Jeff Ditsworth and one of many trout caught that day.
For our first fishing adventure of the year, we headed down to the world famous White River in Arkansas. I spent a few evenings on the vice tying up my streamer box of white streamers in anticipate of a great streamer bite. One of the great things about The White River, near the Bull Shoals Dam, is they close the upper section from November 1st through January 31st. I planned on being on the water early on February 1st to be one of the first to rip a streamer off the bank. I was not alone, the fishing pressure was pretty heavy.
Upper Section of The White River under Bull Shoals Dam is Closed Nov 1-Jan31 to protect the Brown Trout Spawn.
I booked a local guide and friend of mine, the only human that would take me out on the water the previous year when the actual temperature when we launched was close to MINUS 16 degrees. Steve Lopez is a great guide, knows the river, and knows these fish. He’s incredibly passionate about protecting the big browns, which I appreciate.
Professional Guide, Steve Lopez, ready for COLD weather!
Our gear for this trip was a pair of our new El Jefe four section combos, 6 weight and 8 weight. I spooled our 8 weight up with a sink tip line to get our streamers down. I also brought a couple of our six section El Jefe combos on the boat for back up rigs. We rigged the six weights up to nymph, and the eight weights up for streamers. For flies, we started out fishing a white streamer on our eight weight, and an orange egg pattern on our nymph rigs.
White Streamer
We had a handful of really solid follows on the streamer which gave us some confidence. I do love fishing streamers, its very active fishing, and produces great results. Normally we hook less fish, but the fish are bigger. We ended up fishing around 6-7 different streamers and really couldn’t find the right size or color. This lead us back to our nymphing rigs.
Solid Rainbow on the Orange Egg Pattern
After a solid morning with a number of rainbows in the boat, the bite slowed down. It was time to open the fly box and look for our game changer. I had tied up a new experiment, combining a tungsten bead head jig hook with a squirmy worm. I love the jig hook because the fly always rides perfect. Unlike a traditional squirmy worm or San Juan worm, made the worm tail only come off the back of the hook. This fly almost instantly started producing strikes. We were hooking up consistently when the boats around us were not. That’s a heck of a cool feeling!
Brown Trout on the Squirmy Jig
This brown nailed the squirmy jig hard and the fight was on. We got to put on a show for a number of other boats in the immediate area, which is always fun. This one was a solid brown, in the 17-18 inch size. One of the great things about The White River, they say the average brown is around 18-22 inches. That’s a heck of an average!
Brown Trout Release
The temperature was starting to drop in the late afternoon, as a high pressure system started moving in. We knew that the conditions the next day were not going to be great with rain forecasted all morning and the temperature dropping all day. It was going to be interesting, but we were optimistic. Steve did a great job of navigating the other boats, and keeping us on fish the entire day.
Bull Shoals Dam, Arkansas
Stay tuned for day two of our Arkansas Adventure.
Until next time, tight lines my friend!
Jeff
El Jefe and a Pretty Rainbow
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