Arkansas has been a fly-fishing mecca for generations. While chroniclers of Hernando De Soto’s expedition mention systems of marsh ponds and canals for containing fish at Native American villages, it was in the nineteen twenties and thirties that fly-fishing caught on big in northern Arkansas, with out of state anglers converging at Norfork to fish the North Fork and Buffalo rivers for bass.
The Shakespeare Company began producing fiberglass fishing rods in the late forties and moved its reel production to Fayetteville in 1965, where it remained for seventeen years. The Wapsi Fly Company came from Iowa to Mountain Home in 1978, making flies until production moved overseas but remaining one of the largest fly materials suppliers in the world.
Both the Game and Fish Commission and fly fishers stocked streams with trout in the 1970s, and Howard “Rip” Collins caught a forty pound four ounce brown trout on the Little Red River that remained a record for seventeen years.
To learn more, visit encyclopediaofarkansas.net.
