s Lodge, the guide ran the full length of the video while explaining how the river between Bull Shoals and Rim Shoals had been spared the havoc and damage wrought elsewhere by the recent flood.

The 12 spillway gates of Norfork Dam, for example, had been lowered

1 4 /2 feet to release water in amounts equivalent to 40 generators running at maximum capacity. The record surge peeled the pavement from parking lots below the dam and took out nearby trout docks.

When that water reached the White River, joining tremendous runoff from Crooked Creek and the Buffalo National River, a muddy rise damaged cabins, docks and launch ramps, as well as making the White unfishable anywhere below its confluence with Crooked Creek.

At Bull Shoals Dam, however, the spillway gates were lowered only about 4 inches to add the equivalent of two generators to the total water release. With the dam’s eight units raising the river about 12 feet, the spillway releases added only 3 feet to the rise.

The river could easily cope with a rise of 15 feet, and the fishermen certainly had no complaint with the resulting trout bonanza.

PRODUCTIVE PATTERN

Many guides and float fishermen like high-water fishing in the tailwaters. Using an outboard to control the drift speed, it’s easy to drift along while casting lures or bumping lures and bait along the bottom.

The higher water level not only encourages the trout to bite better, but also increases the chances of catching big rainbows and browns. The latter is especially the case when the higher flows bring the trout a bonus food source, such as threadfin shad during the cold spells of late winter.

The bonus of the recent high water has been a tremendous abundance of earthworms drawn from the ground along the low-lying areas of the inundated banks.

“The trout have been gorging on the worms and are really fat right now,”Capps said. “Nearly all of them you catch have worms in their stomachs, some of them with wads as big as the end of a baseball bat.”

Obviously, a worm pattern has been the way to go, with either live specimens or artificial replicas.

For natural bait, Capps and his clients have been using live red wigglers sold as panfish/trout worms in many tackle stores.

“I’ve also been using an artificial worm made by Mister Twister and called the Exude worm,” Capps said. 1 It’s 2 /2 inches long and looks like a larger version of the San Juan Worm used by fly fishermen.

When the bite has been at its best, the Exude worms in either red or brown colors have been top performers.

“They are no-mess, no-muss to use and they are really durable on the hook, so you can keep your bait in the water longer to catch more fish,” Capps said.

Rather than waiting for the rain to slow, we headed for Wildcat Shoals and launched about an hour before noon to fish upstream toward the dam.

As a sign of conditions returning to normal, Capps estimated the flow to be the equivalent of four units running at the dam. He would continually hope for higher flows over the next several hours, but we would get no more than a bump to five units.

Another indication of a return to more normal conditions was the news of Norfork Dam’s two generators being temporarily shut down that morning. Even before that, Capps had learned that flows in the North Fork River had slowed and cleared enough for fishermen to get back to catching trout, proving the massive releases hadn’t flushed the fish from the tailwaters.

Using spinning tackle with bottombumping rigs and hooks baited with natural worms, Capps began heading upstream in a stop-and-go fashion, trying drift fishing in various locations and looking for what he called the “water bite.”

“That’s the part of the rise where the trout are feeding best,” he said. “The other day, with all the spillway gates open and all the generators going, the bite was wherever you’d go, and they bit all day.”

For the first hour or so, we endured periodic bouts of cold rain, causing me to commiserate with a wet and bedraggled immature bald eagle hunkered in a tree.

By the time Capps had located a good bite, the rain had stopped, allowing us to fish under high clouds and occasional periods of sunlight the rest of the day.

In the course of catching eight rainbows during a half-dozen drifts over the first good spot, the easy fishingrequired nothing more than allowing our baits to bump along until a trout bit. Most of the rainbows were fat fish of 12-14 inches and fought with a lot of spunk.

In contrast to all the bad news of the flooding that had dominated recent headlines, our situation provoked a good-humored and convivial mood.

INCREASING OPTIMISM

As always when fishing high water, there was hope of hooking up with a big brown trout.

When the water’s up, one can catch a big brown on any cast while still having fun catching a lot of rainbows, Capps said.

“I once caught a 19-pound, 6-ounce brown trout on a worm and had a client get a 15-pounder with one on the North Fork,” he said.

His dream, of course, is to catch one of the legendary giants. “I’ve seen one in the White Hole that goes about 42 or 43 inches and must weigh 32 pounds or more,” Capps said.

Another good spot nearly doubled our catch of rainbows as we averagedcatching and releasing one or two fish per drift.

There would be several instances when Gifford and I would have fish on at the same time, but a steady catch of single fish up to 15 inches would prevail at several other locations to bring our total to more than 40 rainbows.

To show the prevalence of worms in the river, Capps pulled up to the bank at one spot where clumps of mudcaked moss had piled up against the base of a small tree. Pulling the moss apart revealed the presence of many live wigglers.

However, Capps soon switched to a red Exude worm and caught a rainbow on the first cast to prove the effectiveness of the artificials.

While we fished, the guide pointed out how the gravel bars had been scoured clean by the high water and pointed out the abundance of logs, limbs and leaves that had been removed from the river, as well as the clumps of “didymo” algae collected in the trees.

Capps kept hoping for more high water, and finally got some during the last two hours of fishing.

It was only the addition of one generator, but it helped wake up the browns.

Capps soon caught an 18-incher and Gifford followed with a thick-bodied, 1 leaping brown of 18/2 inches for the best catches of the day, brightening the conclusion of the outing.

Looking at the weeks ahead, some healing will need to be done on parts of the Bull Shoals and Norfork tailwaters. The parking lot near Norfork Dam will need to be repaired, launch ramps on the White River below Crooked Creek will need to be cleaned of accumulated sand and gravel, and some bank erosion will need to be addressed.

Even so, Capps and Gifford were optimistic about the recent big releases having a positive effect on the trout habitat and the fishing ahead.

Specifically, Capps is looking forward to frequent periods of high water as Bull Shoals and Norfork lakes are drawn to normal levels and to the continuation of the worm bite through fall.

“The fishing is going to be fabulous; the rainbows will be bigger and the browns will keep biting good,” he predicted.

Bring it on.

Interested anglers can contact David Capps or see videos of recent trout fishing action online at www.thefishermanslodge.com.