Devan S.

We arrived back at the dam way before daylight. Before I left the day before I went down and picked around the flat area while they were running water and hooked and lost a really nice brown on its third jump so our plan was to start here. We caught a bunch of health fighting rainbows but probably lost double what we landed. I did catch the biggest brown of the trip and a nice rainbow that just looked rough. We picked around the fast water on the other side by the boat ramp and caught a couple more nice browns and some rainbows before heading back to Norfork.

After doing some checking around at the white I headed over to the campsite I had at Dam Quarry. Along the way I stopped at the confluence and fished and Ackerman. I did not get a bite at either location but did not fish much and was more exploring options for night time fishing. I fished right below the dam with a jerkbait/jig and caught multiple rainbows prior to dark. Got camp setup and began fishing after dark. Right away I caught another brown. Right as the moon came over the hill I hooked and landed a really nice walleye probably 23". About that time @Prifish tells me he has a fish that is just running and he isn't gaining ground. He fought it for awhile and finally brought a Hybrid to the net. This fish really gave him a good fight. It wasn't but maybe about 5 minutes and I hooked a fish in the upstream pool right below the dam that just ran and I couldn't stop. I kept pressure and finally landed this 8.5lber. At this point we fished a bit more and called it a night to get up early and head back to Bull Shoals.

Decided to head east for a couple days around the full moon to chase giants and check out some new areas. Arrived right below the dam on the west side right at 10am. Stepped out of the truck pulled waders out and they blew the horn. Not knowing what to expect I skipped the waders and just went down to watch. The water came up but seemed to be fishable. Instead of suiting up I hoped downstream to the boat ramp to check out that area figuring I could fish the eddy behind the point. I immediately caught several brookies and a decent brown. I did get checked by AGFC here. The barbless check was just a simple look n see vs. the discussion on cotton ect. He did tell me as they kicked the generators on there was shad coming through and he advised white. I stayed around a bit but it was mid-afternoon and was ready to go check out Norfork TW and some other accesses including White Hole looking for some deeper holes to target bigger fish.

I've noticed at Beaver Tailwaters I loose a lot of the little rainbow "nippers" when I am barbless vs. barbed. To me that is a positive less risk to me. Big fish usually get it firmly enough it doesn't matter.

Awesome. I have been tempted to book with Cranor's looking for a 30+ and get some intel vs. flying blind solo. I really like you put a length with your pictures...much better perspective on just how big they are. I think were gonna go down on Sept. 29 and spend a few days out of the kayaks and wading at night and see what happens.

Those guys/gals are insane. Some of them are running 4 or 5 - 100mile races a year.

I've been thinking this for a good 24 hours. Lots of jobs out there that check the boxes here on what is "tough".

Well with the cooler mornings I decided to get back into the swing of hunting for a tailwater slob. Did not find the one this morning but I caught a bunch of super nice fish for Beaver. 1 Brown, 12-ish rainbows, and 3 borderline keeper walleyes. Felt good to be back.

I had a couple hours to burn between landing in San Antonio and driving to the border. Burn I did....car said it was 106. Rio Cichlids-my first fish was the brute and I was about 8ft above him on a vertical wall along the river. Had to pull him about 100 yards to find a spot I could drop down onto a inlet pipe to net him. They are not as aggressive in this spot like I thought they would be although they are plentiful. I might have caught 10 total. A bunch of bluegill and the river has lots of fish in it. The Rio's stick out like a sore thumb. You can see some of the stuff I was fishing. I had hoped to find some red breast and I caught a bunch of sunfish but nothing that I was just positive it was a red breast. I saw several tilapia and at one time think I had a really nice one hooked but he came off in the weeds. I went down river to another park area. No shade but I quickly got to work. I caught 2 of these. I'm not an expert and I really want them to be Guadalupe bass but I'm not sure.

Nice!

I have 2 non-fishing trips coming up that I at least plan to drag along a fly rod for. Any help/tips ideas someone can give would be greatly appreciated. Trip one is a quick Friday through Monday trip the first week of August to Destin/Ft. Walton with the family. My only plan currently is to take my 9wt and strip clousers through the surf early in the mornings. I wont have a ton of time but nearly every potential species I catch will be "new" to me. Anyone have any tips/tricks? I assume ladyfish is my most likely target. The second trip I have a bit more flexibility and a target during mid-August. Work will see me heading to San Antonio and then a drive to Eagle Pass and crossing the border daily for work. I will have time to burn Monday after landing in San Antonio and plan on chasing Rio Cichlids before driving to Eagle Pass. This is a trip I have made multiple times but never drug a fly rod along( I suspect Ill make many more trips). I am hoping to maybe go back in winter when I can chase some trout on the Guadalupe just to check the state off for trout. Guadalupe bass seems intriguing as well as Redbreast sunfish. All should be in the area but I haven't done a bunch of research yet. Any tips or locations someone might target or avoid? Any other species to target?

The article I read on Crooked river said something like 5-8,000 trout per mile, and 30-40,000 whitefish per mile. It referenced locals who blamed the whitefish for a decline in trout and they throw them on the bank. Said some people target them and catch easy 100/day. Said they also get up to 2-4lbs. no clue.....we spent the better part of 4 hours there without catching one unless they look like trout. I'm silently hoping at Pyramid lake or Eagle lake part 2, I can catch a Tui Chub.

For me: I had 4 fish/states off the western native trout challenge. Originally I had planned on UT/WY/MT/ID. However it ended up with WA/CA/ID/OR no slams per se but state complete and fish caught. I also hoped for 2 more Arkansas Master Anglers. I caught a white bass at Beaver TW that went 3.54lbs which was master angler. I caught a crappie that went 2.36 which is dangerously close. Ill take 1 of 2 at the midway point.

Now that we are home here are my post trip feelings. Overall it was a good trip. Wayyyyy too many miles. I think we were nearing 23-2400 miles from Wednesday till Monday. Far more driving than fishing. Outside of Bulls it was 1-3 fish per stop. This is the first big miss on a species trip but it works out in the end I think. It was aggressive but if I would have just combined pyramid lake and eagle lake to begin with I would have likely never got McCloud river and Goose lake redbands. Oregon feels huge and empty. Portland is literally a cess pool of homeless camps. If I had to do over again I might fly into say Redmond, Bend, or Eugene and stay in that general vicinity. I feel like we fished Washington but also feel there is more there to explore especially with Puget sound and the peninsula. Idaho is the same way....I may go back someday to "chase" bulls there but it sounds like Canada is really the place to go so who knows. From a species standpoint the only thing that stands out is the bulls. Coastals and the redbands check a box but honestly I can get that similar fix elsewhere. Bulls-So incredibly aggressive. That one pool yielded 5-6 bulls to hand and multiple times we had chasers slashing 3/4 times at our lures. Toss right back in and they kept going even with us standing right there in the water and totally visible. Big line too 6-8lb test so not line shy in the least. The Bull @Prifish caught at the Met chased me casting and him prior to finally hooking up. We didn't jack with getting good pictures and other than my bull at the Met our Bull pictures don't show the fish well. Its unfortunate but really no regrets there. Its the memory that counts. I would have really liked to fish our first location for Bulls more but it was just too hot. Its definitely the kind of place you could spend multiple days packing around or as I have seen on some blogs pack in and float out. Another note: I didn't see a single firework tent out west.

The best part is we still found bulls. and even a nice redband.

Final day-Big water, Bulls, and booze My original plan was the Metolius river for bulls but the more I read the more I grew wary. Reports of fishless days, fickle fish, and lots of people made us search out other locations. However I was still interested in trying and as time and luck would work out we had a chance. We chose to fish the lower section so we rigged up jerkbaits and took off on the river side trail. Right away we noted big, fast, deep water. Really glad we didn't need this and made it much more enjoyable. Right away I had a nice follow and first deep slow pool had a nice bull hunkered down he wasn't interest in anything we had to offer him.

Our second to last day finished up here. Rumor has it that anyone can catch fish here. We did so I believe it. Nothing of size, small redbands. The water is much murkier than we are use too. The trout were rising but they wouldn't hit larger caddis flies. We had to downsize significantly and realistical we don't have a lot of small flies. We also caught fish on midges under a bobber. This area is really a nice place and if I was going to travel back to Oregon I'd use sisters as a home base and stay within a couple hours of there. Lots of access and camping right on the river here. My makeshift wading boots had a blowout here. Thankfully near the end of our time fishing. For @Ham Google says crooked river is full of mountain whitefish. Google also says they are easy and some would say a nuisance fish. We found the exact opposite. We stayed longer here in hopes of finding some. We had planned on stopping into the fly shop to get a better idea of the how, where, and what but they were closed so onto our next stop.

The hike out was rough. We had water but by midday it was hot. The area is burn scar and offers very little shade. Once we got cooled off, we formulated a new plan. If we hadn't caught bulls we would have gone up river but all the access involves good hikes again in the heat. Just didn't seem nearly as fun. Therefore we decided to head to Idaho and chase native redbands in the Boise National Forest. Again pretty small creek and really pocket water style fishing. Lots of dipping and cussing bushes. Once we both caught fish we raced back across towards Sisters, Or in search of more fishing and less hiking and driving.

The cheeseburgers are much better than my normal meals for these kinds or trips.

Looking upstream into the hole we fished. Our first cast at the tail yielded a small bull that pulled off prior to netting. We moved up to the end of the run into head of the pool abd found them. First cast was a hookup with multiple chasers. 1 good chaser that would ultimately make a mistake on the next cast. note: these fish were all out of the water less than 5 seconds. We used spinning rods with heavy line and kept them in the net while unhooking. We did everything possible to minimize handling issues while still snapping a picture. We probably each caught 3-4 bulls here and @Prifish caught a nice redband. Did I mention it was hot? Things went so well we celebrated with herd bull cheeseburgers at the Wenaha Bar and Grill that were 5 star before deciding our next move.

View from the trail looking at the river. The cub was spotted on river Bank on left side if picture. Right side is the bushwack berry patch.