It's a work of art (and a fine piece of machined fly tying goodness)

…but I was almost starting to feel bad for myself — sitting around with a pile of newly tied flies, but not so much as a fish to show for it in 2010. Who am I kidding, I could sit in front of that vise for hours upon hours and never get bored, but I really was itchin’ to get the new year’s skunk off my back.

I worked hard last week convincing my buddy Josh that he needed a trip to the river about as badly as I did, and after some successful sweet talking with his wife and my fiance, we both got the green light. Game time… things finally falling into place for a prime winter weekend on the Lower Mountain Fork river.

We got down to Broken Bow a little later than expected (I was a slacker and didn’t gather my gear the night before and we had to battle fog for the majority of the drive).  By the time we got there it was raining pretty steadily, but we weren’t ready to set up camp just yet… It’s never too late to hit the water.

So we pulled into the parking area just after midnight and geared up…

Had a few four legged friends watching us as we made our way to the spot, their glowing eyes were everywhere.

Thinking about bolting...

curious why we were out in the rain...

We didn’t have much (read: any) luck swinging any of the black or olive wooly buggers I had tied up. I was pretty hesitant to fish something I hadn’t tied up myself (I really wanted to catch my first fish on a fly I tied), but I finally gave in and tied on a store bought zonker. Good choice.

Scored a small bow pretty quick and then hooked into something heavy a little while later. Ended up with a frustrating LDR, but the blood was pumping again. A few casts later I hooked into another heavy one, and thankfully this time it was hooked well. I thought it was a nice one, but then again… when a fish hammers a swinging streamer they all feel nice. Then the acrobatics started, the doubt was gone…just hoped I could get it in.

what a chunk

Had a lull in the action for a while and the numb toes/soaking rain combo sent us back in the direction of the car and camp.

We got up and started fishing after 8 on Sat… put Josh on some water he hadn’t fished yet and he got into ‘em quick. Think he had one to hand before I had a fly tied on.

Nice start to the day

It was a great area with a lot of fun water to work… I decided to get in on the action and pulled in my first fish on a fly I tied myself.

victory

There was a lot of fun water and I just enjoy fishing with the bluffs as a backdrop… nice place.

Josh workin' a run

Josh on another nice run

We caught a nice mix, a few small ones and a few nice ones… but one really stood out from the rest. Hard to be sure, but I’d bet he was born in the river. Rather catch one of the ‘wild’ ones than an above average stocker any day.

okie'bow

Got pretty hungry and decided to head back to town for some food and fish z3 while were were down there. Spent our time at the Rereg dam. Took us a little bit to find ‘em, but the action was pretty quick for a while.

Josh puttin it on a nice one

well done (click to see larger image, shows up pretty small)

I even managed to fool a few nice ones on the unproductive buggers from the night before.

rewarding

After catching enough to satisfy we headed back to the park to fish the spillway Creek from about 430 to dark. Didn’t have great success and only brough a few to hand. They were small and pretty unnoteworthy, but fun nonethless. The rain finally stopped and seemed to slow the fish down too. Or maybe we were just getting tired?? Who knows.

After fishing hard all day we didn’t really have it in us to get back out that night. The rain picked up again and the whiskey made it hard to get out of the ol’ sleeping bag.

We fished a little more on Sunday morning… but a few responsibilites at home made us call the trip a little short. Missed out on a perfect partly cloudy day with mild winter temps (mid 50s!?!), but at least the ladies were happy, ha. Gone are the days of fishing without responsibilties hanging over our heads…

getting into the groove

Sure wish we had more time out there… kinda felt like we had to rush to get all the fishing in. Had to make up for all the missed weekends the past few weeks. Need a long weekend or a midweek vacation to slow things down!

Had a hard time coming up with a title for this one… but definitely (and thankfully) a change of pace from the last post

Had a great time fishing with Brent and Chris. Started out down in the “red zone” and saw some success, although it was hit or miss.

Chris on the Bluffs, Brent tying on the next fly

Chris and Brent pulled in the big’uns, while I played with the dinks (got totally ignored by the big riser that I worked for at least 30min).

Nice Bow caught by Chris, Landed by Brent

The dinks were fun though, no complaining from me… tan ehc, black ehc, organge stimulator, parachute adams, olive foam caddis… didn’t seem to matter, they just wanted one look.

Found a nice one chilling in the protection of a boulder and some downed limbs.

a little shy...

Had a nice surprise when I worked my way into a couple of these too…

unexpected

Took a break for lunch and stopped by Sid’s shop to pick up a few flies, chat for a while, and borrow a picnic table. Had a great time over there, gotta stop by if you’re out that way…

Moved on to the Spillway Creek after lunch and worked our way into a little better fishing. We all managed to hook into some great browns and nice rainbows.

the curse breaker

Brent's Brown

Standard Bow for the day

Sure seems like they dropped in some big bows recently. Nice to see, hope they manage to stick around.

Need more daylight hours… but definitely a great day. Now we just need a more direct route from OKC, all this driving out of the way stuff stinks.

My apologies for the absence… lost a bit of blogging motivation, but thought I’d make a comeback with a piece on a weekend trip to Broken Bow, Oklahoma to fish the Lower Mountain Fork River in Beavers Bend State Park.

Well, it was another great weekend on the LMF to say the least! Temps were perfect, the trees were starting to turn, the rain stopped (minus some drizzle), and it was generally overcast… Could have done without the crowds, but with zone 2 and zone 3 out of the equation due to generation, that’s to be expected (tough when everyone’s packed into the one remaining zone). To make it even better, Reese wanted to get away and do some camping/relaxing (didn’t feel like doing any fishing) so it was a great chance for us to get away from the grind.

We got in after midnight Friday and after setting up camp and organizing my gear (putting flies in boxes, cleaning lines, etc) I was too tired to get out and do any night fishing like I had planned on. Woke up in the morning, got the signal from Reese that she wanted to sleep in,  and decided to start the day on the Evening Hole (meaningless to some of you, but more on it here).

Fished the Evening Hole for a little bit (unsuccessfully), but I’m a fan of hopping around and the EH was PACKED (sort of like it was this day) so I took off to cook some breakfast for Reese and make the move to the Spillway Creek.

Lots of people were around, but I love the Spillway because there’s always unfished productive pocketwater. There’s ALWAYS a way to escape out there. I didn’t catch a ton of fish that morning, but the ones I did catch were all quality size. Most were just about the length of the opening of my net.

Fiesty Little Pellet-head

Nice colors on them though..

A bit shy

But a couple fish that were truly big worked their way into the mix, and MAN were those fun. Managed to keep one from coming unbuttoned (a fun challenge on a 2wt in strong, quick water!). Definitely a PB on the 2wt.

Tough glare, beautiful fish

Big fish on small flies (#20 red zebra midge) and a small rod, sort of thing that makes it hard to leave! Who says Oklahoma doesn’t have nice fish anyway?

We spent a little time relaxing after lunch out at the Old Park Dam (start of zone 2).

Lots of water. Lots and lots of water

Ended up fishing a different area of the Spillway Creek that afternoon… Not much success. Couldn’t make it work… fished a lot of FISHY spots, but couldn’t get ‘em figured out. Had one chomp on my strike indicator, so I tied on a stimulator and he smashed it pretty good. Wasn’t big, but it’s always nice to mix it up and bring one in on a dry. Happened to be the only fish I caught the entire afternoon too. Almost walked face first into this monster when I was trying to scramble off the trail down to the river… Obviously he parked himself head high right in the middle of the opening to the most convenient way down.

Marbled Orb Weaver?

Closed out the day by picking up a couple of ribeyes from the frontier general store. We got the last two, and they were tasty, but really fatty. Might have been more fat than meat… but I chalk that up to only having the last two to choose from! We brought some wine back with us from Napa (that was the tail end of the Yosemite trip I posted about a while ago) and paired with the steak it was solid.

Don’t know if it was the wine (or the post-wine bourbon), but I set my alarm for 12:30am to see if I could track down some browns below the spillway dam and somehow didn’t manage to wake up… whoops. Was disappointed when I woke up Sun morning that I hadn’t done any night fishing, but got over it pretty quickly when I realized the spillway wasn’t too crowded that morning…

Wont be long and the trees will be in full swing

Didn’t catch a ton of fish again, but that made it more enjoyable and each fish more rewarding. I really was hoping to get into some of the browns… but I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.

Reese was not feeling too good on Sunday… Not sure if it was allergies or if she’s getting sick, but she had a really sore throat and a lot of sinus drainage that wasn’t making her very comfortable (being sick to your stomach in a place that’s out of your comfort zone is the pits…). We packed up camp pretty early and we made one more stop at the Evening Hole (crowds had thinned out some by Sunday) on our way out. Fished under the bluffs for about and hour and had a blast.

Great water

The fishies thought so too. Tied on an EHC/Emerger combo and started to had some success. The little guys were just destroying the EHC.

I vote this one’s an okie’ native (”native” term obviously used loosely)… (and apologies for the foul hook, got tangled with the dropper)

Can't wait for the day that the stream/river is full of these

It was definitely a great time. Good to be back knee deep in cold water and nice to be back on theokieangler.com

NO idea what this post message the page up, but for some reason it does…

If you want to continue to older posts, click here

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