It was Mother’s Day and
my wife, Lori, wanted to go fishing. That was okay with me! After
what seems like eternity, we finally had some low water on the White. At
various locations on the White, there have been several reliable reports of
spectacular caddis hatches. The concept of catching a Mother’s Day caddis hatch
was too much to ignore. Several years ago I caught a spectacular caddis hatch,
on Mother’s Day, on the Little Red River and I still relish the thought of
it. In addition, I had Sunday off. Life is good!
We ate a hearty
breakfast, walked Tilley, our beloved English Labrador Retriever and headed for
the river. We decided on Rim Shoals one of our favorite spots to fish. It is a
Catch and Release section that holds some great trout. We arrived about 10:00
AM. It was sunny, about seventy two degrees with a light westerly wind. The
river was on the bottom and was pretty clear with a bit of vegetation suspended
in it. It was spectacular conditions for a day on the river.
We had brought my river
boat with us so that we could easily access some of the more productive water.
We donned our waders and made sure that we had our wading staffs with us. I had
been fishing the White quite a bit lately and my client rods were already
rigged. We opted to use them. They were rigged with a hare and copper nymph
with a ruby midge dropper. There was also a split shot to get the flies down
and a strike indicator. The only thing we had to do was to adjust the strike
indicator down for the lower water level.
We decided to drift fish
for a while to see if we could get anything going. We landed three fish on the
first drift. One of them was a fat eighteen inch rainbow that fought like a
demon. We kept drifting and caught trout after trout. I hooked a lunker but it
wrapped a big rock and broke off. It took a few minutes to rerig and get back
in the game.
It was Lori’s turn. She
hooked a big one and needed some help. She usually lands her fish by herself
but this one was too much and she wanted me to net him. I quit fishing and
pulled my rod in. As I was doing this, I somehow caught my fly on Lori’s
leader. I had achieved the notorious Arkansas double. We were both hooked up on
the same fish. To make matters worse this trout would not give up. I managed to
remove the hare and copper fly from the leader only to catch the dropper on it.
Miraculously it slipped free, when I gave it a bit of slack. Now I was free to
man the net and we finally landed the fat rainbow, at nineteen inches, it was
the largest fish landed.
We got out and waded for
a while but it was just not as productive as drifting. We returned to the boat
and continued fishing till about 2:30 PM. We had six doubles and caught a
bunch of trout (we didn’t count). It was our best fishing trip in a long time.
We didn’t catch the
Mother’s Day hatch but we had a wonderful time fishing together nonetheless...
John Berry is a fly
fishing guide with Blue Ribbon Guides in Cotter, Arkansas and has fished our
local streams for over thirty years.
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