The weekend on the White River offered nice, big, steady water around the clock.
Those big bumps have hit upwards of 21,000 cfs, though not usually during typical fishing hours.
As such, if steady low water is your goal, start your day way downstream. If you want to ride the push, fish minimum flow in the AM upriver and wait for the water to start rising.
Girdle Bugs have become staple in recent days with the arrival of big summer water. Coffee/black, black, or brown Girdles fished shallow and tight will provide both browns and rainbows.
Trail the Girdles with a number of the usual suspects, including Sunday Specials, Dally’s Tailwater Jigs in Ruby or Silver Bullet, Lightning Bug Jigs, Rainbow Warriors, Zebra Midge, and Sexton’s Carotene Jigs.
Sulphurs are up next on the hatch chart dais, so pack along Egan’s Frenchies, Rusty Nails, Super Sinkers, Split Backs, and the like to be ready when that particular dinner bell rings.
In low water, shrinking the Girdle Bug to a size 12 or 14 and trailing any of the aforementioned midge imitations below will yield a steady bite of rainbows all day long.
The topwater bite has transitioned smoothly from our cicadas to hoppers/beetles, both in the big water working tight like the girdles and in low water as a hopper/dropper.
Fat Alberts in black, tan, or pink, Psycho Ants, Amy’s Ants, Swisher’s LLS Chernobyls, and Chubby Chernobyls are all great options.
Aside from minimum flow on Sunday, the Norfork continued its long-standing pattern of minimum in the AM and 80 megs in the afternoon.
Minimum flow has been fun for the wade fisherman. Shallow nymphing has yielded lots of fish in the swift shoals.
Y2Ks or Sunday Specials are great lead flies and the venerable Knowles’ Ruby Midge and/or Root Beer Midge are great trailing flies. Dally’s Tailwater Jigs, Zebra Midges, size 18 Rainbow Warriors, BH Pheasant Tails, and GB Hare’s Ears are more solid choices.
Pheasant Tails will come on strong soon enough as sulphurs begin to emerge. Dally’s Tailwater Soft Hackle in yellow and Partridge and Oranges, along with Crackle Backs, will be fun to swing this time of year.
The 80 megawatts water has been less than stellar. Nonetheless, one can find fish deep nymphing with attractor flies (Blobs, Girdles, Cheetos, Mega Worms) or working tight to the banks with Girdle Bugs
. Buggy dropper flies, like Guide’s Choice Hare’s Ears, BH Pheasant Tails, Sexton’s Carotene Jigs, Sunday Specials, Bethke’s Pink Squirrels, Red Fox Squirrel Nymphs, and similar have been productive choices.
Crooked Creek has hit low, summer-time flows. As of this writing, the gauge is hovering around 10 feet at Kelley’s Access. Floating the creek is doable, so long as you’re willing to drag your canoe, kayak, or raft frequently.
Productive fishing is better on foot until some much-needed rain lifts the water level. Fish are certainly wary, often refusing streamers like they’ve seen a hundred Rapalas in the last few hours.
The best bite has been to slow crawl crawfish patterns. Whitlock’s Near Nuff Crayfish and Hada’s Creek Crawler are your best bets.
Dead-drifting Boogle Bugs in white or blue damsel have gotten bit, too. Be stealthy and make your shots count for a productive day.
Rain is nowhere in the forecast as of right now. Sunny skies and hot temps may be here to stay for the next few months. Thankfully, though, our tailwaters provide a little reprieve from the hot sun. Those cold waters rumbling through help cool you off on a hot summer day. We’ll eclipse 90 degrees multiple times over the next week, so pack along plenty of water, sunscreen, and solid solar gear. Our mayfly friends are already starting to pop, so I’m confident we’ll be sharing photos of some dry-fly eating browns again before too long. Swing by the shop and grab a handful of sulphur dries, like the Parachute Sulphur and Quigley’s Film Critic. See you out there.
Saturday’s water sat in that 160-180 mwh range while Sunday’s generation averaged around 200 mwh. The start of the new work week saw a drop in flows to around 50 megs and the rest of the week entered into a minimum-flow morning to a big afternoon push cadence.
BY TADD FORE
The Ozark Fly Fisher Journal 
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