Fly-Fishing Biz Depends on Rainfall

Bill Tenison doesn’t like to talk bad about his competition.

“A lot of people say, ‘What’s your biggest competition?’ And I say, ‘Mother Nature,'” he quips.

Tenison, owner of White River Angler fly-fishing shop in Fayetteville, said too much rain in the springtime can cause his annual revenue to dip by 10 to 15 percent. For that matter, not enough rain is also bad for business.

And there is some human intervention.

“It all depends on how the Corps [of Engineers] handles that floodwater,” Tenison said.

Floods in 2002 were particularly harmful for fly fishermen in Northwest Arkansas.

“We had a lot of water but a lot less water to fish,” Tenison said, indicating water was too high to wade in many area rivers. “They had to open the floodgates that year [at Beaver Lake].”

Most fly fishing in the area is done by fishermen wading after trout in two sections of the White River — for about three miles below Beaver Dam near Eureka Springs and in different spots for about 40 miles below Bull Shoals Dam in Marion, Baxter and Izard counties.

But the best trout fishing in north Arkansas right now (and much of the rest of the time) is along a 4.5 mile stretch of the Norfork River that feeds from Lake Norfork into the White River south of Mountain Home.

Brian Harris, an employee of White River Angler, caught a 25-pound brown trout on the Norfork River this summer.

Tenison, Harris and another employee of White River Angler also serve as guides. The cost is $210 per person for a day of fishing on the Norfork River (or $235 for two people). That cost includes flies, leaders, tippets, lunch and soft drinks. The cost is a little less for White River Angler employees to serve as guides below Beaver Dam: $175 for one person or $200 for two.

Some people think it’s all in the fly, but Tenison, who also teaches fly-fishing classes on area rivers, said it’s “20 percent bug, 80 percent fisherman.”

Just throwing the right fly in the water won’t cut it, Tenison said.

“North Arkansas has some of the best fishing in the country and some of the best guides,” he said, adding that the cost for a fly-fishing guide in Western states is about $350 per day.

Fishing below Beaver Dam can be problematic. It’s the closest trout fishing spot to Northwest Arkansas, but fishermen never know when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will release water through the dam to generate hydroelectric power for the area.

The additional water causes the river to rise and flushes fisherman onto the banks. South of Bull Shoals, however, there’s about 100 miles of trout fishing, so fishermen can hop in a boat and race the water downstream to find another fishing spot.

When the dams on Beaver and Bull Shoals lakes were constructed in the early 1960s, it destroyed a large natural habitat for smallmouth bass, a fish that prefers warm water. So, the Corps agreed to stock the rivers below the dams with trout, which could thrive in the cold water released from the bottom of the lakes. The move created the southernmost spot in the United States for fly fishermen to fish for rainbow, brown and cutthroat trout.

“When they put those dams in, they had no idea how big fly fishing was going to become,” Tenison said.

Tenison said he wants people to fly fish for smallmouth bass in addition to trout. He said the Kings River and Osage River are good locations for bass fishing — “anywhere you would spin fish,” he said.

Tenison opened White River Angler in 1998 in Fayetteville’s Singletree Plaza. He had worked for Bancroft & Tabor, which also sold fly-fishing equipment, from 1986 until it closed in ’98.