Fishing forecast for Little Rock, AR

Little Rock fishes the Arkansas River where the Corps of Engineers holds it in pools between Murray Lock and Dam, upstream of downtown, and David D. Terry Lock and Dam below. To the west, Central Arkansas Water's Lake Maumelle is a drinking-water reservoir whose fishery the Game and Fish Commission manages, and where white bass push up the river arm each spring; the Little Maumelle River winds out of Pinnacle Mountain State Park. In city parks, AGFC stocks ponds with channel catfish in spring and fall and rainbow trout in winter.

Best fishing times in Little Rock this week

Majors run an hour either side of the moon crossing the meridian over Little Rock, AR; minors, half an hour either side of moonrise and moonset. Where those widths come from: best fishing times and how we compute these times.

When these windows are not the right tool

Solunar theory is John Alden Knight's 1926 prediction; the ±60 and ±30 minute widths are convention, not calculation. The times are computed astronomy, the claim that fish feed inside them is not. The day rating follows moon phase — identical nationwide, so every city shows it the same. A moving front beats the moon: apps that read pressure.

Where to fish in Little Rock

This page is built around Arkansas River, with Lake Maumelle, Little Maumelle River and Boyle Park Pond in reach — fresh water, about 12 minutes from the middle of Little Rock.

Downtown Little Rock sits on Pool 6 of the Arkansas River, which the Corps of Engineers places at both the eastern and western edges of the city, between David D. Terry Lock and Dam downstream and Murray Lock and Dam upstream. The Corps steers anglers to the old river cutoffs and the water below both dams; the city's 166-acre Murray Park, on Corps land just below Murray, has a boat ramp and fishing access.

Central Arkansas Water dammed the Maumelle River in 1958 to make Lake Maumelle, which the Game and Fish Commission lists as the main drinking-water source for 450,000 people in and around Little Rock. The 8,900-acre lake averages 24.7 feet deep, and since its water-supply role keeps organic cover out, AGFC sank 850 PVC attractors in 2010 and 450 Mossback racks in 2011 at 12 to 30 feet and publishes their GPS coordinates.

Two Game and Fish Commission water trails put paddling anglers on moving water close to town. The Little Maumelle River trail runs 8.2 river miles from Pinnacle Mountain State Park to Two Rivers Park, under cypress and past American lotus, with largemouth and spotted bass, crappie, bream and catfish, while the Fourche Creek Urban Water Trail covers 4.4 miles from Benny Craig Park to Interstate Park on a creek AGFC credits with fifty fish species.

The nearest grids we publish are Memphis, TN (209 km, Mississippi) and Shreveport, LA (281 km, Cross Lake). Different water, and different minutes.

What you can catch in Little Rock

State listings put these 6 fish in the water around Little Rock. Plan around the peak, not the open season.

The upper end of Lake Maumelle draws a crowd for the spring white bass run. The Game and Fish Commission writes that the lots at its Sleepy Hollow Access and the walk-in Bringle Creek Access are seldom empty from March through May, while the fish feed along the shoals before spawning. AGFC says white bass start gathering at stream mouths as surface water nears 50 degrees and push upstream in the mid-50s.

In the Game and Fish Commission's spring 2014 creel survey on Lake Maumelle, 45 percent of anglers were after black bass, 25 percent crappie, 10 percent bream and 9 percent white bass. AGFC's netting found the crappie to be mostly black crappie, reaching 10 to 11 inches by age two, and the agency dropped its saugeye stockings after that survey showed under 1 percent of effort aimed at them.

When the Game and Fish Commission and the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff electrofished all eleven Arkansas navigation pools in 2004 and 2005, the Little Rock pool between Terry and Murray dams was one of four where largemouth catch rates ran greatest both years, and its 58.8 bass an hour in 2005 was the top figure among the pools that season. In that survey, 94 percent of the river's largemouth were one to four years old.

Tackle sits outside a forecast page: start with how to catch largemouth bass.

Water temperature and season in Little Rock

Air here swings 40.7 °F across the year, from 40.7 °F in January to 81.4 °F in July. Water is measured separately, and it is not the same number: against these air normals the gauge reads 0.3 to 9.7 °F warmer, every month of the year.

Monthly climate for Little Rock, AR. The air line is the NOAA NCEI climate normal for 1991–2020 — the thirty-year average of a calendar month, not the weather of any one year — measured at LITTLE ROCK AP ADAMS FLD, AR US (USW00013963), 5.3 km from the middle of town, with 28–30 of the thirty years behind each month. The water line is neither a normal nor the air: daily means at USGS gauge Lk Maumelle Raw Water Intake nr Natural Steps,AR (072632996), 21.4 km out, averaged by calendar month over 2016–2025 — 9–10 complete years per month. It is the surface at the gauge, not the water on any particular spot, and it lags the air by weeks, so the two lines are not interchangeable. Read into this site on 2026-10-20.

Here the table measures a lake rather than a river: Lake Maumelle, read at the raw-water intake, sits above the air in all twelve months — by more than nine degrees in October and November — with no monthly mean below January's 45.9. AGFC has white bass gathering as the water nears 50 and moving upstream in the mid-50s; at the intake the lake crosses 50 between February's 46.6 and March's 53.2.

Sunrise, sunset and daylight in Little Rock

The moon window moves daily; the sun does not. Plan a season against this block.

The longest day of 2026 is June 21, 14h 29m; the shortest, December 21, 9h 49m. The meridian passing drifts about 50 minutes later daily: a dawn window this week is an afternoon window in a fortnight.

Through its Family and Community Fishing Program the Game and Fish Commission releases catchable rainbow trout each winter, from November through February, and its stocking table for Little Rock records trout at Boyle Park Pond, MacArthur Park Pond and a stretch of Rock Creek inside Boyle Park, with Lake Valencia in nearby Maumelle on the same list. The fish average a little under a pound, with a handful of 2- to 5-pounders in each season's releases.

NWS Little Rock's frost and freeze table for Adams Field, built on 1991–2020 normals, puts the median first fall freeze on November 10 and the median last spring freeze on March 21, with frost dates of October 31 and April 3. That cold stretch spans most of AGFC's November-to-February trout window in the city ponds, and the agency notes that talk of the white bass run starts in late February and early March.

Lake Maumelle's bass year is set in spring: AGFC's management plan ties good reproduction to high spring water and records strong year classes in high-water springs, 2011 above all. For late summer and fall, the plan seeks a five-foot drawdown from August 1 to January 1 about once every five years, to crowd forage fish toward the bass and let vegetation grow on the exposed shore before the lake refills.

License and seasons in Arkansas

Rules for Arkansas come from Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, and the calculation behind the table is set out in how we compute these times.