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.

Mike caught and released a nice one yesterday. Image title

The lake level is 556.45 and is up just a bit from this time yesterday with no discharge for three days. The White River at Newport is 3.61 feet and about ready to dry up. The top of the power pool is now 555.85 and there is no effort to get it below that. The surface water temperature is just under 85-degrees and the water has cleared a little in the last couple of days. The thermocline starts at 22-feet and there are a lot of fish around that depth including Kentucky bass and walleye especially on main lake points. Go out on a point to 25-feet and drop a spoon and tap bottom snapping the lure up 4-5 feet and let it fall on slack line and work your way out from there increasing depth of water but not how deep you are fishing.  A few crappie are there also. Bass are full of crawdads so they are feeding shallow some time or other and other being after dark when the black lights and saltcraws are the best. Stripers are deep and also hitting spoons but you need a bigger one to get down to them. They all die when caught deep so I do not fish for them there. Venting does not work. They may go down but die later. You do not know what size fish you are going to catch and there is no releasing a live fish. if you see a picture of a striper with it's mouth open it is dead. Pictures of multiple fish mean none are getting released.  The same people keep fishing deep and killing fish everyday over and over. They must need meat bad or do not know how to catch them any other way. Possesstion limit is three times the daily limit which is three. There are too many small stripers in the 5-8 pound range being killed and they need time to grow if we are to get back to where we were on the size a few years ago. About 1/2 the fishermen out there are guides. I have never seem nearly so many ever and they all want to impress people on how many fish they can catch. It is hot today and it continues for a few days and is a perfect time for a family get-a-way before school starts. Blackburns has the best prices on both cabins and boat rentals and a free boat stall comes with your cabin at our dock. The children can swim in our big pool with slide, off our dock or around a boat in a sheltered cove. Give Debbie a call at 870-492-5115 for a reservation and we will not charge you too much.