Spring Break is often a misnomer. Mostly, it is nothing like spring at all.
But it’s a good break from the grind and it gave Louis Campbell and myself a good chance to convince our wives that an extended fishing trip was needed.
Our wives are convinced that it’s good for them for us to take a break - meaning they need it from us more than we need it from them. It’s just fine for them to think that way. We just want to go fishing.
Fishing means trout fishing. Campbell, a former Arkansas coach and player, and I attack the White River below Bull Shoals Dam, or the Norfork, below Norfork Dam with equal delight. Wade fishing is our preference, with light four weight fly rods.
But to wade you need low flows from the dams, ideally minimum flow with only a trickle to provide some ultra cold water for the trout fishery.
That’s not what was happening Spring Break, or most of this winter. Heavy rains the first two months of the year have left our lakes up a little, and lots of heavy generation.
That’s what we got in the middle of Spring Break for two-and-a-half days of fishing out of Campbell’s trout boat. We’ve been trying to figure out ways to fish high flows below Bull Shoals Dam for about 15 years. It’s tricky, if not dangerous. You better know how to operate a boat in that kind of fast current. You can get in trouble in a hurry and with a fish on, it’s gets real tricky.
There are lots of variables – among them sunlight conditions and number of boats on the water -- that can make or break these trips. Too many boat motors running above them and the big browns disappear, as in move way down the into a deep, dark hole in the river.
The ultimate good break is for there to have been a mild shad kill coming through the generators a day or two ahead of the trip. I don’t mean a massive shad kill, just a few here or there.
You can be really unlucky and get a big shad kill for more than several days just ahead of your trip . The trout are too full to care about your white imitations. Ideally, you get to the river in a light, cold rain. That reduces the number of anglers and the dark day helps to get the big browns looking up.
The big ones get that way because they are wary. They know the sun reveals them to predators from above, like an eagle. Or, maybe like Campbell.
I consider him now to be among the apex predators on the White River after what he did to the big browns over Spring Break.
I caught some, too, but not like the two monsters Campbell hooked. Only one was landed, but that’s way above the odds. You hook two browns over 30 inches in one day on 5x fluorocarbon tippet – around 6-pound test – the odds are against you getting any to the boat. He batted .500 and that’s great.
The plan was to fish 3x or 4x tippet, much stronger. That’s what I did and didn’t get a bite the first morning. Campbell went for 5x, thinking the 1/8-ounce white jigs we were dead drifting with our six weight fly rods would have more action.
This was Courtland Ultra Premium 5x, with a branding trick on the label that says “top secret.” It’s a half-size stronger, meaning we were fishing with 4.5x or thereabouts. Yes, this is technical talk, but the fly fishers out there will appreciate that tidbit.
Never mind that we were suspending them 10 feet deep under a float, there would still be action from the fast flows in the 12 feet of water from the maximum eight generators at Bull Shoals. That’s 22,000 cfs, extremely big flows.
That’s cold water in cold, windy conditions. On the river on a 45-degree day with wind and in a fast boat, you better have layers to cover everything, including your face. We did. We probably looked a little scary.
What Campbell pulled out of the White that first day was the scariest. It was a massive beast, like an Old Testament Leviathan.
We began catching nice-sized browns early on Wednesday, the first of our three days on the White River in Campbell’s trout boat. At first, we just fought them to the boat without using the motor, needed to run back toward the dam after each one-mile drift in the catch-and-release zone.
There were plenty of snags, with our jigs catching the bottom or structure. You jumped on the motor when that happened, hurtling the boat back toward the hang point, hoping not to lose a whole 80 feet of fly line. There’s 200 feet of Dacron backing behind the fly line, and you could lose that, too, if you aren’t quick to start the motor.
If it was a big fish, we reasoned we might have to chase it with the motor, too. Indeed, that’s what happened just before lunch when line began to scream off Campbell’s reel.
Oh, that’s a sweet sound when it’s finally determined it’s a fish, and not a bottom hang. We were both sure at the same instant, when the monster broke the surface to give us the evil eye, just 20 yards from the boat and not far from the bank.
Campbell generally runs the motor. It’s got some quirks to it that I don’t understand as far as the choke and starter, but I can handle it once it’s running. The motor was especially quirky for this trip, but like I said, sometimes the stars align. I got the motor started quickly, just after Campbell and I changed positions in the boat.
I slowly pumped up the speed of the boat to allow Campbell to re-capture most of his fly line and begin the 15-minute fight with his personal-record fish. We already knew that was the case. Most of the other big ones he’d netted since I converting him from spin fishing more than one-dozen years ago had been in the 25-inch range. We knew this was far bigger just from that first jump.
Soon, it became apparent that this one was going to come off the bottom where structure was his friend and our enemy. Campbell worked it to the range where we could see it. Our gasps were surely heard all across the river. The guides who were near moved their boats away, giving us all the room we needed if the monster made a run. It did not.
I grabbed the boat net and stabbed the water on the first time it was close to the boat. Success! There’s pressure when you are netting your best friend’s best brown. I’ve messed that up once before with Bruce Ritter. I’m still hearing about it.
Then it was time to measure it, get a few pictures, then quickly get it back in the water. We were in the catch-and-release zone, making that required, but we would have released it either way.
Two measurements both came up with over 30 inches, and one almost 31. The girth was 20 inches on the first wrap and 21 on the second. Our estimate on weight was well over 20 pounds. Then, it was back in the river. It was still full of fight and pulled hard as Campbell held the tail. Boom, it was off to wreak havoc on stocker rainbows once again.
That’s what a fish that size eats, a 10-inch fish. It might eat a handful each day. That big, white jig we were throwing has to be a snack.
There was another like that one later in the week. Campbell seemed frustrated when it wrapped the line around a tree stump, but reminded him that was a normal result for these kinds of White River monsters. They aren’t easy to land.
The brown trout hookups decreased over the next two days as we got further away from the shad kill that preceded us by one day. There was one notable big brown we caught together.
There’s always fun in this kind of a trip because it takes two complementary fly fishers to both run the boat and play the fish. The handoff between boat operator/net man and the man on the fish must be seamless. It is with us. We’ve done it together so many times each knows the way the other is going to step in the boat as we change spots.
Campbell said he was hung. We’d decided on a system earlier that if he was hung, and not on a big fish, I’d just take his rod and try to reclaim the backing and line before deciding if it was something we could pull loose or just had to break off. He jumped on the motor.
I reeled the backing and fly line and had the fly rod straight above what I thought 12 feet down might be a tree limb. Then, as I studied the fly line, it was moving as we floated down the river. Then, I felt a little tug, a head shake. Snags don’t do that.
“Coach Campbell, come back and get your fish,” I shouted above the motor.
We quickly switched places. I chased after the fish as he played in another massive brown, maybe 24 inches. As I said, we both can claim that one.
We did that for almost three days. At noon on the last day, we were packing our gear with the boat on the trailer when a young guide from Heber Springs came to visit. He’d watched us all week as he guided three groups of paying customers. They had commented that we were “wrecking brown trout,” and why couldn’t they?
It’s not just knowing what to do, it’s about knowing when to do it. It took years for all of our skills to finally improve to the point we could take advantage on the perfect day. It can be about the weather, the flow and so many other variables.
Campbell slumped in his boat chair after releasing the big one. He summed it up correctly, “I can die a happy man, now.”
You don’t get that feeling unless you’ve been trying for that fish for decades. It was a fish of a lifetime, much bigger and better than any I’ve caught, better than any most have even dreamed about.
The clincher of this story didn’t take place until Friday night, after the last day we fished. At a family dinner, a guide near our table pointed out that as he fished with clients on the Norfork all week, some of his guide friends launched their boats each day after lunch.
He asked each where they’d been. The guide would say, “We were at Bull Shoals Dam, but we left after a morning of my clients seeing Clay and his friend, the coach, net all those big browns.”
I phoned the coach. We had both confessed to be too tired to fish for a few days just one hour earlier. That story from dinner from the guide changed his attitude. He said, “When can you go again?”