dgames

Looks like 3 or 4 hour windows of low water today and tomorrow on the schedule. You probably already know most of this, but this is what I look at: http://www.swpa.gov/generationschedules.aspx click on the link for the appropriate day. Tenkiller is TKD. For tomorrow's schedule (Sunday) it looks like it is scheduled down from 1400 hrs to 1700 hours. Enough to get 3 hours or so in. There are no hard and fast rules to what the corps is going to do, but if you watch it over time, you can start to get a little feel for things. I follow this website to see what the lake level is, the tailwater level and the inflows into the lake. http://www.swt-wc.usace.army.mil/webdata/gagedata/TENO2.current.html 632' is the top of the normal pool, bottom of the flood pool in the lake. Right now the lake is around 632.7. It had been above 633 for most of the last week or two. Seems like when it is above 633, they are usually running. Particularly if there is a lot of water flowing into the lake. There are links on this page where you can follow the watershed upstream and downstream to see what is going on in the Illinois river at Talhlequah, etc. When we get good rains, you can see the levels go up on the river at Tahlequah feeding into the lake. If they are at 633 or higher and the river feeding the lake is 1000cfs or higher, they are probably going to be generating. Also, it seems like weekends are more likely to have windows of low water. On that same page, I also look at the tailwater elevation. Right now, is says 481.96. That means the dam is shut down right now. When they kick the units on, the tailwater elevation rises to 486-487, depending on how much they are generating. It doesn't usually show the steam cubic ft per second (cfs) flow directly on this page for the current day, but if you click on line for the gauge downstream at "Illinois River, Gore.." it usually shows the cfs. It usually runs 2000-4000 when running and drops down to 100 or less when shut down. I will say that whenever you start to feel like you kind of have things figured out, the corps will prove you wrong. Most of us have made the trip over, start to get rigged up and then immediately hear the dreaded horn going off even though they weren't scheduled to run. At least from Tulsa it is only an hour and 15 minutes over there. Would be a little more of a bummer driving from OKC. I would guess that if the watershed doesn't get heavy rains this week, there will be larger windows of downtime next weekend.

So, it sounds like cottonmouths aren't common on the NFOW. In reading various things over the years, two places in MO seem to keep popping up at being infested with cottonmouths - crane creek and the upper jacks fork. Are the stories of cottonmouths on those streams overblown? If not, are there other streams much higher than normal concentrations of cottonmouths? I wonder why they would be thick on the JF, but not the current, NFOW, 11pt, big piney which are all in the same general vicinity? I have spent a fair amount of time in the woods over the years and I have only seen one copperhead in the wild in my life and it was in the middle of the fairway on a golf course in Tulsa.

I hear you. Here in OK, any snake in the water is automatically a water mocassin and on land a copperhead. I had a plumber run a gas line for my grill a few years ago and he killed a 'copperhead' that was under a mulch bag next to my house. He told my wife that whenever you find one, there is always another. She called me at the office, somewhat freaked out thinking we might have a copperhead in our house. When I got home, here was the dead snake I found Not exactly a copperhead. This is when I found the OK snakes website and figured this is a brownsnake http://www.oksnakes....0&solid=0&all=0

It seemed really big, but there is no doubt it may have grown some in my mind and it was back in the late 90's. The mind does funny things with time. I have always wondered if it was a cottonmouth or water snake. When I read the deal from the Oklahoma snake website a year or so ago about cottonmouths swimming on the surface, I hadn't previously been aware of that distinction. In my mind I had always remembered both snakes somewhat 'skating' across the surface which has led me to think it was possibly a cottonmouth. Either way, it scared the heck out of me. In your experience, does the 'swimming on the surface' vs 'swimming with body partly submerged' factor hold true as an identifier?

From the website - www.oksnakes.org "Cottonmouths swim with their head up and their entire body on the surface of the water, unlike the harmless water snakes, which swim with the lower half of their body underneath the water." I wouldn't bank my life on this if I saw a snake swimming with the back end underwater, but if I saw one swimming entirely on the surface, I am assuming it's a cottonmouth. I had a pretty creepy encounter on the NFOW about 15 years ago. Was wet wading and nymph fishing the riffle run on the east side of the island by Riverside CG (just downstream from Patrick Bridge) Saw a big brownish banded snake (probaby 5 ft long or so) swimming on the surface at the bank across from me. At the time, I assumed it was a water snake with the brown color. Now I would assume it was a cottonmouth given that it was very much on top of the water. Anyway, it swam downstream 20 yards or so and went to the far bank and I kind of forgot about it. 5 or 10 minutes later, I was hyper-focused on my strike indicator as I was fishing it upstream (current flowing from my left to right) and I feel something bump against my left leg. I look down, and a equally large, more blackish snake is two feet in front of me swimming downstream on top of the water. I guess I was still enough in the water that he just treated me like a log in the water. Thankfully, it just kept swimming downstream while I was practically crapping my pants. I have always thanked god I didn't look down a second or two earlier because I wouldn't have been able to stay still and probably would have startled it and it probably would have struck. This was late september and a few leaves were starting to fall into the river. The rest of that float, I was so freaked out, whenever a leaf washed into me, I would just about jump out my skin. To this day, I am still pretty paranoid when wet wading. For some reason, I feel much braver with waders, although I would guess they probably don't give that much protection.

Here is all my stuff packed into the duffel.

Here is a pic of my stuff taken out of the duffel bag. I use kids school zippered pencil pouches in three ring binders to organize my stuff. The wooden laptop tying desk thing obviously doesn't fit in the duffel. I dont take that on trips. Here is another better pic of the tying table. Pretty much all my tools except the vise fit in the red pouch on the right. The blue pouch has all my beads as well as several small 6 compartment boxes holding small hooks. The rest of my hooks are in the box on the left.

Mine is actually a duffel bag. Although actually I have a table in our sun room that I plop my stuff down on most of the time, but I do actually keep all my stuff in a duffel bag that I can throw in the car if I want to take it on a trip or tie somewhere else.

I believe wet fly hooks are heavier, made from thicker wire.

I wasn't trying to be critical of you Justin, I just didn't know if you realized how small 36000kwhr was in relation to what a stadium that size used.

I'm with you on the dry dropper rig. The only time I use a bobber is when my nymph is too heavy for the dry or the water too fast and broken to easily see the dry. At the LI, I almost exclusively use a stimulator/dropper rig.

That is pretty cool. I haven't seen any of that stuff in decades.

Trouble is it is really hard to get very much out of it. This is only 28.8kw, enough to run about a 35hp motor while the sun is shining. I just read this <p> Yankee Stadium Green Initiatives The Yankees are committed to helping promote a sustainable environment and have implemented many green initiatives at Yankee Stadium. Renewable Energy In March 2009, Yankee Stadium purchased over 33 million kilowatt-hours in renewable energy certificates (RECs) - meeting 100% of the stadium's purchased electricity usage for the next two years. so that would be over 15,000,000 kwhrs per year. If the Royals' stadium has even half the usage of Yankee Stadium, that would be 7,500,000 and 36,000kwhr would be less than 1% of their total load.

Something I will throw in on vise decisions - get a pedestal. Makes your vise much more mobil without having to worry about scarring furniture.

I learned on a herters as a junior high kid back in the 70s. Makes my griffin & renzetti look really good. It was a thompson model a knockoff and really wasn't very good at firmly holding hooks. I remember from time to time the hook would torque out of the jaws when you tried to pull down hard on the thread.

Renzetti Traveler. I like it. Had a simple griffin vise that I tied on for years and liked it as well as it was cheap, easy to use and firmly held hooks. However, a couple years ago I decided I wanted to upgrade to a rotary and bought the Renzetti. I do use the rotary feature quite a bit. Not necessary, but a nice luxury.

Is that with silver wire? Do you fish the lower Illinois with this or mainly tanycomo?

Yes, I tie in a strand of midge flash, make a neat thin thread body then half hitch the thread at the bead. Then I hold the flash with hackle pliers and use my rotary vise and try to neatly wrap a coating of flash on top of the thread body. Tie the flash down at the bead and whip finish. Then apply a drop of zap a gap to the body so that the flash doesn't unravel when you catch fish. The flash gives the body a nice glow but you can still see the yellow through it. The LI fish seem to like it.

o midge flash olive is what I usually use.

My go to is yellow thread covered with crystal flash with copper bead. I mainly use size 16 on 2499spbl hooks. Coat the flash with zap a gap so it doesn't fall apart on the first fish. OK44-why don't you like fishing midges?

I look forward to meeting you.

Sounds like a good day. Fished Roaring River Saturday for the Tulsa FlyFishers winter outing. It was actually pretty tough. Made me realize I have become spoiled with the number of fish you can catch on the LI.

Did well last saturday afternoon with a size 16 bead head midge fished about 18" below a dry fly used as an indicator.

The fly ended up being an adams dry fly, probably a 16 or 14. Not a good choice for me. I ended up trying what I did last year and clipped off the hackle and fished it like a nymph. Didn't do real well. I only caught 7 fish on it. There were a couple of guys that caught 20+ and I believe they were both stripping it in soft hackle/crackleback style. The guy that won it caught all his fish in the still pool right at the gravel parking lot. I never would have expected that. I started out in a hole on the back side of the island where I had caught 30+ last weekend and I got NOTHING from it. The second place guy was fishing just upstream from me on the back side of the island. He had a really good pod of fish and was hammering them fishing the adams directly downstream and swinging it in front of the fishes face. Ended up moving down to the pool just above the boulder weir and caught my 7 from there. Chili lunch was great and hit the spot as it was a pretty cold windy morning. Afternoon was much better fishing for me than the morning. Went down to Watts and ended up with doing really well on a bead head midge fished below a stimulator.

Kiddie Hole? I get the feeling that is one of the more popular spots. I don't really fish it much though as there always seems to be major crowds up in that area. I'm not real hung up on winning. The thing seemed to be a pretty low key affair last year and the chili lunch was good.