Norfork Bass - Full Moon Possibilities!

We all know how hot the weather can get, especially in August! It gets down right nasty, in fact! The heat and long days of summer are on us and we resort to the a/c and some TV! I was sitting around the house and wanting to go fishing so bad, but not wanting to endure the heat! I realized the full moon was getting close and knew if the weather stayed the same then the nights would be clear as in "no clouds!"

Now I got on the phone and called a good friend, who happens to live right on "Lake Norfork" at Henderson, Arkansas! He said the night time bite was right on and the stripers were hitting good at night also! That was music to my ears! So off to Norfork Lake we headed and soon met up with my friend Larry, who bought us breakfast and filled us in on the bite. He had to work and wouldn't be able to join us on the first night. We went to a hotel and got some sleep and hit the lake about 5 pm.

It was still pretty hot but we had a pretty good ride to our first fishing spot for the night. Jerry tied on a black jig n pig and I tied on a 10 inch texas rigged black worm. Jerry got bit several times but all came off pretty quick and one was a good one too! He made a good run and let Jerry know real quick that he had a bad place on his line and it broke him off!

We decided to try our luck at some whites when we noticed them surfacing about a hundred yards from us so we tied on some rooster tails and eased in on the school of whites with just the trolling motor on slow. We both made a few casts and both rods were bent and bouncing with a couple of nice hybrids! They were in the 8 pound range! In the next 45 minutes we would limit out on whites and it was getting pretty dark so we rigged up and proceeded to get after "Mr" large mouth.

We got on this fairly shallow flat next to deep water and it was about 3 or 4 hundred yards long, lots of logs and rocks. I tied on a black buzz bait and Jerry tied on a white buzz bait.We both quickly caught 2 bass a piece and they were all 4 bass about 4 1/2 lbs! We really thought we had found the meal ticket when they quit them altogether! I tried something that worked years ago on Norfork, I put on a large black single blade spinner bait, and basically started bouncing the bottom with it and "WHAM" I had a big old large mouth on and she was mad! But she wasn't no match for my ugly stick and ambassador 6000 reel! She finally gave it up, rolled over on her side and we weighed her at 9.50 lbs!

Jerry quickly tied on a spinner bait identical to mine for some reason and we both proceeded to catch the fire out of those Norfork bass! We ended up with 9 bass with the biggest being 9.50 lbs and the smallest weighing in at 4.75 lbs. We had a great night and we even caught 2 keeper walleyes, what a night! Now mind you we started this night time fishing expedition on August 3rd and it was a rock n roll trip start! The 4Th and the 5Th were both good nights, but the quality of fish was down. The last 2 days we caught a lot of whites and bass but they were smaller.

So when it gets too hot for you in the dog days of summer, then try your luck on those full moon nights! It will be quite a bit cooler and sometimes you can really get into those big old bass! But, you need to know the lake that you are fishing because while the full moon is bright, the lake is different to navigate at night, so , be careful out there and boat safe! Watch out for the other guys and yield right of way to other boaters, and enjoy, the "Great Outdoors!"

Keep your hooks wet and we will see ya out there, we Hope!