Full Report Jan 20-21

[Jason S]

Well sorry it took so long to get this written up. It has been one weekend of fishing after another and then a week in Miami (FL) for work. No time to post.

So this trip came together pretty last minute. For my buddy Josh and I to get out on a trip it seems like everything in the universe has to come into alignment. By this I mean, our wives have to grant us precious "get out of tha house points" for inexplicable reasons… that we don't question.

We knew we could leave OKC at 11am on Friday and had to be back by 3:30pm on Saturday, so we did just that. We arrived at the dam at 1:45pm and were wading by 2. Excited to say the least, we knew we should have until at least 5pm before the horn so we hit it pretty hard and fast. It started kind of slow for us. From 2 to 3pm we tried several spots and different flies with nothing. Not a bump or a strike. All of a sudden like a light switch we started seeing raises all around this hole near us! Without hesitation Josh clipped his nymph rig and tied on a #18 Adams. I was thinking I'll let him test the water and follow if need be. Well turns out I had a dry on within 10 minutes. He was working this great little run with a ton of success. After catching three on the tiny Adams, we realized they were feeding on emurgers so we both switched to some an emurger pattern. A few more fish came to hand and then it seemed to slow down. I decided to try some scuds I had tied seeing as there was sooooo much vegetation in the water upstream from where we were. That was THE fly! From here on out it was almost every other cast fishing until around 5pm! Such a blast! We both managed to pull out a healthy 15 or 16" fish. When 5pm rolled around I was just waiting for the horn any minute, but we ended up getting to fish for another half hour before they blew the horn. Stayed for 20 more and it was dark. Couldn't have asked for a better 3.5 hours of fishing.

We ate at Jimbo's and made camp down at Gore Landing. Boy was it cold. I was excited to break in my new tent and bag and it turns out that was almost too perfect a night. Got down to 24 degrees Friday night. To my surprise I woke up warm and toasty to the sound of the horn at 6am. Awesome. We knew we would have to wait until at least 10:30am before any chance of dropping water so we went back to Jimbo's for breakfast. We were trying to figure out what to do for the next 2 hours after breakfast and it hit me. We should break out the vises and tie! The folks at Jimbo's were kind enough to let us and they even kept our coffee cups filled the whole time!

We decided we would head out about 10am and got to the second parking lot around 10:15am only to find a roaring river. We geared up anyway and played the waiting game. Talked to some other guys for a while and finally they shut her down and we made our way upstream from the point of the island. By this time, we only had 2 hours before we had to head for the barn, so we stayed close. Only having 2 hours turned out to be no problem at all. I started fishing the gravel bar just up and to the right of the island. Stared with the same scud rig from the day before and brought 6 fish to hand fairly quickly. Decided to try some olive Hare's Ears I had tied and they loved it. I was getting sick of the indicator so I had a crazy idea to take it off and see what happened. I have to say that was the most fun fishing I have had in a long time. I just kept a steady eye on the point where my fly line met the leader and used it as the indicator. What a blast. I caught around 15 fish in that hour and a half to two hours and hookup with and missed just as many! We packed up and headed home.

For the short time we had one the water, we had a blast! What I haven't mentioned yet is Josh and I, a few months ago, decided we were going to build our own fly rods. Well thats a whole other loooooong post but long story short we did it, and were successful. We built the same rod, a 6'6" 2wt. This is the only rod either of us used that whole trip and I have been on two more trips since and never took another rod out of its case. I love this thing as does Josh and we are starting to order for our next build. 8'6" 3/4wt's

Here are some pics. I didn't have too many of fish because I couldn't get myself to stop long enough to take them.

Thanks to everyone who gave advise prior to the trip!

-Jason

Hope Josh will post some of his pics! He got some nice ones!

The big fish.

Tying at Jimbo's. Needless to say we have several people come ask what tha heck we were doing

Putting a nice bend in the 2wt!

[swellcat]

Very comprehensive report. Many thanks.

[DaddyO]

Nice report and nice pics! I'll have to tie up some olive scuds. I've never tried those down there. Nice looking rod, too. I'm looking forward to that story.

[SteveA]

Jason,

Really enjoyed your report! Sounds just like me and my brother-in-law (minus the numbers of good fish)! Love the handle on that rod by the way! Beautiful!

Thanks

[okiebug]

Nice report. Like the vise too, I have the exact same one. You can't beat the price for one of those.

[joshuapaul]

Thought I'd chime in with a few more photos from that quick trip we took. Seems like they've been generating non stop since that weekend we were there. I'd really like to get over there for an afternoon again to see if that type of activity is normal.

Just a note on the rods we made. I fell in love with fishing that 2wt on that trip. Thats my first light rod and I'm sold on them now. Unfortunately, I stopped by a neighborhood pond to blow off an hour catching bluegills and snapped the tip section when I was putting it back in my truck. That really sucked.

Oh well, replacement parts are on the way and I'll have it fixed soon enough.

Does anyone have any idea when this constant generation will let up? Not that I mind, just wondering.

to life!

Josh

[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.

[dgames]

Nice fish and good report by the way.

[joshuapaul]

Thanks for the links Dgames. I've looked at them before, but it's great to know that I'm actually looking at the correct thing!

It would be nice to only have an hour and 15 minute drive, I'm a little jealous about that!