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.