BY JOHN BERRY

It was a rainy day and my wife, Lori’s, parents were visiting. We had been scheduled to take them to Branson for the day but had rescheduled for the next day, due to the weather. I checked river conditions and noted that the river was down. I decided to get in an afternoon of fishing. The prospect of doing it in the rain did not bother me. Lori’s parents silently questioned my intelligence and wondered just what the heck their daughter had gotten herself into.

When I arrived at Rim Shoals, I ran into David McCray, one of my fishing buddies from Memphis who has a weekend place in Gassville. He had arrived before me and had already rigged his rod and donned his waders. We spoke briefly and agreed to link up on stream. David walked toward the river and I briefly escaped the rain under the hatchback of my ancient Volvo wagon while I put on my waders.

I pulled out my beloved nine foot four weight Sage Light Line fly rod and began rigging it. The sulphurs had been coming off during the preceding week so I tied on a copper John nymph in size fourteen. The sulphurs are our major mayfly hatch of the year. They are yellowish orange and the copper John is a dead on imitation of their nymphs. I used an eighteen inch 6X tippet, a bit of lead tape just above the tippet knot and a strike indicator set at the depth of the water plus a couple of inches.

I zipped up my rain jacket and closed the hatch back. I walked the trail down to the top of the shoals. I carefully waded across. The water was still dropping out and the wading was a bit treacherous. Halfway across I stopped and pulled out my wading staff. I always carry a folding wading staff and pull it out whenever I encounter fast heavy water. I carefully made my way across and breathed a sigh of relief when I emerged on the other side.

I made my way down the island and quickly located David. He was fishing one of my favorite spots. I waded over to yet another favorite spot that is located just a few yards out from his location. We were close but not too close. We both had plenty of water to fish, both spots held a lot of trout and there was room for both of us to cast.

David was rigged pretty much the same as I was, a copper John under an indicator. David was into a nice trout when I arrived and I hooked a good one on my second cast. There were a few sulphurs starting to come off and the trout were keying in on the nymphs. The natural progression for the sulphur hatch, or any other hatch for that matter, is to start with the nymphal form of the insect before the hatch (copper John). When the nymphs rise to the surface and the trout begin keying in on the emerging insects you switch to an emerger pattern like the partridge and orange. Finally, when the trout begin keying in on the adults, you switch to a dry fly like the sulphur parachute.

There is a certain amount of overlap on these phases. For instance, I have found that trout will take nymphs during all phases of a hatch or the trout will key in on the emergers and never move on to the adults. Emergers are much easier to fish with and for the fly tiers among us much easier to tie.

As David was fishing, he noticed that at the end of the drift he waited a short while leaving his nymph in the water. A good trout hit the fly and he was able to land it rather quickly. He mentioned the situation to me and it made me think. When you are fishing a nymph, you have to concentrate on a perfect drag free drift and quickly set the hook when there is the slightest movement of the strike indicator. Yet here is a take on a fly that is not drifting and there is no hook set.

Since the strike occurred at the end of the drift, I surmised that, when the drift ended, the fly began to ride up in the water column and the trout took it as a rising nymph. As I was standing there in the run discussing it with David, my fly ended its drift and began riding up. I felt a strong take and instinctively lifted my rod. A couple of minutes later I had landed a fat sixteen inch rainbow. I was amazed when the exact same thing happened again a few minutes later.

As a result, we amended our fishing style so that we hesitated at the end of our drifts and purposely let the fly rise in the current. We caught trout after trout. Maybe half were taken on the perfect drag free drift and the other half were hooked when the fly began to ride up. In essence, we were fishing nymphs as emergers and experiencing great success, while doing it.

The rain continued off and on for the rest of the afternoon as did the fishing. We didn’t count but we both did well. It seems like one or the other of us was into a fish all of the time. About five thirty, I glanced at my watch and realized it was time to head home. Lori was cooking beef tenderloin and it is bad form to miss a great supper like that. I reluctantly bid adieu to David and waded back to the access. I took off my waders, loaded my gear and headed back to Cotter.

I had ignored weather conditions that would concern others and been flexible in the choice of my fishing technique. All I had to show for it were the memories of a great afternoon of fishing!

By John Berry

Recently a couple of my neighbors, Mike Wilhelm and Scott Berringer, were up for the weekend from Memphis. They both have weekend homes in Cotter and come over to fish and relax whenever they can. Mike is a retired business executive and Scott is a school teacher. They are both avid anglers and are really nice people to be around.

The day was nearly perfect. The temperature was around seventy three degrees with a light wind out of the South East. The Corps of Engineers were running one and a half full generators or about 4500 cubic feet per second (CFS). This is an almost perfect flow for drift fishing. It is deep enough for easy navigation but shallow enough to use the same rigging as you would for no generation. You are not required to use massive amounts of lead, heavy flies and huge strike indicators that the higher flows require.

They were fishing in the area of the White River just above Jenkin’s Creek near the Rim Shoals Catch and Release section. This section had a lot of work done to it in previous years. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission brought in tons of big rocks to create fish habitat. It has had a positive effect and it now holds quite a few trout. Though it can only be accessed by boat, it receives a bit of fishing pressure.

There was no insect activity on the top, so the guys were fishing the bottom. They were concentrating on deep pockets and structure. Scott was fishing his version of the Y2K. When he ties them, he trims them in a round shape. Not the conical shape, to which we are accustomed. He gave me a box of them for Christmas and they are deadly. Mike was fishing a high water San Juan worm in cerise. This is one of my go to flies and I fish them often. This was the perfect tactic for the conditions and they were having a great day, catching trout after trout.

Mike hooked a really good fish. Most of the fish they had been catching were in the twelve to fourteen inch range. This one was different. He was quite a bit larger and was fighting ferociously. The guys figured that it was at least an eighteen incher and settled down for a protracted struggle. They were in Scott’s river boat and were dragging a short length of chain drifting backward. This is a common way to fish on this section of the river under these conditions. The idea is to carefully play the fish as you drift and to gently release him after the struggle to avoid any damage to the trout. They were at a critical point in the struggle where you cannot make any erratic movements with the boat or you can easily lose the fish.

About the time they drifted down to Red Bud Shoals, they heard the roar of an engine up stream. They glanced up and saw a boat quickly approaching and seemingly headed straight toward them. It was obvious that the guys were into a good fish. Proper boating etiquette gives the right of way to the boat that is not under power and certainly a boat in the midst of an active battle with a good fish should be given plenty of room. To Mike’s amazement, this rude boater roared past him running right over his line and fish, in the process.

As the other boater passed by, Mike yelled over to him and said “next time go around the other side”. He was answered with a few curse words and “I am not going out of my way just so you can catch a fish”. You could see Mike and Scott’s jaws drop. They could not believe what was happening. Needless to say words and gestures were exchanged. Of course, in the process of the confrontation, the fish was lost.

While this other boater was doing this, the two ladies and young man in his boat sat silent. Surely they were embarrassed by his behavior. I was raised in the Deep South many years ago and was taught not to use language like that, particularly in front of a lady.

The sad part of the story is that the whole mess could have been easily avoided. There was plenty of water for the other boater to just come around giving Mike and Scott plenty of room to land the fish. Or maybe, he could have just slowed down and given them a couple of minutes to clear the shoals.

Behavior like this on the river or lake is wrong on many levels. While I am sure there were no laws broken, conduct like this should not be tolerated. For locals, what we want is a nice quiet place to spend a sunny afternoon catching a few trout. Anglers from throughout the country will not spend their hard earned dollars to travel here and fish with people like this. Luckily this does not happen often. Most of the boaters I see are far more courteous than this.

To the rude boater, I ask that you reconsider your attitude toward other boaters and practice a little common courtesy. It could make the river a more pleasant place for all of us.

BY JOHN BERRY

I recently received an email from a reader. He was concerned about barbless hooks. In Arkansas, we are required by regulation to fish barbless hooks in Catch and Release areas. The point of contention was that he took great pains to mash down his barbs was concerned if it was enough to pass the scrutiny of the Arkansas Game and Fish enforcement officers? He had heard that they would put the hook point in a cotton ball and see if the barb would catch anything. My clients and I have been checked on several occasions in the past and this has never really happened to us. When I have been checked, the officers examined the hook but never passed it through a cotton ball. This is not always easy especially when you are fishing a size twenty two midge dry fly. The question remains, what is adequate to pass inspection? Since this can be a subjective determination, well meaning anglers can be in violation of the law, despite their best efforts. I feel that, if you make your best effort, you will be OK.

To avoid this problem, I have been switching my choice of hooks to ones that are factory barbless (hooks made without a barb by the manufacturer). I have encountered a few problems with this strategy. The number of hooks made without barbs is quite limited. To date, I have only found scud, nymph and dry fly hooks that are barbless. I have found no local source for other types of barbless hooks.

I have also found that barbless hooks to be more expensive. I do not understand why hooks that require fewer steps to manufacture cost more than hooks that require more steps. They certainly contain the same amount of metal.

I still own hundreds of barbed hooks and I am too cheap to discard them. Maybe I should donate them to some fly tying group that needs materials.

For those flies that I tie, for which I cannot find barbless hooks, I pinch down the barbs as I tie them. I have acquired a pair of Tiemco barb mashers. This is a great tool that I could not do without. They have smooth flat jaws that do quick work on any barbs. The handles are fairly long to provide plenty of leverage. The finger holes are coated with plastic to provide a certain amount of comfort. I have found it best for me to mash the barbs for all of the hooks before I tie the flies. You do not want to spend several minutes tying a fly only to break the hook as you pinch down the barb. I generally lay out the hooks a dozen at a time and debarb them all at once.

Over the years, I have tied thousands of flies and there are many that I still have that I did not debarb, when I tied them. To fish them, I have to pinch down the barb on stream, as I tie them on my line. I use my forceps and it is a hit or miss proposition. I always check the barb after I attempt to mash it down. Sometimes I have to go back and redo it. Occasionally, when I land a fish, I notice that the hook is a bit difficult to remove and I mash down the barb again.

All of this may possibly change. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission is proposing the elimination of the barbless hook requirement for Catch and Release areas. Under the new regulations, you would be able to fish artificial lures with up to three treble hooks. According to the Commission, recent studies have shown a very low mortality rate with the treble hooks. The reason that we have a barbless hook rule in the catch and Release areas is to significantly lower the hook mortality rate. I personally cannot see how a lure with three barbed treble hooks can have a low hook mortality rate.

I personally started using barbless hooks a long time ago, well before the establishment of Catch and Release areas when I became a convert to Catch and Release fishing. But that is not the only reason that I fish barbless. I found that barbless hooks do much less damage to me and others around me than the barbed ones do. Whenever and wherever I fish, I fish barbless. I will continue debarbing hooks after the regulations change. I hope that you do the same. It will be safer for all of us.

I recently guided two of my regular clients, John and Cliff, for the day at the Catch and Release section at Bull Shoals Dam. I had fished there a few days before and had done well. I picked them up at the lodge they were staying at and headed for the river.

When we got there it was overcast and there was moderate generation from the dam (probably 10,000 CFS or three full units). This is a really productive level to fish this area. The water is deep enough to clear most obstacles but shallow enough to easily get the fly down to the bottom.

I took care and carefully rigged their rods before we launched my river boat. I started one with an orange egg under an indicator and the other I rigged with a hot fluorescent pink San Juan worm. If I am fishing two anglers, I always start them with different flies. Then, if one starts producing, I switch the other to the same fly. I keep in mind that one fish on a given fly is an isolated incident and two fish on a fly is a trend. We picked up a nice sixteen inch trout on the egg pattern. That was the last fish on that fly. After taking three nice trout on the pink worm, I switched the egg pattern, so that both my anglers were fishing the worm.

We motored up to the upper legal limits of the tailwater taking care not to enter the restricted area and then floated back down stream. My anglers cast their lines about twenty to twenty five feet from the boat. As we drifted down stream, the guys would carefully mend their lines to maintain a drag free drift and cast as necessary to keep their line in front of them. When the strike indicator went down, they set the hook. Fish on!

We caught some excellent fish, several fish in the sixteen to eighteen inch range and a couple of nineteen inchers. All of them were ridiculously fat and fought incredibly well. My clients were pretty happy. It was time for lunch. We motored over to the ramp and anchored the river boat.

We walked up the hill to my car and got the food out of my station wagon. For some inexplicable reason there are no picnic tables at this access or the one across the river in Marion County. I sometimes motor down to the State Park and use one of the picnic tables there but I decided to use the folding chairs and roll up table I keep in the back of my Volvo for occasions like this. We ate and relaxed for a few minutes. The lunch talk as always centered on the fishing. Did you see that big one that got away? I stowed away the gear and disposed of the trash. I saved the empty soda cans for the next time I passed one of the TU recycle bins.

We made our way back to my river boat. A fellow guide, Jeremy Hunt, was also anchored at the access. They had pulled the spider chairs out of the boat and had eaten their lunch on the bank. As is my habit, I asked how the fishing was going and what fly he was using. Though we were having success, I was interested in what he was doing so that I could include the information in my weekly fishing report.

Not all guides are willing to share. I am an open book. I feel that by improving fishing conditions for all we can improve the success for this fishery. Jeremy is a guide that shares his information and I appreciate that.

He said that he had been fishing shad patterns and had done well. Though the shad kill had been several months earlier, the trout will not soon forget the great surge of food that came through.

The shad kill is a natural phenomenon that normally occurs in the dead of winter. It generally requires cold weather and high levels of generation. When these conditions collide thousands of shad are killed and sucked through the generators. This results in a feeding frenzy in the tail waters below the dam.

When we returned to the water, I switched my client’s flies to shad patterns. We started having immediate success. We nailed a fat nineteen inch rainbow on the first drift. Jeremy had suggested drifting the shad pattern down through the center of the river. We had been catching most of our fish on the right bank and I continued drifting down that bank. We caught trout after trout and nothing less than seventeen inches long.

John hit a really good fish. I could tell by the way it was hugging the bottom it was a big brown trout. He had a really good quality rod and reel. This is where a good reel earns its keep. He kept steady pressure on the trout. Every time it took a good run you could hear the high pitched whine of the reel. Cliff cranked his rig in so that it would not get tangled in the fight.

John slowly eased the brown closer to the boat. He was doing a masterful job. Just then the brown surged under the boat. I was concerned. I had a good fish wrap the chain the week before and we had miraculously landed that one. This one was too big for that. It came out from under the boat and John eased it close. I slipped the net under it and quickly raised it out of the water. The fight was over and we won. We took a few photos. We never removed the brown from the net and released it carefully.

We caught a few more but nothing like that. The day ended an hour later. The hot action had taken a toll on my anglers and they were anxious to return to the lodge and tell their tales.

BY JOHN BERRY

Almost three decades ago, my brother, Dan, taught me how to fly fish. We have fished together ever since then. Over fifteen years ago, we started our business, Berry Brothers Guide Service. While we started as a guide service, our initial concentration was in teaching fly fishing and fly casting. Dan was the first Federation of Fly Fishers Certified Casting Instructor in Tennessee. Over the years, we literally taught thousands of people to fly fish and cast a fly rod.

Over time, I grew to prefer the guiding portion of the business. Almost nine years ago, I moved to Cotter to do just that. Dan stayed in Memphis and concentrated on teaching casting and developing his commercial photography business. While we occasionally get together for special projects, we just do not have many opportunities to fish together like before.

This past year has been the worst ever. The high water did not appeal to Dan. He prefers wading in gentle water, light tackle, long casts and tiny flies. Fishing from a boat with eight generators running at maximum capacity and heaving heavily weighted flies with serious meat sticks is just not his cup of tea. Oh, we went out a couple of times and he caught some decent fish but it was just not his thing. I, on the other hand, have come to embrace high water. It is not the genteel essence of fly fishing like in the fly fishing magazines. It is, for me, a viable fishing strategy that allows me to fish challenging conditions and produce trout.

Now that we have had some reliable low water, I have been calling Dan and trying to lure him here to fish with me. I told him tales of large fish on low water. In a final act of desperation, I reminded Dan that we could begin the day with a hearty breakfast at The Sands. There is nothing that flips his switch like a two or three of the Sand’s homemade biscuits swathed in sausage gravy. He finally agreed and asked a friend, Gary Powell to accompany him. He made it up on Saturday afternoon and they headed directly to the Norfork.

Dan and Gary waded up into the Catch and Release section. Dan migrated over to his favorite spot, the ring of rocks. This spot is a glass smooth pool with a gentle current running across it. There are always a fish rising there. The key to success here is a seventy foot cast and size twenty four or smaller flies. He rigged his rod with a long 6X tippet and his signature fly, Dan’s turkey tail emerger. He expertly cast to some large rising fish. Though his casts were perfect, he was unable to set the hook on most of the takes. Dan managed to land a few but he felt like he was off his game. Gary fared no better and only landed a couple.

I called Dan early the next day and we agreed to meet for breakfast and then fish at the Narrows. I arrived at the Sands first and drank a cup of coffee while waiting. When they arrived, we ordered breakfast. Tragedy struck. They were out of sausage gravy! Gary and I were OK. We ordered something else. Dan was inconsolable. After studying the menu, he finally ordered oatmeal and toast. When it arrived, he picked at it but did not eat. It was not his beloved biscuits with sausage gravy.

We left the restaurant. I stopped by the house to pick up my yellow lab, Ellie. Dan stopped by a gas station to get some peanut butter and crackers. We met at the pull out and walked through the cane break to the river. There were a few anglers there that had motored up in their boat but there was plenty of water to fish. We spread out and vainly tried several flies. We caught a few trout but it wasn’t happening. In desperation, I suggested a move to Wildcat Shoals a few miles down stream.

We parked at a friend’s house and walked through his yard to the river. There was no one there. We could see over a mile of river before us. It was on the bottom. With a sunny windless sky, the conditions were perfect. Dan hadn’t fished there in a while so I pointed out the most productive water for Gary and him to fish. I went upstream to fish some water where a client had done well a couple of weeks before.

Gary wanted to observe Dan’s technique so he located near him and just watched. Dan rigged his rod with a long 6X tippet and a partridge and orange soft hackle. On the second cast he landed a fat nineteen and one half inch rainbow. Two casts later he landed an eighteen inch rainbow that was fatter and fought better than the first fish. He was getting his mojo back. His reflexes were sharpening and he was definitely enjoying himself.

Gary got the idea. He rigged his rod with a long 6X tippet and a Dan’s turkey tail emerger. He located down stream from Dan and began picking up fish immediately.

The spot I was fishing was not producing much. I landed a couple of small fish but nothing like Dan’s. I stopped what I was doing and waded to a spot upstream from Dan. I rigged a partridge and orange soft hackle on a long tippet and began working the water before me. I picked up a few fish but I quickly realized that fishing behind Dan was not a great career decision. He was vacuuming the good fish from the water and leaving me a few runts. I moved far downstream below Gary to find some productive water.

By now, it was time for Dan and Gary to head back to Memphis. Dan’s success in the afternoon had renewed him, Gary had learned a new technique and I had been able to fish with my brother. The only thing that would have made the day better was some sausage gravy and biscuits.