Greers Ferry Fishing Report Updated Weekly Greers Ferry Lake Fishing Information Arkansas |
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Report Updated December 12, 2007
After a long absence of this report,
it's time to start regular reports from our winter home here in
Greers Ferry Arkansas. We arrived back to our Ozark home and, of
course, began our daily fishing trips on this great reservoir.
The weather the whole month of November
was superb with highs most every day in the 60s and 70s. Water
temps remained the whole month in the mid 60s. Water levels in the
lake are close to normal at only about 4 feet low, so almost all
areas of the lake are accessible. Only the far reaches of the 3
main feeder arms of the Little Red River cannot be reached.
As a whole, November fishing was down
over past Novembers. For some reason, schooling of white bass and
hybrids did not take place. Very little surfacing of fish was
seen. This means shad were not pushed to the surface and all game
fish remained deeper than normal. We did manage to catch fish every
day, though. The secret was to locate schools of bait fish with the
depth finder and concentrate in those areas. The schools of shad
are being found in 30 to 60 feet of water for the most part.
It is absolutely necessary to locate
structure of some sort to entice game fish. We have found the bulk
of active fish tightly relating to small piles of rock on mid lake
structure of drops of sand flats. Now when I say rocks, I don't
mean chunk rocks. I mean boulder rocks ranging from golf ball size
to basketball size. These rock areas are not huge areas, but maybe
100 yards long at the most. Remember, these rocks will be in 25 to
50 feet of water. Once found, extreme patience must be used to pick
off a fish here and one there. I do this using a very slow bouncing
of a 1/16 or 1/8 oz lead head jig tipped with a crawler or medium to
large golden shiner.
Crawlers are not hard to find, but
large golden shiners are very difficult to find, as most bait shops
will not stock minnows again until spring. There is only one bait
shop in the Greers Ferry Lake area that is still stocking decent
size minnows. Woody's Bait and Tackle in Choctaw on Hwy 65 just
south of Clinton is the spot. Even Woody is closing the end of
December. At that point, I am forced to travel over 75 miles to
find decent minnows. We then buy them in bulk and keep them in
large aerated coolers at home.
I'm totally convinced this is necessary
to produce fish throughout the winter here. As water cools as it is
doing now into the mid 50s to mid 40s, game fish metabolism slows
and they are much more reluctant to chase fast moving artificials.
Many manufacturers of various lures and imitations of live bait
advertise their product as just as good as live bait. Don't believe
this. Nothing replaces the real thing. Live night crawlers or live
minnows will out produce artificials 5 to 1 in cold water
conditions. If you're traveling here to fish, it is my advice to
bring live bait along with you from bait shops that stock good live
bait year round. The bigger the minnows, the better.
Also it is critical to use this live
bait very slowly. The run and gun approach or trolling lures will
result in very little success. Once a school of active fish is
found by us, we concentrate on that particular area. It sometimes
will take us 2 hours to cover an area of only 500 yards of good
structure picking off a fish every 15 to 20 minutes. I figure right
now one keeper fish in the live well per man hour is good fishing.
There are times, however, they will hit
very aggressively and fast and furious. An example of that was Wed,
Dec 5, when Pat, "Uncle" Fred Anderson, and I located a huge school
of shad hanging around a marina. We enjoyed non stop action,
boating close to 100 beautiful Kentuckies, large mouth, small mouth
bass, and even walleye in less than 3 hours time. These were nice
fish with even the Kentuckies averaging 2 to 3 lbs. The method, of
course, was live bait, 8 lb test line, and, yes, 1/16 oz jigs used
in 20 to 40 feet of water.
This type of action is not to be
expected on a regular basis, though. Expect slower action, but if
this method is used, you will produce a decent catch every day. Now
that you understand it's patience and live bait that is producing,
on my next report we will discuss precise areas of the lake and the
species we are catching in those areas. See ya then.
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