dgames

fly fishing knots I use If my fly line doesn't have a welded loop, I use a nail not to connect a short piece of amnesia to the fly line and then tie a small perfection loop in amnesia about 4"- 6" from the nail knot. Perfection loop in the butt section of the leader. Connect to the loop in my fly line or amnesia with a simple loop to loop connection. Use double surgeons knot to tie together two pieces of leader material. I try to stay within 2x on the diameters I am tying together (i.e. 3x connect no thinner than 5x) Use Davy knot to connect tippet to fly. I will occasionally use a blood knot to repair the butt section of a leader if I have a bunch of stuff rigged up already on the leader and don't want to pull that stuff through the loop in tying a double surgeons. If you go to youtube, you can easily find videos on how to tie all of these knots.

Ended up being a pretty successful outing. We had about 30 people show up. After a little over an hour, trash had been picked pretty clean. Ended up filling the bed on one of the ODWC pickup trucks with trash. For fishing, they kept the water off until about 3:30, so had a fair amount of time to fish after the trash pickup. Pretty much everyone I talked with caught fish. I got to fish a while late morning with Daddy-O and we both caught fish at the pool above the rock weir downstream of the gravel lot. We both caught a number of fish before breaking for lunch. Lunch was chili at the Watts parking lot make by one of the OKC guys. A fter lunch, Phil fished watts and I went back up to the gravel lot and did really well back in that same hole. Ended up messing around trying different flies after a while and everything I threw seemed to work.

The OKC and Tulsa Trout Unlimited Chapters work together twice a year to have a stream cleanup on the Lower Illinois river. We are having one tomorrow morning December 5 - meeting at 9am at the dam parking lot. We usually work with the corps of engineers on these to schedule low water. They are showing this window of low water on the schedule tomorrow. This may be the last shot of low water for a while on the LI with all the rain we have had. Meet us at the dam at 9am and help pick up trash for an hour or two. After that, fish the low water and stop by for a chili lunch at noonish at the Watts parking lot. Hope to see some of you there.

Is anyone familiar with trout fishing at Blanchard Springs? I have a friend that will be in the area later this month and asked me if I knew anything about it as a trout fishery. Are there trout in the creek or just the lake? Is it worth fishing? From the usda website, it says the following Lake and Pond Fishing Two historic dams enclose the waters of Blanchard Springs, forming Mirror Lake.The lake is stocked with rainbow trout. Arkansas Game and Fish regulations apply. Accessible parking lot, boardwalk, and fishing pier. River and Stream Fishing Clear North Sylamore Creek runs through the Blanchard Recreation Area, and offers some good fishing holes either upstream or downstream from the swim areas.

I think you can wade all the way down to the bridge at the town of Navajo Dam. Beatis Bend is the furthest downstream I have fished in my trips the last couple years. Back in the 90s I took a guided drift boat trip and the take out was a ways downstream from there, but I don't remember a whole lot about that water. Doing the half day guided trip is a good plan. We went with Roger Hibner out of Abes two years ago on our first full day and enjoyed fishing with him. Last year he was working at the shop instead of guiding most of the week and he ended up coming out and fishing with us for a couple hours one day. That was fun. I have also heard good things about Aaron Carithers at Anasazi Anglers.

To expand on the San Juan commentary, one of the things that I think is cool about the river is the diversity of the type of water you can find. Lots of places to dredge nymphs in riffle water with nice little deep cuts where you are pretty much just reading the water to find fish. If you get tired of doing that, there are usually plenty of places where you can wander flats looking for visible fish and sight fishing to risers of fish visibly feeding on nymphs. Sick of seeing other people, go explore some of the vast backwater and side channel areas where you will have to stalk spooky fish.

I love the San Juan. Spent a week there last fall and the year before. As others have said, there will be other people, but it is so vast of an area, that you can always find a spot to fish. My favorite areas are the upper flats and cable area, beatis bend/lunker alley and the lower flats. The Texas hole and Kiddie pool area can be fun, but it is a little more like fishing one of the trout parks that some of the other areas. Be prepared with small stuff - size 22 and 24 midge nymphs. Buy some size 24 adams parachutes and size 24 fore and aft dries at one of the fly shops there (Abes, Fishheads and a third one I can't remember name of just up the hill from fishheads) unless you are a good enough tyer to tie hackled flies that small. I would also have some 18 or 16 hi-viz griffiths gnats. I spent a lot of time fishing to rising fish with one of the 24 dries droppered off the griffiths gnat Watch the gnat and set the hook if you seen a rise next to it. You will also get some fish on the gnat. My biggest fish last fall was a 20"er on the gnat. I also did some fishing with a big (size 12) stimulator with a midge larva dropped off it. Size of the larva are too small for tungsten bh, so I did not bead head and used a small split shot. Most of the fish will be caught on the dropper, but you will pick up occasional fish on the stimulator and usually they will be big ones. For midge patterns, I did well with dorsey's mercury black beauty midges in black or gray. Have fun if you go. I will probably spend a week out there again this fall.

I did end up fishing 3 mornings (6/29,30 and 7/1) with my brother in law. My daughters boyfriend came with us one morning and my sister came with us the last morning. Spent most of the first 2 days trolling the area marked on the map above. Only caught a few <12" smallmouth. Picked up 2 or 3 of these by the shallow water by the dam campground area. The third day, we went around the corner from the trolling area marked above to the channel by the big island. Fished the cove with the tiny island at its entrance. We found what looked like a lot of fish in that cove on my cheap locator and did end up hooking a few white bass. As luck would have it, my sister caught the biggest fish of the trip which was about a pound and half white bass. Thanks again for the help.

Went last Saturday. The Tulsa and OKC TU chapters held a river cleanup in the morning and then we fished in the afternoon. Water was very low and extremely clear. Caught some but had to work pretty hard for them. Caught mine on bead head midges fished about 15" below a dry fly indicator. I think the dry fly indicators work well in these low and clear conditions as I think the dry is less likely to spook fish than a conventional indicator.

Wow, thanks everyone for the replies.

Spending a few days on Beaver next week. Staying at a house in Lost Bridge Village and keeping my boat at Lost Bridge marina. My boat is not a fishing boat. It is a 21 IB/OB runabout and we will mainly be pleasure boating, pulling the kids on wakeboard and tube. I would be interested in doing a little fishing in the early morning or early evening if there was something that was relatively easy to do that I could pull off with by non-fishing boat. I am mainly fly fish for trout, so I am not a really good at lake fishing, but like to do it when I can. I have had some success trolling with this boat in the past for sand bass in Oklahoma lakes. It does have a cheap Eagle locator on it, so I can at least tell a little bit about the water depth and some structure. I read about F&F's report of trolling flicker shad. Is that more appropriate in the upper end of the lake where it is shallower. I know the main lake is really deep down where we are staying. Should I be seeking out the creek arms like the Clifty branches or Indian Creek to find shallower water? Looking for a little advice and don't really care that much what we catch. Just something that a relatively inexperienced lake fisherman could pull off. By the way, I plan to be courteous of fishermen when we are pleasure boating during the day.

I caught a few hours of low water sunday morning and did well at Watts using my favorite yellow/midgeflash midge.

That is pretty cool.

The LI fishes well as the water is falling. The added current definitely helps. If you get there right when they stop, you might want to start at the dam of the gravel lot if you don't want to wait for the water to start falling at Watts.

Water had definitely cleared. Had been there the previous sunday as well and there was a noticeable difference in clarity. Also, the fish seemed more congregated than usual. Usually you can go just about anywhere at Watts or the dam area and catch fish. Saturday, I started at the bottom end of the rip-rap bank at watts and it was really slow in an area that usually is productive. Moved downstream and stopped in the riffle just below and fish were absolutely stacked in there. Caught fish pretty much non-stop for an hour or so in a pretty small area. Broke for the lunch we were having at our outing. After lunch went further downstream. Again, slow fishing for a while until I found a concentration of fish and then caught a bunch in one spot.