Best Fishing Spots in Arkansas

Arkansas fishes on impoundments and on the cold water below them. Most mapped water is reservoir, concentrated in the Ozarks in the north and the Ouachitas in the west, built on river valleys for power and flood control. Those dams created something unusual: tailwaters running cold enough downstream to support trout in a state that otherwise sits entirely in the warm-temperate band, where nothing freezes and the year runs on heat. Elevation is modest, from 28 metres to 652 metres with a median of 105 metres, so it is the dams rather than the terrain that produce the cold-water fishing. Spring and autumn fish strongest, summer compresses to dawn, and winter continues slowly and deeper. Across 62 counties of Arkansas we hold 388 waters. Reservoirs dominate the list, followed by natural lakes. For sheer size, Bull Shoals Lake leads at roughly 70 sq miles. The climate spread across these waters is 39°F to 81°F. Open occurrence records for the state name bluegill, green sunfish, longear sunfish and largemouth bass most frequently....