Regardless of the time of year, the fish are always biting somewhere. Try your hand at catching monster catfish in the broad bottomland rivers of the Delta, or fly-fish for trout in the clear streams of the Ozarks. Fish the coastal plain lakes for crappie and bream, or try for white bass and hybrids at a reservoir in the Ouachita Mountains. The opportunities are almost endless.
FEBRUARY
Old Town Lake Crappie
Old Town Lake, southwest of West Helena, warms up earlier than do many other Arkansas lakes, and crappie usually move into the shallows to prepare for spawning around the middle of February. This oxbow, separated from the Mississippi River by a levee, drains into Big Creek in the White River drainage. Fishing conditions are not highly influenced by any river, however, and water levels are generally quite stable, a definite advantage for visiting crappie anglers. The lake is at the town of Lakeview on state Highway 44 in Phillips County.
As the water in Old Town Lake warms this month, anglers start catching crappie around the dense stands of cypress trees in shoreline shallows. It's not uncommon when working jigs or minnows around good cover to take a 30-fish limit of crappie that weighs 40 pounds or more. The lake is extremely shallow, less than 6 feet throughout, but on February's warm bluebird days, most crappie will be in 2 feet of water or less.
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