WARM SUNNY DAY ON THE WHITE

BY JOHN BERRY

One of the advantages to living here is that you can pick your day to go fishing. With our brutally cold weather there have been few this winter. I am talking about those warm winter days when the sun shines, the wind lies down, the temperature is warm and the river is on the bottom. I had pushed the envelope a few days earlier and had fished in the rain for four hours. While I had some solitude on stream I was without my favorite fishing buddy, my wife, Lori. She just didn’t want to spend the day in the rain. Lori wanted to go fishing but wanted better conditions. We carefully monitored the conditions, until we found the perfect day. 

It was a Sunday a week or so ago and we waited until early afternoon to take advantage of the warmest part of the day. We put our yellow lab, Tilley, in her kennel cage and chose a fishing spot near home, so we could get back quicker and let her out, when we finished. We drove over to Roundhouse Shoals, here in Cotter. We found the river on the bottom, the temperature was hovering around fifty three degrees and the sun was warming us. 

The only challenge we faced was fifteen to twenty five mile per hour winds that had resulted in lake wind advisories. To mitigate this problem we planned on using heavier rods than we usually fish. Lori chose a six weight, in lieu of her normal five weight, and I fished with my five weight because in my hurry to leave the house I had left my six weight by the door. Roundhouse Shoals has tall bluffs on the Marion County side of the river. In an effort to escape the wind, we waded across the river and fished close to the base of the bluffs. It helped a lot. 

Lori began with an olive woolly bugger and was into trout almost immediately. I began with a double fly nymph rig. I chose a ruby midge below a cerise San Juan worm. It had rained a couple of days before and I thought that the worm would be my ticket to success. I was surprised, when I caught my first fish on the ruby midge. The next three were on the worm. 

As I was fishing, I noticed some rises nearby. I didn’t see any insects on the surface and assumed that the trout were keying in on emergers. I remembered that I had done well fishing a green butt on the Norfork a couple of days earlier. I took a few minutes to strip off the flies, lead and strike indicator. I tied on a fresh 5X tippet and a green butt. I took care to pinch down the barb. Though I wasn’t in Catch and Release water. I wanted to fish barbless, in case the wind caught my cast and sent to fly into areas of my body that were not conducive to being punctured. 

I landed a nice fourteen inch rainbow a couple of casts later. I spent the next couple of hours slowly working my way down stream catching several trout along the way. I decided to wade far down stream and try a spot that had always been productive in the past. When I got there I noticed that the flows were heavier than I remembered. I figured that it was the result of minimum flow. I tried fishing the soft hackle but the flow was just too heavy for that technique. Rather than rerig and try another technique, I decided to wade back upstream and fish with Lori. 

By the time that I got there, I decided that I had caught enough trout. I found a comfortable spot on the bank and sat down to watch her fish. She was on fire landing one trout after another. I was close enough to her that we could carry on a conversation. I found that she had tried several techniques, nymphs, emergers and soft hackles but had found the woolly bugger to be the most effective. We fished late. I love watching her fish. She is an accomplished fly caster and I really enjoy the smile on her face every time she hooks up. 

On our wade out, we noted that the spot where we crossed had changed significantly. What had previously been a gravel bottom was now slick bedrock. This coupled from the increase in water volume from minimum flow made the wade out challenging. The river is constantly changing and we will look for an easier route out next time. 

There is some great fishing in the winter. You just have to pick your day. 

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