Norfork Lake fishing and lake conditions by Scuba Steve from Blackburns Resort and Boat rental (click here for comments)

I like those big crappie. Caught more too.Image title

The lake level is 552.89 and stable with just a bit of generation in both the morning and evening. The brown water is settling slowly and is about tea color or the color of Northwestern Ontario lakes. There are fish in it but are biting slowly. Crank baits are catching small bass pretty well near the bank but not very many big ones. Do not take pictures of undersized fish but release them right away. I tried fishing the transition water from brown to milky just to see what happens and caught a few crappie. Went to the green stained water and caught several more. The grub was working for me and I caught nothing on the spoon. Some are shallow at 4-5 feet in 25-ft. of water. It takes about an hour between the time when they stop biting and then start again. Do not give up. You get three or four in about 5-minutes and then they quit again. Things are getting better. A few stripers are showing up now but are very small. Most in the 20-inch range or barely legal. The water is not warming much with the cold nights and is slow coming around and hanging in there at about 50. Several bluegill are moving into the shallow warmer water. It looks to be a good spring if we can keep away from big rains and wind. I am not going to speculate when stuff is going to change. I have lived here for 23 years and know better than to do that. Just roll with the flow and catch what is biting now. The rest will come around but you have to be out there to find out. I only saw three other boats out there and they were all Blackburns customers. They did not pay too much. We have been full for three weeks and it is time to open more cabins. Learned my lesson back in 1996 when it got down to single digits in March.  Will not do that again.