Highland Stoneroller (Campostoma sapadiceum)

Highland Stoneroller (Campostoma sapadiceum) 2

Highland Stoneroller (Campostoma sapadiceum) 3

I shot an email over to the wildlife department to see what they though… Turned out to be a pretty interesting catch. Thanks to Greg Summers, the Supervisor of the Oklahoma Fishery Research Lab, it was quickly identified as the Highland Stoneroller.

This fish has been a hot topic for ichthyologists recently. Within the last year it’s been identified as a unique species and there aren’t very many images available of this species.

Not the monster brown I had been planning on catching… but still cool enough to deserve a quick post

Not gonna keep me from fishin’ early. Hope to come back with some cool stories/pics of warm water creekin’ okie style.

Eh?

It was so big and alien looking I couldn’t help but be curious.

I had a lot of sphinx moth suggestions, but none of the google’d images showed a sphinx moth with those antennae. A little more googling turned up The Butterflies and Moths of North America listing of state and regional coordinators. Shot an email to the Cali coordinator Kelly and minutes later had an answer…

Coloradia Pandora – The Pandora Pinemoth.

God bless google and people who really really like moths (gonna start thinking of them as roughfish of flying insects).

Who needs a "to-do" list anyway?

I picked up this book a few weeks ago after reading JP’s interview with Tom Dickson. It’s easy to feel a bit isolated from the fly fishing community out here in Oklahoma and the book sounded like a good enough substitute for getting in some on-the-water time with the rough fishing gurus.

I’ve always been a fan of a little fishing variety and it seems like this book is opening up a few more fly fishing options for me. I definitely haven’t been disappointed with the results thus far. After picking up my first Flathead a couple of weeks ago (admittedly, more luck than a result of reading the book…spend enough time on the water and something cool is bound to happen sooner or later), I pulled in my first bullhead. Check another one off the species life list!

A not-so-black black bullhead

With a little academic motivation from Fishing for Buffalo and having knocked off 2 new species from the life list in as many weeks I thought I should expand on my “Gar Goal” a bit more… I’m always trying to find ways to continually improve and I figure there’s no better way to ensure it happens than to come up with some specific challenges for myself.

SUMMER GOALS:

1. Catch a Gar – Still #1, but I think I am going to take after Trash on the Fly (one of the best posts I’ve read in a while) and just fish for them opportunistically. I’ve burned a lot of time fishing for them recently when I would have probably been better off chasing something else.
2. Develop some all around rough fishin’ skills. The vast majority of the time I’ve spent on the water this  year has been chasing carp in still water, I need to break out of the rut. This one has to be broken up into a few parts:
   1. Fish more moving water.
   2. Find and catch at least one species of Redhorse
   3. Find and catch at least one species of Buffalo
   4. Find and catch a Drum

Having more goals will give me better opportunity for success and I think will really help me to pick up some new skills over the summer. The water is low and the days are hot and long. Gotta take advantage of it while I can.

Tight Lines.

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.

Well it was definitely nice to be back on the river over the weekend… with over 250k miles (not even sure how many, the odometer went out around 245k, ha) on the ol’ Buick, I get a little more nervous for each road trip, but the LMFR is always worth every mile. 

The trail of people pulling into the park around Midnight Friday

I made my way back to the z2 parking lot, crossing my fingers the whole time that they would cut back the flows for the weekend. No dice. My traditional z2 night fishing opener was a wash, so I decided to toss some flies under the lights…

Kind of like fly fishing with stadium lighting??

Didn’t bring anything to hand, but I wasn’t too bummed… had a lot of fishing yet to enjoy.

I left the spillway around 1:30am to look for a campsite. Area G looked booked, and not wanting to disturb the mess of tents searching for a spot, I opted to sleep in the car by the EH. Woke up to the sound of a car door shutting near by and saw the first anglers arriving. After snapping a couple quick pictures of the refreshing sunrise over the EH, I headed to the remains of the upper footbridge on Spillway Creek to begin the morning fishin’ session.

Sunrise on the EH -- Great way to start the day

Sunrise on the Lake

Had a really good time fishing the spillway. It was a blast checking out all the new holes. I heard Donny C got into some nice big holdovers earlier in the week, but I wasn’t fortunate enough to bring any to hand. The stockers were still around (or were they recently placed???) as well as quite a few little guys that DEFINITELY appeared to be naturally born and bred! NICE! Looks like we had another successful spawn and they survived the heavy flows!!!

There's just something special about a "wild" trout....

The spillway was packed by 10am and after bringing in quite a few stockers and half a dozen wild little guys, I thought I’d move over to the evening hole. I was met with crowds just as big over there too… but I did meet Mike Love (a LMFR celeb to me) while I was on my way upstream. I’ve been reading Mike’s posts on the Beaver’s Bend Fly Shop message board for years and it was great to have the chance to meet him.

Mike mid-release

He was showin’ off… carrying on a conversation, not even paying attention to his drift (that I could tell) and catchin fish when everyone else seemed to be struggling around him. I’m jealous he gets to fish the south eastern Oklahoma waters on the regular. I kept moving upstream, but had to stop and take a picture of the morning EH scene. Quite a sight… Be sure to check out the image full size, you’ll see people pop up all over the place.

Combat Fishing???

I headed up below the (now dry) confluence of lost creek and had a great time throwing roll casts underneath the overhanging trees. Saw some activity on the surface and caught a few on a EHC…

He liked the Caddis...

But quickly realized they were working on emergers… had much more consistent success throwing an caddis pupa emerger (olive body). The wild ‘bows seemed to really appreciate the caddis emerger too…caught quite a few healty and beautiful ones!! I love these fish!! Each one is so distinct.

Apologies for the blur, hurried all fish pics. Great parr marks on this one!

Another great OKIE 'bow. Lovin' the white tipped fins.

Well, I’ve covered the celebs and the wild rainbows… now it’s time for the POACHERS.  I spoke with these two about the regulations as they passed me… Wish I had my cell phone on me to notify the authorities. Seeing wild fish in the EH makes the poaching seem even more grotesque.

WALK OF SHAME

Sunday was an even better day than Saturday. More fish, less crowds. Didn’t catch any monsters the whole weekend, in fact… Not sure I even brought anything to hand larger than 14inches. Had a really nice one (looked like a football) break me off on a downed tree in the EH, but besides that I just ran into stockers and the wild ones.

Can’t wait to be back… next time hope they wont be pushing out so much water so I can play in Z2 and 3!

-Ward