Arkansas: "Natural Disaster", a Wrap-up

**Dave** · 11-14-2007, 12:30 AM

Woweewow (as they say down south)! Arkansas was a BLAST ;D to say the least. Aaron and I were discussing that we probably caught upwards of 500-600 fish this trip. Keep in mind, 175-200 of those were on the Norfork for an afternoon!

Browns, rainbows, brookies, and cutthroat. . .could you ask for anything more?

With no exaggeration, so many of the fish were real lunkers, upwards of 20+ inches, the largest ones being over TWO FEET! The smaller fish were rainbows, as all the browns were big (I don't think we landed a brown smaller than 18/19'', or if we did, it was rare). ALL sweet wild browns!!!

Alright, getting back to the conclusions:
We stayed at a great lodge, with friendly folks on either side of our cabin room. In fact, we had a really funny guy next to us that had an unusually "explosive" and "salty" vocabulary (let's just say I'm glad there were no children around

). . .I don't think he closed his mouth for more than 3 seconds the entire night. The lodge owners were very friendly, and shared some great information with us, and helped us out when we needed something.

Food Review: LOTS and LOTS of Mexican food. "El Rey" was the premiere Mexican restaurant in Heber Springs, although it was only open one night when we were there. Great food, great people. We tried lots of Chinese, more Mexican, and some fast food to fill in the cracks. The Chinese buffet may be something to keep away from there. My favorite was the breakfast "Biscuits" sold at the local gas station. Seriously, these were homemade, with sausage, egg, cheese and bacon. I couldn't keep my hands off of them! I usually got a couple, and stashed them down my waders for periodic snacks throughout.

Other Anglers: This is a touchy subject, but must be addressed. As expected, there was a WIDE range of anglers, in both their skill, and in river etiquette. Most were selfish with space, and were eager to snatch your spot, like anywhere. I had to use the outdoor "facilities" one morning, only to come back to TWO anglers in my spot, MOMENTS later. However, the good thing was, not much polution at all. River access is tough in some parts, and home owners aren't very sympathetic to anglers. It's funny, there was a huge generation gap between anglers. Most were very elderly, not too many young anglers at all. We did manage to befriend at least a handful of anglers from both rivers.

We FISHED really hard, with long days, and short, short nights. Sleep was rare ;D! Our room was filled with hundreds of lbs. of fishing equipment. . .rods, reels, outerwear, FLY TYING EQUIPMENT, fly boxes, streamer boxes, tippets galore, extra spools, you name it, it was there. Aaron came prepared as if marching into BATTLE, and that we did ! ! ! (as expected). Combined, we had thousands of flies ready to go and catch those browns. It was a trip to remember alright.

Well, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The memories will certainly remain for a lifetime. It was an exhilarating trip, thanks buddy.

**Dave** · 11-15-2007, 08:43 PM

I'm still exhausted from the trip, and my arms are still recovering from catching all those southern Brown Trout! ;D Arkansas was a BLAST! ! !

While organizing the mass amounts of photos and videos, I found a few more worth sharing.

This first one is of a flock of VULTURES! These ravenous birds are HUGE. I'm sure glad we weren't bleeding from any pores

:

Some more browns: