The White River below Bull Shoals Dam is one of the best brown trout fisheries in the country, and it's also one of the hardest rivers in the Ozarks to figure out on your own. Water levels can rise and fall four feet in a single day, and the fishing changes completely when they do.

We sat down with Chad Johnson, a White River guide with 20 years on the water and owner of CJ's White River Outfitter, at Diamond State Fly Co. in Cotter, Arkansas. Across two episodes he covered how to read the flows, where the fish go as the water changes, and which flies to tie on in every season.

Both full episodes and transcripts are below. Here's what you need to know first.

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Bull Shoals Dam does two jobs: it generates power and it controls floods. When the lake is at normal pool, the power company decides how much water to release. Once the lake rises into flood pool, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers takes over and starts draining it, and that decision depends on the whole region. Table Rock, Beaver, tributaries like the Buffalo, and downstream towns like Newport all factor in. That's why Chad tells every new client the same thing: "The one thing you need to understand about the White River flows is you're never gonna understand them." You can still learn to fish them, though.

The Southwestern Power Administration (swpa.gov) posts predicted generation around 4 p.m. each day for the next day. On Fridays, the 4 p.m. update covers Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Chad also links every schedule (Bull Shoals, Norfork, the Buffalo, Crooked Creek) on the water page of CJ's White River Outfitter, and Diamond State Fly Co. keeps them on its Our Waters page.

Chad tells new guides they have to learn three rivers: low water, medium water, and high water.

Low water (with the generators off, the White can drop to around 700 CFS) fishes like a slow, small stream. Think midges and woolly buggers. Rainbows bunch up and are easy to catch. Browns spread out and sit in the deepest, safest water they can find, which is usually the middle of the river.

High water flips it. Rainbows spread out into the current, and the lazy browns push to the banks to ambush food. That's when streamers, hoppers, and girdle bugs fished tight to the bank come into play.

Chad's number one tip comes out of that: under 6,000 CFS, fish the middle. Over 6,000 CFS, fish the banks.

For wade fishing, the answer is simple: when the generators are off. Anything more and there isn't much wading to be had.

From a boat, Chad's ideal flow is 8,000 to 10,000 CFS. That's enough water to push fish to the banks and make them comfortable eating streamers, but not so much that you need long leaders or a sink-tip line to get your bugs down. At 20,000 CFS and up, it gets hard to get nymphs or streamers down at all. Chad puts the water in good fishing shape about 75 percent of the time.

Falling water is usually bad. Fish are jockeying for safe water so they don't get stranded, and the White has had fish kills when big flows dropped fast. The exception is tail-out water: if most of the water drops out quickly and the last foot trickles out over a few hours, the fish settle back in and feed again.

Rising water is where it gets good. When the first few inches of a rise come through, fish get fired up. That's "the push." Instead of sitting on the hole where you just caught three browns, run downstream to the next hole and let the push come in on you again. The sweet spot can be shorter than a football field, so stay ahead of it. We wrote more about this in What is "The Push" on the White River?

It comes down to feeding math. An average two-pound rainbow eats up to 500 midges a day. A trophy brown might eat one rainbow and four crawdads. That's 500 chances to fool the rainbow and maybe five to fool the brown, before you factor in how smart and spooky browns are. It's also why you have to target browns on purpose. Standing in a riffle swinging woolly buggers will catch you a lot of rainbows.

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

Or listen on Spotify | Apple

Chad has seen both hatches change. The caddis used to start at the lower end of the river near Buffalo City and work upstream to the dam over a few weeks. For about the last four years, they've started everywhere at once. The river's cold-water bugs are still getting established, too. The White was a warm-water smallmouth river until the dam went in about 70 years ago, and Chad says it's twice the dry fly fishery it was when he arrived 20 years ago.

Chad explains it with a bag of Doritos. Hand someone a bag with one fake chip in it, and there's a good chance they eat it without noticing. Hand them a single chip, and they'll turn it over and inspect it first. A lone fly with no hatch on is that single chip. During a hatch, your fly hides in the crowd. So before you pick a river, ask what's hatching on it. For a closer look at the gap between hatches, see How to fish the "hatch gap".

Chad's rule of thumb: in spring you fish from the bottom up, and in summer you fish from the top down. Summer brings higher flows and food falling in from above. His go-to summer rig is a hopper with a girdle bug tagged about three feet below it, fished on the bank. When the fish really turn on to hoppers, he cuts the dropper so he can put a single hopper tight to the bank. They won't fully commit to hoppers until the sulfurs are done.

For rainbows: a midge, a scud, or a sow bug under an indicator. In low water, he'll also strip woolly buggers over grass beds.

For browns: one of three things. A size 8 girdle bug, a white mop fly, or a small streamer. Chad thinks browns eat girdle bugs as baby crawdads, since the White doesn't have a real stonefly hatch.

A sulfur, caddis, midge, scud, and sow bug. Here's how Chad uses them through the year:

Two stories from the late fly fishing legend come up in these episodes. In the first, Whitlock and Chad fished the same riffle. Chad caught rainbows and Whitlock caught browns, even after they switched spots. Whitlock was animating his caddis, lifting and dropping it through the water column with no indicator. In the second, Chad was catching browns on a brown, black-ribbed, copper-bead midge in the middle of a caddis hatch. Whitlock pointed out that he had tied a near-perfect caddis casing without meaning to.

If you make your way out to Cotter to fish the White yourself, keep in mind members of The Holler get 10% OFF all in-store purchases @ Diamond State Fly Co.

Show your love for the Ozarks and grab some gear from our shop!

20% supports conservation work preserving the region's mountains, rivers, and wildlife. So you can look good and feel good, too.

These transcripts are lightly edited for readability. Filler words and crosstalk have been trimmed.

Kyle Veit: Welcome back to the Ozark Podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Veit, joined as always by co-host of the show, and my good buddy, Kyle Plunkett. Yes sir. How are you doing?

Kyle Plunkett: Great. We're back at the Diamond State Fly Co.

Kyle Veit: That's right. Second time we've been here and probably the third time you've seen it on our show 'cause we had a two-parter with Ben Levin. Back when we were here. And we've actually got two guests right now on the episode. One's gonna bounce 'cause he is super busy and he's got flies to count and inventory to stock and things to do. But we've got Logan Huff with us of Diamond State Fly Co. Welcome to the podcast. We've also got our guest for the rest of the episode once Logan bounces, and that's gonna be Chad Johnson. You probably know Chad, he's one of the top guides on the White River. And we're pleased to have you. So welcome to the show. Now, before we jump into it, Logan, awesome shop. We've talked about it before. Gimme just a brief overview. I know you guys just opened up within the last year, I think. Gimme a little backstory on Diamond State.

Logan Huff: Morgan, Gus and I, we were kind of transitioning out of another shop and we decided to simply open an outfitter together, and I think the shop life kind of followed us and we missed it. And so next thing we knew, we were cranking out flies ourselves and tying 'em and trying to sell 'em to guides on the river and get 'em out. All of a sudden this place popped up for sale, and we bought this place and started to fill it with inventory and then, you know, here we are. So like I said, it kind of started as an outfitter and it didn't last very long as an outfitter before we kind of missed the fly shop part of it.

Kyle Veit: Yeah. That's cool. You've got a great shop. I love the vibe, like the feel of this place. It feels like a guide shop that you wanna go hang out in, you know, like you got this big table, you got a fireplace behind me, you've got the pool light overhanging the flies. It's just got a good feel. How did you guys go about picking all the stuff to put in here? You got a bar over here on tap?

Logan Huff: Yeah, so we wanted the whole shop to be super welcoming to everybody. I kept calling it that wow factor, I guess. You know, they walk in and go, wow, this place is sweet. But we wanted to serve our customers and just make 'em feel at home. Like they could come here and hang out and kind of build that community. And our favorite thing is when guides get off the water and they come up here and hang out and tell stories from the day and all that kind of stuff. So we just wanted to build that atmosphere here and continue that.

Chad Johnson: I dig it. There are a lot of shops across the country that are not very welcoming as far as hanging out. They don't want you to hang out. So it's just really cool to have a fly shop around that after work you can come and hang out at. It's not just somewhere you stop by to grab a fly or grab the tip that you need. It's actually somewhere that the guys go and get together. And so the big back deck and all, it just makes it nice.

Kyle Veit: Yeah, it's super cool. I remember when I was getting into fly fishing and I was trying to figure things out, going into some fly shops and being just super intimidated. I don't even know what to ask. And it kind of seems like sometimes people don't have time for you. And so just to have that welcoming feel of like, I don't know what I don't know, help me out, tell me what I need and hook me up. I just wanna go catch fish. If you can nail that, you're doing things right.

Logan Huff: That's what we shoot for. I remember when I was starting, having that same feeling, and I just absolutely hated it and honestly could say that it almost made me give it up. And so I wanna avoid that as much as I possibly can. And just let everybody, customers, guides, whoever, feel welcome and like they can come in here and ask. There is no stupid question. I've been there at some point.

Kyle Plunkett: Yeah. There's fly shops I've left going, I don't think they want me as a customer. But yeah, man, y'all done just a great job with it. And if you listen to this one, you've either heard or you're about to hear a Diamond State Fly Co. ad. And so if y'all pop over this way to Cotter, tell 'em we sent you, that you heard it from the podcast. And also if you're a part of our Holler community on Patreon, Diamond State's offering a 10% discount throughout the store on, I'm gonna say 98% of the items. Except what, like Ross Reels?

Logan Huff: Ross Reels and Turtle Box. We're pretty stuck on those prices.

Kyle Plunkett: So other than Ross Reels and Turtle Box, you have your run of the store if you're in the Holler.

Kyle Veit: I'm excited. We just announced that last week. So that's a brand new thing, and y'all are one of our first partners. I think that'll be great for both of us and great for people to have a discount, have somewhere to go and feel like they know guys and have a hookup essentially.

Logan Huff: Yeah. We're super excited to be a part of it. It's turned out to be pretty cool.

Chad Johnson: Good deal. And a 10% discount, heck, that's what the guides get. That's a pretty good discount.

Kyle Veit: That's cool. I didn't know that. Well, Logan, we appreciate you, man. I know you're busy. I know you gotta bounce and go do your thing, but we appreciate you for letting us come over here and hang out and talk with Chad, and for everything else that you guys are doing. Now let's get into the good stuff here with Chad. We got you all to ourselves here, man. It's funny, you've been on our list. We started doing the podcast a little over three years ago, and you've been on my list to come interview 'cause I've heard you on other podcasts. You did one a couple years ago talking about just how amazing the White River is and all the big brown trout you can catch over here. And I just remember hearing that, like, I gotta talk to Chad. So it's finally here. A lot of people know about river flows and the generation schedules and how variable they can be on the White River, but someone like you who's got the experience that you have and has spent as much time as you spend on this river, I didn't think there was a whole lot of people that could do a better job than you. And the way that you communicate things is really simple. So we're gonna dive in on this episode with Chad talking about what every angler should know about the White River flows, and everything that goes into that. We are not gonna be able to cover everything, but we're gonna get you started, hopefully. So start me off with just the White River. What makes it unique with the flows? Kinda help people understand it.

Chad Johnson: Well, I'll start by saying what I say to everybody: the one thing you need to understand about the White River flows is you're never gonna understand them.

Kyle Veit: It's a good starting point.

Chad Johnson: You're not gonna figure it out. You're not going to put two and two together and go, well, now I understand that this gauge is this and this and this. It's way too big of a math problem for you to get a grip on. I'll back up now. Our dam does two things: power demand and flood control. When we're in our normal pool on the lake, the electric company has charge of it. The only flows you see are whatever the electric company wants to do. They have full control of it. But the second that it gets into what we call flood pool, the Army Corps of Engineers takes control of it and they begin to drain it. And it's not like they're draining the White River system. It's the whole region. The Arkansas dumps in the Mississippi just below the White. There's tributaries that come into them. There's Newport that floods out. Once they take control of it, it is such a giant math problem. How many units are coming in from Table Rock? How many are coming into Table Rock? How many are coming into the tributaries between Table Rock and here? How much is downstream? Like right now, Newport's six inches from going over, and so if we start flowing, we put water in their houses. That's a problem. So people start going, oh, well the lake's full, you gotta dump it. Well, we can't dump it. You'd flush somebody out. The math problem is so great, that's the reason I always start out with, you're never gonna understand.

Kyle Plunkett: Quick question just to understand. When you say the Corps takes over, if it gets above the regular pool into the flood pool on one lake, does the Corps take over for the whole system, or do they just take over that one? And if they all get too full, then you're looking at a bigger system where federal takes over?

Chad Johnson: Like right now. Table Rock is flooded. Beaver's flooded. This is flooded. Downstream's flooded right now. The federal government has control over all of it, and the electric company gets what they get, whatever that may be. They've taken full control.

Kyle Veit: So it's very complicated. It's a huge math problem. When you're on the water and you're talking to people or you're thinking about what am I gonna do tomorrow and the next day, how do you simplify all that to make an actionable decision for you and your clients?

Chad Johnson: So if we back up one step, this will kind of help people understand. They do give us a graph, what they call flow predictions, which they do about four o'clock every day for the next day. And then on Fridays at four o'clock, they give you Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. But always, when you're looking at this graph, make sure you check the date on the top, because a lot of times they haven't updated and it's the week before you're looking at. That's a very common mistake to make. And then when you're looking at the prediction graph, it gives you megawatts, not CFS. So 40 megawatts is equal to one generator. If you see they're putting out 80 megawatts, that's two generators. That's easy math. 160 megawatts, that's four.

Kyle Veit: And real quick, just so if someone's listening and following along, this is on the swpa.gov site. The Southwestern Power Administration.

Chad Johnson: Or they can go to CJ's White River Outfitter. I have all of the water systems on there, including the Buffalo, Crooked Creek, White River, Norfork. I've got everything on my site there under water generation, and they can look it up that way as well.

Kyle Veit: I'm gonna pull it up as you're going through it so I can make sure that I'm following along, if someone wants to pull it up on their phone and hear you talk through it.

Chad Johnson: So do you have it pulled up there?

Kyle Veit: I'm pulling up Chad Johnson's guide service website here. It might take a minute to load. Okay, I'm coming in. Water generation. Look at you, you got a slick website here.

Chad Johnson: Okay, so you're gonna go down, you're gonna see real time flows. And then just below it, you're gonna see generation release, scheduled flows. Click on that. And then you're gonna see where it says Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Click on tomorrow's.

Kyle Veit: That would be Wednesday. If you're listening to this, it'll be Thursday.

Chad Johnson: And then we're gonna go over and we're gonna look at number 13, Bull Shoals, BSD. If I'm not mistaken, tomorrow they're running somewhere around 200 megawatts and then dropping down into the 150s and then 90 by nine o'clock or something like that.

Kyle Veit: They drop to 90 by 7 a.m. And then they run 90 from seven until 16, which would be four o'clock.

Chad Johnson: Okay, perfect. So what that means is, first thing in the morning when you wake up, the river's gonna be on a big dump, because it's been up at that 200. Now it's dropping down to the 90. So before we take off into the fishing part of it: the 40 megawatts is one generator. One generator is 3,200 CFS.

Kyle Veit: So 40 is one, and one is 3,200 CFS. So if I'm looking at 90 right now, that's two units and a little.

Chad Johnson: Each unit is a generator. So that'd be two generators plus a little bit. That's gonna be the 6,400 plus a little bit. So I'm looking at probably 7,000 CFS.

Kyle Plunkett: And CFS, for anybody listening, is cubic feet per second of water.

Chad Johnson: Yes. And so now we've got kind of the whole basis for being able to read that. Because there's another deal when you go on there. If you back up one, you're gonna go to the real time flows. And the real time flows are actually gonna give you CFS. That tells you what they're doing right now. That's usually about an hour to two hours behind. But that gives you a good idea of actually what CFS is in the river, because at times they can predict something and not stick to it. They may tell you they're gonna run two, and heck, there may be five units on. It's the government. They don't always do exactly what they say.

Chad Johnson: So we can jump past the dam now. The way it relates to your fishing: high water, low water, the tactics obviously are gonna be completely different. Different flies, different techniques. Everything changes from the low to the high. I always told guides when they come here that they needed to learn three rivers. They needed to learn the low water, the medium water, and the high water. And until you have a grip on all three of those, you're gonna have some rough days, because it changes drastically. I mean, tomorrow is changing from 15,000 CFS dropping down to nine. That's a huge drop in a river system in that small of a window. And then turn around in the evening, it's going right back up. So in an eight hour period it's gonna fall four foot and rise four foot. That's tremendous. Kinda insane for a river.

Chad Johnson: Low water, you would think of like smaller streams. Whenever you get small, slow water, it's a lot of midge fishing. It's a lot of woolly bugger fishing. At times when they've got that water off, it is a trickle. That river's so big, and they're potentially running 700 CFS when it's off. 700 CFS in a river the size of the White is not much. And so it becomes pretty stagnant. And I don't mean stagnant like there's sludge all over the top of the water. I mean a lot of really slow frog water. Midges and woolly buggers and things like that are typically slow water bugs. The fish seem to not mind that they're not moving. Where, for instance, if I go try to fish a hopper in low water, I'm not gonna get those nice browns on hoppers in low water unless I'm in a shoal where it's moving better. They're not gonna eat it off of that dead water.

Chad Johnson: So you've got that low water fishing, and then the high water fishing comes in completely different. These fish are not sitting in the middle of the river in the deepest hole they can find, hiding out. Now they're pushing to the banks and feeding. They feel like they can breathe. All of a sudden they feel more comfortable. They're out hunting. That's when it gets fun. That's when we're on the banks and those browns are ambushing stuff and we're fishing streamers and hoppers and girdle bugs. So the high water really brings a totally different game. And it's funny if you think about it. When it's low, we can catch way more rainbows, because they're concentrated more, but those browns are kinda everywhere, spread out through that low water. Well, once it gets high, it's the opposite. Now those rainbows are all spread out in all that big current water, 'cause they don't mind sitting in the current. But the brown trout are lazy. So now it's concentrated the brown trout on our banks, and now we can target them on our banks.

Chad Johnson: And there can be good things about both of them. A lot of times in that low water, we get a great caddis hatch. That's gonna be some of the best brown trout fishing of the year, and it's in low water, where we're kind of going, well, they're a little spooky. They will get so drunk on that hatch that they ignore everybody and everything. So it's not like if you show up here on low water, you're not gonna catch any nice brown trout. Whether you catch a nice brown trout depends on what time of the year you're here and how good of an angler you are, and whether you're here on a day something happened. Brown trout don't just eat all the time. Something a lot of people don't consider when we're hunting brown trout: the average two pound trout, like your rainbows, they eat up to 500 midges a day. That's a ton. Your giant brown trout's going to eat a rainbow a day. He's going to eat four crawdads a day. You have four opportunities to catch that big brown. You have 500 to catch that rainbow. So the discrepancy is huge, just if you look at their feeding habits, not anything about how smart they are.

Kyle Veit: I've never heard that. That is so good. That elusive big brown trout, if you can catch a real good brown trout, that's something. We've come over here for years and we've been lucky enough to catch a few, but it's far from every time. It is a rare occasion when you come over here and land a really nice one.

Chad Johnson: Yes. And part of that is we don't catch the rainbows like we catch our browns. You have to be targeting browns to catch 'em. You don't go out, stand in the riffle and swing your woolly buggers and fish midges and sow bugs and that kinda stuff and catch a lot of brown trout. You are going to catch some here and there. They're gonna get in that shoal. It's not that they don't like sow bugs. It's not that they don't eat a midge. But you're gonna catch a lot of rainbows, and those browns are holed up in very specific spots. That in large part is why people are coming here and hiring a guide and being able to get on them, versus coming here and fishing on their own and not. It is so different. You're not catching those fish in the same place.

Kyle Plunkett: I've never thought about the 500 midges for a rainbow versus the brown that's gonna eat a couple times a day. That truly blows my mind. And it makes sense. A couple weeks ago I was officiating a wedding, and one of the groomsmen, I learned, was a big fisherman. I was like, oh, we're gonna be friends. Let's sit here and talk before the ceremony. And he said, I just haven't gone over to the White because I'm so scared to try to figure it out on my own. What do you mean? He's like, well, I can't read the water. That was kind of a barrier to entry. It's a far drive from where he's at, but also because it's so big and he doesn't have a boat. He's scared he's gonna get over there, the water's gonna be huge, and he's not gonna be able to fish. So I kind of talked him through it. I said, you're right, if you go over there and it's high, you're not wading. But when it's low, you can wade out there and catch a hundred rainbows and have a blast. You're picking up your skills. But if you get over here and that water's big, you need to go get a guide that day and say, teach me how to do it. 'Cause there's nothing like big high water. Those browns are on the bank and you're shooting cicadas and hoppers and topwater stuff two inches off that bank where that water's hitting, and you're watching fish come up to take it. That's a whole nother level of fishing. It's totally different, isn't it?

Chad Johnson: It really is. And obviously it's not always like that. There's tough days of fishing when the water's up. But it's like you're on two different rivers when you get to fish like that. You feel like you're out west. That river gets kind of like western water. It gets that big and gets a little sketchy.

Kyle Veit: That is good. I wish that I had heard you describe that so simply 10 years ago when we were starting. It just would've accelerated my learning curve so fast. I can't remember how many times we came over here and we're starting to catch some rainbows, but we're fishing riffles and stuff, and it's like, where are the big fish? What are we doing wrong?

Chad Johnson: You weren't doing anything wrong. It's just a totally different kind of fishing. You just weren't targeting the browns. It's very funny. One time I was out with Dave Whitlock and he goes, all right, Chad, I wanna show you something. Let's go out in this riffle, and you rig up and I'm gonna rig up, and let's go out here together. And I said, okay. He does his thing, and I do my thing. We walk out there, and we both start fishing, and I'm catching one rainbow after another, and he's catching one brown right after another. And he goes, Chad, switch spots with me. So we switch spots. I went down there and started catching rainbows, and he went up where I was and started catching browns, and I was like, what the hell, Dave? He was animating his flies. Moving his flies up and down in the water column, making them emerge and dropping back down to the bottom, and making them emerge and dropping back down to the bottom. And he said, Chad, those fish are in the same riffles that you're catching those rainbows out of at times, but they wanna see that fly animated. I had never seen that before. It blew my mind.

Kyle Veit: What were y'all fishing? What kind of flies, do you remember?

Chad Johnson: It was caddis.

Kyle Plunkett: Like an emerger, coming back down. Was he swinging it downstream?

Chad Johnson: Kind of a swing across, and then animating it when he gets there, and then bringing it up and carrying it down and doing almost these Leisenring lifts as he goes down. And just animating those flies. He had no indicator. He's just feeling for 'em.

Kyle Veit: There's a reason he's a legend.

Chad Johnson: He would take that line in his hand and gather this line up in his hand. And then when those fish would strike, because they would hit so hard and he's on a tight line with no indicator, he would let go of that line when it hit, to give them some give so they didn't break him off.

Kyle Plunkett: No wonder he's a genius, man. Even the animation makes some sense. I've watched Kyle accidentally catch more fish than I can count at the end of his swing.

Kyle Veit: Where you're not even paying attention, you're walking up and it's coming up, or you're holding the rod up at the top.

Kyle Plunkett: Holding the rod in the crook of your arm and you're doing something else. Unbeknownst to you, you're actually animating it a little bit. That's worth the price of the podcast right there. That's a tip.

Kyle Veit: That's good. So let's go back to flows. When you start getting in and you've got variable days, talk to me about different tactics. You kind of already mentioned this a little bit, with low water you're fishing midges and woolly buggers. But that's gonna be seasonal too. We always hear about rising water versus dropping water and how that's different. What does that mean for an angler? If you're there and now it's starting to drop on you, what should you do?

Chad Johnson: Okay. So falling water's typically not good. Falling water typically shuts the fish down a bit. I think they're jockeying for position and they're getting back into areas where they know they're not gonna get trapped. There have been lots of fish kills on the White River where we're up at 25 grand and they dump this thing all the way down to nothing, and browns and 'bows are left in puddles on the side of the river, and we're all running up and down the river trying to get 'em back in. So they're really jockeying for position to make sure that doesn't happen to 'em. That's why I think the fall is so bad. Now, there's another point on the fall. We call it tail out water, and it's okay to fish. What happens is, let's make it simple. Let's say there's four foot of water in the system and three of it drops out fast. When that three is falling out, it's no good. But then that last foot will take several hours just to trickle out. That tail out water's okay to fish. It's not like it's a trigger for 'em or anything, but the fish have already started back feeding.

Kyle Veit: So it kind of stabilizes back?

Chad Johnson: Yes, it's stabilized enough that even with that tail out water, they'll feed for you. Now, the rise is something totally different. It used to be really the only way they fished it. That was kind of the thing, was to chase the push. And so many people have kinda either just not learned it, don't know how to do it, or forgotten about it. I don't know. I'm on the push a lot, and I don't see a lot of people doing it. Everybody, if they have a boat, at some point has been out there and the water starts coming up and all of a sudden the fishing gets really good for a few minutes. That's the push coming through. Well, why don't you run down to the next hole and let it come in on you again? And run down to the next hole and let it come in on you again. If every time it comes in on you the fish bite, here's your sign. What are you doing still sitting there? Make the move. So often people go, well, yeah, but I just caught three browns on this run. Yeah, because the push was coming through. Time to move. That's over with now. Now the push is coming in down here.

Chad Johnson: But the push can be very hard to ride as well. When I first started learning it, I had one of the old time guides tell me, Chad, I can't even explain it to you. It's just a feeling, because it can be such a small change. It's when that trickle first starts coming in, and it hasn't risen three inches yet, but it's gonna rise three feet. That first three inches got 'em fired up, and so that's the part of the push you need to be on. That part of the push didn't work? Let me back up in it a little bit. Okay, now I'm catching fish. I'm gonna ride with this part of the push. That's a great tactic for catching those nicer fish.

Kyle Veit: I could see how that would be a feel thing too. It's such a big river. There's so much water. You gotta be pretty tuned in and paying attention to what you got going on in front of you to have the awareness to see the water's coming up, things are changing. It's a subtle thing that you have to notice, and to be on the front of it, the middle of it, the back of it, you'd really gotta be keyed in.

Chad Johnson: You do. I had one of the guys tell me one time, Chad, I've seen it at times where the sweet spot wasn't a hundred yards long.

Kyle Plunkett: So just get your drift boat right in the middle of that football field and keep going with it.

Chad Johnson: But as soon as you back row for one bank, you're behind it. I always tell people, don't you come out here on the White River playing checkers when we're all out here playing chess.

Kyle Plunkett: What would you say some ideal CFS numbers are for low water, mid water, and high water, for the average angler who's trying to go out here and catch some fish? How do you break those up?

Chad Johnson: Well, the reality is, if we're talking wade fishermen, it's just off. Because when it's anything other than off, there ain't much wading to be had.

Kyle Plunkett: Let's say we've got a couple days with you. We gotta talk boat fishing.

Chad Johnson: If you're talking boat fishing, if I had my ideal water just around the clock, it'd probably be somewhere between eight and 10,000. It's enough to put the fish on the banks, but it doesn't blow everything out. Plenty of water to make 'em feel comfortable to eat streamers and that kind of thing, but it's still easy enough to get your bugs down. You don't have to go crazy long leaders. You don't have to go to a depth charge line. 10 grand's pretty easy to fish. Your streamer's working, your hopper's working, your nymph's working. It's just a water flow that everything kinda works in.

Kyle Veit: So two and a half to three generators?

Chad Johnson: Yes. When I get lower than that, a lot of my streamer stuff doesn't work, and my hoppers will fall off a little bit. When I get way up into 20 grand, it's so hard to get any kind of nymph down. It's hard to get streamers down. That's a lot of water to ask them to come up in. So there can be some extremes. That's one of the things with coming to these tailwaters like this. It's never gonna be the way you want it every time. I have guys come on six trips, and four of 'em were awesome. That's the reality of it. If you come here to go streamer fishing and there's no water, 2,000 CFS, it just probably isn't gonna happen. It's not the day. So as far as guide trips go, at times you are kinda buying a lottery ticket. But I would say our water's good 75% of the time. That's not bad odds.

Kyle Veit: And it's versatile enough. You may be coming for that big brown, but like you were saying, even on the low water days, you can still go out and catch fish and have a good time.

Chad Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. They're day savers.

Kyle Veit: I want to ask you for some pro tips, or maybe on the opposite side of that, some common pitfalls you see of guys coming over here and they're just not figuring it out. What would be a pro tip that you would give to people fishing the White?

Chad Johnson: If I had to give somebody a number one boat tip, it would be: if it's under six grand, fish the middle of the river. If it's over six grand, fish the banks. I probably shouldn't even say that out loud. For your brown trout. Because that's kinda where they push. That's where they start to push to the side.

Kyle Veit: Under six, stay in the middle. That makes sense. Everything we hear about browns is, like you said, they're lazy. They're big, they're carnivores. They're trying to do as little as possible and get the most return, the most bang for their buck.

Chad Johnson: But then they're also smart and spooky. So during the day when it's under that six grand, they're gonna sit in the deepest spot in the river, which is the middle.

Kyle Veit: That's good. Well, I know there's a lot more to cover there, and the thing that always amazes me is you could spend your whole life fishing this river and never completely figure it out, like you were saying at the beginning. But there's some things that you can do to simplify it and have some strategies as it fluctuates from super high water to low water, and still have good days over here.

Chad Johnson: Your fishing's not over. You just gotta change your tactic. And don't come to the White River with this one thing in your mind that you're gonna come and do to catch brown trout. Come with an open mind. It really is a good kind of mentality to have when you come over here. A lot of times you get your heart set on, like, I'm going to the state park and I'm gonna throw hoppers on that right bank and we're gonna crush 'em. Well, probably not. I'm probably fishing somewhere else that day, and we won't even see that bank, because that ain't where it's happening this time. You were here three weeks earlier the year before, and things have changed. So just come with an open mind, and most of the time our guides can show you a pretty good time.

Kyle Plunkett: Great episode. Thanks for opening the book for us on how to read water and what to look for. I'm sitting here going, I'm learning so much. Every time we come and talk to these guys, they're always teaching us stuff. I fish a decent amount. I feel like I should have it pretty figured out by now, but nope. Y'all stick around for next week. We're gonna continue this conversation. We're going into bug selection, and how the bugs translate to catching big browns.

Kyle Veit: And really going into, when the hatch isn't obvious, what are you gonna do?

Kyle Plunkett: When it's not obvious, how do you match a non-obvious hatch? What do you fish? And remember, if you're a part of the Holler on Patreon, you get a discount here at Diamond State Fly Co. They'd love to meet you, sell you some flies, show you around, offer you a beer. Y'all stop by and tell 'em we sent you. For everybody else, share this episode with your fishing friends who really need to learn how to row their boat or keep their little bobber right in the middle. Whatever it is y'all do, y'all enjoy and we'll see you on the next one.

Chad Johnson: Thanks for having me, guys.

Kyle Veit: Welcome back to the Ozark Podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Veit, joined as always by co-host of the show and my good buddy, Kyle Plunkett. What's going on, bro?

Kyle Plunkett: Man, we're back at it. Back at Diamond State. This is part two of how to make sense of the White River. What do you do with flows? What do you do with bugs? What do you do with hatches? What do you do when you don't know the hatches and you're trying to figure out how to fish? So we're excited to be back talking about fishing.

Kyle Veit: That's right. We got Chad Johnson back with us. Welcome back.

Chad Johnson: Glad to be here.

Kyle Veit: So we just came off of last week. We talked through all the flows, trying to understand the beast that is the White River and how variable it can be: high water, mid water, low water, what to do. Now I want to get into fly selection. One of the staples of fly fishing is match the hatch. Understand what's going on with the bugs on the water. And that works. If you can do that, you can catch fish. But there's a lot of in-between time too, when there's maybe not a big hatch going on, or where it might not be obvious. So I wanna talk about fly selection and what to do in those little seasons. But before we go there, let's break it down at a high level. What are the key seasons on the White River when it comes to insects and the different hatches that you'll see?

Chad Johnson: So the reality is we've got three major hatches. And then we have some small ones. But our three major hatches, and I'm calling one of 'em a major hatch that everybody else may not, I'm calling our midge hatch a major hatch. We get more midges than anything else. We get those 275 days a year. You can't negate the midge hatch, even though at times it's not getting the big browns up and going. It is big and prolific. It's just the rainbows are crushing 'em, the smaller browns are crushing them. But it is the biggest hatch we have. Most tailwaters are that way. Tailwaters are major midge fisheries.

Kyle Veit: I'm just gonna ask a basic question here. When you say a midge, I know that's like a tiny bug. What actually is that? What does a midge become? Is a midge a fly?

Chad Johnson: So in layman's terms, it kinda looks like a mosquito. That's kind of the size bug we're talking about. Very tiny legs. To be honest, a mosquito body might be a little big. They really are like just thread. The body width of that small hook is about how big their bodies actually are. That's why I say a lot of people wouldn't consider that one of our major hatches. But I can't negate that, man. I catch more fish on midges than anything else.

Chad Johnson: But the hatches most people care about are the caddis hatch and the sulfur hatch. And the caddis hatch is really funny, man. Things are changing here on the White River. Heck, maybe an entomologist will hear us talking and he'll hit me up on Facebook and explain it to me. Obviously I know temperatures changing are kinda what's causing what I'm gonna say next. When I first got here, the hatches were fairly small, but I could mark 'em on March 15th. Boom. I was gonna start seeing my first caddis, which are a really nice size 14 white wing caddis. And over the years, it's just gotten a little later and a little later. And it seems like now it's kind of mid-April when they really start popping, and they usually go somewhere around five weeks. And when I say prolific, I mean hatching in your cup holders. Wiping 'em out from under your glasses. Every fish in the river is eating it. My bait fishing buddies go, Chad, during that time, I can't even catch my minnows to go fishing because they're eating the damn caddis. Every fish in the river is eating caddis, big and small. It can be quite ridiculous at times, the way they stack up.

Kyle Plunkett: Real quick, do you think it's later because the minimum flow has changed? Like they push more water, and so there's less sunlight getting to the bottom to warm it up?

Chad Johnson: For whatever reason, the water out of our lake seems to not warm as fast. Just a week and a half ago it was still 47 degrees, which is too cold. Around 51 or 52, don't crush me if I'm wrong, that's when those caddis really start to do well. And so what we really saw this year was, if we didn't get any sunshine, they weren't hatching, where typically the water would be warm enough that it would make 'em hatch.

Chad Johnson: But here's the part I was talking about, if an entomologist can explain this to me. Hatches start on the lower end of the river, because that's what warms up first. And we know our hatches are all about temperature. As of about four years ago, they hatch at the dam as soon as they hatch at Buffalo City. Makes no sense. And it wasn't that way. I used to chase that hatch up river. I would start down there, and as the weeks went, before it was all over with, I was at the dam. Now there's not as many bugs down there as there used to be, and up top is just loaded. It's really strange how it doesn't start downstream. They kinda start everywhere at the same time. I know it shouldn't be that way, and I don't really know what causes that.

Kyle Veit: That's interesting. I almost wonder if there's some kind of adaptation where that bug is adapting to that water faster 'cause it's been here longer.

Chad Johnson: I think you're onto something with your temperature.

Kyle Plunkett: I know they run more water. That could be part of it too. But that doesn't help solve why they're starting at the dam.

Chad Johnson: No. So caddis go about five weeks. Then, say we're in the third week of May, we'll get a couple of in-between weeks, where I can easily catch 'em on hoppers. And then we'll start getting sulfurs. Here's another entomologist question. Our sulfurs don't hatch unless we have high water. If we had low water, our sulfurs don't even come off. As soon as he starts our summer high water, our sulfurs come off.

Kyle Plunkett: Who's he?

Chad Johnson: The guy at the dam that has the button. The powers that be. The power company and the Corps of Engineers.

Kyle Plunkett: Sounds like a conspiracy theory. He's like a lighthouse keeper. He just lives in the dam.

Kyle Veit: He's probably an avid podcast listener.

Kyle Plunkett: He's showing off to his friends like, watch me screw with all these guides.

Chad Johnson: Watch 'em bump. But one of the funny things that happens is, when that water hits, they'll kick that thing up to 10, 15 grand, trying to dump all this water out of the lake, and those fish will just push behind brush tops and eat the crap outta the sulfurs. So we're dry fly fishing in 15,000 CFS. It's pretty fun.

Kyle Veit: So that's kind of the opposite of the traditional thinking of low water and a warmer bottom, 'cause the sunlight's coming through the water, warming the bottom, letting those bugs hatch. But you need high water to let those sulfurs hatch.

Chad Johnson: That's the part we're all wanting somebody to explain. We've had crazy theories, like people going, well, they're coming out of the banks. I don't believe any of them. I'd like to know what it actually is. It can't be out of the banks, 'cause they live in the water.

Chad Johnson: But you have to understand, when we are talking about the hatches, the difference in the fishing when you're actually in a hatch. So think about this, little redneck example here. If I come up to you and I gave you a bag of Doritos, and there was one fake Dorito in the middle of the bag, the likeliness that you would eat 30 real Doritos and put that fake one in your mouth is pretty high. But if I walked up to you and I tried to hand you one Dorito, you would look at it and you'd go, why is this guy trying to hand me one Dorito? And you would inspect it, and you'd probably notice it looked a little funny, like our flies. And the likeliness you eat it is not very good. When we're fishing and there's not a hatch on, we're out there trying to hand them one potato chip. And they make their living eating potato chips. The fishing is so different if you have a hatch. So as a fisherman, when I go places, I don't just go, what river am I going to? I go, I want to go fish such and such river. What's hatching on it right now? It makes a huge difference.

Kyle Veit: That makes total sense. I'm not eating a single Dorito from some dude, I don't care who it is. But if somebody said, here's a whole bag?

Kyle Plunkett: I'm totally tearing it open. Well, and then there's the other part that I know some guides talk about, which is if I came up to you and handed you 20 Dorito bags, the likelihood of you eating all those bags is pretty unlikely. You can actually get oversaturated with Doritos. You'll hear guys who hit the start of the hatch and they're killing it, and then all of a sudden there's too many real ones on the water. So they do something totally different and that works. So we've hit caddis, and you said that's April to mid-May. And then there's a little bit of a down period, and then you get sulfurs, and that's a mayfly. It's a big old bug. And then the third is really the midge, which is always there.

Chad Johnson: So those are really the two big hatches. And then by the time the sulfurs leave, we're on the hopper season. Girdle bugs, hoppers, that type of thing. And those aren't hatches. Those are falling in. I always say, if you think about it, through the spring you're fishing everything from the bottom up. Through the summer you're fishing everything from the top down. It's just a way to think about it and help pick your bug selection when you go somewhere. Not that you can't catch fish on the bottom during the summer, but when you start thinking about what's actually happening, what they're eating on the bottom during the summer would be a crawfish. Other than that, most of the fish that I'm catching are eating stuff from above. Outside of that, I do have some smallmouth that are crushing crawfish, and you've gotta get down and crawl it for 'em.

Kyle Veit: And in the summer is usually when you have higher flows, 'cause they're trying to generate more power for electricity in the homes. So it would be a little bit counterintuitive to put in all that extra effort to get your fly all the way down to the bottom in high water. You're really trying to target the top.

Chad Johnson: It would be counterintuitive. If the food's coming from up top, what am I doing trying to get 12 foot deep? That's kinda the way to think about it. So as a general rule, we're looking at that kind of water through the summer. I got on a hopper with a girdle bug tagged three foot below it, and I'm fishing it on the bank. That's really your summer rig. We change a few things. There's a few small nymphs that we'll tag with that we do pretty dang well with that time of year under a hopper as well. A lot of times you gotta pull your dropper off, because if you've got a three foot dropper, you've got to keep your hopper three foot off the bank. So if they're really on the hoppers, we pull that off so you can get that hopper closer and just go real clean with one fly, and you can get it in right on the bank. But they will not turn on to those hoppers like that until those sulfurs are gone.

Kyle Plunkett: When does that sulfur hatch dry up?

Chad Johnson: It's the same, it lasts four to five weeks. So pretty much through the second week in June or so, depending on when he turns that water on. But you asked the question about in-between times.

Kyle Veit: Yeah. So you've got these major hatches that people hear about and know about. What do you do when you come on a day and it's not a caddis hatch, it's not a mayfly hatch, maybe the hoppers aren't going crazy? What do you do?

Chad Johnson: So I'm gonna go rainbows first. If you're here and you're fishing rainbows and there's no hatch on, well, there's a midge hatch every day. You can't beat a midge for a rainbow. Sow bugs and scuds are crustaceans. They're here year round, and they love them. So you should be fishing a scud or sow bug or midge, or a woolly bugger. Woolly buggers work great. It's small, like a sculpin or a small crayfish. It's something moving, and a lot of times they just like that.

Kyle Veit: So with the midges and the scuds and sow bugs, most of the time you're under an indicator. With a woolly bugger, are you stripping and swinging that? You won't put a woolly bugger under an indicator?

Chad Johnson: At times, but typically, no. If I've put on a woolly bugger, it's because I wanna do something other than indicator fishing. I'm in low water, and my customers don't wanna look at an indicator anymore. And so I put on woolly buggers and let 'em strip 'em over grass beds, and those rainbows eat the crap out of 'em. We have a good time stripping flies and watching the rainbows dart after 'em and chase 'em. That's some action. It's just a different tactic, typically for low water. If I put that on, it's 'cause I'm wanting to move something. Typically, if I'm dead drifting, I do better with my bugs.

Chad Johnson: So that would be the rainbows. When it comes to our browns, guys, our browns are dirty eaters. If you tell me any given day of the week that there's no hatch on and I need you to go catch a brown trout, I'm probably gonna do one of three things. I'm either gonna go strip a small streamer, or I'm gonna drift a mop or a girdle bug. Mops are big ones. We catch a lot of brown trout on mops.

Kyle Plunkett: What color?

Chad Johnson: White. You can't go wrong with a white mop fly. White on the White. It's crazy, but they just eat so dirty on that. I don't know why they like it, but that's the thing. On a day for a brown when there's nothing going on, I'm not typically gonna try to nymph one up. Because with nothing going on bug-wise, I'm gonna try to do something dirty. Girdle bug, mop, or small streamer.

Kyle Plunkett: What size girdle bug? Let's say it's mid-July.

Chad Johnson: Size eight.

Kyle Veit: Let me ask you about the girdle bug. My understanding of a girdle bug is it's an imitation of a stonefly, right? Do we have stoneflies? So why do they eat those?

Chad Johnson: I think they're eating them as baby crawdads. The time of the year that they eat them the best is during the crawdad hatch. I can take 'em out to my smallmouth stream, too. I fished a whole tournament for smallmouth bass and never put on anything other than the girdle bug.

Kyle Veit: No way. On an indicator, or you strip it on the bottom?

Chad Johnson: Strip it. That thing they're eating is baby crawdads.

Kyle Plunkett: I've never thought about how we don't have stoneflies, but that's the imitation.

Kyle Veit: Do we not have any?

Chad Johnson: I have found them on the river before, down around Buffalo City on the lower end, where we have some silt and things coming in off the Buffalo River. But it's not like Montana, where there's a stonefly hatch. We would love to have a big bug introduced up here. It'd be fun.

Chad Johnson: Something to think about while we're talking about bugs: when I moved here, this river was only 50 years old. I've been here 20 years, so now it's only 70 years old. It was a smallmouth fishery until they dammed it up and put trout in it. So it had warm water bugs. It has taken a lot of years for these cold water bugs to establish themselves. When I first got here 20 years ago, we didn't have a sulfur hatch like that. Not even close. A couple would trickle through here and there, and we'd go crazy, but it was never enough to get fish to eat anything. And now that is prolific. Our caddis hatch was okay, and now it's prolific. So we're a young river on our cold water bugs. We're still maturing, and it's only gonna get better in our bug life. It's twice the dry fly fishery now that it was when I showed up here 20 years ago.

Kyle Plunkett: You said we don't have a big bug, but you do have cicadas every 13 and 17 years. So if you're willing to really wait.

Chad Johnson: That's right. And then you've got the annual cicadas, the little olive ones. We see some of them getting eaten, but it's usually not prolific. It's just not often enough. What I've always said is it takes a few really big bugs or a lot of small bugs to get those browns going. When that 17 year cicada thing happened, it really only touched the White River in two spots. It was not near as prolific as it was made up to be. But where it did touch the White, it had big browns up eating them. But I found out the smallmouth were crushing them, so for that whole three weeks I was up in the creek on smallmouth. They were turning backflips out of the water for 'em. I got to where I wasn't even fishing cicada patterns anymore. I tore the legs off a black popper and pushed orange legs through it, and was going pop, pop, pop. It was insane. The bream and goggle-eye and Ozark bass were eating the dead-drifting ones, and the bass were eating all the ones that were alive and buzzing. So we just popped and didn't stop, and they were knocking poppers out of the water, out in the air, like a dadgum peacock bass on a plug. Dude, it was so cool. I stayed over there the whole time.

Kyle Plunkett: I love it. We were talking to a buddy who was catching stripers on them. He was like, that was the coolest thing ever. Can you imagine stripers on cicadas, on topwater?

Chad Johnson: Any of those fish eat 'em. I had a couple of boys that came to me that were doing like a tour. They were following it around to like four different places to hit the cicadas.

Kyle Veit: That is really cool. Let me ask you one thing. You're talking about fish behavior and how they're reacting to different flies. When you come out on a day and you're figuring it out, and you're starting to throw some different things, and one thing's not working, you've tried the midge and that's not working, how do you read the fish behavior? If you start seeing them chasing something or turning off, do you change up your strategy? What are you looking for in the water?

Chad Johnson: It's kind of funny, because we get to be on it every day, we get to see the changes, and all us guides are talking about what we're catching them on. So it's very rare that I go to the river and don't know what bugs I'm going to use before I get there. But I see this a ton. Yesterday morning, I knew I'd been catching them on Lightning Bugs and midges. I got out there, and they were rising up to the midge but not eating it and going back down, rising up to the midge but not eating it and going back down. And I was like, all right, they want it. They're moving for it. Something's a little off. I deepened the rig six more inches and they started eating it. I think that happens to us so often, that it's some little thing. I knew they were eating midges. I was watching them eat. They're rising up, dimpling. These fish are eating midges. Why are they not eating mine?

Chad Johnson: And if they had not eaten that, my next move would've been, well, I was fishing a Ruby midge. That's just a red midge with black thread, and I tie 'em with a silver bead and with a copper bead. Two different flies, two variations. And I find most of the time it's sunny day, silver bead. Cloudy day, copper bead. I will fish the same midge with a different color bead and they'll start eating it. There's so many micro changes out there that it can be pretty challenging deciding what the issue is. Do they not even want that bug? Well, they were coming and looking at it, so something interested them in it. Or am I not getting any looks at all? Okay, well, the water is a little cloudy, so can they not see it? Do I need a lead fly? Do I need to put on a girdle bug or a San Juan worm or whatever lead to get 'em to move over and line up with me so they can see my midge? Something a little brighter can get 'em to move over into the lane so they can see what you're actually trying to present to 'em. It doesn't even have to be something they'll eat. Tie a mop on, tie an egg on, tie a San Juan worm on. If the water's cloudy, they may be eating the same midge they were eating up river before that creek came in and clouded it. They just can't see it as well, so they're not moving over as far for it. So you needed a lead. You didn't need a new bug. If you're out there doing it right, it's tough.

Kyle Veit: Fascinating. I've always heard of attractor flies and getting their attention, but I've never thought about it as getting them to see it sooner so they can move over into the swim lane and be there at the moment that your fly actually gets there.

Chad Johnson: A fish may not move over four foot for a midge, but he'll move over four foot to look at that egg, and then eat the midge. So when you get into it, it can be very hard like that. But I don't want to just tell people, well guys, it's tough, live with it. What I would say is, if you're here and you've got some flies that you know have worked for you in the past, play with your depths before you do anything. Before you move, before you do anything, play with your depths. We're almost never getting as deep as we think we are. Almost never. Especially if you're wading.

Kyle Veit: Oh, we've done that so many times. Exactly what you're saying. We've pushed it down another six inches, another foot, and we start catching fish immediately.

Chad Johnson: Yes. Because it's so tough to get those bugs down. When we're in that boat, we're putting a cast out and we're drifting a hundred foot. When you're wading, you're getting a drift of 15, 20 feet. By the time you throw a mend and it finally sinks, it gets right here and starts swinging up again. You're in that zone for such a small, narrow window of time that you should really play with your depths first.

Chad Johnson: But as far as fly selection, as a general rule here when it comes to our nymphs, you're gonna fish a sulfur pattern, a caddis pattern, a midge pattern, a scud, and a sow bug. If I had those five bugs in my boat, I'd be good to fish the White River as far as nymphs go. That's not that many. It's pretty simple. So what I would say is, per time of year: if I got here during the winter, I'm starting with my midge. That's all that's going on. You may put on a heavy beaded mayfly so that you can get your midge down, but make no mistake, it's the midge you're fishing. If I got here anywhere between March and May, I'm gonna start with a caddis and probably tag a midge off of it. And if I'm here anytime after May, I'm gonna start with my mayfly and a midge. We get those midge hatches every day, so that midge is pretty much gonna be tacked onto the bottom of every one of those for me, until I get something just so hammered down, like I'm in the middle of a caddis hatch, so I'm gonna put on a 14 and a 16.

Chad Johnson: I'll give you one quick Whitlock story. I'm fishing the caddis hatch and I'm whooping brown trout, but I'm whooping them on a midge in the middle of the caddis hatch. And so I go to Dave and I'm like, all right Dave, what's going on? I got these two bugs in my hand. I got a caddis and I got a midge. And I go, Dave, I know it's the caddis that's getting these browns up and going. I know that's why they're feeding. But right in the middle of the caddis hatch, I'm fishing this caddis with the midge dropped below it, and those browns are taking the midge every time. And he goes, well, Johnson, if I had two pieces of shit in my hand and you had to eat one of 'em, which one would you eat? And I said, well, Dave, I guess I'd eat the little one so I didn't have to eat so much of it. And he goes, yeah, I think that's what they're doing. And I go, Dave, man, are you just calling my flies crap? And he goes, oh, you know me, Johnson. I like catching my fish on pretty flies. And he laughed for a minute, but then he told me that I didn't realize how perfect of a caddis casing I had tied. It was a brown midge with black wire for a rib and a copper bead. And he said that caddis, when it's popping out of its husk, has a little helmet on the front of the worm that looks just like that copper bead, and that husk is brown with a black rib. They were eating it as the full caddis casing with the caddis in it. That's why they were eating that one.

Kyle Veit: How did he know all this? How did he figure it out?

Chad Johnson: I sit around and I talk about all kinds of really great fishermen that I've gotten to fish with over the years, but Dave's mind worked different. He was a different guy. I've met so many of these guys, and Dave was just different.

Kyle Plunkett: That's so cool. Well, Chad, we really appreciate you, man. This has been fun. If people wanna get in contact with you, where should they go?

Chad Johnson: CJ's White River Outfitter. Got a website. Go check it out. You can hear my podcast, you can look at the water reports. I have a cabin on there I rent, and also my booking agent for booking guide trips.

Kyle Plunkett: Awesome. The one stop shop. I love it, man. Thank you again. Appreciate it, everybody. Y'all share this with your friends. We really appreciate it. It means the world to get some good fishing info out to the people of the Ozarks. And remember, if you wanna stop by Diamond State Fly Co., you can use our Patreon discount from the Holler and get 10% off the store. We will see y'all on the next one.