Day 1

The Norfork had zero units on when we arrived. We decided to head up to the catch and release section. As we waded up river, we spotted a couple of smaller fish rising in shallower water. Rob took off to fish to risers and I continued up river. As I was wading I spooked a huge fish out from the bank and it took off down river. I continued making my way upstream and finally came to Mill Dam Eddy. I spent the next hour casting streamers into the deeper water and then working down to the shallow tail of the pool without so much as a follow. I headed back down river to see how Rob was doing. He had landed 5-6 fish at the head of the pool he was working. We headed up to the next riffle and worked it downstream, but didn't hook into any more fish. As we were heading back downstream, I spotted a nice rainbow in the area I had spooked the fish earlier. As I worked the rainbow, we spotted a pod with some monster browns down river. I headed down and began working the largest brown, which was close to 28 inches. I only got a couple of casts before it took off downstream with another brown that was maybe 24 inches. The third fish took off up river where Rob managed to hook it, only to have it break his line. As I headed back upstream to look for the rainbow, Rob's brown reappeared. He put a couple of casts on it and it finally took his brown worm. The fish put up a huge fight, taking Rob all over the river. We finally got it into some calmer water where I was able to net it. It was a large male brown in the 26-27 inch range with bright colors. We quickly snapped a couple of picks and let it go. We decided head up to the dam to fish for another hour before calling it a day. I started out fishing the riffle on the far back of the shoal and within a couple of casts I landed a nice 12 inch rainbow. I continued to work my way down past the boat launch and starting getting into a bunch of fish. I landed another 7-8 rainbows and a brown, all in the 12 -14 inch range.

Day 2

We decided to return early the next day, to see if any of the browns had returned to the same spot. It had snowed 6 inches that night, and we weren't surprised to find that we were the only ones in the lot when we arrived. We got up to the spot just as it was getting light out and I worked the area with hooking into any fish. Rob returned to riffles he had caught fish in the day before and I again headed up to fish the deeper pool. I took some casts in a riffle and deeper pool with a wooly bugger, but with no luck. I headed up to the deep pool and again stripped various streamers. I was pretty determined that I could fool at least one large fish, but again didn't even have a strike. I headed back down river where I could see Rob fighting a fish. When I got down to him I could tell it was pretty large. It was near the end of the battle and he managed to coax the fish into the net.

It was a FAT female...The fish's belly was dragging on the bottom of the river it was so fat. We took a quick picture of the fish, a 21 inch brown, and let her go. Rob hooked into two more fish as we continued to make our way down river. When the other fishermen finally started to arrive, we decided to head back to the White to try some new holes.

Day 3

We decided to give the night fishing another shot on the Norfork, even though the air temps were in the single digits. We are definitely hard core fishermen! We headed up to the catch and release section and began working a shallow run where we had spotted a lot of fish the day before. After working the run with no fish I headed back up to the tailout a huge pool. I had spotted a couple of larger browns cruising the previous day and knew it should be a good spot. I spent the next hour stripping and swinging streams through the tailout and did not have a single solid strike. I did have two smaller fish swirl, either missing the fly or I had spooked them with the fly. We tried the riffles and runs that had produced nice fish during the day and still no fish.

The best flies for us were trout crack, brown worms, a smaller wooly buggers up by the dam. The air temps for the weekend were in the 20's during the day and single digits at night. The cold weather and snow also seemed to turn the fish off on the Norfork. We fished the river under zero generation and they had briefly had 1 generator on both nights we were there.