Many Thanks to Mike and Christy Mayer for being gracious enough to let Ryan join Mike and Matt for the weekend. Ryan works with Matt (their son) and once they found out they were both trout enthusiasts (ahem....FLY Fishermen), the planning started and culminated in 4-days of trout fishing greatness!!
The closest town is 'Mountain Home', which is right in between the two lakes, Norfork and Bull Shoals. Bull Shoals' tailwater is the White River and Norfork's tailwater is the Norfork River and the two converge southwest of Norfork lake to create probably the best trophy Brown Trout habitat in the world!! They showed up at the river on Saturday morning and guess who caught the first fish while the other two guys were still figuring out where to put their lines!!! (that's why Ryan had such a great camera operator).They all caught tons of fish over the weekend, but Ryan is not too modest to say that he was the only one that caught a Brown of any good size. No pictures yet (Matt got a good one on his I-phone that he hasn't sent to Ryan yet), but we will post them when we get them.
Catching a sizeable Brown Trout on a fly rod was indescribable. Ryan's hands were shaking for about 15 minutes after he landed that bad boy!! Ryan and Matt both caught 18" rainbows and Mike hooked a really nice one. All told, the guys probably caught 6-10 fish per day EACH! And this is not a trout park folks! These fish are wild, though the populations are not native to AR, they reproduce naturally, and fight just like in the movies!
Tough thing was, Ryan promised to help Matt and Mike figure out the lake while they were down there. Norfork Lake has a max depth of about 160 feet and is crystal clear.....a bit off from what Ryan is used to fishing. They threw everything at those lake fish and barely had a bite. Thankfully, the trout fishing was good enough to wipe that sore spot out of everyone's mind.
What a trip!! I think there may be another....
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