A great White River trophy for on of Duane Hada's fly fishers
MARCH is coming to a close and the caddis bite is well and truly on most days, and some much needed rain is returning.
Lake levels on Bull Shoals and Norfork are climbing once again, both gaining a foot over the week so far alleviating the drought conditions we had been facing. But for the waders, who have been enjoying some great low water conditions, weekend flows have generally been low.
There have been some great captures over the past couple of weeks but few better than the one our mate Duane Hada dropped by to show us, a gorgeous 28″ brown trout caught by one of his fly fishers on a guide trip last weekend. Guiding of course isn’t Duane’s only talent, his 40-painting exhibit “The River White” is on its last week in the Fly Shop.
If you haven’t seen his works make sure you drop by the shop this weekend for a last glimpse of the exhibit in this are for a while. And the fishing is sure to be pretty dang good as well.
WHITE RIVER: The caddis hatch has been ticking away despite the cooler conditions. The Journal fished below Cotter on Friday with Eric from Memphis and bagged a bunch on Elk Hair dries when conditions settled during the afternoon. Davy Wotton was further downstream and reported similar doings on wet flies and dries.
Subsurface pupa patterns continue to perform well, early in the day we have been doing well with pupa paired with a Super Midge or Whitetail. Olive Tungsten Z-Wing Caddis, Radical Caddis and green/yellow Hot Wire Princes have been doing very well, alongside suprise winners like Copper John’s in Green and Chartreuse.
Soft Hackles like the TungstenSubmarine’s in olive, and Swing Caddis have been taking their share of fish alongside more traditional wets like the Partridge and Green.
On top an Olive Elk Hair Caddis, or Headlight Caddis has been doing well.
Upstream away from the Caddis Hatch midges continue to perform well, particularly zebras in black and silver, red and olive. Super Midges in Silver/Black and Whitetails in red have also been exceptionally good.
Scuds have returned to popularity in a big way over the past few weeks, with the MClellan’s Hunchback Scud, and the Kaufman’s Scuds gaining plenty of following and plenty of fish. For streamer fishers, the high flows early in the week are also allowing people to head back out trophy hunting if they can carefully position themselves on the rising water.
NORFORK: We have heard plenty from low down on the Norfork about caddis as well, and there have been some smiling fly fishers walking into the shop.
Norfork, which has been particularly low, received some rejuventating flows late last week and yesterday, and looked the better for it. Marc Poulos was guiding there yesterday and remarked on the healthy state of the fish up to about 18″.
Midges and soft hackles remain a mainstay. Tungsten WD40s, Poison Tungs, and the newer Harvester Midges seriously have been kicking butts. For the slow flats we have been hearing a little scuttlebutt about the D-Midge both in black, with the unusual purple bead, and the deadly looking red and olive. Keep this one shhhhh.
Scuds have been working extremely well here too.
