Goin' Fishin'

[DaddyO]

Well boys, this is probably the last opportunity that I am going to get to go fishin before the end of the year. So, I am going to get up Saturday morning and head out of Owasso, OK and hit the Lower Illinois river.

The OWDC was supposed to have stocked the river again on the 3rd and hopefully the colder weather and football games will provide me with the opportunity to fish some good water without too much competition.

Hopefully I will be goin' fishin' and not just goin' throwin'!!

[Danimal]

Just got back a few minutes ago. Spanked em' on a red/black zebra midge and a black/chartreuse jig that was given to me by a gentleman I ran into. Great afternoon.

Dan-o

[DaddyO]

What a Day!!

I pulled into the Dam access and put on my waders and tied on some new tippet. I didn't get on the river until about 9am. I threw to a few runs but without success. I definitely wasn't throwing what they were wanting. That "Goin' Throwin'" phrase that I used in the first post was starting to haunt me.

To make matters worse, there was a water turkey in the water chasing fish. He was catchin them, so, at least I knew they were in there.

Then I had an oriental family walk right into my backcast and crowd me out of the hole that I was fishing. I thought, oh well, I'll just move on.

Then I saw this young man making his way upstream on the other side of the river. He started jumping from rock to rock making his way over to one of the runs that I had fished with no luck. The young man got into position and flipped his line into the water and started high sticking his nymph through the water. After a few casts, he had a fish on!! It wasn't a big fish but he was still a lot more productive than I had been and had done it in a fraction of the time. I'll have to say, it was very impressive.

I made my way upstream and across from the young man. I asked him how he had been doing. He said that he had been there a couple of hours and had caught a couple of dozen. I then put 2 and 2 together and said, "Your name isn't Zach Bearden, is it?" He said, "Yes sir", and then made his way over to my side of the river.

Zach turned me on to the right color for the day, "Pink" of all colors. I hear it's the new Black. haha He gave me one of his Pink "Frenchie's" and I commenced to losing it trying to set the hook in a fish and instead setting the hook in the upper branches of a tree in my backcast. After a few moments of self pitty, it occured to me that I had a supply of Pink Micro Jigs. I tied one of those on and put on a strike indicator (Hey! I'm not as good as Zach. I need a little assistance at identifying the strike)

We went back downstream to the first turnoff on the Dam Access road and fished the other side of the island. I caught a few before Zach left. I then made my way back up to the Kiddie pool and caught a few out of there. I fished that same Pink micro jig until there were just a few threads and maribou left on the thing. It was so productive, I couldn't make myself throw it away, so, I stuck it in my fly vest to remember the day.

I fished until dark. It was the best day that I've had on the river in a long time. I lost track of the number of fish that I caught somewhere between 30 and 40. About six of those were on a few flies that Zach gave me before he left. By the way, Zach, they were all productive.

Zach, it was a pleasure meeting you and fishing with you. We'll have to hook up again sometime.

[bassman92681]

I had a great day too on Saturday. I fished from 6:30 until 1:30 and caught 30 trout, 2 largemouth, 1 bluegill and 1 herring. I caught my first 10 near the darn, then proceeded to the Sand & Gravel pit (the southern edge of Watts) and caught 2 more. I finished up at another spot downstream and caught 18 more, most of them out of one little hole. This wasn't a very big hole and I actually passed it up on my way downstream, but on my way back up, I cast near it and saw a trout follow my bait. So I eased in closer and every time I pulled a bait through there, you could see 10 or more trout rise near the surface. I saw a gar swim through twice and scatter them. There was minimum 40 trout in this one little hole. It couldn't have been any bigger than 5' x 10'. I've never seen that many trout packed into one spot except at a fish farm. The water was much clearer down stream than near the darn.

[Zach Bearden]

DaddyO: Glad to hear that you caught plenty of fish! I would definately like to go fishing with you again. It was a pleasure to help somebody else with catching a few. It didn't take me 5 minutes to tie all those flies back up

bassman: I have had fish pile up in the most un-ideal holes in the river but still you can just pull fish after fish after fish out of them. Its always fun. Tad bit too easy but still fun.

[annelidhunter]

I also went Saturday. I started at the turnoff before the dam, went right, and hiked until the tail gets pretty thick. I then went to the Sand and Gravel pit area. I tried a pretty large variety of patterns. It seemed to me that if you found them, at least in the Watts area, they would really hit anything. I honestly can't think of anything that didnt work in the management area, as long as it wasnt a big bass lunker or something. It was great. It really felt good to be back down there again after all this time of the water being too high, then too hot.