I had an absolute blast fishing Norfork Lake this morning. I pretty much had a constant bite from 4am to 8AM. I fished 2 different spots in the dark and landed 5 hybrids and a boat load of white bass. I landed these fish by casting a 3.5 inch swimbait and vertical jigging a Tater Baits Tater Shad in key lime color. Right before sunrise I moved to a creek and the bite was on immediately. There was some spotty topwater action and I got to land several whites on a Kastmaster. I saw a few big fish come up, but they were too far away. On my graph I noticed some big arcs 50 to 70 deep in 80 to 90 feet of water. At first, I had several lookers and followers, but no takers. Finally, one of them hit my Tater Baits key lime Tater Shad. It was the striped bass. I continued trying to catch these deep fish, but they were snubbing my bait even though I changed colors several times. I went back to jigging the key lime Tater Shad and had another hit and landed a nice 20 inch walleye. For the next hour I landed 5 more walleye (all keeper size) and another boat load of whites. The walleye were aggressive and would hit it while I occasionally twitched the bait lightly or reeled up from the bottom slowly. They would hit the bait before it passed the 60 foot mark. Yesterday I fished a different creek and got into some fairly good topwater action. It was mainly whites, but there were hybrids and some largemouth playing with whites. Several of our guests had a good day yesterday. Bart and his son, BT, caught some nice crappie trolling Flicker Minnows. The Kahlenbeck boys had a great day catching walleye, hybrids/stripers and whites. The walleye were caught in the dark casting out a shallow diving suspending jerk bait with a slow reel back to the boat. They landed 7 walleye all in the same area. They then moved to a small cove and the stripers/hybrids erupted in the mouth of the cove. They had lots of fun. The water temp was slightly below 64 degrees. The lake level is holding stable and stable and sits at 553.62 ft msl.
Enjoy Norfork Lake in the Arkansas Ozarks!
