Public access points on the White River are very popular for all kinds of anglers all over Arkansas.
While Ray Tucker and I prepared to launch my boat at the Sylamore Access, an elderly gentleman showed up and immediately began catching rainbow trout from the bank. That was about 10 a.m., and he was still fishing when Tucker and I returned at about 6:30 p.m.
As we prepared to leave, we chatted with Jason Love of Mountain View, who devoted a few hours of his busy evening to fish for trout in the swift water.
"Did you see the otter?" Love shouted.
Sure enough, a river otter had snatched a trout right off the bank and slowly swam to his lair in the bank at Sportsman's Trout Dock.
"That's why the trout ain't biting!" Love said. "It's because he's biting!"
Another fellow asked us what baits we recommended. We were the wrong people to ask, we said, because we didn't catch any trout.
He said that he and his family live in Benton, and they made the trip especially to fish for trout from the bank. They said they do it frequently.
"You don't think these kinds of places aren't important?" Tucker asked. "For people like that to come all the way up here without a boat and go back the same day because they love fishing that much?
"And to think," Tucker added, "there are people in Arkansas that don't know any of this even exists."
Sports on 06/24/2018