Fishing for stripers with fly rod challenges anglers
Going after heavyweight striped bass at Beaver Lake is a challenge for any angler. The ultimate test is catching these finned torpedoes with a fly rod.
A striper weighing in the range of 20 pounds is a trophy for nearly everyone. That’s a tremendous fish, but they grow larger than that, a lot larger. It takes a 30-pounder to turn many heads among avid striper chasers.
The state record is 64 pounds, 8 ounces caught in 2000 from the White River below Beaver Dam. That fish probably shouldn’t have been in the river. It evidently washed over Beaver Dam and into the river when the spillway gates were open. It likely grew such girth gorging on the river’s rainbow trout.
To catch such a giant like that takes plenty of skill. So does landing any doubledigit striper by fly fishing.
Bruce Darr proves time and again that fly fishing works for catching striped bass at Beaver Lake. He routinely catches stripers in the 10- to 20-pound range on his fly rod. His largest fly-rod striper pegged the scales at 29 pounds. “I’ve yet to break 30,” he said.
“Once the water dips below 60 degrees, it’s time to start looking for stripers breaking the surface,” he said.
The big fish often go on a feeding frenzy pushing big schools of theadfin shad toward the surface. Shad are the main forage for stripers at Beaver. When stripers break the surface gulping down shad, the commotion can be so explosive that there’s no mistaking the activity for anything but striped bass.
Sometimes Darr will see shad on his fish-finding sonar but no surfacing stripers. He’ll cast anyway because stripers are likely hanging around.
The big bait, bit fish theory doesn’t always apply to fly-rod stripers. Darr’s favorite fly is a Clouser minnow an inch or two long. He ties his own flies that are mostly white with some blue, gray or other color in the mix.
Darr flings the fly with an 8-weight fly rod. That’s a stout stick in the fly fishing world, but necessary to land big fish. He ties his Clouser minnow to 10-pound test line, or 2X tippet in fly fishing lingo.
“I think when they’re really biting, you can get away with 12-pound test,” he said.
The fly line on his reel has a sinking tip that gets his fly down to 10 feet. Sometimes a striper will bite the second it hits the water. Another handy tool for any striper fishing is a big net.
“A different technique it to just sort of troll the fly. Cast it out, let it sink and troll along slow,” he coached.
During winter, the area around Point 12 on the far south end of the lake is ground zero for striped bass. It’s where the White and War Eagle river arms meet. “Striper junction,” it’s called by lots of fishermen.
Jon Conklin, a multispecies fishing guide from Goshen, said it’s a hot spot because it’s a prespawn area for stripers. These fish go through the motions of spawning, but without success. Striper eggs must be suspended in current for at least 24 hours to hatch. There isn’t enough current in the lake for that. Striper eggs sink to the bottom and die.
Another reason Point 12 is hot is there are lots of shad, Conklin noted. Once the water warms in spring, stripers migrate back downstream and the north half of the lake is best to fish in warm months.
Since stripers aren’t successful spawners, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission stocks them in Beaver Lake. Decades ago an average of 160,000 striper fingerlings, around 2 inches long, were stocked each year, said Jon Stein, fisheries biologist and Northwest Arkansas fisheries supervisor with Game and Fish.
In 2015, the number was raised to 200,000, and now 280,000 striper fingerlings are stocked each year, he said. There’s no way to know how many of those reach a legal size of 20 inches to keep, he added. The daily striper limit at Beaver Lake is three. Striper fingerlings are raised at a Game and Fish hatchery near Hot Springs.
Fly fishing for stripers is a heart-racing way to catch big fish for sure. During winter, anglers who win the battle can release their fish because survival rate is good in cold water, Stein said. In the summer, anglers are encouraged to keep legal stripers for the table. Survival rate declines once the water temperature tops 70 degrees.