Caught fishing with Bink's Guide Service on the Spoon.
The lake level is 554.00 and has been steady for the last several hours with flood gates open just a bit. They run the one operable generator for a few hours now and again. The White River at Newport is 18.41 and dropping. The surface water temperature is just over 47-degrees and has been steady for several days. At least it is not dropping. It is near 70-degrees ambient temperature out there but is to cool off with rain later this weekend. The water clarity is fair and you could see your lure down about 6-feet yesterday. The creeks are stained green. I headed out to my favorite bass brush pile and on the way saw a broken school of shad as I rounded Mallard Point and dropped a spoon and caught one but they were just White Bass. I am not interested in them but saw more as I headed towards Cranfield Island. Another boat came over and caught a small Hybrid. I am not interested in them either. The Walleye and White Bass are the first to spawn. I expect the Walleye to return to this area from up- river in a few days. Now that the Dawt mill dam is gone they go further upstream than they used to. The lake has changed a lot since that dam has gone and so has fishing. People are seeing stripers several miles more upstream than they use to. I am mostly bass fishing and they are both in deep water on shad and can be caught on a spoon or in brush with the roaming crappie. The big crappie are definitely going to spawn early this year so I hope the water level stays steady this spring with no big variances. There are more and more crappie fishermen out there and some that are out everyday are killing too many. They can never fish Norfork out of Crappie but they can hurt them in certain areas. There are some big ones but in general not as many as before. The fishing presure is increasing as people continue to move here. I sometimes have to go to three or four places in order to find one of my brush piles with nobody on it. If they catch a few fish they go to the same place over and over until they die. The tourists buy an out of state fishing license and fish a few days and go home. This is good. There are not very many good places to fish from the bank on Norfork. The Game and Fish have cleared some trees in the Cranfield use area and put them next to the shore by the pavilion and by the handicapped fishing dock. It should make for some good pan fishing. I would like them to freshen up the Corps Of Engineers brush piles like they did several years ago. It really worked well but they are getting old again. Scuba Steve has 28-acres of cedar forrest and cuts his own trees and hauls them to the launch and puts in his own brush piles for his customers. He will show you where they are when you get here. There will be no price increases in 2024 here at Blackburns despite everything else going up. Property tax, Resort insurance, Car Insurance all had big increases again this year. Boat repair parts, tires, batteries, lumber, plumbing and electrical supplies all increased dramatically. I will hold prices as long as I can so you can have an affordable vacation. Come on down and we will not charge you too much. Compare prices and give Debbie a call at 870-492-5115. It is nice here and the price is right. We have many repeat customers.
