The lake level is 553.61 and is up just a bit with no dam discharge except minimum flow. Once it gets below the top of the power pool they quit and refuse to drop the lake before the spring rains. The White River at Newport is 7.56 feet and is low with not much water going into the White River. They are running less than one generator at Bull Shoals. I do not understand this but I am just a Chemical Engineer and cannot expect to compare to the brain thrusts in the government. There needs to be some accountability not just take what they give us and shut up. It is almost like they want to flood us out in the spring. At least they try to take it down faster than they used to with the use of the spillway gates after they let it get too high and blame the rain. I had a surface water temperature of 48+ last evening when I came in. It should start to warm again with the nice weather. When it gets a little over 50 the fish will start to move back into the creeks that warm faster than the deerper water. it has not happened yet and there are still a lot of fish in open water on shad and fishing is just fair. We need some warm nights. Some brush piles are holding no fish but some are. This is just the transition period and is a typical early March. Last year they flooded us out at the end of March. The wind has moved back to from the south so I will fish a brush pile on a main lake point windblown bank with brush in a few minutes. I am not catching a lot but just a couple of crappie and bass in a couple of hours. We could get some rain on Monday and we certainly need it. When they quit generating the lake stains up green a little and I could see my lure down about 6-feet. It is very clear near the shore. It helps when there are not a lot of boats out there stirring things up like in the summer. Especially on the holidays. There are a lot of fishing tournaments coming up this spring during the spawn. I do not know why they must have them then except that the fishing is the best. I thought a tournament was to tell what people that can catch fish when nobody else can. It should not matter if everyone catches fish or not but I guess it makes the less skilled people feel better. I know they take a lot of fish off the nests. Even if they do release them it is not at the same place and there are many Bluegill just waiting to scarf up the eggs and newly hatched fish when the guard is gone. I do not sight fish beds or fish in deep water but do enjoy just being out there in the peace and quiet. Two things I would do is to decrease the limits of stripers and hybrids to two and increase the stocking of walleye. Walleye reproduce a little in Norfork but not enough to match the fishing pressure. Few get released. The mercury scare does not even deter them. A big walleye in Norfork is 4-pounds. I have caught some bigger but not a lot and they are my favorite. I will take walleye, crappie, bluegill, kentucky bass and flathead catfish and everybody else can have the rest. That seems fair to me. I spent my time chasing the red meat fish in open water on shad and have no desire to do so anymore. I know where the brush piles are located because I put them in and they do not move around much. Trolling is not for me but I have friends that do. It keeps them off my brush piles. If everybody trolled for red meat fish and stared at their live scopes except for me it would be just fine.I will stick to my Hummingbird 4-ID that I got for a present in 1985. It says it positively identifies fish and my old Champion Boat rides pretty good. Blackburns is still the home of the $59/day one bedroom cabins and a free boat stall comes with the cabin at our dock. Call Debbie at 870-492-5115 for a reservation.
