We would like to wish all, a happy and safe Memorial Holiday weekend. This may be my last Norfork Lake Fishing Report until the beginning of next week. Happy fishing to some and to others have a great time enjoying our beautiful Norfork Lake. It is time to break out those skis, tubes, boards and other toys to enjoy our lake.
I had fun this morning, but to be honest I did have to work a little for the fish. That is the fun of it, at least in my opinion. I arrived at a main lake bluff wall point at about 4AM. I set my green light down about 10 feet and I was sitting in roughly 100 ft of water, not far from the bluff. It took about 30 minutes to have my boat surrounded by shad. The predators started to show up not long after that. I really was not marking any big striped bass, but there were plenty of walleye, white bass and baby stripers. I may have figured out how to catch some of the walleye. I dropped my bait down to 30 or 40 feet then very slowly retrieved the key lime Tater Shad. When my bait hit 20-25 feet a fish would hammer it. The bait was 20 feet thick, and the predators were right underneath the bait and darted up through them to feed. The walleye ranged from 19 to 21 inches long and the white bass were huge. When it just started to get light out the bait dispersed and so did the fish. But all of a sudden, I started to mark big arcs 30 to 60 feet down. No schools, no bait, but my graph would show 3 to 10 fish on the screen at all different depths. These guys are still being finicky. I had a lot of window shoppers. I did manage to get 2 of them to hammer the bait, both on a slow reel up. The fish were big and fat and sure did have some strength. Some of our other fishing guests are having fun. The Ruehrup, father/son team caught some really good fish last evening and a few more this morning. They have been using live thread fin shad. The Hagermann gang did really good yesterday morning as well as last evening. One of their boats is using live bait and the other boat is Tater Shadding. They are also doing a little river fishing during their stay.
The surface water temperature this morning ranged from 77 to a little over 78 degrees. The lake level is 557.69 ft msl. Both temp and lake level are holding fairly stable
Hummingbird Hideaway Resort still has cabins available during June and July. Summer family vacation fun is just around the corner. Give us a call with any questions or for reservations at 870-492-5113. If you have not been to Norfork Lake before you will absolutely fall in love with it!
Enjoy Norfork Lake in the Arkansas Ozark.