Correction: Donnie Hulse caught a 12-pound brown trout on the White River near Stetson’s Resort at about the same time as his longtime friend Rick Boyd caught an 11.25-pound rainbow trout near Buffalo Shoals. The identifies of the fishermen were switched in a photo caption in some editions of Sunday’s newspaper.
What a wonderfully small, fishing- and hunting-obsessed state we inhabit.
The photos that arrived in my e-mail last week at first seemed unrelated.
Rick Boyd of Mountain Home sent a photo of an 11.25-pound rainbow trout he caught on the White River near Buffalo Shoals. His note mentioned photos we've run of Dr. Allyn Ladd of Camden and the big game trophies he's killed with his bow. Ladd and Boyd are friends and members of the same hunting club near Prescott.
"I thought you might enjoy a good trout picture," Boyd wrote.
That's the first double-digit rainbow I've heard caught from the White River in many years, and I considered the photo an excellent choice for our Sportsman of the Week feature.
The next day brought a picture from Donnie Hulse of Redfield, a frequent correspondent, admiring a 12-pound brown trout he caught the previous day on the White near Stetson's Resort.
Obviously folks have been catching big trout on the White River lately, and that merited a feature story.
During our interview, Boyd mentioned the photos we've run of Hulse over the years. It turns out they are old friends and colleagues, as well as classmates at the University of Arkansas-Monticello in the late 1970s. They used to do a spring crappie camp near each other on Lake Ouachita, but they've been out of touch for ages.
Boyd, a former forester with International Paper Co., is the co-manager of the Wal-Mart store in Mountain Home. He and his friend Randy Tate of Mountain Home got on the river at 7:30 a.m. Aug. 13. Using what Boyd called a "river rig," they were fishing for rainbows and caught a small one almost immediately. Boyd quickly got another bite, but this fish was a bit bigger than the other.
"Usually you set the hook and feel tension," Boyd said. "This time I set the hook, and there was this huge explosion with a five-inch tail coming out of the water. I thought I had a great big brown [trout]."
Using an ultralight spinning rig with 6-pound test Stren line, Boyd quickly realized he was overmatched. He resigned himself to the inevitability of losing the fish, so he resolved to enjoy the fight as long as it lasted.
"It came all the way around the boat and then turned downriver," Boyd said. "We pulled anchor and followed it."
Boyd reeled and the fish ran, taking out line as quickly as Boyd recovered it. His spool buzzed against the drag. The fish circled the boat again, and that's when Boyd recognized it as a rainbow.
"It looked like a dolphin coming through there," Boyd said. "It was all colored up and just beautiful."
Finally, the fish came close enough for Tate to net it.
"The moment of truth," Boyd said. "Randy stuck the net out, but it was too big for the net."
That brief struggle reinvigorated the fish, and the fight renewed.
"So I'm like, 'One of these days when it comes by again, think you'd mind putting a net on it?' " Boyd said. "Randy said, 'You think you feel pressure? Try being the net man and it gets away."
Eventually the trout ran out of gas and Tate netted it. Exhausted, the fish died about 90 seconds after they landed it, Boyd said, even though it was hooked in the jaw.
"We didn't have an opportunity to turn it loose," Boyd said.
The fish was 27 inches long with a girth of 19 inches. It weighed 11.25 pounds on a digital scale six hours after Boyd landed it.
"It was a great day, a cool day on the river," Boyd said. "It was like killing a 27-inch, 12-point buck while you're waiting to shoot a doe."
Hulse caught his fish Aug. 12 after a little net drama of his own.
He and his family were vacationing at Stetson's Resort near Lakeview. Hulse and his grandson Darren Small of White Hall hit the water to catch a mess of rainbows. Hulse launched his War Eagle boat at 9:30 a.m. and went upstream to a place where rainbows congregate but that also offers the potential of a big brown. Mary Hulse, Donnie's wife, caught an 8-pound brown the day before.
"She held the record in our household for many years with a 10.5-pound brown, and my grandsons had all caught bigger browns than me," Hulse said.
Hulse's first cast got a solid strike. As the boat drifted downstream, a fish stripped 4-pound test line from the spool. Hulse believed it was a "really good" rainbow or a feisty small brown.
After the fish took about 75 yards of line, Hulse got serious.
"I instructed Darren to trade places with me and to motor me up to where my line was headed upriver at a good pace," Hulse said.
They drifted backward downriver as Hulse regained line. He finally got the fish close enough to see it for the first time.
"I got a glimpse of the biggest brown I've ever hooked, and we have been going there for over 27 years," Hulse said.
That's when Hulse got a case of buck fever.
"With light tackle, you don't just horse these fish in," Hulse said. "We continued gaining line, and the nervousness continued to grow."
After about 30 minutes, Darren attempted to net the fish with a small bass fishing net.
"I always wondered why the guides carried nets as big as the hood of my truck with 20-foot handles," Hulse said. "The fish was almost too big to go in the net."
Meanwhile, a construction crew working on a cabin stopped work to witness the battle. They cheered and high-fived when Hulse and Small brought the fish to shore to revive it.
A fishing guide came by and lent Hulse his scale. It displayed 12 pounds, but that was after the brown disgorged a 1-pound rainbow during one of its rallies.
"It was a memorable day and a fantastic day for fishing," Hulse said. "We just do not realize how lucky we have it in Arkansas."
Sports on 08/24/2014