We arrived at our White River campsite in the remote Ozark Mountain region of Arkansas yesterday evening- very rural, lots of tiny towns, pick up trucks, and fisherman. There is a big Depression era dam here providing very good, cold "tail water", excellent for trout. We wouldn't have thought it this far south, but it is a healthy trout fishery. After dinner, we prepared to turn in early as we were meeting our guide at 7:30am. Then it started raining, and it rained all night. Rain in an Airstream has a very distinctive pinging quality that takes some getting used to. We are both still adjusting and can't say we slept well. By 5pm Sally noted that if it kept raining she thought she might forgo fishing and read a book. Ron couldn't blame her. However promptly at 6 am the rain stopped. We decided to carry on with our fishing adventure. It turned out to be a nice day on the river.
The White is a big river with big flow so it is drift boat country. We started with nymphs and Sally quickly caught three nice rainbows of the 10 to 12 inch variety, not big but very healthy, feisty, fish- lots of jumps. Meanwhile Ron floated along confidant his time would come, but a bit worried. In the end , with a rig change or two, he finally got in the game. The highlight of the trip was the late morning caddis hatch, the first on the river this year. We quickly changed to dry flies and Ron caught a good- sized brown trout which our guide wanted a picture of to commemorate the first brown on a dry of 2022.. There were lots of caddis around and at one point Sally was in the middle of 6 or 7 brown trout, all eating caddis's but not hers!
The afternoon was slower, but the caddis stayed around and we were able to get a few more rainbows. All in all, it was a decent day. The White is not a pretty drift like the Green River in Wyoming. Our guide was OK, but absorbed in his own personal problems. Still, it was good to wet a line and see some action- the first of this kind on the trip- which just passed 3000 miles on our odometer.
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