Welcome to my first edition of the White River Fly Fishing Report on OMW! I'll be updating this report about once a month, or as fly fishing conditions change.

In many respects the White and North Fork rivers provide some of the best fly fishing experiences that you will find any place in the world. There are very many ways that you can fish this unique system. It would be true to say that over a period of time you could achieve and become a very competent fly fisher mastering all the skills that would be needed to deal with any situation you might find any place else.

You have open to you many options on any given day how you would choose to catch fish from fishing nymphs, drys, streamers and emergers. The trick to optimizing the best choice on any given day is to read the water in the given area that you are fishing, and to figure out what the fish are doing so far as what you should do by way of the best technique to catch those fish.

As a general rule dead drift techniques using various nymph, scud and sowbug imitations will catch you fish any place on the entire White River system. However, take into consideration that fish in the trophy zones will be somewhat more aware of the fly fisherman's activity, and you may well have to fine tune your approach to catch those fish, particularly at the Bull Shoals dam zone, and Rim Shoals, which are two notable areas that get a great deal of pressure.

Likewise for the trophy zone on the North Fork. Some of the factors that you should pay attention to include: 1) reduction of your tippet size; 2) increase overall leader and tippet length from the standard 9ft to as much as 15.

Avoid at all cost wading in a way that you create a great deal of disturbance.
Fish in a upstream direction as opposed to a down stream angle, do not make bad presentations which cause line slap on the surface and reduce (if you use them) the size of your strike indicator, and use indicators of a more natural color.

You might also take this factor into consideration, aim to find sections of water that have not been fished by someone else before you choose to do so. Many of the better class fish will be put down and will need a period of time without any fishing or boat activity before they will resume to feed.

At this point in time the bulk of the larger caddis hatches have gone but there will be some hatches of the smaller species of caddis, and that may well bring fish to the surface to feed on the emerged adults and the oviposting females as they return to egg lay.

You should expect to see also some hatches of PMD and the larger sulphurs. These hatches are often more predominant in the afternoons and early evenings, the late evening and early morning are times that you may well encounter surface activity to the spinners of the species. There is almost always, at sometime during the day, activity toward the small midges that we have on the river system.

If is it your choice to fish the hatch then look forward to some great surface fishing. Many of the fish we have been catching recently have contained the
nymphs of the sulphur. Areas on the river that contain good rock structure are good bet to fish the nymph of these species so too the longer flat glides that tail out from the faster water flows off the shoals.

Trout like many other species of fish are subject to optimum periods of time that they will feed hard, unsettled climatic conditions, and water
flows will determine at times how active those fish will be be at any given time. There are times that they will shut down for a period and show little or no interest to feed no matter what you may do to catch them. The more you understand about the habits of the trout then the more you will reap the rewards at this time.

As l write this report we are having some heavy rain falls and very unsettled weather, this can be both good and bad. The river can be a mess of washed up bottom vegetation and debris washed from the shorelines, not to mention
the mud-stained water that will flow in from the creeks. Trout generally do not like this and will seek out of the way places, comfort zones if you like.

You will need to look for those zones. Rainbows and Browns differ somewhat regarding this. Browns will often be found foraging in shallow colored water and you have an opportunity here to hook into a big fish. They feel much more confident to venture into these zones and will generally strike at something of a lesser form of life. I have in my lifetime of fly fishing caught many big fish in the most atrocious of conditions!

Here you might choose to fish large streamers, white and black are two good color options. Do not be concerned too much with the size of the fly. l have used tandem flies of 4 inches or more. The bigger the fly the more likely they are to see it. Likewise you are not going to fish with large fly comfortably using a 3 or 4 weight rod. You will need to upgrade at least to a 6wt . I would opt more for a 7 or 8 wt.

I know only too well what a big fish can do and bear in mind you need to keep that fish away from underwater structure that you will not be able to see. The use of heavy leaders of 10 Ib breaking strain will make no difference either, go for it. You never know what you may catch.

Overall for the forthcoming period floating line tactics would include the standard approach of nymph rigs and indicator fishing. Do not assume that surface fishing is of no use when fish are not seen feeding in the surface. The trout in this water system are very often free rising to surface fished both dry fly and emergers, and its fun to fish and catch this way, particularly in the shallow water zones of up 2 to 3 feet deep.

Wet fly and soft hackle techniques fishing shallow water runs and tails outs will also work well at this time. For the deeper water sections both sink tip and intermediate lines are a good bet with the standard wooly bugger and other streamer type flies. These tactics will apply to both wade and boat fishing.

For those of you who like to venture out in the dawn hours and the twilight times, then this time of the year starts to see the bigger browns become more active at such times. Big fish will venture in to the shallow water zones at these times and also over the gravel bars.

Some of the fly patterns that will work well now would include Nymphs, Pheasant tails, gold ribbed hares ear, zug bug, sulphur nymph, sowbug and scuds in gray/olive. Small midge and chironomid pupa. Bead heads assorted. Red fox, small cadis pupa of hares ear and olive.

Soft hackles: Hares ear and partridge, red ass, Chuck's emerger,

Dry flies: Elk hair caddis, light Cahill, PMD, small midges and sulfur imitations of the Dorothea.

Streamers: Standard wooly buggers in olive, black and white. Large marabou streamers in white and black , muddler minnows of various types and flies that resemble bait fish.

Tight lines for now,
Davy Wotton

About Davy Wotton
Davy has been making his living as a full time fly fisher in one capacity or another for over 30 years. He has written many articles for all of the fly fishing magazines, created several unique flies and fly tying materials which he developed into a full scale manufacturing operation in his native country of Wales, and is a much-sought speaker around America at fly fishing functions and shows. Over the years Davy has fished in over 40 countries around the world but his choice for base of operation is right here on the White River. Davy operates his American International Schools of Fly Fishing in Flippin, Arkansas.