Tailwater Tribe

Once in a while, the planets, The Army Corps of Engineers, and the Weather Man get together and allow a fishing trip to be successful.  If there is one thing I have learned from years of planning fishing trips: the more you plan, tweak your plan, and anticipate every aspect of your plan, the faster you set yourself up for disappointment.  This trip, however, was a spur-of-the-moment affair.  Randy, my friend from Wisconsin, was traveling south to visit relatives in Texas, and asked if I'd like to meet in Arkansas for a couple days fishing.  Of course, I was more than happy to accommodate him as my teaching semester had just ended.  What transpired, was an epic two-day trip where we caught more big browns and rainbows than you would believe.  Randy is a fantastic fly-fisherman and guides in the UP.  We met three years ago at Montana State University in Bozeman.  We were there to defend our Master's theses.  By coincidence, he attended my defense where it was mentioned in my in

Finally got to go fly-fishing last week and had an epic experience on the North Fork of the White River, or "Norfork" to the locals.  Since all of my prior attempts to head north had fallen through, and I missed the caddis hatches of April, I was more than ready for good weather and prolific bugs.  On this trip, I got both!  The annual Ephemerella (Sulphur) hatch was in full bloom on the Fork and I took advantage of a predictable generation pattern by the USACE and wonderful, albeit, unseasonably warm, weather to rack up forty or so, fat, colored-up rainbows.    Another amazing thing about the trip was the fact that I never pulled the waders out of the Taco bag.  I wet-waded the entire trip, and even though the water was shockingly cold at first, the afternoon sun soon made it a very comfortable place to be.  It was nice for all things to come together for this trip!  Once again the guys at Steve Dally's made my trip a successful one as I scored several nice si

Before the Gun:  BOB IV The Shed:  BBQ, Blues and COLD beer! For those of you who aren't familiar, the Battle on the Bayou is one of the premier paddle watercraft races in the Southeastern United States.  This year's event featured over 230 paddlers in 15 categories, each with the common goal of finishing the 9.5 mile race.  The course is a section of Old Fort Bayou and begins at Gulf Hills Hotel in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and ends at The Shed-a popular BBQ and blues joint.  The Shed terminus offers great incentive to finish as there is, in addition to the fantastic food, all the free cold beer you want. The ladies and gentlemen who paddle this race are an eclectic mix of fun-loving outdoors people with a broad range of ages, skill-levels, watercraft, and motives for being here.  I've found that the paddle-crowd is very similar to the fly-fishing crowd: friendly, talkative gear-heads that talk in a language of inside jargon that others outside the domain woul

     After the hectic Christmas season, Laurie and I ventured north from the Mississippi Gulf Coast to the Traveler State.  I had carefully planned this trip well in advance.  My strategy was to fish the midge hatches on the Norfork and White Rivers for two days, and then meet the Bouncer and his wife, Peggy at their place in Mammoth Springs to celebrate New Years.  I had meticulously checked the weather and the generation schedules for Bull Shoals and Norfork Lake, read John Berry's fishing report, checked in with the Ozark Fly Flinger website and all the prospects looked favorable.      When we left Gulfport it was 57 degrees.  By the time we got to Hardy, AR, it was hovering between 32 and 33 degrees and snowing like crazy.  It seems as if every time I have a window to trout fish, that Arkansas is having a major weather event.  Over the past ten years I have seen blizzards, ice-storms, epic floods, hailstorms, and tornadoes--just about everything short of a tsunami.  This tr

                 I’m not a fan of overvisited, public-access areas, but when I see rising trout tipping and sipping, my fly-fishing purist, virgin-remote-wilderness, not another angler in sight indignation, is quickly forgotten and I am consumed with the entomology and ichthyology of the moment—not where I am.                   There is no ugly place to catch a trout, at least none that I’ve found.   Trout love clear, cold water, and you don’t generally find such hydrology in areas that aren’t clear and cold, too.   A couple summers ago while hiking and fishing a remote stretch of the Gallatin River in Montana, I encountered a graveyard of rusted automobiles lined up door-to-door along the bank.   I didn’t consider this oxidized scar on the landscape an ugly sight because there were too many beautiful things to offset it:   azure skies, mountains on every horizon, and clear currents of melted snow rolling over freestone.   Even in the back Urbana of Denver where the South Platte R