Well I will start with a half apology for statements I made in just my pics post. Response came from being in a car for 10 hours with two ladies that needed a few more bathroom breaks and only getting about three hours of sleep a day for a week. I am as easy going as they come ,and one of the most conservation minded sportsman you will ever meet. I fish and hunt over 200 days a year. I managed several private lakes for a few ranchers in central Texas for trophy bass and I have been doing this since I was in my late teens. I have never fished trout off the Redds. I am not sure if that was a shot at me because it was thought I was a trout eating hillbilly(I don't even have a stringer in my trout stuff)but I don't eat trout or just an individual that has never read any post from my trips where I just post pics and give a report on return. But as much as I try to improve the outdoors for the generations to come including my kids and their kids and I am trying to bridge the generation gap in the flyfishing world especially in Texas with the lack of flyfisherman out there.seeing as most of the good points have already been covered I won't have a lot to talk about on my own trip but hey saved me some typing lol. As far as the Redds go they are very visible and you really need to avoid them this time of year the fish are concentrated there is NO need to target active fish. I understand that you need to cross the river at times if you are near Redds please do this down stream so you don't drift silt down to the eggs and suffocate them. I have frequently seen people at broken Bow with the successful spawning in the last few years just trample right through the middle of the Redds crossing lost creek. Please learn how to adentify them and use your brain. Well I guess back to the trip. I try and target transition areas much like when you fish for bass. The week was amazing with a mix of clouds and rain and a bright moonlight. So I was able to really catch a ton of rainbow and browns this trip. I am sure as some of y'all have mentioned you had wanted to try or you have heard that fly fishing is really good at night. It can be exceptional but the rainbows will typically bite all night whereas Browns you will generally get an hour and a half window at some point through the night you just have to be there when it happens. If the Browns will key him on the streamers you can generally cast down and across and give several upstream mends to your line to get them to bite. After the mends let the fly swing to strait down stream most bites occur at the very end of the swing. I normally let it sit right there for a few seconds before I start slowly stripping in the fly if you have not got a hit by now often times that first strip will trigger the bite. Anything dark in color and with a little bunny is my favorite woolly bugger so will work just fine as well. This was my go to the last year but they seemed to favor the nymph rig this year. If you were going to do this my biggest philosophy is Scout your area during the day. It is even better if you can scout the area with several different levels of generation. Scuds are one of the few patterns that I absolutely do not like bead head versions. It tends to make them drift unnaturally. I try and use one small split shot per unit they are running when they are generating power. I tried to keep the amount of tippet from the shot to the fly at a minimal this really seems to keep from snagging fish. Then I add a second fly around 15 inches from the first. As for seeing the indicator I use a 5/33 drill bit to drill out the indicators shown. I then use the glow sticks shown(academy has four packs)as the peg after I have drill the hole. Just remember when doing this you will need to thread the line through the indicator before you tie on your fly.at night you can get by with at least one x size tippet than day most of the time two jumps up. This helps land fish quicker and reduce stress. As for flys black grey and sultan soft shell scuds where the hot ticket. Followed by a slightly smaller version or hunch back scud the last night I was running low on scuds and did real well on grey sow bugs. If you can see I use barbless hooks to aid in unhooking the fish in the dark I am looking for an area where there is a Riffle followed by a long deep pool most of the time to target. This is why scouting your area during the day is so crucial. If you are having a hard time to mend line during the day only imagine that with complex currents in the dark. So if you can really see what the water is doing during the day I think it will help you visualize it in the dark by using the glow stick as a point of reference.123123123123my girlfriends mom actually went with us on the trip. She had an absolutely amazing time and took more pictures then you could count LOL.

I am really proud she is really focusing on what she is learning and learns a little bit more each trip. The one night she fished she froze out really quick but she caught a lot of fish over the trip :-) and hey I managed to catch a brown during the daylight even though I only fish in the light for 30 minutes over the week. The biggest thing to remember is that trout are really susceptible to over handling. This does not just go for night fishing for trout but even during the day. When I set up on the run I plan on fishing that night I set my dry box with my camera on top of it and four headlamps two on either side up for lighting before I start fishing. I keep the Wi-Fi remote in my dry pocket on my waders so as soon as I land of the fish I can wet my hands hold it up push a button take a picture and release. A good release is even more critical this time of year as no matter where you catch them they are on their way to spawn or they are trying to recover from already spawning. I hope this might give you a little insight into catching a trout at night it was an absolutely amazing trip.

There will always be a jealous Troll trying to [censored] on ur parade, then write a book about it. Great trip man! Wish my old lady would fish w/ me more.

You boys are cracking me up. I like you, Robert. Carey? Not so much.

Awesome Post! Good job.

Awesome report.

Like what your doing there Robert.

Really great information and pictures!!! Thanks for sharing.

Robert, I have read your posts, and you've made the most informative one here about this trip to the magnificent White River. I'm amazed that you even posted photos of the flies you used! I feel that I could make the trip and have at least a decent shot at catching a decent fish.

Kudos to you. Thank you for your post. I've been to the White once, and I've been to the Little Red a couple of times. Because of your post, my next trip either place will be more successful.

JR

I will tell you this if there's any amount of wind it all and you don't have above average casting ability I would probably wait for another night. Wind knots Are frustrating enough now add the fact that there's no light to see it can frustrate you in a hurry. In the long run though I really think it improves your casting because you're doing everything off of feel you really have to feel the rod load up going forward and backwards and it will really help your cast. Mending a nymph rig in the dark is another thing especially with the nymphs where drag free drift is critical. That is probably where the scouting pays off the most so you can see the seams in the current that you will be mending against in the daylight. If you are on a run you can get close enough I would just high stick or Czec style. You can also get directly downstream of where you're going to be fishing in cash directly upstream and strip the line in at the same pace the indicator is moving at you but your risk spooking fish.

Great report Rob! I know you love a good debate but let the haters HATE...great pics. We need to catch up soon. Kudos for taking her mom too! I'm hitting a spot w my in-laws in a few weeks. Remind me to tell you the story of our last trip out there. LOL.

Lol will do!

@ split cane. If you really sit down and focus on the night fishing it can be exceptional I hope I helped. I am one of the weird ones I watched walkers K chronicles growing up and picked up a fly rod and was shooting line into the backing the first day I picked up a fly rod I can just see it and do it. My only problem is that it took a while to omit the double haul out of my flycast when I was casting a size 22 Griffiths nat with my three weight lol. The night fishing is not for everybody. I come from the same lines as Bass busting Texan as a traditional bass angler. On some nights it is slow and tedious but it can pay big dividends. I really wish I had the best flies of the trip left but I had popped most of them off the black tan and gray soft scuds were really the best flies of the trip.

Carey's as generously helpful to those of us who are still learning as anyone on this or any board I've been on, and that's saying a lot, because I've found generousity and kindness to be the norm among both amateur fly-fishermen and the pro-guides.

I fished at Cotter last year, around His Place and the RV Park. Very nice wade-fishing there. I did well for one who's still pretty new to fly fishing, mostly on red-booty type soft-hackles. Couldn't get midges or other nymphs to work for some reason. But if any of y'all go to the Bull Shoals tailwater of the White, be sure to plan a run over to the Norfork tailwater (45 minutes from Cotter). I'll bet they don't make too many more gorgeous fly-fishing stream sections than that even in the Catskills or Montana or Colorado. I fished it twice while I was up there and plan definitely to return some time. For one thing, it's a lot smaller and less intimidating than the main BS tailwater. My buddy's headed up that way soon. I recommended Charlie's on the Norfork to him merely by its perfect location without knowing a thing about the accomadations.

This year I'm going to be fishing the Beaver Dam tailwater by Eureka Springs. Wife was a little bored while I was fishing, so this year she can hang out in ES while I fish. I still dream of the Norfork, but I imagine BD will provide me with all the action I desire.

Robert,

It was definitely not a "shot at you." I was going to PM you about this because I don't think personal conversations work very well in this type of format, but your PM box is OTL...which I have never seen before. So I'll explain why publicly.

You see, I was born in the Ozarks to parents of two families who had lived in the Ozarks since the early and mid 1800's, respectively. My ethnic heritage is quite "hillbilly." I don't consider that a derogatory reference. I'm quite proud of my genealogy. We moved to ETX when I was 12 and I have spent about half of my adult life in the USA in the Ozarks and half in ETX.

The reference was purely historical, for the purpose of explaining the nature of the struggle for ecological social change regarding those fisheries. It had nothing to do with you whatsoever.

I made it very clear that I was trying not to pass judgment on your activities or give an answer to the question "should or shouldn't people target Browns during the spawn in waters where natural reproduction is known to occur." I was attempting to raise awareness regarding the circumstances and allow people to make more educated choices, because it is legal there. I not only don't oppose, but I aggressively defend licensed anglers' rights to fish by all legal means...period. I always have. Sometimes, I have become involved in efforts to change the law or improve enforcement, but I will never attack a licensed angler for fishing legally! And...as an outdoor journalist...I have refused many requests to do precisely that over the decades (including this year). They come up constantly for guys like me.

Your photo posts were getting a lot of attention without any of the context. This post did a great job of explaining the context and how you were fishing in ways that you believe minimize the impact and are completely legal. Had it preceded or accompanied all those hero shots, I wouldn't have felt any need to comment other than congratulations for the great pics. Raising questions of sporting ethics is not "hating" or any sort of personal attack. Accusing is not the same as questioning. I provided you with an opportunity to educate everyone further about what you were doing and why. I never accused you of fishing on the redds. Did I? I explained fishing on the redds and the impact it has on the sustainability of the fishery for the future. I had no idea whether you were or not, and I'm pretty darned deliberate in the way I write things and speak.

I posted an entire paragraph of explanation in my original post:

Now, I am not trying to get on a high-horse or be a kill-joy. I keep and eat fish. I hunt. I consider catch-n-release a management tool, not an ethical imperative. But I was up there for a week last week fishing with 2 guides and we avoided some key spawning areas to let these girls make a bunch of baby Brown Trout for the rest of y'all to catch in the future. I am a Texas Angler Ed Instructor, and I take that responsibility seriously enough to make this post, in spite of it being an entirely volunteer gig. I'm not taking sides about should you/shouldn't you, because...generally speaking...it is legal there. I do not criticize anyone who is fishing legally. But I think we should all be aware of what we're actually looking at, talking about, and doing. There is a cost associated with our sport, no matter how we pursue it. But some things are much more costly to the resource than others, and can have serious negative consequences for ourselves and future generations.