Don’t even know what to say… Disturbing to say the least.

It had been a long day at work getting things squared away for Friday and road trips, even in the ~4hr range, are always tiring. The last thing I wanted to hear was “we don’t have a room for you,” but it turned out to be a good deal. They put us up in a different hotel for the night and then put us up in a “villa” when they brought us back the next day. Saved some $ and got a sick upgrade, not bad.

Woke up Friday to a beautiful day. Low 60’s, sunny, no wind… The ladies were going to spend the day doing some shopping, and considering that malls are probably my least favorite place on the planet, I figured it was a good opportunity to try and get in some time on the water.

I had scouted out some spots (God bless google maps), but after consulting with the King of rough fishing in the Lone Star State, I discovered the spots I had been thinking about were posted no-fishing. Whoops.

Would have probably ended up arrested (or at least heavily fined) if it wasn’t for Dave, but instead, he put me on a killer spot. It was silly how good this spot was, not kidding, silly.

Within the first half hour I missed two definite takes. Was borderline frustrated and mad that I had spooked a couple spots holding nice pods of fish, when I noticed a gulping mouth come out of the vegetation a few feet directly in front of me. It wasn’t even fair… a little dap dap dap, and the skunk was off my back.

No chance

I had developed a small gallery of on-lookers on their smoke break and not wanting to give anyone any ideas for after work activities, I moved downstream for a bit to check things out. Promptly botched a hookset and spooked another group of fish and hunted around unsuccessfully for a bit before heading back upstream.

Ran into a spotted gar parked in the middle of the creek and gave it a good effort, but couldn’t manage to get its attention. Literally dragged the fly across his nose at one point, and the only response was a little flick of the tail and a slight change of direction.

Look in the middle...

Tired of getting “the finger” from the gar I moved upstream some more and hit the jackpot. Carp were feeding everywhere I looked, and close. They were burying themselves in the junk and were going to town on whatever was inside. Stripping the fly in/around all the junk what impossible (at least for me), so I resorted to casting the fly on top of the junk, and then just vibrating the line to give the fly a bit of life. Did the trick. Saw a nose move up around the area I thought my fly was and set the hook…

Had a great time “trying” to steer him away from all the trouble around and managed to get him in pretty close. Tried to scoop him in the net when he gave the standard “you think I’m tired, but I’m not… I’m gonna go on another run” to me… and snapped my rod before I even knew what was going on.

####… Really??? Again?? Another broken rod? I feel like I JUST had it repaired. I ended up pulling him in by hand… just had to get a shot of the fish responsible for the breakage.

Sage, get ready for another warranty claim... sorry, really I am.

Had to call it a day… really wish I would have packed a spare rod, it was a crazy good spot. Definitely motivated to find something similar in my own backyard. If you’re trying to get into some rough fish in the DFW area, you’ve gotta book a trip with Dave Speer. Stand up guy… knows how to find ‘em and catch ‘em.

Closed out the Dallas trip with the game on Sat. I’m a lot more comfortable on the banks of a creek than in the chaos of the TX state fair on game day, but it was still a hell of a time.

Ocean of orange and red

The game was obviously disappointing, but it was definitely fun and exciting… I think I could make a strong argument for having the best seat in the house.

Literally on the 50, high enough where you can still see everything, but not too high that you miss out.

 Yeah, I may have been sitting next to TX fans, but they weren’t d-bags so it was all good. Woulda been nice to walk away with a W though.

Got home just in time on Sunday to make the drive to Norman… time to close out the weekend with some straight up entertainment!

Opened with the Black Eyed Peas

And closed with the one of the biggest of all time….

U2!

Broken rod, lost game… still don’t think the weekend could be beat. Hell of a time.

Makes Monday awfully rough though. Ward needs a nap. Bad.

Haven’t had a ton of time lately to pursue my summer goals, but I had a nice chunk of time on Sunday to try and learn a thing or two.

Got down to the water and found a different gate than normal open. The run was a lot trickier to fish than I anticipated. Tried high sticking for a while… no luck. Threw giant mends (exhausting)… no success. Let it swing… Nada.

Definitely should have picked up one or two here...

Decided to explore downstream since the water was so low. If I wasn’t going to be catching fish… I might as well be finding new water. I walked down all the way to the 10th street bridge without spotting any fish. Noticed a nice little creek on my way downstream and had to give it a shot on the way back up.

Shallow... but fishy

Spotted a few small feeding carp right off the bat.  Didn’t take long to get hooked up… the little guys are so explosive. He darted upstream and spooked every other fish in the vicenity before running back downstream towards the main part of the river. Wish he would have headed that direction first, but that’s the way it goes.

MONSTER

Kept moving upstream in the little creek and found a fun spot…

Notice the nervous water just off the point

The carp were small, but it was a fun spot for a challenge. Ended up hooking up with one of them but it broke me off by running into the construction “barrier” (don’t know what to call it.)

No big ones, and no new species… but still a good day on the river.

I’ll work on putting together a post about today’s post-rain fishin’ (great day!) and will also give up an update with the final vacation plans… Can’t wait, SERIOUSLY pumped about the vacation.

Found a real nice shallow pool stacked with nice carp. I tied on a red sjw, took my time and snuck into position… Hooked into one on the first cast and horsed it out of the pool in a hurry to avoid completely spooking every other fish in the pool.

Not a monster, but always rewarding.

I was thinking about the fish on the first cast curse while I was fighting/landing/releasing the fish and wasn’t too surprised to look up and see my stacked pool getting a little extra pressure…

At least this guy just scoped it out and kept on moving...

Thankfully, the fish started tailing again after a few minutes of waiting. I made probably 10 casts to a big one parked next to a tangle of rebar. No dice. Changed flies… a couple more casts. Nada, but hey… at least he was still there. I stopped for a moment to remove a bit of green/brown goo from the hook and thought about changing it up again when I heard a “ZZZZZPPPPHH“ and saw a splash… followed shortly by an enormous wake steaming off to the main part of the river. Grrreat.

Some jackass bowfisherman had set up shop a good 30 ft off the bank and 20ft up a concrete embankment. I guess he thought it would be a good idea to shoot at the fish I was obviously trying to catch for the past few minutes????

Waited until I figured they were just out of range... ha

Fly fishing the Oklahoma River is certainly never boring.

My Dad is in sales and was visiting one of his feed store customers in a small OK town last week (which will remain nameless, figure it’s probably not a good idea to offend my ol’ man’s customers) when someone brought up fishing. My dad mentioned I was really into carp fishing these days and the store owner’s son (the 8yr old) immediately chimmed in “Hey! I know a great carp recipe, wanna hear it?” Obviously the reponse was “Well sure… let’s hear it.”

The kid continued:

“Well, it’s hard, but first you clean it up real good. Then you put it on some cardboard and season it up so it won’t taste so fishy. Once you’ve seasoned it up the way you like it……… throw away the fish and eat the cardboard!! Why’s he fishin’ for carp anyway!?”

True story. Wonder if he’ll ever come around?

I’ve been wanting to scout out a few new areas I’ve been hearing about (stay tuned!), but I decided to stop off at my favorite local golf course pond to get in a big fish fix. It had been over a week since I had seen the backing on my reel; obviously chasing down some big carp and/or catfish was in order. The LMFR wild rainbows were a treat, don’t get me wrong… but there’s something addictive about hearing your reel scream and finding bruises on your stomach from fighting fish.

The water was a couple feet lower than the last time I had seen the pond and the fish weren’t feeding in any of the areas where I had seen them before. I only had a couple of hours to fish and was worried I was going to strike out. I kept walking along the bank and found some promising activity in the form of a tail flicking around above the surface. I figured it was a carp, but upon closer inspection it turned out to be one of these:

Cat tailing along the bank

He had his head buried under the edge of the bank most of the time, giving me a great chance to get above him and highstick/dap a crawfish imitation (headstand) right next to his face. He didn’t look twice, grabbed it almost immediately and was off to the races.  He wasn’t a monster but still managed to put a solid bend in the rod.

Meow

I didn’t have too much success following the catfish so I took off to a different area of the pond… Spotted a shadow moving around a few feet off the bank. I tossed one about a foot in front of his nose and hoped it was a big carp. Gave it a few strips and saw the shadow turn… set the hook and the water exploded. He went on a decent initial run, but began running 30-40ft back and forth along the bank with an occasional run into deeper water. I wasn’t sure what I was hooked into until I was able to finally drag him in close.

Throwing off a nice vortex... headed on another run

He wasn’t a monster, but the fight lasted long enough to put a few bruises on my stomach and for a few different groups of golfers to finish the hole I was fishing near. I don’t know that I’ll ever get tired of catching these fish.

Sayin' hi

Panorama wasn't cooperating... bummer

I don’t know if the boaters enjoyed getting a close up look at a fly fisherman or what, but it seemed like every boat on the lake would make pass after pass right in front of me. I wouldn’t have even needed a double haul to cast into many of their boats as they would pass.   The wakes were rolling in high (and OFTEN), but the carp were still plenty willing to play around.

Refreshing... but oh so frustrating.

The wakes were a throwback to my Santa Barbara surf fishin’ days. Line control was definitely a pain, and detecting a strike in wavy water was no easy task, but there were enough fish running around that I could just move on to the next spot after I’d spook a group. Weighted red SJW’s and the trusty rusty Egan’s Headstand were both good producers, bringing to hand half a dozen in a few hours. None of them were the monsters that I had hoped to find, but the quantity made up for the lack of size!!

Small, but still knows how to run...

It seemed like the larger fish were all off the bank clooping, but I was had a terrible time enticing them with anything I was throwing. I spent over an hour working a few different groups of cloopers, no dice. I think I feel a new personal challenge coming along…

cloop cloop cloop

The constant waves made it hard for me to keep track of my drys, but I’m sure they helped me keep from spooking them so easily too… give and take I guess…

cloopin away

If you have any advice for foolin’ cloopers, please share… I clearly need the help!!

All in all, definitely a good weekend at Arcadia. Saw a few bait fisherman wrestling some nice cats and even a few nice looking hybrids (though I saw them from a distance so might have misidentified??).  I’ll close with a parting shot of some wildlife… time to go nurse my sunburn.

He was fast and I was far away

Enough of the introduction… It’s business time.

This work week may have been short thanks to Memorial Day, but it sure felt L O N G. After sacrificing my lunch hour three days in a row, I finally had a chance to break free of my windowless, fluorescent light filled prison cell office to grab some lunch. I drove out to my fav lunch spot below the Lake Overholser Dam to enjoy some sun and fresh air while scouting the tailwaters. I didn’t see anyone catch anything (although I must admit I didn’t have too long to observe), but they were releasing a good amount of water from the canal and it was virtually WIND FREE. Not a bad combination. I headed back to the office determined to finish things up in a hurry so that I could get in a serious session on the water before it got dark. I mean come on, wind <10mph… that’s an Oklahoma rarity that demands to be taken advantage of.

Although the water release was tempting me to chase some hybrids below Overholser, I couldn’t resist the urge to track down tailing carp in one of the local golf course ponds. I figured with the light breeze I’d have an easy time locating the goods. Definitely made the right decision.

I got out to the pond around 5:30 and after making sure my girlfriend was comfortably situated with a book/chair/water/etc so she could “sun,” it was game time. I tied on the go-to rusty orange egan’s headstand and got to work. I crept around the bank for a while until I spotted a tail flicking around in the murky water. After putting my first cast about a foot out of range, the second cast was right on target… Saw the tail drop, set the hook, and BOOM… early success. Or so I thought.  He didn’t hesitate for a second, running straight to a metal stake sticking out of the water 10ft away near the bank, quickly wrapping my leader around it, and leaving me saying a few words that my girlfriend wasn’t too happy to hear. She was practically across the pond from me, but I could still see the glare and evidently, she could still hear me pretty well… whoops.

Tied on another headstand and kept on movin’. I crept along west side of the pond, keeping my shadow in the shadows of the bank to avoid spooking the fish that I thought would be feeding on the bank. Didn’t run into a single carp along the whole bank (surprising, normally see at least a fish or two, even on days when the conditions aren’t as pristine). It wasn’t until I got down to the creek/waterfall on the far side where water was draining in from the pond above that I saw any activity, but WOW… was there ever some activity!!!

I don’t know if there was a dead fish (or multiple dead fish) in the upper pond or what, but there were quite a few pieces of “flesh” draining into the pond and they were causing a feeding FRENZY.

Little chunks of fleshy/fishy/goo

Here’s a video of the action:

You’d think the fishing would be pretty simple with some much action going on, but between avoiding the ridiculous number of catfish going to town on whatever had died and trying to entice the carp to eat something artifical instead of the bountiful easy “real” meal being funneled right to their mouths — it wasn’t quite as easy as I anticipated.

It seemed like every time I’d put the fly on the nose of a carp I’d end up setting the hook on one of the catfish instead. The competition was  fierce and this one had the battle wounds to prove it…

Bet it was from the same turtle that got a hold of my sage rod tip... Still mad.

I had to start being very selective concerning which carp I’d cast to since each time I’d drag out a cat I’d spook the carp and have to wait for them to return. The selective casting paid off and I ended up bringing a couple nice carp to hand. I’d run them (literally… the golfers probably thought I was crazy)  along the bank to get out of the action zone to keep the commotion/spooking to a minimum.

Don't know what's more special... a nice carp, or a shot of the nice calm water. What I would do for a few more days like that each year...

The fly that changed my life...

By the time I pulled in the 2nd one I had thoroughly spooked the carp from the area. My stomach was growling and Reese had finished her book so it was a good time to pack it up and go pick up some dinner. What a nice way to cap off a long week…

-Ward