OKFlyFisher44

Nice job Andrew! Glad to hear that the lower wire road fished good for ya! Lots of good water down there, no doubt. Bet the creek is pretty low now?

You are right on the clousers and crawfish patterns, always a must to have. If you see the fish chasing minnows, just keep changing colors on the clousers till you find the magical combo. Also have big buggers in the box too, I have caught more smallies on #4 and #6 buggers than probably any other fly in my box. Olive and brown with plenty of rubber legs and flash. Last year, I started fishing smaller articulated streamers like circus peanuts, sex dungeons, etc in #4 and #6 for smallies and they were my top producer last year. Olive and brown once again were the best colors. Best technique I had was to "jig" them thru boulders and gravel bars, mostly sight fishing too which was always awesome. Another couple techniques to use if they wont eat the bugs on the strip, tight line/swing the fly next to structure or swing the fly thru shallow riffles just ahead of where the drop off is. It can be the way to fish when the fish are kinda lazy and wont chase a fly down. Something else to think about, everything is almost a month early this year so the topwater bite might be in full swing by then if the weather keeps warming up. Big gurglers, foam poppers, and deer head poppers in various colors are always a must have when the topwater bite is on. Nothing like having a 4lb river smallie smash a topwater! And one more thing, dont forget about our river largemouth and kentucky bass! Make sure to throw a fly in the little back eddies and backwater sloughs on some of these rivers/creeks....you would be surprised by how many big largemouth/kentucky bass are in our rivers.

Blog post for the trip! http://okietroutbum.blogspot.com/2012/04/where-wild-things-are.html?m=1

That creek is tough if you aren't the first one to hit the water, especially since it's back to being "low". Those fish r so skittish when it gets that low. I am little surprised it didn't fish better than it did though, usually if u let those fish "rest" for a bit then they will feed again. Who knows... That's what makes the creek so awesome...

It's all seriousness when we fish Banboozle! No time for smiling! LOL.

With the past rain events leaving the tailwaters and the NFOW still a little on the high side, part of the crew and I decided it was time to hit the Elk and see what the smallies were up to. We didnt have very high hopes for the fishing cuz normally April 1st is still a little early but we couldnt pass up the floating opportunity with the level that the Elk was at. So I loaded up the drift boat on sunday and met up with a couple of buddies to fish the Pineville-Mt. Shira section. The river was in GREAT shape from the previous rain....flow was perfect, river bottom was clean, and the water was very clear. Lots of new log jams, gravel moved around, and several holes have changed dramatically since I was on the river in September. The fishing was pretty darn good for April 1st. We didnt catch anything BIG but caught several nice fish along with your normal run of the mill river dinks. Various streamers patterns worked for us all day. Color seemed to matter more than anything with tan and black being the best colors on the nasty streamers. Blue/white and blue/chart were good colors for Clousers. We had equal luck stripping the bugs back to the boat and letting them dead drift on a tight line. It was a beautiful day on the river overall with great flows, weather, and fishing. Didnt even pull on the waders....gotta love wet wading in April! A big thank you to Russ and Jean Ann at Hog Haven for the shuttle on Sunday. U guys r great, really appreciate it! U will be hearing from us again soon!

We just fished the upper and the park. I'm not a fan of the lower access. Amazing looking water but it has never fished good for me, never. Catch a dink here and there....about it. I like to think I have the upper and the park pretty well figured out so we always just stick to that normally. Love this creek. Check out my blog over the next day or so for a more detailed report.

A buddy and I hit the creek up today for a few McClouds. The creek was already back to being relatively low considering the recent rains, its amazing how fast that creek drops and clears up. There was a couple of new log jams that screwed up a couple of holes but other than that, I didnt notice much of a change from the rains we got. The creek fished excellent today for us. Fish werent super spooky like the last trip, they were feeding all morning (even saw a few risers), and it was a great day on the water. Neither of us ever switched flies from what we started with. Cole stuck his fish with a #10 prince and I got my fish on a #10 "Crane RubberLegs" (a fly I whip up just for Crane). Wish I coulda fished it when the water was up from the rains but I can't complain too much, the creek treated us well today. Cant wait to go back.... Pics to follow....

No sir, I still have never fished the LMF. Been spending most of my time in MO and AR in my drift boat. I need to get down there but never can make it happen. We have a fishing trip planned this weekend but we aren't sure where we are going just yet. Hoping to hit the White this weekend for the caddis hatch but just gotta see if they r gonna start generating heavy or stick with the lower flows.

Awesome trip it sounds like it! Glad to hear you got some driftboat time Andrew! Not much better than floating an Ozark trout/smallie stream in a drifter with a fly rod in hand....and you probably floated the best trout stream in the Ozarks for fishing from a drift boat for both fishing and floating. You have just as much fun on the sticks as you do fishing. We are gonna try to head down there this weekend if the river drops enough but its not looking too promising.

FishHead is the name of the app. It's awesome but it's for iPhone only far as I know. Any river that has a USGS Stream Gauge can be accessed and monitored with the app.

Quite a bit of water flowing into Tenkiller, bet it will be a while before we have wading conditions. But hopefully this won't be like last year and will only give the tailwater a good system flush. On the flip side, the higher water will hopefully get the stripers moving upstream. Last year sucked for stripers on the fly! I'm ready to stick another 20lber on the 8wt!

I'm bringing a jet boat and we r gonna ramp over the bridges!

Thanks. We r supposed to come down next weekend and the river is on the rise. Appreciate that...u r banned from the NFOW till July!!

Just wanted to let anyone who used to follow my blog that we are going to be doing regular updates again with fishing reports, photo updates, or just anything we deem as "fishy". I will post any blog update on Facebook as well for those of you who I'm friends with on Facebook. A link to the blog is posted in my signature when I post here as well... There are 2 recent updates to the blog as well as a couple more that should come in the next few days which should get us caught up as far as recent fishing trips go. Feel free to leave any comments as they are appreciated. http://okietroutbum.blogspot.com/

Just wanted to let anyone who used to follow my blog that we are going to be doing regular updates again with fishing reports, photo updates, or just anything we deem as "fishy". I will post any blog update on Facebook as well for those of you who I'm friends with on Facebook. A link to the blog is posted in my signature when I post here as well... There are 2 recent updates to the blog as well as a couple more that should come in the next few days which should get us caught up as far as recent fishing trips go. Feel free to leave any comments as they are appreciated. http://okietroutbum.blogspot.com/

Just wanted to let anyone who used to follow my blog that we are going to be doing regular updates again with fishing reports, photo updates, or just anything we deem as "fishy". I will post any blog update on Facebook as well for those of you who I'm friends with on Facebook. A link to the blog is posted in my signature when I post here as well... There are 2 recent updates to the blog as well as a couple more that should come in the next few days which should get us caught up as far as recent fishing trips go. Feel free to leave any comments as they are appreciated. http://okietroutbum.blogspot.com/

Just wanted to let anyone who used to follow my blog that we are going to be doing regular updates again with fishing reports, photo updates, or just anything we deem as "fishy". I will post any blog update on Facebook as well for those of you who I'm friends with on Facebook. A link to the blog is posted in my signature when I post here as well... There are 2 recent updates to the blog as well as a couple more that should come in the next few days which should get us caught up as far as recent fishing trips go. Feel free to leave any comments as they are appreciated. http://okietroutbum.blogspot.com/

Just wanted to let anyone who used to follow my blog that we are going to be doing regular updates again with fishing reports, photo updates, or just anything we deem as "fishy". I will post any blog update on Facebook as well for those of you who I'm friends with on Facebook. A link to the blog is posted in my signature when I post here as well... There are 2 recent updates to the blog as well as a couple more that should come in the next few days which should get us caught up as far as recent fishing trips go. Feel free to leave any comments as they are appreciated. http://okietroutbum.blogspot.com/

Awesome report Zonker! As far as a camera goes....look into the GoPro Hero HD 2. Very popular these days for "outdoor activities". I have been kicking around buying one for sometime but havent pulled the trigger. Brian Wise uses one ALL the time for his videos if you wanna see what the little camera is capable of.

Bill Thorne runs his shuttle service with Dally. I don't have his number in my phone and his card is in my personal truck. Like Justin said, call Dallys fly shop and he can give you his number. Bill is a great guy and will get u lined out for a good price!

We loved the river. So much awesome water to fish and the feeling of being totally remote is always cool. We just couldn't figure out the trout. We will return...

We r going back on March 31-April 1st I think...not 100% sure yet. Depends on flows and weather on the White...hoping for epic caddis hatch down there at anytime.