Norfork Lake Arkansas near Mountain Home in the Ozarks Mountains Region Fishing Report and Lake Condition by Scuba Steve from Blackburns Resort and Boat Rental

New windows, ceilings, laminate floors, roofs, cabinets, counter tops and much more in #'s 12 and 14 at no price increase. They are full already. Image title

Tom Kelly with some nice Norfork Lake Crappie. He is one of the best fishermen on the lake except for Bink. Image title

The lake level is 553.29 and has dropped 1-1/2 inches in the last 24-hours with both generators running about 1/2 the time. The White River at Newport is 13.1 feet indicating they are letting out more water. It could be at 21-feet. The water clarity remains about the same and you can see your lure down 4-5 feet on the main lake. Surface water temperature is still about 46-degrees. It was very windy yesterday but it did lay in the late afternoon making for better fishing conditions with an ambient temperature in the low 50's. That is to end again early next week with another cold front coming in bringing more cold and wintery weather. Just keep away the ice. Fishing remains just fair but some good ones are being caught everyday. The crappie may not be in big numbers but they are big in size and are biting both slip floats with live minnows and jigs. Set the slip floats about 10-ft, deep during the day and shorten them to about 6-feet at sunset when they come up to feed. It is not a fast and furious bite by any means. I am also casting a 2-inch single-tailed jig past the brush and letting it sink into it. The rest of the time I am beating the bank with a small white grub tipped with a live minnow on shadowy wind blown banks to the secondary points just around the main lake point. They move from the deeper brush to behind it shallow just before dark.  Trollers are still catching a few red meat fish dragging stuff through shad but are looking hard for feeding fish. Bink is still catching White Bass and a few walleye spooning flats in 55-ft. of water on the bottom but still refuses to give me any walleye even if they are not edible acording to the health department. They say do not eat more than two meals of walleye over 18-inches a month. Now I am confused. I thought all walleye under 18-inches must be immediately released. Does this mean throw back all of the ones that are not poison and keep only two a month that are big enough to keep that are full of poison? A good idea would be to release all of them immediately and leave them for me to catch for shore lunch. As many as I catch I should be dead of mercury poison by now or it could explain some of my current symptoms. Back when I amalgamated gold behind the dredge in the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho in the 1880's there were 10 of us and only 9 of us died. They called me the mad hatter when I worked in the hat industry but some of that has been metabolized or dissipated over time rather than accumulated. I hope the walleye in Norfork Lake are not that toxic but the only safe thing to do is leave them for me and eat carp, gar and white bass.  I hope everybody does not quit walleye fishing and start crappie fishing. There are a lot of Asian Carp in Kentucky lake so maybe the meat hinters should go there to fish and be safe. Just wear a helmet.  Actually I do not kill very many fish but I did live in Idaho and it is a beautiful place but the fishing is not that good. It is much better here on Norfork. We have now finished the renovation of both cabins #12 and 14 and they are full already. You can get a two bedroom nice cabin at Blackburns for less money than a one bedroom duplex cabin elsewhere and your first boat stall is free here. We will not charge you too much and do not expect you to pay for our vacations. We like it right here and have no reason to go elsewhere. Deposits for the spring and summer are due so call Debbie at 870-492-5115 to insure you get the cabin and boat of your choice and do not end up paying way to much elsewhere. We are the first resort to fill up and I am pretty sure I know why.