Ray, Jessica, Nicolas Sowell from Yellville had fun on the dock yesterday. 
The lake level is 554.07 and has dropped 1/2 inch in the last 24-hours with one generator running continuously. The White River at Newport is 21.18 feet and they are letting out a lot of water without much change in area lakes level indicating there is still a lot of runoff despite no rain for a week. That is about to change. We are right in the bullseye of storms moving through the area late this afternoon and tonight with some possiblly severe, high wind and locally heavy rain. It is to be followed by a cold front and below freezing for night time lows. Our normal high is 56. It is too early to announce spring. I have advised our current fishermen to leave early and ones scheduled to come in early next week to hold off for a day or two. It looks like we are to get this one. Iowa got hit hard yesterday and we are so sorry. It looks like a week from today will be a good time for the after dark striper fishermen and continue until the week after or a few days after the full moon which is the 18th. 15-17 should be the best. The lake continued to get more and more stained as I headed to the Cranfield Island area yesterday but Blackburns Creek remained very clear and I could see the fish on the brush under the dock down 6-8 feet. It was very windy all day and it did not lay until late afternoon making daytime fishing very tough and hard to find a place to get out of the wind that still had fish. The surface water temperature was 51 degrees on the main lake and it was a warm, cloudy, windy day. I fished for a little over an hour, caught three crappie and a keeper bass and came in. The bass was on a crawdad creature bait on a jig head and the crappie was on a jig cast past the brush and sinking into it about 5-6 feet. People had fun off the dock catching crappie and bluegill off the new brush piles. We were full yesterday and it was very busy here with people taking advantage of the best prices on boats and cabins in the Ozarks. They do not like paying for their first boat stalls elsewhere and mention it often as one reason they choose here.
