The first time I heard about trout fishing in Arkansas was 1960. I was in basic training for the U.S. Air Force in San Antonio, Texas, Lackland Air Force base. It was a special feature story in a Sunday edition paper about flying into a resort in Arkansas (no doubt Gaston’s Resort) and catching huge rainbow trout with trout guides in jon boats. The section really cued my interest, I’d done lots of trout fishing in Arizona growing up. But five to seven pound rainbow trout sounded unbelievable. Part two, I was moving to northwest Arkansas as soon as my basic training was over.
In the early 1950s, they had completed the impoundment on the White River and created Bull Shoals Lake and Dam. Once on the route of famous small mouth bass camping trips, this first White River dam was set up to control the downstream flooding, produce electricity and provide recreation. But the water coming from beneath the dam at 42 degrees was too cold year round for small mouth bass, catfish and other species. So rainbows were introduced and they hoped they would thrive, spawn and replace the native varieties.
The trout planting was a great secret and not much fishing pressure was put on the trout for five years. They grew at the rate of an inch and half a month in the White. However they grow less than that when they get larger, but the feed was right, scalpins, fresh water shrimp and many other river residents proved great for the new variety. But the spawning part proved to be very limited due mainly to the river’s flow fluctuating so much during generation. Realizing that reproduction would be limited, the federal government invested in a trout hatchery to restock the water, then they turned the chore over to the Arkansas Fish and Game Department.
According to a fishing guide they had some different regulations in those formative years. You could only catch fish with lures during the winter in those early days. So bait fishing was limited to summer time, worms were and still are a favorite, since many get washed in during rains from side creeks and also during generation.
Someone must have run out of worms once and discovered canned sweet corn with its bright yellow color attracted trout. So it became the bait used by the guides. Who could keep such a secret anyway? Many western states to this day prohibit the use of corn in trout waters.
Entrepreneurs began to start small resorts for fisherman. The local people found jobs as fish guides, shuttling the narrow jon boats with tourists that the small mouth fishermen had used before them. Overnight camping trips became the thing to do. So you not only had to be a fish guide by day, but become a chef each night and morning with shore lunches on the banks. These were wonderful jobs, they paid better than anything else in a very poor economy in the region at the time, and beat most Ozarks farming projects. The tourists began to find they could find great fishing in the White River and you didn’t have to be a fly fisherman. In fact, with the interruptions of generating flows, fly fishing in the White River proved kind of tough and undependable. It never drew the avid attention of many of those folks who could fish in streams in the west and north in waders, never fearing being swept away by the sudden flow.
A world record German brown trout caught in the White in the late ‘60’s drew much national attention, and you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing the locals boast about the lunker caught in “their” river.
The introduction of the German brown trout came later than the rainbow. However they soon found the brown could spawn some in the river. Many fly fishing groups put boxes of fertilized brown trout eggs in streams that flowed into White. But rainbows were much easier to mass produce.
In future issues we’ll talk some more about trout fishing on the White River. God bless you and I hope the summer showers keep up.
Western novelist Dusty Richards and his wife Pat live on Beaver Lake in northwest Arkansas. For more information about his books you can email Dusty by visiting www.ozarksfn.com and clicking on ‘Contact Us’ or call 1-866-532-1960.
