Even cat-loving fly anglers love their fishing dogs. My favorite fishing buddy was Cassidy, a lab-mix blonde heartbreaker I picked up as a six-week-old puppy from an Indiana farm in 1990. We spent the next 12 years rambling from fishing holes and mountain tops, sea shores and forests. She is the only dog I know …
Fly Fishers Need Low-Water Weekends
Nearly all fly fishers on the White River system share the same hopeful mantra: Please bring low water. Yet, since February the Corps of Engineers has pumped billions of gallons of water under Bull Shoals and Norfork dams to draw down the lake levels and prevent downstream flooding on the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers. Those …
Regulations Save Brown Trout
I wrote this article when I worked as a newspaper reporter for the Northwest Arkansas Times in Fayetteville, Ark., in 1999. The details have changed a bit, but the basics are correct. The big brown trout in the White River owe their entire existence to strict regulations that prevent overfishing and careless angling. Click the …
Low Water Arrives With Spring
Equinox sunrise over Kapoho Tide Pools on the Big Island of Hawaii. Photo taken in 2008, before the entire area was covered in lava and destroyed in 2018. The Corps of Engineers ran water through the Bull Shoals Dam power turbines nearly non-stop from early January until March 26th, when the first few, fleeting …
Fly Fishing For Fossils
There are no giant barracuda in Hawaii. At least that’s what the passing ocean kayaker yelled as I battled a three-foot, toothy monster behind the coral reef off Maui’s south coast. Obviously, no one bothered to tell the barracuda that took my baitfish fly like it was his last supper. Lucky for that fish, I caught and released it, but only after removing a two-pronged live-bait hook squarely set into the fish’s jaw – the last angler had dinner plans.
January 2019 Fishing Report
Anyone who fishes the White River or Norfork River in January knows to expect high water, and that is just what we got all month on both rivers. Both Bull Shoals and Norfork lakes are unusually full compared to previous years, and even with nearly round-the-clock generation from both dams the lake levels remained high. …
Four Reasons To Learn Fly Fishing
1) Catch fish! 2) Have fun 3) Learn a new and challenging skill 4) Fly fishing is the best excuse to be outdoors
Arkansas Traveler Fly Fishing 