Editor’s note: The author of this story is Randy Zellers with Arkansas Game & Fish Commission.

The Arkansas Fishing Guidebook is being delivered to bait shops and license dealers across Arkansas, but you can always ensure you have a copy of the regs at the ready by downloading your own copy to your phone.

Downloadable versions of all AGFC regulations guidebooks are available at www.agfc.com/guidebooks.

The guidebook covers all public waters of The Natural State and includes illustrations of Arkansas’s most popular game fish to help with identification. A special section for Arkansas’s trout waters highlights maps of these famous trout-fishing destinations for anglers to find the best locations to launch a boat or walk to the water’s edge.

The most notable changes to Arkansas’s fishing regulations are the opening of Lake Monticello to harvest and refined harvest regulations on trout in the Norfork, Bull Shoals, Greers Ferry and Beaver tailwaters.

Also passed in January, strict catch-and-release regulations on bass and crappie at Lake Monticello have been replaced with new harvest opportunities to help manage the growing fishery.

Lake Monticello was drawn down by the city of Monticello in 2019 to repair the lake’s levee, and the AGFC worked with the city to complete a major renovation to foster this once trophy bass and crappie fishing destination.

Since its refilling began in 2022, the lake has been heavily stocked with forage species and Florida bass. The crappie in the lake have also seen a huge spike in growth since the lake’s renovation, and both species are ready for conservative harvest to keep populations healthy and growth rates high.

On Lake Monticello, anglers may keep the following:

• Largemouth Bass Daily Limit (Five bass, with only one bass being 16 inches or longer)
• Crappie Daily Limit (15 crappie, with no more than seven of those fish being 12 inches or longer)
• Bream Daily Limit (50 – all species combined)
• Catfish Daily Limit (10 – all species combined)