Favorite Fishing Destinations Countdown: No. 9 - Lake Ouachita, Arkansas

Largemouths, spotted bass, stripers, walleyes, crappie, bluegill... Lake Ouachita serves up excellent opportunities for catching a bunch of different kinds of fish, and over the past 20-plus years, I've gotten to enjoy many of Ouachita's bounties. Beyond offering excellent fishing, Ouachita is a beautiful lake, bounded by the Ouachita mountains and with clear water and mostly undeveloped, forested shores.

I've spent dozens of days on Ouachita and had fun doing everything from walking Spooks for largemouths, spots and stripers to jig-fishing for mixed catches of big bluegills and crappie. Arguably my single favorite day on Ouachita, though, was with Gary Roach of Minnesota, better known as Mr. Walleye, and Chris Gulstad. We were officially targeting walleyes, using light spinning tackle and jigs tipped with minnows, but instead found crazily good action from stripers up to about 15 pounds. More than once that day, we were tripled up with 8- or 10-pound stripers on our light tackle. Somehow we landed most fish that day. By day's we were happily exhausted.

Similar to what I mentioned about the Tennessee River, Lake Ouachita has been the site for quite a few media events over the years, which explains why I've spent far more time on a lake that's a dozen hours from home than on lakes Hartwell and Lanier combined (each about a half hour from me at the nearest point.) I've established many friendships on this lake and have spent countless enjoyable hours on the water, around a dinner table and in cabins with friends at Ouachita events.



And while it's not technically part of the lake, a bonus to Lake Ouachita is its convenience to the Ouachita River just upstream of the lake. The river, which is ideally suited for floating in a canoe or kayak or to wade-fishing, offers outstanding opportunities for smallmouths and mixed panfish, so I sometimes slip up to the river for some bonus moving water fun when I visit Lake Ouachita.

Good lodging options for Lake Ouachita include Shangri-La Resort and Mountain Harbor Resort & Spa. For guided fishing, contact Jason Lenderman, Hugh Albright or Ty Whisenhunt (870-490-1399)

Week of Bass Fun

Last week's travels landed me in Fort Smith, Arkansas, which was the jumping off point for fishing trips to Arkansas' Lake Ouachita, an Oklahoma stretch of the Arkansas River and Lake Tenkiller. My company's office is also in Fort Smith, so I slipped in an office visit between fishing days.

At Ouachita we spent a bit of time crappie fishing because of some photos I'd hoped to get. The crappie bite wasn't really happening, though. So we mostly fished for bass, and that was fun. I hadn't done a lot of dedicated bass fishing for a while.

At Ouachita, the fish were looking up, so we caught quite a few spots and largemouths on Spooks and other surface lures. When they wouldn't come up, we went down after them with dropshots, C.C. Spoons and live crawfish, with the of those being a locally popular and extremely effective approach during the fall.

The Arkansas River fishing was all up tributaries and all about cranking. We tried a bit of spinnerbait fishing and a little topwater, but crankbaits were the ticket. Our top producer was a Bandit prototype that I can't show a photo of... Yet!

Tenkiller, which is deep, clear and rocky, offered a nice blend of topwater fishing and cranking opportunities with Bandits and Normans, with a nice mix of smallmouths adding to the fun. I had a big time for a while throwing a small BOOYAH Boss Pop, which is probably my single favorite topwater lure.

Next stop is Santee Cooper, where it'll be back to mixed-species fun!