DATE: Tuesday, December 20, 2011
TIME: 12:30 PM TO 2:00 PM
WEATHER: Low-50s, partly cloudy
WATER CONDITIONS: 0 units
LOCATIONS FISHED: Norfork River, Mill Dam Eddy
FLIES USED: Olive Wayne’s mini sculpin, #14 cerise egg, #14 cerise San Juan worm, #14 furnace cockleburr, #20 Dunn’s Dun
ROD USED: Winston 10’ 4-weight WT
HATCHES: Midges
OTHER: Kay and I fished together. Mill Dam Eddy had not been fishing well for me the last several weeks. I started fishing with an olive Wayne’s mini sculpin and dropping a cerise egg. I didn’t get any hits immediately below the island, but as I fished a drop-off further downstream, had a few hook-ups. Meanwhile, Kay was able to catch a couple on a gray Norfork River scud with a dropped cerise worm below it. We both switched to midge emergers and fished sporadic rises, but I managed only one fish, caught on the Dunn’s Dun fished in the film. I ended the day with 8 or 9 fish, better than expected.
NOTE AND WATER RESOURCES ENGINEERING OPINION: The tree and root wad that had anchored just below the island at Mill Dam Eddy is no longer there, though the other tree and root wad just downstream and closer to the bank remains. The river is slowly, but surely, healing itself from changes wrought by the major spring flood and ensuing long-term generation. More flow is returning to the right-hand chute, and the channel is widening at the end of the island. I hope the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission staff and trout, river, and hatchery “protection” organizations will leave it alone; it will stabilize in a relatively short time, returning much the way it used to be. It’s my opinion that they have permanently damaged the river at Cook’s Island and downstream, and I am sure that it will never ever recover from their work! If they had just left the river alone, it would have healed itself.
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