Float/fishing Report - 4/1/12

[OKFlyFisher44]

With the past rain events leaving the tailwaters and the NFOW still a little on the high side, part of the crew and I decided it was time to hit the Elk and see what the smallies were up to. We didnt have very high hopes for the fishing cuz normally April 1st is still a little early but we couldnt pass up the floating opportunity with the level that the Elk was at. So I loaded up the drift boat on sunday and met up with a couple of buddies to fish the Pineville-Mt. Shira section. The river was in GREAT shape from the previous rain....flow was perfect, river bottom was clean, and the water was very clear. Lots of new log jams, gravel moved around, and several holes have changed dramatically since I was on the river in September. The fishing was pretty darn good for April 1st. We didnt catch anything BIG but caught several nice fish along with your normal run of the mill river dinks. Various streamers patterns worked for us all day. Color seemed to matter more than anything with tan and black being the best colors on the nasty streamers. Blue/white and blue/chart were good colors for Clousers. We had equal luck stripping the bugs back to the boat and letting them dead drift on a tight line. It was a beautiful day on the river overall with great flows, weather, and fishing. Didnt even pull on the waders....gotta love wet wading in April!

A big thank you to Russ and Jean Ann at Hog Haven for the shuttle on Sunday. U guys r great, really appreciate it! U will be hearing from us again soon!

[OKFlyFisher44]

[Phillbert]

Some friends and I threw our boats in Indian Creek for the same reason. Water was perfect for floating. Fishing wasn't great until the end of the trip and we brought in a few decent small mouth.

I wrote a short article about it and included most of my pictures on hubpages... http://phillbert.hubpages.com/hub/First-River-Float-Fishing-Trip-Of-the-Year-2012