thoughts on river levels - Arkansas River

I like to fish the river in the pool above Ozark. I've fished out of Clear Creek, Vache Grasse, and Vine Prairie at different times, so I'm somewhat familiar with all of them. I was hoping to go tomorrow, but the river appears to have quite a bit of flow right now (60k cfs). I have a bunch of spots that are protected, but just off the main channel rather than up a backwater. In what I'd call "low" water, the river is generally running about 20k cfs. So this is three times as much water and at least two or three feet higher.

Assuming those water levels hold for tomorrow, what does it do to the fish? If they cut it back to 20 or 30, what would that do (the river would fall two feet)? For those of you who fish jetties and inlets just off the channel, do you tend to stick more to the back waters when the river is running like that?

USGS Current Conditions for USGS 07258000 Arkansas River at Dardanelle, AR

Arkansas River Projects

I don't do any good on the river until the flow is almost nonexistent. But then.........I don't do good on lots of places, so I'm not a good reference.

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Originally Posted by Roughneck

USGS Current Conditions for USGS 07258000 Arkansas River at Dardanelle, AR

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I watch the gauge for Trimble through USGS, and the Corps tabular release information. One gauge alone doesn't give you a very good picture of what's going on, though it's easy to see that Dardanelle is high. The whole river is high at the moment, but the headwater above Trimble is in normal ranges. So they should stop hammering water soon, but they haven't stopped yet.

60,000 cfs is just too much current for me to want to be out there. I'll stick to a back water tomorrow or...sigh...go to Beaver.

I'm new to crappie fishing the river so take my advice with a grain of salt lol. But I've bass fished the ozark pool my whole life. Usually I will try to watch Jeta Taylor as well. If they are pushing or pulling more water than Trimble that's when the water will be really screwed up and it will be sucking the water out of the backwaters. Also as long as they keep it a steady flow the fish will get on somewhat a pattern but you'll have to be in some cuts that don't get bothered by current. I live about 10 min from the clear creek ramp and I'm headed out tonight, the weather is too nice to let the water level bother me unless it's over 70k which is when they issue a small craft advisory. Any reference points you would like pictures of to see the level?

Also if you don't have the USACE LITTLE ROCK phone app you need to!! Looks like they have cut back to the 40 range this past hour.

I don't have the app. I look it up the hard way!

Like I said, my spots are just off the channel but get some protection. I'd think I could probably do ok up the mulberry if I wanted to fish down there.

If it got down in the 30 range that's where I really like it. I'm ready to catch some shallow fish and would rather go to the river, but if the water is all screwed up and the fish are having to pull way back, then I'd probably just stick close to home and fish Beaver.

Also, if you look here: USGS Current Conditions for USGS 07250550 AR River at James W. Trimble L&D nr Van Buren, AR, you can see that the headwater above Trimble is coming up quick now that they've lowered the gates a bit. They'll have to open them back up some more soon I think.