AN INTERNATIONAL ANGLER ON OUR STREAMS

BY JOHN BERRY

This past weekend I had a two day guide trip with two interesting clients. Stack Scoville is a cardiologist from Nashville, an accomplished fly tier and avid angler. His friend, Paul Little, an Orvis endorsed fly fishing guide from the north of England is a world renown fly tier and is also an avid angler. Paul was in the United States to present a two day fly tying symposium for Stacks fly fishing group, the Hendersonville Fly Fishing Club. The object of the guide trip was to introduce Paul to fly fishing on the White and Norfork Rivers. 

I picked them up at their hotel at 7:30 AM on Saturday and we drove over to Rim Shoals. I rigged their rods with my usual double fly rigs (in this case, a white tail midge below a cerise san Juan worm with a AAA split shot and a strike indicator). They were running about 3,000 CFS (cubic feet per second) or the rough equivalent of almost one full generator. It was sunny and cool with an expected high temperature of 78 degrees. Winds were light and there was little if any fog. We were the only ones there. I launched my White River Jon boat and we motored up stream. 

We were into trout almost immediately. The fishing was hot all morning. We had ten doubles, which is the most that I can ever remember having in one day. Stack gained an early lead but Paul had just about caught up with him by noon. When we sat down at the picnic table for lunch, we had landed well over fifty trout. We decided to do something different in the afternoon. 

Since we had caught plenty of trout, we decided to play around with a different technique in the afternoon. Paul had never fished grasshoppers. Though they have the insects in England, they do not fish them (he said that beetles are the terrestrial of choice). In addition, we had trout rise to hit Paul’s bright pink strike indicator all morning and we figured that the trout were motivated to feed on the top, despite the lack of a hatch of aquatic insects. Paul was eager to try some dry fly action. 

I cut their 4X leaders back to seven and one half feet and tied on foam grasshopper patterns on both of their rods. I usually add a small nymph as a dropper to increase the takes. I avoided it in this situation because we wanted to strictly concentrate on top water action. Paul took to it like a duck to water and landed ten on the hopper. Stack was struggling and though we tried almost a half dozen hopper patterns only managed one on the hopper. We ended the day with well over sixty fish and the catch fairly even divided between the two anglers. We stopped at Dally’s Ozark Angler Fly Shop on the way back to the hotel so that Stack could buy a new reel and fly line and Paul could troll the aisles for new fly tying materials. 

When I do a two day guide trip, I like to change it up and show my clients something very different on the second day. Since we had fished the White from a boat on the first day, I thought that a wade trip on the Norfork would be a nice change of pace. The generation prediction was for the Norfork to be down over night with generation beginning at 1:00 PM. I planned on fishing at the Ackerman Access, which meant that we would get the rise at around 2:00 PM. I formulated a plan to maximize our fishing time on the Norfork. I picked the guys up at 6:00 AM. They already had their waders on as did I. We drove to the access and we were on the water a bit before 6:30 AM. The idea was to fish until the water came up and then walk out and eat lunch. It would be a long tough morning but it held promise. 

The only thing that concerned me was that the Corps of Engineers had instituted a minimum flow regimen on the Norfork a few days earlier and I had not fished it. I was not sure what to expect. The water was a few inches higher but it did not impair our wading and fishing in any way. 

We walked up into the Catch and Release section and quickly rigged their rods. We used a ruby midge below cerise or worm brown San Juan worms, a bit of lead and a strike indicator. As the sun came up, both were into their first trout. The action was pretty much nonstop. When the guys got tired of nymphing we went to dry flies, a small parachute Adams for Paul and a big hopper with a dropper for Stack. Paul caught a bunch on the dry and Stack caught the fish of the day, a stout eighteen inch rainbow on the hopper. 

Mid morning Paul was watching the trout feed and began to wonder, if the soft hackle techniques (he called them spiders) he used on his home waters in Northern England would work here. He took a few minutes to rig up a partridge and orange and small black soft hackle. He was into fish immediately. There were not many people fishing there and we could move around and fish different spots. We literally caught fish everywhere. 

When the water came up at two as predicted, Paul was at sixty five trout and Stack was north of forty. We had caught over a hundred trout including three species, rainbow, cutthroat and brown. Both needed a brook trout to achieve the grand slam. We walked out with the rising water. We drove over to Dry Run Creek and ate lunch on a shaded picnic table on stream. We finished the day walking the creek so Paul could get a feel for our best Catch and Release stream. 

It was a great trip for Paul, our international visitor. He was able to fish our two best trout streams under perfect conditions. He also was able to successfully try a new technique and learn that his favorite techniques from home worked here. Life is good! 

John Berry is a fly fishing guide in Cotter, Arkansas and has fished our local streams for over thirty years.