HUGE ARKANSAS BROWN TROUT CAUGHT

It had been suggested several times, and for several years, to Eric Underhill of Colorado that he ought to check out the north Arkansas trout waters. When he finally did, he caught a fish that some of us can only dream about.

Last weekend, Underhill was fishing with Cranor’s White River Lodge guide Craig Yowell when a “pretty good-sized trout took the bait and ran us out into the river immediately,” Yowell said. “I just moved my boat. I knew we had a good fish on, but I wasn’t expecting that.” It took a 7-minute tussle down 300 yards of the White River, as the trout took the pair back to the bank in the Bull Shoals Dam tailwater, and what Yowell figured was a 27-inch brown trout turned out to be a 34-inch and 25.8-pounder. “It was unbelievable, an unbelievable fish,” Yowell said. “It went from 27-20 to ‘We might have a record!'”

Alas, it still falls shy of the biggest brown caught in Arkansas waters, at 40.4 pounds, but obviously from the photo (Yowell on the left, Underhill with an armful and then some of brown trout on the right) it’s a monster.

“It’s not the biggest one I’ve ever seen in person, but it’s the biggest one I’ve ever seen a customer with and the biggest one to enter my book,” Yowell said.

Underhill was fishing with a minnow. When the trout headed back to the bank area from the middle of the river, Yowell said, “that is your worse nightmare because there are a trees all on it. It ran that whole entire bank until we landed it.” After getting a weight and the photo, the trout was returned to the river.

Yowell described Underhill as an outdoors enthusiast who hunts a lot, most of it in other states. “He’s a longtime customer of the lodge owner, Rob Finley,” said Yowell, noting the Arkansas Game and Fish Commissioner from Mountain Home. ” Rob has been wanting him to come down for some time. He’s been trying to get him here for about eight years. Eric said, ‘There’s great fishing where I am,’ but Rob got him down to see some true fishing.”

No doubt it will be the memory of a lifetime.

There may be a similar memory to be made by you in one of Arkansas’s outstanding fisheries. Check out what’s biting and what you need to use by clicking HERE.