Back from Lake Norfork

[CrappieHusker]

Well it's nice to be where the wind is not constantly blowing 30 or 40 MPH! My wife and I got to Mountain Home last Monday afternoon. It was cold and windy. We got back here yesterday afternoon and it was.....cold and windy. Fished from the docks at Teal Point Resort Monday afternoon and evening, caught nada! The water temp, according to the resort owner was 38 degrees sometime last week. It was not much warmer than that when we got there.:o
Tried minnows, jigs, jig and minnows and minnows and minnows. Nada. Told the owner that I would like to rent a boat the next morning (Tuesday). Their 60 HP bassboat was in the shop, so I rented a 16 foot aluminum boat with 15 HP motor and a weird trolling motor/depth finder combination. 17 pound thrust and a depth finder that sometimes told me the depths between 10 and 40 feet and sometimes didn't say anything. Anything greater than 40 feet was a guess on my part as the channel drops from 40 to 70 and greater. So I spent 9 hours on the lake (my wife went out with me for 3 hours later in the day when it "warmed up" a bit. Fished changes in the rock structure, indentations and deep points outside of coves. I thought that I may accidently run into schools of crappie, but the only way I would know would be if I caught more than 1.
Totals for the 9 hours of fishing: 2 smallmouth bass that went 14" each, 1 largemouth bass that went 13" and 5 spots (Kentucky Bass) the largest which was 17". Ended up catching all fish on a red/chartruese 1/32 oz. crappie jig 2 of which were slab busters) all tipped with a minnow. Most were caught in 20 to 30 feet of water with at least 2 or 3 coming out of 60 or 70 feet of water! Was lucky that was the only non-windy day, otherwise would have been impossible to get down that deep with a light jig.
We spent the rest of the fishing time down there fishing for trout in the White River and the North Fork of the White River, as we stayed in a resort down there below the Norfork Dam. We drove up to Mammoth Springs and fished for trout there the last afternoon we were there and did well. The water in the trout areas-the springs and below the Norfork Dam was probably 15 degrees warmer than the water in the lake!