Arkansas River -- fishing report for Dec. 28th

[Bill Butts]

Thursday was an interesting day on the AR River in the Tulsa area, but not because we caught fish.

I continued to hear of a few fishermen that have been finding and catching some Stripers in areas that do have significant landlocked water with a little depth. We just couldn't pass up the opportunity to do battle with some of them, so we spent a very long day to check out several areas including some new ones.

The river continues to be extremely low, with a continuous flow of only 40-50 cfs, a trickle for that huge praire river. Keystone Lake is getting closer to power pool level (just 2 feet below), so perhaps with the forecast rain this weekend it will come up more. Kaw Lake, about 75 miles above Keystone, is now just a smidge below power pool.

The water below Zink Dam was brown murky, but it was about normal color about 5 miles down river. The water was green murky right below Keystone Dam, but beautifully crystal clear just a half mile down river at the Swift Park area. There just is not enough flow through the river basin to clear out areas that get muddied from creek inflow from rain water.

For the entire day of fishing, fighting the wind, walking and wading several miles, our total combined success was......one dinky White Bass.

There were only two people fishing below Keystone Dam (no success), and we only met one other fisherman during the entire day. That guy, Kelly from Tulsa, is a local fisherman we met below Zink Dam. He said he purchased a fly tackle outfit recently because he saw the fly fishermen catch so many nice Stripers last spring.

Kelly has also just registered for this forum (I don't know his user name yet)and I think the guys who fish the AR will enjoy and appreciate his participation since he does know the river and has spent a lot of time fishing it. He's a very nice guy.

Welcome, Kelly.

Hopefully, my next report will be a much better one.

Anyone else had any recent experiences down there?

Bill

[snagged in outlet 3]

Hi Bill.

I asked this question before but never got an answer. Do hybrids feed in the winter in the tailwaters? What temperature shuts them down?

SIO3.

[jay bird]

Well I have gotten the bug and will be trying to do some fishing down there as soon as they run some consistant water. I have not fished for Stripers since the Spring and did not have a good year on Beaver lake last year. (Not sure why everyone else did) Any way my small group will start to post as soon as we make it down there. Trying to find some family stuff to do in Tulsa so I can take the Family down there for a long weekend fish in the AM and do the Family thing in the PM.