Norfork Lake Fun out of Blackburns Resort and Boat Rental fishing with Bink's Guide service on the spoon yesterday. Two of the biggest caught. 
The lake level is 555.60 and has been very stable for a couple of months with very little generation. They are holding the White River at barely above 10-feet at Newport and all of the area lakes are just about at power pool with no effort to drop anything so far this winter. The ambient temperature was in the low 50's and the surface water temperature was exactly 47 degrees and the wind was calm when I went out yesterday. The lake is fairly clear and you can see your lure down about 6-feet. You can see the tops of some of Blackburns Brush piles. The bite of the day was hybrid stripers. I found them just outside brush on shad in 45-ft. of water. Bink had some of Blackburn's guests out and they reported having a lot of fun catching about 50-fish and releasing most of them. Walleye, small stripers, white bass and some hybrids in the 7-8 lb. range. They were using the spoon and jigging straight down. They are out again today. Bink has been working closely with Blackburns for over 25-years and they have attended over 100 sports and boat shows together. He books about 80-100 guide trips in conjunction with the resort every year and it has been a very good symbiotic relationship. We quit attending sports shows a few years ago when they became ineffective. Before the internet they were the best ways to get business but not now. They became just a place where fishermen would come for a social event for a day and already had a guide and place to stay. We did more than our share of them and we met a lot of nice people. They went the way of printed advertising. We went from completely booking the resort and his guide business from Memorial day to Labor day with several other trips before and after in the mid 1990's to booking absolutely nothing except for a few weekend trips during prime time. The bookings came but almost all from the internet but most from repeat customers. Blackburns has about 80% repeat customers and we have developed many friendships over the years and continue to do so. That is why we try to keep our prices as low as possible and not try to see how much money we can get out of our friends. It is easy to be very friendly with customers if you are charging them too much. We do not do that. Crappie fishing was a little slow yesterday and bass fishing was a bit better. Look for shad just outside of brush in 40-45 ft. of water and drop a spoon on them. A lot of differend species are together.
