Talk to the anglers about what’s working and not and you hear more of the latter on the day prior to a competition. Yesterday topping the list was muddy water.
But the conflict of interest there is the water is frequently muddy on the Arkansas River. Fifty miles of it is impounded to create Lake Dardanelle. Water flows downstream on this river and upstream is lots of clay shoreline. Add lots of runoff from periods of heavy rain and the outcome is the dark, soupy mud.
So muddy or not, the bass population of Lake Dardanelle is used to such conditions.
What else got a lot of talk was just how small the lake will fish. Let’s put that into perspective. Lake Dardanelle encompasses about 36,000 acres. Ross Barnett Reservoir, site of the Elite Series event in April, has 33,000 acres. There were lots of boo birds complaining about how small it fished. Cherokee Lake, at 28,700 acres. No one complained about it fishing small.
What about current? Beside the shad spawn it’s the sleeper factor here this week. Under these conditions the lake is typically higher on the upper pool and lower near the dam, a distance of 50 miles from end to end. According to data from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers the Top Navigation Pool for Dardanelle is 338.2 MSL. Bottom Navigation Pool is 336 MSL. The current elevation is 337.4 MSL. That means the USACE is keeping the lake level in check. To do that a lot of water is moving through L&D 10.
Take away the clarity factor and the current created by the dam becomes a factor in how the bass are relating to the cover. That is a huge factor the nearer you are to the main river channel. In the backwaters that is less of a factor. The shallow population gets acclimated sooner than later to the current.