Photo by RON SINFELT

Most people know it more for its outstanding trout fishing or a legendary 30-foot long sea serpent that appears occasionally, but the White River offers some of the best largemouth bass fishing in eastern Arkansas.

The luxuriant Ozark Mountains near Fayetteville give birth to this 720-mile stream that wanders eastward, snaking across the Arkansas-Missouri line before heading southeastward toward Batesville. At Newport the White River abruptly turns southward for 257 miles until it connects with the Mississippi River. Along the way, it touches 18 counties, about 25 percent of all the counties in the Natural State.

Along its course, the White River changes dramatically. Several dams create Beaver, Table Rock, Bull Shoals, Norfork and other lakes on the small Ozark Mountain stream complete with rapids. While these lakes support thriving populations of bass, stripers and other fish, the rocky, clear and swift tailraces offer excellent fishing for rainbows, brown trout and other cold-water species.

After the river turns southward, though, it transforms into a slow, meandering waterway capable of supporting commercial barge traffic. At the lower end, it runs through a cypress and tupelo gum wilderness and provides excellent habitat for bass, catfish, bream, crappie and other warm-water species.

“Seasonally, the lower White River is a good bass stream,” said Jeff Farwick, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission district fisheries biologist in Brinkley. “In the river proper, anglers mostly catch Kentucky spotted bass with some in the 2- to 3-pound range. People usually fish for largemouths in the slack backwaters and oxbows.”

Down through eastern Arkansas, the White River flows through and nourishes a vast wetland known as the Big Woods. The Little Red River hits the White near Georgetown. The Black River merges with the White at Jacksonport. The Cache River, the major tributary, flows into the White about one mile upstream of Clarendon.

One of the last and best surviving portions of lower Mississippi Valley floodplain, the area between the Cache and White rivers supports a wide variety of fish and game. In 2004, researchers spotted ivory-billed woodpeckers near the Cache River. Believed extinct since 1944, the woodpecker can only survive in remote, old-growth wet wilderness areas.

The largest tract of hardwood bottomlands under a single owner left in the United States, the White River National Wildlife Refuge preserves about 160,000 acres of swamp in Desha, Monroe, Phillips and Arkansas counties. Created in 1935, the refuge runs about 90 miles down the White River. Low, flat and swampy, the area contains numerous small tributaries and more than 350 natural and manmade lakes or river oxbows.

Not far away, the 55,000-acre Cache River NWR runs 70 miles along the Cache River in Jackson, Woodruff, Prairie and Monroe counties. Similar to the White River NWR, the Cache River NWR also contains many fish-rich oxbow lakes, sloughs and smaller tributaries. Considered a “Wetland of International Importance” by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Lower White River Basin contains more than 280,000 acres of bottomlands, forests, swamps and small lakes. Several state wildlife management areas also preserve wetlands in this area.