Summer fishing still hot all over Arkansas

Anglers have plenty of options for August trips to the honey hole

From Jim Harris jim.harris@agfc.ar.gov

• Slab Crappie Are Hitting at Hot Millwood Lake Anglers know Millwood Lake for being a great black bass lake with large bass, but in recent days it’s turned into a crappie hot spot. Guide Mike Siefert tells us the crappie “are on FI-yah,” and these are big crappie (up to 2.5 pounds) to boot. This is despite the heat turning back on in intensity the past few days, too. Mike says the crappie (left photo) are consistently biting minnows for the past few weeks in the standing timber of the oxbows and planted brush piles along Little River, just out of river current behind primary or secondary points. Minnows have been seeing the best bite over the past few weeks with an occasional largemouth or white bass stealing it.

The bite is from daylight to around 10-11 a.m. when the bite almost shuts off like for the largemouth bass, which are in their typical full-blown summer pattern. Most of the crappie have been holding from 4-9 feet of depth around cypress trees where deeper drops are nearby. Once the sun starts heating the 3-5 feet depth range, the crappie are retreating to standing timber or planted brush piles, nearby in 10-17 feet of depth, and the bite slows considerably.

Check out more of Mike’s report from Millwood and more great reports this week by clicking the green button below.

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• AGFC Talks Management of Bull Shoals, Norfork Tailwaters The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission will update all interested anglers about trout management and habitat work on the Bull Shoals and Norfork tailwaters in northern Arkansas at a town hall meeting from 6 to 8 p.m.

Thursday, Aug.15. The meeting will be held at the Arkansas State University Mountain Home campus in the McMullin Lecture Hall (Room D200) of Dryer Hall. AGFC Trout Management Supervisor Christy Graham says the workshop is a follow up to the 2017 revisit of the Bull Shoals and Norfork Tailwaters Management Plan. “We have made a lot of progress on work outlined in that plan,” Graham said. “One of the main goals of the new plan is to keep communication with our stakeholders open and transparent. A specific strategy we included was the creation of annual information meetings to keep our anglers up to date on progress made and challenges we’ve discovered or overcome.”

The management plans for these trout tailwaters can be found at https://www.

agfc.com.

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• Big Fish Being Caught at Special Events Wyatt Moritz and his fishing buddy Doug hauled in a 26-inch brown trout recently on the White River near Cotter Trout Dock.

That’s just some of the great catches we’re hearing about in recent days from all over the state, but especially with the brown and rainbow trout in north Arkansas. Guide John Berry has a great story of a youth’s incredible catches at Dry Run Creek; just check out his report from the Norfork tailwater in this week’s Fishing Report and read all about it.

Also, one great event not to miss is the Special Olympics Fishing Derby at Hot Springs Family Park, just off Airport Road in the Spa City. While geared toward giving Special Olympics athletes and their families a chance at fishing for catfish (as well as bream and bass in the pond), the entire community is invited to take it in. The AGFC’s Family and Community Fishing Program is supporting the event, which is run every year by Arkansan and pro angler Cody Kelley. He times the event to coincide with a return home when the FLW Tour has wrapped up and the organization (along with the FLW Foundation) is holding the FLW Cup in the Hot Springs area. The event will run from 8-11 a.m., and the best anglers among the Special Olympians will then head over the Bank OZK Arena in Hot Springs to be recognized with prizes and meet the pros.

And, while we’re thinking about it, anyone who loves fishing ought to head over to Hot Springs and Bank OZK Arena this week, starting at 10:30 a.m. each day, and take in the the FLW Expo. Plus, not only is the FLW Cup being staged over there, a few hundred kayak anglers will be participating in a twoday national tournament on Lake Ouachita while The Bass Federation stages its Junior World Championship out of the North Little Rock launch by Hastings Pavilion Thursday through Saturday on the Arkansas River.

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• Send us Your Big Catches!

We love hearing from you… Drop a line and let us know what’s going on in your neck of the woods.

Sent any hunting or fishing news our way to jim.harris@ agfc.ar.gov.

Also, do you have an angling friend who you think might want to receive the Fishing Report every Wednesday, or might be interested in the other AGFC offerings such as the weekly newsletter or the Waterfowl Report, which is about to grown to monthly during the non-hunting months? Tell them to e-mail us to sign up for any, or all, of our weekly and monthly reports to stay on top of what’s happening in the Arkansas outdoors.