Caught fishing with Bink's Guide Service. 
the lake level is 553.79 and is stable with spillway gates open just a little about equal to the incoming water from the river. There has been no generation for two days. The surface water temperature is 49-degrees and has not changed very much recently. It is to get very warm early next week and we should finally break the 50-degree mark for water temperature this year and move fish shallower and back in the creeks. I am not catching very many fish on main lake brush piles and some of the bass and crappie are deeper than they should be for the end of February. The lake level was 554.37 with a surface water temperature of 47-degrees on this date last year and was very stained with poor visibiliy.. It is much more clear now and I could see my lure down about 7-8 feet yesterday on the main lake. They flooded us out at the end of March last year but brought it down fairly quickly. The White Bass are moving upstream to spawn and there are dozens of boats in the same area all trolling around like a Minnesota Lake on opening day and in a covey all staring at their live scopes. They are killing as many as they can and bragging about how many. This is all happening just before spawn and should go a long way towards thinning them out again. They were just making a comeback after being in low numbers for several years. I do not fish for them but they are easily caught by novice fishermen and children. There are a lot of meat hunters out there. The fishing pressure has increased dramatically the last few years and the number of guides has doubled at the same time. They are most all trying to out kill each other. You see the same pictures of the same people with large numbers of dead fish day after day after day. The long-term future does not look good for Norfork but when they cannot catch them here they just move over to Bull Shoals. It is bigger. Blackburns has a two-tiered pricing system. Memorial day to Labor Day and off-season. Some sneak in another increase in March right when the fishing and weather start to improve and along with their annual raise it can be confusing and very expensive. In order to not pay way too much you have to check carefully. An example is Blackburns charge $59/day for a 1-bedroom cabin until Memorial day and then it goes to $90/day and $475/week. After Labor day it reverts back to $59/day. Some even add on for the first stall for your boat at the dock, we do not. No hidden charges. Some do not even have a dock or swimming pool. We have no duplexes and all have big covered porches. Come on down and check us out. It is nice here and the price is right. If you have too much money and do not care about price, stay here and give the difference to the disabled Veterans. We have many repeat customers and want them to have an affordable vacation and stay in a nice place and not pay too much.
