Broken Bow Fishing Report

[Phil Lilley]

Sent to me from John Wenzslick-

Over the weekend two of us drove down to Broken Bow, OK for a TU meeting at this beautiful little gem in the Ouchita Mountains. The Beaver Bend State Park is built around the Broken Bow Lake on the Mountain Fork River which eventually runs into the Arkansas. The Oachita’s remind me of the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas because they are more steep and rugged than the Ozarks in Missouri but the striking difference is that the forest is mostly tall Southern Pines. The park is a 450 mile ride from Mid-Missouri but is within about 150 mile radius of big cities in three states: Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Little Rock and Dallas/Fort Worth. One of our hosts from Tulsa pointed out that 5 out of 6 license plates you see are from Texas.

We ended up fishing parts of two of three days that were cold and rainy, Saturday March 1st an all-day meeting so of course it got up to 75F that day. The Mountain Fork is unique for a tailwater because there are two dams on Broken Bow Lake. One is a spillway which has flood gates for emergency release at the top but has water drawn from the bottom continuously. It flows down a fairly steep grade that has pools and runs. This is called the Spillway Run and the pools run swift but are wadable, you just have to be careful navigating around the big flat pieces of shale rock that are strewn at different angles all over in the 30 ft. wide river bed, with some flat bare rock on the bottom that I was glad I had studs on my wading boots. Our second morning there I caught a nice rainbow about 15” on a mini bead head olive woolly bugger and my buddy caught one about 17”. The very next cast he caught a Brown 18”.

A young man who guides for the parks Fly Shop sat on the bank and was watching us fish, he told me he was waiting for the BWO hatch which should start about 11AM. He had been stalking for a while a big Brown Trout and wanted to catch it with a dry fly. About 11:30 I heard him yelling for me, I was just upstream, he had it on and wanted me to take a picture for him. When he got it into the net it was a long lean stream bred Brown 18”-20”. It made a fine picture and had a size 26 BWO emerger in its top jaw.

Pics to follow...

Thursday afternoon when we arrived, we were directed by our host to try the gentler meadow part of the lower Spillway Run that is called the “Evening Hole”. The sun was out and there was a small March Brown hatch and one angler up from me was getting them on the surface. Our host was picking up little browns and rainbows on a hares ear soft hackle and a woolly bugger and my buddy was catching a few on browns zebra midges. One of the ladies from TU in Dallas started getting them on the surface too. I finally did snag a couple nice 10”-12” rainbows stripping a #14 green Crackleback. In about the middle of the Spillway channel the state has fixed up a little quarter mile run that is about 10 ft. at the widest point and resembles a beautiful little spring creek. We didn’t fish it because we found it our last day there but there was a man and his young son getting a few small rainbows with the fly rod.

The “Evening Pool” on Spillway Run The other dam about a half mile to the east of the spillway on Broken Bow Lake houses the power plant. It spills into the main channel of the Mountain Fork passes the Heritage Center, Restaurant and campgrounds and a little below that goes over a re-regulation dam, there it is a 200 ft. plus wide river. When the generators are running this stretch is a typical tailwater, it’s not wade fishing. We were going to fish the Red Zone (Trophy barbless hook area) down here on our last morning but the sirens went off right before we got there so we took a look at the area and went back up to the upper spillway branch, where the water is always running steady at the same flow and is just like a beautiful freestone creek, and caught three fish each before the thunder and lightning started. This is really a delightful place but we were told it really gets crowded in the summer. The regulations on most of the water are Blue zones where you can keep 6 fish per day with one a Brown trout of 20”, there are also a Red zone on the Spillway Run and on the Mountain Fork Tailwater where it is barbless hooks, C&R. You are assured though that if you make the long trip down that you will get to fish for trout. When you arrive it isn’t like your typical tailwater. Even if they are running a lot of water you still have miles of stream that you can catch brown and rainbow trout and if they aren’t running water you have a chance to catch a really big trout in the tailwater section.

[ollie]

Have seen the place, but never had the chance to fish it. One of these days!