HITHER & YONDER
A Springfield duo just gave 90-year-old Ozark songs a second life. The Creek Rocks spent two years combing through Library of Congress field recordings made across southwest Missouri and Northwest Arkansas back in 1936-37, and built a whole new album out of what they found. Album releases this Saturday, Aug 15. Find them on Spotify or Apple Music.
Squirrel season never tasted so good. The World Champion Squirrel Cookoff returns to Springdale Sept. 12, complete with the World's Hottest Squirrel Eating Contest and a squirrel skinning contest.
AGFC just landed its biggest set-aside yet for private landowners. The Conservation Incentive Program is heading into its third round with $5 million to help landowners improve wildlife habitat — prescribed fire, forest thinning, feral hog trapping, that kind of thing. Demand's been way past what they can fund every round so far, so if you've got acreage, don't sit on this one.
Thinking about a fall food plot? MDC and the National Deer Association are running a free webinar on the fundamentals of building and managing one for deer, Tuesday, Aug. 25 at 6 p.m. over Zoom. Free, but you've got to register ahead of time.
A hunter's been cited after dumping black bear remains in Pope County. Officers found the bear with the head and paws removed, and the person believed responsible was hit with citations for hunting a bear out of season and wasting edible meat. Worth remembering Arkansas nearly lost its bear population once already to wasteful hunting like this, which is the whole reason it used to be called the Bear State.
Heard a good story we ought to share next week? Hit "reply" and send it our way!
THE WALKING STICK CAPITAL OF THE WORLD
One of our favorite breakfast spots round our part of the Ozarks is Susan’s Restaurant in Springdale, AR. I’ll take 2 eggs over easy with ham, hash browns, and biscuit and gravy. Add a cinnamon roll and you might have to haul me out of here with a wheelbarrow.
Their sign out front reads:
Home of Susan’s World Famous (Here Locally) Breakfast
Being “world famous here locally” is something us Ozarkers enjoy. In fact, we’ve racked up our fair share of “Capital of the World” titles over the years (be they self-imposed titles or not).
Cotter is Trout Capital
Springdale is Poultry Capital
Branson the Live Music Show Capital
Bentonville the Mountain Biking Capital
Turns out you can add one more to the list: Fryatt, Arkansas, once known as the Walking Stick Capital of the World
This blink-and-you-miss-it spot on Highway 9 was once home to a cane making dynasty.
It starts with Newt Blagg, a handle-maker who took a stray bullet to the shoulder on a Kansas train in 1916, purely by accident, and lived to tell about it.
By 1931, at 53, he'd landed in Fryatt and started making canes out of a barn he borrowed from the local postmaster. He cut his own hickory, steamed it soft in barrels, and bent it into what old newspapers called a "Little Bo Peep" crook.
That one barn turned into a whole trade.
Newt's know-how passed down through the Berrys, Albrights, Flynns, and Marlers, and by the '90s a reporter had dubbed the area the cane-making capital of the world.
One of those family operations, Whistle Creek, is still the largest handcrafted hiking stick maker in the country.
Get the full story in the recent episode of The Old Ozarks, your gateway to the forgotten history of the Ozarks hosted by renowned historian Dr. Brooks Blevins.
The Dorito Rule: Why Top Anglers “Match the Hatch”
If you passed somebody a whole bag of Doritos with one fake chip hidden inside, and they'll probably grab a handful and eat it the fraud without ever catching on.
But walk up and hand them a single Dorito with nothing else around, and they might get suspicious, turn it over a few times, and inspect it before eating.
That’s what fish feel like when you sling a solitary fly out there.
But if you can hide your fake fly in a crowd of real ones, they’re none the wiser.
That’s the whole theory behind the phrase “Match the Hatch.”
Three Major Hatches on the White River
So if you’re trying to match the hatch on the White River, there are three major hatches you should know about.
Midge. Basically year-round. Chad puts it at something like 275 days a year. They’re easy to overlook since the bugs are tiny, but it's the biggest hatch on the river by volume and money for rainbows.
Caddis. Used to start like clockwork mid-March. These days it's drifted to mid-April and runs about five weeks. When it's on, it's on. Chad's seen it hatch thick enough to fill up cup holders.
Sulfur. The one that breaks the rules. It doesn't hatch on warmth alone, it needs the dam to kick up summer generation first, so it usually doesn't show until late May. Another four-to-five week run, done by mid-June.
What About the Hatch Gap?
We're deep into August now, which puts us past both caddis and sulfur for the year. We’re in what some call the “hatch gap.”
The midge is the one still going, and it about never stops, so you're never wrong dropping one on.
A good rule of thumb for midges:
sunny day = silver bead
cloudy day = copper bead.
But hopper season is really what's happening on the White right now.
Give the episode a listen to learn:
Chad’s go to summer hopper rig
The only five flies you need to fish the White year round
Why girdle bugs work even though we don’t have a big stonefly hatch on this river.
0:00 – The Three Major Hatches on the White River
5:00 – The Caddis Hatch
9:00 – The Sulfur Hatch
14:00 – The Dorito Rule: Why Fishing a Hatch Is a Completely Different Game
17:00 – Summer Fishing: Why You Flip from Fishing Bottom-Up to Top-Down
19:00 – What to Throw When There's No Hatch On (Browns vs. Rainbows)
26:00 – How to Read Fish Behavior When They Won't Eat Your Fly
30:00 – The Five Flies You Need to Fish the White River All Year
33:00 – Dave Whitlock's Lesson
GET 10% OFF AT DIAMOND STATE FLY CO.
If you make your way out to Cotter to fish with Chad yourself, keep in mind members of The Holler get 10% OFF all in-store purchases @ Diamond State Fly Shop.
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We’ll be back next week with more stories from the Ozarks.
Til then,
The Ozark Podcast