Report, 3/6

[OKFlyFisher44]

The crew and I fished the LIR this past sunday in hopes of catching some ol' trout. We had an awesome day, probably the best day we have had as a group. I started the morning off throwing wooly buggers and slumpbusters with great succcess, caught a bunch and missed/broke off a ton more till I finally just switched to 2X! LOVE fishing streamers just for the anticipation of the "tug". The guys were having great success on various nymphs below an indicator. Around 10 am, the river came alive with a massive midge hatch and every fish in the river was looking up. We switched up our rigs and went to a dry/dropper rig using various dries as the lead fly and then dropping off a midge emerger, zebra midge, or pheasant tail below it. This worked great while the fish were feeding. Probably caught 3 fish on the dropper to every 1 fish on the dry so it was worth to keep the dry on instead of fishing an indicator. We all caught a ton of fish. Weather turned out great. Had the section of river we were fishing all to ourselves, only seen 1 other angler. Cant beat it...

On a side note, we caught 3 tiny browns, all of them being around 6" long. Anybody know if the wildlife dept stocked some brown fingerlings?

[Zach Bearden]

Hey man, you need a bigger frabil

Nice fish. Especially that brown, heard there's a bunch down there right now.

[OKFlyFisher44]

Hey now...take it easy on the Frabill net, I'm too jewish to buy a Brodin

[FlyfishinOK]

Congrats! Sounds like a great trip. I like to see those browns. I've yet to catch a brown on the LIR. I have caught a few on the LMF though.

Did you see any Striper? I'm rigged and ready for them this year!

[OKFlyFisher44]

No stripers. Still too early I would think and cold. Won't be long though. We r all ready for it to start. I scouted out some new holes to try on the LIR once they do start. If we keep getting some warm weather, I bet they will start doing their thing on the Arkansas real soon. So much fishing to do. We will be chasing trout till the middle of April, then stripers till June, and then smallie fishin' kicks off! Man, can't wait!

[mic]

Great report and pics. Thanks for posting.

[swellcat]

Excellent report. Here's hoping the baby browns grow into really big browns.

[Zach Bearden]

Mine's bigger

Dude, I've got so many nets it's not even funny. But I still like my Frabill, my Fishknat is a close second though. When I start fishing more for the peace of it I'll probably switch back to wooden nets, traditional vest, get a Filson hat and grow my beard out. lol

[dgames]

Have also caught several of those little browns in the last 3 weeks. There seemed to be a bunch of them at the upper end of the car body hole two weeks ago when I was there. I caught one just above the watts parking lot this past weekend and the guy I was fishing with caught several there as well.

What dry do you use above your dropper? I use the dry/dropper rig there most of the time with a stimulator as my dry, but almost everything on the dropper and very few on the dry.

[OKFlyFisher44]

Everyone was using something different as a dry. I was using an Elk Hair Caddis just because it's easy to see but the fish seemed to like it as I caught several on it. I highly doubt they were keying in on the dries, more of just them feeding opportunistically on a big bug floating by. I would rather fish that way than stare at an indicator all day. Gives me a headache after a while, lol!