dgames

I am guessing your probably not interested in upper Illinois which would be the closest. You might be able to make a three day trip on Big Sugar flowing into the Elk. They are really nice rivers and only about 2 1/2 hours out of Tulsa.

Hope to see some of you tonight at TFT meeting. It is at the library at memorial and creek turnpike (hardesty I think). Speaker is Jim Borroughs with odwc. He will be talking about LI water issues.

I fished today. Got there a few minutes after 7am and started at the lower end of the island. Water was initially dead low. Had to work pretty hard for them. They started off hitting my usual yellow/olive midge, but they turned off of that after about 8 or 10 fish. About 8am, the blew the horn and as it turned out, they must have turned on the sluice gates, because when the water arrived, it was really nice flow. Switched to several things and started getting some hits on a brownish gold, bh wooly bugger. Caught 7 or 8 on that and had a bunch of ldr's and 2 or 3 breakoffs. After a while, they turned off of that and I switched back to the midge. Got a few more on the midge. A little after 11, I got driven off the water by thunderstorms and headed back to Tulsa.

Were you getting the stripers during the day or did you have to be there at first light to get them?

Looks pretty good to me

Kind of strange generation schedule this weekend, off in morning and running 1 unit from noon on. I had thought about going tomorrow afternoon but won't now with the generation.

No problem. I kind of stumbled onto it a couple years ago just playing around at the vise doing a variation of a primrose and pearl. When I tried it out, it seemed to do better than other midges I had in my box at the time and have been using it ever since. I need to tie up some of your hare and copper patterns to try down on the LI. I keep reading your reports and it sounds like they tear into those pretty well too.

You don't always have to fish them on the bottom In slower water, when fish are feeding on the surface, I will fish bead head midges on a really short dropper (7x or 6x flouro) under a dry fly. At times, I have gone as short as 6", but usually more like a foot to 15". I have had good luck doing this on tailwaters and the trout parks. It doesn't have to always be a zebra midge either. My go to midge is yellow thread covered with olive midge flash with a copper bead.

Caught 1 brown at the gravel lot and 4 or 5 at Watts. There was one riffle area where I caught the browns at Watts. My friend Terry caught some browns at Watts also, but I don't think he got any at the gravel lot.

Also noticed a couple of things Thursday. First, even though they weren't generating, there was nice water flow, 160-170cfs all day. Much nicer water conditions than the total shutdown we had been seeing for the last couple of years while they weren't generating. I wonder what they have changed to create this minimum flow and if this is going to be what they will be doing over the summer to keep the fish alive. Second, they obviously stocked some browns again. I caught several 8-9" browns Thursday. Would be nice to see these grow up.

I take it tapatalk is straightforward to use

Top of big deep hole at lower Watts Below island - gravel lot Pics from yesterday

What is the easiest way to get pics from iPhone into a post? I know i can email pics from my phone to my laptop and then upload, but am trying to figure out more direct way

Was there yesterday as well. My buddy and I worked yesterday morning, left Tulsa a little after noon and got to Watts around 130. Talked to 2 guys at the picnic table by the parking lot that said they had done well. Was that you Tbcmusiconline? We fished about 3 hours at the lower end of Watts by the long deep hole just upstream from the gauge. Then left Watts and went to the gravel lot below the dam and fished the hole just below the island until dark. Had similar results to other, numbers close to 100 for the day. The hole at the bottom of the island was particularly ridiculous. Weekdays on the LI can be pretty awesome, particularly when it is the first low water day after an extended period of generation.

I went last Wednesday afternoon and had the same experience as you, really bad wind, a few rising fish but nowhere near the insect activity of previous weeks, but still caught quite a few. Hopefully this storm won't be as bad as last April's storm. That one was crazy, almost 100,000 cfs on the Illinois for a day or so, raising Tenkiller something like 30 feet in a matter of days. To put that flow in perspective, the tailwater flow with the gates open was like 16000cfs as I recall. Right now, the flow at Tahlequah and above is only like 4500cfs or so. I know it will get higher, but hopefully not like last year's levels.

Wow, sounds like you tore em up. Did you get any cutts or brookies?

How did it go? Looks like you had low water all day Saturday.

I am mainly a fly fisherman, so I am pretty ignorant on baitcasting equipment. I can cast a baitcast reel, learned on an ambassador in the 70s and still have one of the green direct drives (5000D) from that era. I have used it in the last few years catching bass on a farm pond. I also have a cheap baitcaster (Quantum DSS400C) that I bought as part of an outfit really cheap at the Zebco garage sale in Tulsa a couple years ago. I am trying to honestly understand, what will a $120 reel do that the cheap Quantum won't? Does it freespool easier so you can cast lighter lures? Is it mainly the anti-backlash mechanism that is so much better? How will the $120 reel compare to my old ambassador?

would a countdown rapala be considered a jerkbait?

Took 1/2 day vacation and went to lower Illinois today with a friend from work. Major midge hatch, fish rising everywhere. Had a really good afternoon fishing a Stimulator dry with a midge dropper. Got lots of rises on the stimulator and caught a bunch on the midge.

I saw one at the end of the day climbing on me. By this time, fish seemed to be feeding heavily on midges. Just before dark, there were rises everywhere. With the bugger thing, I think it just looks really buggy to me. I am guessing it is somewhat of an attractor pattern.

Dead drift under an indicator. These are poor pics, but this is the fly and what is used for the hackle. The hackle is a material called fun fur that I bought at Michaels. Trim the fibers to about 1/2" or so long and the wrap like hackle. The body under the hackle is golden brown ice dub. The tail is a small piece of pine squirrel strip. A tyer from the Bartlesville showed me this a year ago at a tying event. This ended up being my main producer while the water was off color last summer/fall. The first time I tried it, I tried stripping it and didn't get anything. I then put on an indicator and started dead drifting it and was immediately into fish.

It had been over a month since I had been to the LI and I was getting cabin fever. Worked in the morning and then took a 1/2 day vacation and made it from Tulsa to Watts a little after 1pm. Couldn't believe how many cars were in the lot- about 15 or so. I guess the beautiful weather brought crowds out even on a Wednesday. I hiked downstream to the top of the long deep hole where the side channel re-enters the river. River is in good shape, clearest I have seen in the past year. Started out with a bh midge below a dry fly. Pretty limited interest in this at first. After 30 minutes or so and only a couple of fish, I switched to a beadhead brown wooly bugger thing that I have had some success on there, and the fishing immediately picked up. Caught about 30 on this in the next couple of hours. After breaking a fly off, I decided to switch back to the midge as there were tons of midging fish around me by this time. Did well on the midge then for the rest of the day until it got too dark to see my dry fly. It was a good day to get back on the river!

One of the only places where I have for sure seen a cottonmouth is on the black fork of the poteau river in OK. It is in the Oachita Mtns in SE OK and flows into lake wister. Floated is in 09 with a friend from high school that lives near there. He showed me a link to a guy that does incredible wildlife photography on that river. Here is a link to the gallery, http://www.pbase.com/rbr_ccr check out the "cottonmouths", the "other snakes" and the "other critters along the creek" galleries. Pretty amazing pics. The black fork is a pretty cool stream. Kind of like an ozark stream except it has less gravelly areas and more large drops.

Nice fish and good report by the way.