North of the Arkansas River the boating is highland reservoir water. Bull Shoals Lake, Norfork Lake, Beaver Lake and Greers Ferry Lake all sit in drowned valleys with timbered bluffs running straight into deep water, and the thing that catches a lower unit there is usually a ridge point carrying on under the surface off a bank that looked steep enough to run right up to. Lake Ouachita is a different day out, island country where the far shore is often another island. Lake Dardanelle and Ozark Lake are navigation pools on the river itself, held near a working level for the tows, with backwater arms off the main channel that shallow up quickly.
The Arkansas pack carries 6,773 charted water bodies. Of those, 1,526 carry a name, and 136 named lakes are larger than one square kilometer. The shapes come from the National Hydrography Dataset and the depth under them is built from state elevation surveys, which is what makes a reservoir here something you can plan a crossing on rather than a blue outline with a label floating in it.
The 6,773 charted water bodies put Arkansas 13th of the 48 state lake packs. That count is every polygon the National Hydrography Dataset holds inside the box this pack is cut to, so it takes in farm ponds and oxbows left by the river along with the big impoundments. A good share of the 6,773 are water you would carry a boat to rather than back a trailer down to.
Of them, 1,526 carry a name, which is 19th among the 48. Names matter more on inland water than people expect. Half the coves on a large reservoir are known by whatever the locals call them, and the named water is the part you can match to what somebody told you at the ramp.
The pack also carries 136 named lakes larger than one square kilometer, 16th of the 48. A square kilometer works out to about 247 acres from the same measurements, and that is roughly the size where a lake stops being one sheet of water you can see across and starts having arms out of sight of the ramp, with enough fetch for the wind to build something in the afternoon that was not there at eight in the morning.
| Lake | Charted surface area |
|---|---|
| Bull Shoals Lake | 181 km² (44,775 acres) |
| Table Rock Lake | 168 km² (41,588 acres) |
| Lake Ouachita | 154 km² (38,054 acres) |
| Lake Dardanelle | 137 km² (33,903 acres) |
| Greers Ferry Lake | 125 km² (30,913 acres) |
| Wright Patman Lake | 119 km² (29,381 acres) |
| Beaver Lake | 113 km² (27,898 acres) |
| Norfork Lake | 76 km² (18,706 acres) |
| Haggerty Camp Lake | 58 km² (14,233 acres) |
| Broken Bow Lake | 57 km² (14,110 acres) |
| De Gray Lake | 46 km² (11,490 acres) |
| Ozark Lake | 38 km² (9,390 acres) |
The twelve largest named lakes the Arkansas pack carries, by charted surface area, measured from the chart polygon itself. The pack carries 6,773 charted water bodies in all, 1,526 of them named, and 136 named lakes larger than one square kilometer.
There is no NOAA chart for an impoundment. The nautical charts cover the coast and the navigable rivers, and a lake made by putting a dam across a valley was never part of that survey program. Inland depth in Helm is built from state elevation surveys instead, and the water bodies themselves come from the National Hydrography Dataset. That is the whole reason a reservoir is charted water in Helm rather than a shape with a name on it.
What that gets you at the ramp is a bottom you can read before you are sitting on it. The contours and the depth figures are on the water, and with your draft entered the ground your boat cannot cross shades. How the shading and the routing work is covered on the depth and routes pages. The part that belongs to a lake is where the numbers underneath it came from in the first place.
A reservoir also sits at whatever level it is being held at that week. A flood control lake gets pulled down through the winter and brought back up in the spring, and a navigation pool is held near a working level most of the year. A contour on a lake is drawn against a reference surface elevation, so when the lake is being held below that, every reading is short by the same difference across the whole lake. Read the lake level off the gauge before you leave the house and carry that figure with you all day. The bottom itself does not move. The creek channel you followed in June is in the same place in October, only the water on top of it changed, and the shoulders on either side of that channel are what come up to meet you.
Bull Shoals Lake is the largest named lake in the pack at 181.2 square kilometers, 44,775 acres measured off the chart polygon itself. Table Rock Lake is 168.3 and Lake Ouachita is 154.0, so the top three sit within 27 square kilometers of each other. On any of them, end to end is a day rather than an afternoon.
Lake Dardanelle comes next at 137.2 square kilometers, 33,903 acres, which puts a river pool ahead of both Greers Ferry Lake at 125.1 and Beaver Lake at 112.9. Norfork Lake at 75.7 square kilometers is well under half of Bull Shoals. Further down, Lake Hamilton at 26.9 square kilometers, 6,647 acres, is about a seventh of Bull Shoals, and Lake Conway at 21.9 is smaller again, which is worth holding in mind when somebody calls one of them crowded on a Saturday. Lake Maumelle sits between them at 36.1 square kilometers, 8,920 acres.
The eight largest named lakes in the pack, with the polygon measurements:
The packs are cut to a box rather than to a state line. A lake near a border comes whole in more than one of them, which is the behavior you want out on the water, since a boundary drawn down the middle of Table Rock Lake would mean nothing to anybody running it.
It also means this box reaches past the line and carries water that belongs to a neighbor as much as to anything here. Wright Patman Lake at 118.9 square kilometers, Haggerty Camp Lake at 57.6, Broken Bow Lake at 57.1 and Wister Lake at 25.3 are all in the Arkansas pack, alongside De Gray Lake at 46.5 and Lake Greeson at 28.6 in the hills to the west of Hot Springs.
Where your water runs off the edge of the box, the neighboring packs carry it on: Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi across the river to the east, Louisiana to the south. Taking two packs for one lake costs you storage and nothing else, and the water stays continuous the whole way up the arm.
Inland lake depth comes from state elevation surveys rather than from nautical charts, and a reservoir sits at whatever level it is being held at that week. Treat the shape and the depth as a guide, keep a lookout, and verify locally.
Depth. Inland lake depth in Helm is built from state elevation surveys rather than from a nautical chart, so both of those carry contours and a depth figure on the water itself, read against the draft you entered for your own boat. The lake shapes come from the National Hydrography Dataset, which is where the 6,773 water bodies and 1,526 names in the Arkansas pack come from.
Measured off the chart polygons, Lake Ouachita is 154.0 square kilometers, 38,054 acres, and Bull Shoals Lake is 181.2 square kilometers, 44,775 acres. Bull Shoals is the largest named lake the Arkansas pack carries. Lake Ouachita is third in the pack, behind Table Rock Lake at 168.3 square kilometers, 41,588 acres.
Either one. The packs are cut to a box rather than to a state line, so Table Rock Lake comes whole in the Arkansas pack at 168.3 square kilometers, 41,588 acres, and the Missouri pack carries it as well. If you run the length of it, put both on the device and the chart stays continuous from one end to the other.
Helm Boating