Two fisheries, three dams apart
The Ouachita rises near Eagleton in Polk County and runs east through the national forest as a free-flowing mountain river until it meets Lake Ouachita behind Blakely Mountain Dam. Below that the river becomes a chain of Entergy lakes: Carpenter Dam holds Lake Hamilton at Hot Springs, and its tailwater is the upper end of Lake Catherine; Remmel Dam holds Lake Catherine, and below it the river runs free again past Jones Mill to Malvern. The smallmouth are in the first river, the trout in the second.
The gauge on this page, USGS 07356000 near Mount Ida, measures only the upper river. It sits at the Highway 270 crossing beside Rocky Shoals Float Camp, 414 square miles up the drainage, so it is the number to check before a float. It tells you nothing about the tailwaters, which are covered below.
Pine Ridge to Highway 27 by the Forest Service mile
The Forest Service float brochure measures from the Pine Ridge bridge: Shirley Creek Float Camp at 6 miles, Oden at 10, Pencil Bluff 14, Rocky Shoals 20, Sims 24, Fulton Branch 27, Dragover 29, River Bluff 32, the Forest Road 59 access 35, and the Corps recreation area on Highway 27 at 42; from there the river travels another 45 miles to the lake. Its two suggested day trips are Rocky Shoals to Fulton Branch and Fulton Branch to River Bluff, and it figures about a mile an hour. Keith Sutton's favorite is Oden to Rocky Shoals, 10 miles from the Highway 379 bridge, for smallmouth up to three and four pounds.
The five float camps, Shirley Creek, Rocky Shoals, Fulton Branch, Dragover and River Bluff, are free. American Whitewater says Dragover is now kept by Montgomery County, and because the river makes a three-mile horseshoe there you can float it without a shuttle. Much of the shoreline in between is private.
The Mount Ida gauge and the 100 cfs floor
Ouachita River Haven rents boats and runs shuttles only when the Mount Ida gauge reads between 100 and 1,400 cfs, which is the Ideal Flow used here. AR Own Backyard puts the sweet spot at 3 to 4 feet, floated Oden to the Cave at 3.8 feet and about 547 cfs, and notes that at 4.5 feet some outfitters stop renting. Because no lake feeds this part of the river, summer gets thin: the long-term monthly mean drops from about 1,300 cfs in March to 146 in August.
September 2026 shows how thin. The gauge sat near 10 cfs until a storm on September 11 pushed it to 475 for an evening, then it fell back to about 18 cfs and 2.15 feet by the 24th, well under the rental floor. At that level you wade and drag.
Rainbows below Carpenter and Remmel, November to April
AGFC stocks catchable rainbows below Blakely, Carpenter and Remmel dams from November through April, while the water is cold. In a normal year the numbers below Carpenter are real: 12,000 released in February 2024 with 9,700 more scheduled for March. The 2025 hatchery losses cut the 2025-26 plan to 1,200 fish in December and 1,000 a month from January through April. At Carpenter the fish hold from the dam down to the bridge, reached from the dam park's winter ramp, two more ramps by the public fishing docks, and wadeable shoals near the dam.
Entergy runs both dams. Carpenter has two generators totalling 56 megawatts, and Remmel, finished in 1924 and now on the National Register, three turbines of about 9,300 kilowatts. The weekly release plan goes up on Thursday evenings and the recorded line is 501-844-2148. Below Remmel, USGS 07359002 reads the release directly: in mid-September 2026 it held 263 to 298 cfs overnight and rose to 3,190 to 3,490 cfs on weekday afternoons, with nothing on the weekend. American Whitewater calls 200 to 500 cfs enough to float the 5.9 miles to Malvern with some scraping. Entergy's weekend recreational releases run between noon and 5 p.m.
Two bass over 12 inches, five trout, and the siren
The Ouachita is not one of the ten Blue Ribbon smallmouth streams, though its tributary the Caddo is. The 2026-27 guidebook sets two smallmouth a day, 12 inches minimum, upstream from River Bluff Access and again downstream from Remmel Dam. In Lake Catherine itself, which includes the Carpenter tailwater, smallmouth must be released immediately. Trout carry a daily limit of five, and a trout permit is needed only to keep them; there are no catch-and-release or artificial-only zones. Flathead catfish must be 20 inches from Remmel Dam to Sandy Beach Access at Camden, and hogging and noodling are banned from the Little Missouri's mouth up to Remmel.
Within 100 yards below either dam, every boater must wear a life jacket and leave when the siren sounds before generation. The guidebook also advises against eating largemouth, flathead, pickerel, gar or bowfin from anywhere on the river because of mercury.
Crawdads upstream, shad jigs below the dams
Upper-river smallmouth spawn from April until late May, Sutton says, and most locals fish live crayfish and minnows; imitations of either work. In summer AR Own Backyard caught fish on jig-and-grub combinations and a Hula Popper around brush and big boulders, and AGFC's Sean Lusk says the main stem and both forks hold smallmouth, spotted and largemouth bass. Arkansas Tourism calls November a good month to float, sliding a canoe into the deep holes and ledges where the bass winter.
Below the dams the food is threadfin shad pulled through the turbines. Shane Goodner's reports for AGFC recommend white or black micro-jigs under an indicator, San Juan Worms and hot pink or white Trout Magnets, and small white or brown Rooster Tails, and warn that a rising lake shuts the trout bite off.