I, Al Harper, write here about the pursuit of very large fresh water stripers with a fly rod on perhaps our wildest river in Missouri. 

The North Fork of the White runs for 67 pristine miles and feeds pure spring water into Norfork Lake in Arkansas. It’s not quite as remote as its neighbor river, the Eleven Point, but it is a more robust gem tucked away deep in the Ozarks that many consider our answer to great western angling. 

A devastating flood in 2017 damaged Dawt Mill dam that had prevented large stripers from migrating farther upstream into the North Fork River.  Stripers, which regularly grow to 40 pounds, are stocked by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission into Norfork Lake but they do not reproduce successfully.  They use 15 to 30 miles of the river as seasonal habitat before returning to the reservoir. They are looking for cool, oxygenated water and deep pools connected by runs.  Most of them return to Norfolk Lake as water temps warm, but while they are in the river they are the largest game fish a fly fisherman can pursue in a drift boat.  

I and fishing buddy Homer Tourkakis hired Bryan Bade to take us down the North Fork after the hardest-fighting freshwater fish in the Midwest, if not in all of North America.  Some of Bryan’s clients have landed fish that were 30 pounds and 40 plus inches in length this season.  The current Arkansas state record striped bass is 53 pounds and was caught in Norfork Lake in 1997.  

While Homer and I didn’t get a hookset on one quite in the 20-pound range, we landed a couple of nice ones and we got a fleeting glimpse of a striper or two approaching that size that zoomed up to the fish we were fighting to see what the ruckus was all about.  Bryan said big stripers often attack fish his anglers are playing.  

We were using large (6 – 8“), beautiful streamers we cast with 8 wt. Sage rods and oversized arbor reels.  And despite solid hooksets with the big hooks, the stripers were really adept at throwing the hook.  Seeing those big fish quickly swoop up and strike that streamer (or occasionally just flash or follow it) was a surefired way to keep some dopamine flowing.  Bryan had many good striper stories to share during our day on the river.  He and his wife also own Sunburst Ranch, where we stayed in a rustic cabin.  An added bonus for us was catching smallmouth bass and a nice trout while fishing for stripers.  And of course there was the awesome Ozark Mountain scenery we enjoyed when we could manage to tear our eyes away from our streamers dancing through that clear, beautiful river water.  

I brought my Flycraft and the second day Homer and I floated 5 miles of the upper North Fork.  We were above the range of the stripers up there and pursuing smallmouth and panfish at a slower pace in a more intimate setting, but the scenery was still really great and we didn’t encounter another boat or angler either day of our excursion.