Amanda and Ben are having a blast. After seeing how well a green light draws in bait yesterday, Ben found one locally and was using it this morning. They caught their thread fin shad just by dipping a landing net into the school of bait fish. Sure beats casting out a big heavy cast net. Thread fin shad definitely out fishes me with my artificial baits at times. Both Amanda and Ben landed 3 big walleye, along with quite a few striped and hybrid bass. Let’s not forget about all the whites that they also landed. Good morning of fishing for these two. They were releasing all fish except for the walleye. This was the first walleye Amanda ever caught and she will be eating it this evening for the first time. I also had a good morning fishing. I landed 2 nice striped bass in the dark on a key lime Tater Baits Tater Shad. I also landed a handful of big white bass. The stripers were suspended 35 to 70 feet down. I was sitting in 100+ feet of water. The bait that I drew in was 20 feet thick and there were a lot of whites and baby stripers darting through the bait. The striped bass caught in my first area came up for the bait while it was falling. I started checking out different areas at daybreak. I started to head back into a creek and saw at least 3 boats already in the area where I was planning to fish, so I made a u-turn and checked out a different creek with no striped bass luck. What I did find in this creek was sporadic topwater feeding largemouth bass. I played with these fish for a while catching and releasing 4 nice size largemouth bass. I moved to a main lake bluff wall point and found quite a few striped bass suspended 30 to 50 feet down in 100+ feet of water. Since I fished this area before with a Tater Shad and had no luck, I switched to vertical jigging a 1 ounce green with white belly Binks spoon. That was the ticket today. (Or the fish were more aggressive than the day before.) I dropped the bait into the fish and jigged it up as fast and as high as I could and then I would let it fall. I could see the fish chase the bait up, then when it started to fall, they would take it. I should have landed 3 in this area, but I lost one when I was playing with the drag setting. They were really nice size fish in the 10 to 14 pound range. By 7AM the fish all disappeared so I headed back to the resort making several stops along the way.
The surface water temperature this morning was around 78 degrees. The lake level is 558.24 ft msl. Conditions are holding fairly stable at this time.
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.
