White River Arkansas Trip

[Bluebasser86]

After months of planning and a couple more months of waiting my friend Jon, his son Chris, and I finally got a chance to hit the White River in an attempt to catch a brown trout. I've had more luck catching muskie than I have brown trout up to this point. We were supposed to meet a guide but we had a couple hours to kill beforehand so we put the boat in the water at Whitehole and started messing around. The water wasn't hardly moving so I was tossing a small 65 pointer when less than 30 minutes into the trip I got what I'd been looking for, my first brown trout! It's not a giant in size but it was a huge feeling of accomplisment for me!

A few casts later I got another one on the same bait.

By the time our guide got there it had been raining pretty steady for about an hour, it didn't stop until almost 6pm and it rained really hard most of the day. The fishing was tough and I caught the only brown trout while we were fishing with the guide, it was also the only brown we caught that didn't hit a jerkbait.

Now for the crazy part. We are a couple miles downstream from the boat ramp when our guide tells us that we are going to motor back up by the ramp and try a deeper hole. As we motor though a fairly deep hole (for the white river anyways, maybe 5 feet) the motor hits a rock, jumps off the back of the boat and sinks! I managed to grab the fuel line and by some miracle it stayed connected and I was able to haul the motor off the bottom of the river and help the guide lift it back into the boat. Our guide was an older gentleman, probably around 70 and he was really concerned at how we were going to get back at this point, since the motor was obviously not an option anymore. Thankfully Jon and I had our waders on so we waited to drift to a shallower spot and hopped in and started walking and dragging. What felt like 10 miles was probably only 2 miles before we reached water deep enough that I could get my boat to the guides boat and haul him the rest of the way in.

After that little adventure we decided to head to the cabin and put dry clothes on before hitting the river again. Chris opted to stay because he was tired of being wet, can't say I blamed him. So Jon and I headed back out. It wasn't long after we got back on the water before Jon finally connected with his first ever brown trout. The picture is a little blurry and yes we are as tired as we look, we'd both been up for almost 2 days at this point in the trip.

As it was getting dark I had a flurry of browns on a 97 slender pointer.

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The next day was much nicer weather and I got to work quickly, catching a small brown on the slender pointer.

Chris caught the biggest rainbow of the trip on a 78 pointer, he never did get a brown though.

Then I caught what I thought was another rainbow until I looked closer. Then I saw that I had just caught my first ever cutthroat trout.

They were generating a lot more this day so we went upriver a bit to where we could see some laydowns to toss our baits at them. One of the first logjams, my Erratic shad got slammed and I catch the biggest brown of the trip, a beautiful 18.5" fish. It made me regret leaving the bait in for the picture, right after it was taken it flopped and jammed a hook into the side of my ring finger. Thankfully it was shallow and when it flopped again it ripped right back out.

I'm getting a replica of this one made as it was one of the prettiest freshwater fish I've ever seen.

This trip was a wonderful time and some of the best scenery I've ever seen. If you've never been I'd highly suggest going sometime!

[Long Mike]

Nice fish Bluebasser! Other than that little boat towing incident it sounds like you guys had a great time and enjoyed some beautiful scenery.

Ghoti, Roadwarrior and I fished the White below Bull Shoals dam two weeks ago. Over Friday and Saturday we caught over 120 trout, the great majority of which were Rainbows. Ghoti and RW were primarily fishing for Browns, but I was content to haul in Rainbow after Rainbow. You are absolutely right about the scenery. It's awesome.

[00 mod]

Congrats Blue! Glad you had a great time! And Long Mike, Rw has been telling me for 2 weeks now you were gonna post up the pics..........

Jeff

[fishinkeebs]

Definately an inteteresting trip! glad it worked out and thanks for the pics

[WookieeJedi]

The White is always a good trip. The Little Red is my favorite, but it isn't as scenic. Good pics!