SUCCESSFUL DAY AT TRIM SHOALS BY JOHN BERRY

Last week I had a two boat, four day guide trip. It was four retired guys from the St. Louis area. All were accomplished anglers who had fished from Alaska to Argentina. My regular partner, Dennis Schule, was down with an injured shoulder, so I enlisted Danny Barker to help me, with the trip. He enthusiastically stepped up and did a great job. The general idea was that we would each take two of them and switch off, after two days. That way the guys could get a varied experience, from fishing, with us. I like to fish the Norfork and Rim Shoals. Danny likes to fish the Buffalo Shoals area.

The week went well. My first day went as expected. We caught some big fish (a sixteen inch brook and a twenty four inch brown) on the Norfork. Our next day on the White produced more trout but no trophies. On my last day, I returned to Rim Shoals. I checked the prediction, for that day, and was pleased, with the outcome. It called for lower generation of around 6,000 cubic feet per second early, in the day, with heavier generation later, in the day. I knew that Rim was twenty four miles below the dam and we would never see the higher generation, while we were there. This was the lowest water level we had seen, since the flooding.

The day was near perfect. The morning was overcast, with light and variable winds, with a promise of sunshine and eighty degree temperatures, in the afternoon. I rigged their rods a bit differently. On one, I put on a Y2K with a bead head pheasant tail dropper. On the other, I used a cerise San Juan with the same pheasant tail dropper. I used an AAA split shot and set the depth at seven feet, from bottom fly, to the Thingamabobber.

I chose the Y2K and the cerise San Juan worm to be attractors and used the pheasant tail to imitate the nymphal form of the sulphurs that are coming off. I tied the pheasant tail on a size fourteen jig hook, with a copper slotted bead. It was factory barbless and, since it was tied on a jig hook, did not tend to hang the bottom.

We began fishing and had immediate success landing three trout, on the first drift. It soon became apparent that the rig, with the cerise San Juan worm, was out fishing the rig, with the Y2K, three to one. I stopped and stripped off the Y2K and replaced it with a cerise San Juan worm. It had an immediate impact and we began picking up more trout.

When we broke for lunch, we had about twenty five trout (one of my clients had a clicker). I don’t usually count. In the afternoon, the sun came out and it got a bit warmer. The fishing got better and we were catching a lot of fish. We would pick up two or three trout, on each drift. The amazing thing to me was that there was no one else fishing there we had the whole place to ourselves for most of the day. We finished the day with sixty three trout. We landed one good brown but the rest were rainbows. Most were in the fourteen to sixteen inch slot. 

It was a great day and it was nice, to be fishing good water again.