TheOkieAngler.com

Had the chance to meet and fish with Patrick and his brother John on Saturday…

After a few setbacks (my fault, bad at getting places on time) we met at spot #1 to try and tangle up with some longnose gar. Patrick’s had a ton of experience with gar and I was hoping I could finally bring one to hand with him around to give me a pointer or two. Sure enough, we found plenty of surfacing gar and spent a couple of hours giving them a good effort. I managed to checked off my #1 goal for summer, but couldn’t snap a pic in time for proof.

You’re just gonna have to trust me. He came in on what looked like a single thread of the rope fly and slipped out of my hand while I was pulling out the camera. Didn’t miss much with the picture, it couldn’t have been much more than 12″ long, but it still would have been nice to have a shot of the product of quite a few hours of pursuit.

We all had a few strikes, but didn’t have the greatest luck with the tangles. Hope to go back out this afternoon after work to give ‘em another shot now that I have a bit of confidence.

We had two main goals for the day… put me on a gar and put Patrick on a catfish. On to spot #2…

Didn’t take too long and we had accomplished both goals, not sure how many cats he ended up bringing to hand, but it was more than a few.

Bendo

Checkin' one off the list

We caught plenty of bass and cats for a while and when I tried to take a picture of a slab of a crappie…. my great day on the water suddenly became a frustrating one… My Olympus Stylus Tough 8000 WASN’T working.

The lens cover was open, but the camera was off… not a good sign. I could hear the motor trying to work when I pressed the power button, but I wasn’t getting anything but the power on screen. Sure, it’s endured a couple of waist high falls. Yeah, I’ve taken some underwater shots with it. But this issue seemed to come up out of NOWHERE. No junk in the lens to jam the cover, no recent drops, no nothing. Confusing. I bought the camera on April 30 and it’s already broken?? Ouch. Such a big investment. Majorly disappointing. Especially considering I had just bragged on the performance and durability on a few different fishing forums. Should have knocked on wood I guess.

I’m a bit of a pessimist, but I really hope Olympus decides to honor the warranty and take care of the problem quickly. We will see.

I’ll keep you posted on that one… And, let me apologize in advance for the poor quality (1.3mp camera phone) images to come in the meantime.

Well, I keep saying it, but catching a Gar is #1 on my fishing goals for the summer.  I met up with Brent Monday after work to see if we could track some down on the OK/North Canadian River. Ended up seeing a few fish rolling around, but they were much too far away to reach. Unable to find tailers in the choppy mess that was Lake Overholser, we ended up at a golf course pond (grounds work on Mondays, we could actually fish the course sides of the ponds this time!).

I had given up hope of accomplishing my goal that evening, and then the next thing I know I hear something splashing around over in Brent’s direction. I got over there just in time to miss an impressive tailwalking and realized Brent had hooked into a gar… couldn’t believe it.

Botched a nice photo op...

Not only did I miss the tailwalking in the sunset… but my camera died after the first pic. Way to go Ward. Good thing Brent had one tucked away to document the surprising catch!

For you gar pro's... What species is this??

New adventure in fish handling !

Was pysched to see Brent drag this guy in… Gar are never really even on my mind when I’m on there (though I’ve seen one other gar ~12in), I’ll have to see if I can find more!

I’m feeling it, I’m going to knock another species off the (modest) lifetime fish list soon…. and it’s going to be a toothy one.