dgames

My friend, I mean former friend, arkinok is a funny guy! I take it the 20 or 30 time I saw your rod bent and something splashing in front of you, it was just moss and sticks from the bottom. Yeah, you busted me, there are no fish whatsoever at the island by the gravel lot below the dam. It is not even worth your time to try to fish there.

I will qualify my response by saying I haven't been there in about 12 years or so. I went a number of times in the 90s. I used to like to fish the lower flats area. Very small flies were always the ticket back then -size 20 & 22 midges, 18 or 20 beatis emergers. Also agree on the advice on the kiddie hole.

Went today and did really well fished by the island most of the day at the gravel lot below the dam. Pretty much caught everything on midges.

I didn't make it down over the weekend, but I am going tomorrow. Looking forward to it.

Thanks for the reports.

Surprised nobody has been posting reports lately. Have people been doing well? I am thinking of going tomorrow.

FIshed your neck of the woods back in July. Spent a couple of days in the Tellico basin on the Bald and the North rivers and then a morning on the Hiwassee. Really enjoyed the upper Bald.

Thanks. I talked to Russ last night and am looking forward to floating tomorrow. By the way, where is owls nest?

This Sunday, a friend of mine and I are planning to drive from Tulsa to the Noel/Pineville area and float/fish for smallmouth as long as the stream doesn't get blown out from rains. I am not the most experienced smallmouth fisherman and am looking for suggestions on what might be effective this weekend. I was planning to use spin tackle and/or a baitcasting rig. Stuff I would normally try would be crawfish colored finessse jig/soft craw rigs, texas rigged plastic lizards, baby spooks and floating rapalas. Would also look for suggestions on what stretch of the Elk or Big Sugar to float. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Two of us fished yesterday afternoon from about 1;30 to 5 at the gravel pit access. There were quite a few people there as well. About 8 people fishing the section downstream from the access when we got there. I had never been below the access before. I was impressed with that section. There is some pretty nice looking water there. Caught about 15-20 on various midges with several really fat ones. One that was really fat puked up some shad as I released it, so apparently they are feeding on the shad.

I woulldn't dismiss a 4wt 9' rod as too light if it is fairly fast action. I have been using a sage RPL II 9' 3wt rod with a 4 wt line since 1994 as my sole trout rod. I carry a cheaper 5 wt as a backup in case I ever break my sage, but I never end up using it. I have always loved this outfit and others that have tried it have all been impressed. It may be that the reason this outfit works is that the old rpls were notoriously fast rods. This is also why I upsized the line wt on it. I have seldom felt underweighted fishing this rod on tailwaters, the upper north fork or other area waters. I mainly fish some kind of indicator nymph setup, including big weighted rubber leg stonefly nymphs on the NFOW. It really doesn't have a problem throwing weighted wooly buggers either. The only time it really feels underweighted is fishing really high water on tailwaters such as 8 units at Bull Shoals, 2 full units on the norfork or full generation at Taneycomo where you need really big split shots on long leaders to drift on the bottom. I have used this rod in these situations but it isn't really ideal (probably isn't for a 5wt either). If you want a rod for Taney at high water, something heavier is probably in order. If, however, you target lower water more, you might really enjoy a 9' 4wt. In lower water, I throw a stimulator dry with some kind of bead head dropper a lot of the time and this rod is perfect for that setup.

Where is the kiddie pool. Is it by the dropoff at the top end of the island? I was part of the group fishing yesterday afternoon in the pool at the bottom end of the island

Did you tie those hopper? Those are really nice looking - very precise tying.

I was fishing with Arkinok yesterday. We got to the gravel parking lot below the dam right as they were blowing the horn to signal they were shutting down generation. As the water started to fall, we started wading out. These things were everywhere. Drifting dead, or twitching on the suface. We couldn't believe how many there were. I figured the trout would be just tearing them up, so I quickly took off my elk hair caddis with bh midge dropper rig and put on a shad bead head streamer expecting a feeding frenzy. Amazingly, there was no sign of anything feeding on the shad. In a hour and half or so of stubbornly fishing the shad pattern, I did manage to get a couple or so on a "shad" jig, but they came with a lot of work. Once I switched to a midge, the action immediately picked up. This one looked pretty stuffed. However, none of the one I caught on midges later looked as stuffed as this one. What was really crazy was that an hour or so after the dam shut off, fish started surface feeding like crazy on some kind of midge while shad are still floating by with regularity. Why would the trout spend their energy on midges with the shad going by? Its like going to an all you can eat steak buffet and bypassing the steak for saltine crackers from the salad bar!

Unless they have drastically changed the Dam's flow regimes since I was going there in the 90s it is definitely wadeable. The lower flats & upper flats areas he talked about are both areas I used to fish and I always waded there.

A friend of mine from work went down yesterday as well. We did really well. Caught a bunch in the hole right below the cable till about noon. Then moved to the parking lot a few hundred yards downstream and fished the far bank below the island the rest of the day. Caught fish on & off all day till the started generating again about 4pm.

SJ is a cool river to fish! I went about 4 or 5 times back in the mid 90s. It is amazing that you can catch big fish on 22s.

I think you would struggle on the NFOW if you tried to only fish to fish that you can see. I would guess that is where Brian is coming from. To the original poster, I wouldn't dismiss indicator fishing. There is much more to it that simply chucking out a bobber. I definitely agree with Laker's point on moving around. I find that most fish come on the first drift or two in a particular lie.

Nice fish. That third one had a massive tail.

Make sure you have big weighted rubber leg stoneflies - size 8 or so. Brian Wise posted a recipe for a good pattern on the Fly Recipe forum here a while back.

I love the NFOW, but really can't give much of a fair comparison because I haven't fished the Meramac, Niangua or Eleven Point in recent years. I have fished the current a couple of times in the past year and can see why many like it so well, but I struggled there. For me, I love the wild rainbows on the NFOW. There is enough great riffle dumping into pool water to fill 2 full days of floating/fishing and still feel like you didn't really cover everything. The fishing pressure seems pretty light as well since there is so much good water. I definitely want to hit the 11 point as well. I get the impression that it is similar to the NFOW except with a more wilderness setting.

I feel somewhat ignorant asking, but what exactly is the down & across method of fishing nymphs. Are you swinging the nymphs or are you getting a drag free drift? I assume the strike detect is by feel. My experience is mainly with dead nymphing with an indicator although I have done a little high sticking as well. When I use an indicator, I try to imagine that my indicator is a dry fly. As such, I try to make the indicator drift as drag free as possible and tend to do lots of little mends to keep drag off the indicator. Since I am trying to drift my indicator like a dry fly, I try to wade into a position where I can make my cast almost as straight upstream as possible so I can get as long a drag free drift as possible. On small water where I think an indicator would spook fish, I go with a dry fly/bead head dropper combo.

Fished RR C&R yesterday. Cold with ice in the guides all day. We didn't catch large numbers of fish, but did the best I have ever done on big fish. Caught 3 large ones. We were fishing the pools by the parking lot that is in front of you when you get to the bottom of the big hill on hwy 112 entering the park. Here are pics: first one second one third one - this was the biggest. I believe he was ~25" based on laying him beside my fly rod & then measuring to that spot. Go him on a bead head scud in the long hole just below the first bridge you cross going from hwy 112 driving toward the spring.

Glad to see you on here. I enjoyed my stay at your place in early October before the rain deluge hit and enjoyed the conversation on the ride up to kelly ford.

I sometimes use 2 flies to try to figure out what is working. A couple of weeks ago I was fishing the tenkiller tailwater with a beadhead scud on top and a zebra midge as the dropper. In this case, the scud was outfishing the zebra about 5 to 1 where we switched to just a single scud. If I had started with one fly it probably would have been the zebra midge and wouldn't have figured things out nearly as fast.