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White River (North-Central Arkansas)

Location: North-central Arkansas, close to the Arkansas-Missouri border. Cotter, Arkansas is 2¼ hours from Springfield, Missouri; 2½ hours from Fayetteville; 3 hours from Little Rock; and 4 hours from Memphis, Tennessee, all with full-service airports. Branson, Missouri offers limited flights, and is 90 minutes from Cotter.

The White River tailwater below Bull Shoals Dam is the finest tailwater in the Lower 48 to hunt for trophy browns—or if you are looking for plenty of action. Big brown trout (24 to 30 inches) get all the attention, but the White River fishery is more layered and nuanced—dedicated nymph and midge fishers will be right at home. Wet-fly and Euro nymph fishers can find their water, while streamer addicts and dry-fly aficionados can find outstanding brown trout fishing.

The White offers something for every fly fisher. She bolsters the confidence of novices through plenty of bent-rod positive reinforcement via the bounty of rainbows from Norfork Federal Fish Hatchery. Experts challenge themselves hunting the river’s trophy brown trout or figuring out the abundant midge hatches. But the White is harder to know intimately. The power station releases can fluctuate from 50-24,000 cfs—occasionally within a single day—but variations of up to 10,000 cfs are more common. So seeking advice from guides and shops makes good sense, both for

safety and to maximize your fishing experience. And local know-how is essential for trophy hunters. Trout feeding behavior, holding lies, and the best methods to catch them change with the flows.

The 32-mile stretch below Bull Shoals Dam (down to Buffalo City) has the highest trout density—and the most public accesses and fishing pressure—but fly-fishing activity becomes scarce below the confluence with the Norfork Tailwater.

The two catch-and-release, barbless-hooks-only trophy zones (the first immediately below Bull Shoals Dam, and the second 20 miles downstream at Rim Shoals) draw fly fishers like a magnet. Bull Shoals does hold some of the best rainbow trout in the river, but in reality, neither zone is large enough to offer significantly better fishing than other sections.

Wade fishers traditionally enjoy the “zero-generation,” 50-cfs flows, when the broad expanses of the White can be

crossed and the long, slow, flat glides and the steeper riffles—known locally as “shoals”—can be remarkably productive.