For the first time in a few months I had a fishing buddy with me. The fact that the buddy was my wife had me smiling all day. My wife hasn’t gotten out as much as she wanted in her first 6 months of picking up the fly rod and had never landed a trout successfully until last weekend. After a few hints about how to better play the first few fish she lost, she began to out fish me until early evening.
Everything came together for her really well this weekend, especially her casting, and throughout our adventure I found myself not paying attention to my drift as much as I should have, I seem to have a wandering eye for the wife. Not a lot of big numbers were caught but it was a solid outing for us both. I caught a pristine wild trout that had some great coloring, a far departure from our normal stockers. I wish we had gotten a close up of the fish, but I let it get away a little too fast. It will be interesting to see what the wild fish look like in a few months, and while I am not catching a wild fish every trip to the Lower Illinois, it is becoming a more frequent occurrence.
The obligatory underwater shot:
I tried some of the new Thingamabobber indicators this weekend. I think they would do well with some of the heavier rigs I can envision using, but I really didn’t like the weight on my 4wt setup and it was difficult casting with a stiff wind.
January 14th, 2008
There was nothing spectacular was caught on this trip and overall the fishing was slow, but fish were caught, and they were trout. I did catch this one interesting fish. Should I feel bad for something I just stuck with a hook? I think I did feel for this fish:
I am not sure if a bigger fish got to this one or if he had a stocking accident, but I wish him the best of luck since he is at least eating.
Other than that fish this was really an outing to play with my new toys. I tried out the yellow lenses in my Smiths. Wow is all I can say. I lost track of time and didn’t realize how dark it was getting because everything looked so bright. The vision it gave me into the water was phenomenal given the conditions. The wading jacket worked better than I expected, but I am a sucker for anything with pit zips. I got rained on some and I was dry and warm all day. I think the best aspect of a wading jacket is being able to reach into the water if needed and not worry about getting soaked. I need to practice with my composition, but I did get one ok shot:
I like the reflection aspect of this shot, but I suppose I will get the angles right eventually. I didn’t really fish hard and I didn’t cover much area, but getting out is what is important. It took me a while to find the right fly this time. I went through about 6 before finding the right one, a play on a flashback pheasant tail I tied a few years ago. It was kind odd that it took me so long to find something that worked as I know all of the holes really well in the section and know I was fishing the right depth. I saw a lot of risers that teased me into rigging up a dry fly with an emerger tailing off of it. This is a combination I can’t seem to get right on the Lower Illinois. I am going to actually tie up a few things and see if I can actually land one of the larger browns I have seen hitting the top. Maybe it will yield some better than average fish.
December 27th, 2007
The Lower Illinois is definitely the ugly stepchild of Oklahoma’s year-round trout waters. For some reason it doesn’t get as much traffic as the Lower Mountain Fork, and people really only get excited about the striper fishing on the Lower Illinois. In fact the bait chuckers will catch a limit of stockers and use them as bait down river as the stripers love them. I should be grateful the Lower Illinois can always provide fishing with solitude. Don’t get me wrong, I hate the generation schedule, especially during the summer, but for all its faults it has a lot to offer for being so close to Oklahoma City.
I drove up on my usual starting point at 7:45am to find another car, damn, at least it’s in the mid 40s and I am not freezing my ass off like I expected. The other anglers that beat me to the spot were heading down stream so I started in at the hole I always hit when leaving the water. This is my “one more fish hole” and it never disappoints. On the 4th drift I lay into something big, not Long Nose Gar big, but for sure not your average trout for these waters. After a little tangling I finally see the fish’s back. It’s a huge - well, biggest I have seen in these waters - brown. Seeing as how my last trip I had a knack for losing big fish, I compose my self and start working the fish making sure to do all the right things and not something stupid. It takes a while but finally I bring the fish to my net and stare down at this big, beautiful, hook-jawed male. I fish more than your average angler, not as much as I would like of course, and I fish for trout a third or more of that time. I have caught a lot of trout, but I don’t think I have ever caught a trout this big, and if even I had none of them had such brilliant colors as this one.
A brown trout is a special thing in Oklahoma, since only two of our rivers have them. I have heard anglers complain about how hard they are to catch (they are stocked in far less numbers), but I have never seemed to have a problem and will get a least one on every trip. I decided to forgo making some new friends on the Blue so I could catch a big brown, and I am so glad I won’t regret my decision. I do regret not having a camera with me, but that issue will be solved in a few weeks, or so I hear.
The rest of the day was filled with mostly average fish for the Lower Illinois, but it really wouldn’t have mattered at that point. I could have packed up and headed home and I would have had the same smile no matter how many more fish I had caught. I got to do some exploring and see a lot of potential for night fishing in a few places and can’t wait to try it.
December 8th, 2007
I have been trying to decide where to lay it down this weekend since my children will be away with their grandparents. I had thought about going to the Blue because there will be lots of people from the forum I could meet, but I think I will be less gregarious and go to the Lower Illinois to find some browns. I will probably hit my normal spot in the Watt’s area in the morning and then work my way down to Marvel’s by the afternoon.
I wish I had someone to go with, but being able to fish hard and fast will hopefully yield some better than average fish for the Lower Illinois. I suppose I will need to tie some flies this evening and make a run to the big box store for some sink putty and 5x. I just wish they had super hair so I could tie up some of those swanky midges I have seen that use knot sense, but their selection of non-generic tying items blows.
It’s going to be cold here in OK tomorrow, but having a whole day to fish with no interruptions will be a nice break after a busy week.
December 7th, 2007
This summer was a pretty good one for me as I was able to get out more than ever and work on my casting accuracy as well as my presentation from 30 feet and beyond. I still have a long way to go, but setting a few goals at the beginning of the summer has brought me to the point where I am always fishing with an agenda. I don’t mean to sound like fishing isn’t fun or that I am trying to prove something, but every time I pick up a rod now I have firm goals that I want to accomplish.
Last Friday I decided it was the time for trout with my kids leaving for the night to stay with in-laws. I begged the wife to come, but alas she wanted to get some sleep after a long week. So I called my mother and told her I was heading to her cabin in the morning and to be ready to go at 7AM. I am lucky to have parents that have a place within spitting distance of one of our two year round trout streams in Oklahoma. Even if I am not going to stay the night I will drive for 2 hours and pick up my mom as I love fishing with her and love help putting her on fish.
Mom catching a trout on a fly was first on the agenda. She has caught some fish on a fly, even a Fresh Water Drum, but for some reason the trout had escaped her olive bugger. The outing previous to this one she had some bites, but was really getting the feel for nymphing and wasn’t able to put it all together. This weekend she did great. She got her drifts just right and while she can’t cast to the runs from 40 feet away like I tend to do she can work her way up to a good run and fish it pretty well now. The result was several missed fish, a few that got off, and finally her first trout on a fly:
I can’t wait until I make it out there in a few weeks. I think she might start to catch as many fish as I do on the Lower Illinois. I love the section of river we were fishing and it is easy for my mom to get around on without much fuss or difficult wading. The one thing that she doesn’t like is the immense amount of these beasts in the water:
You have to watch where you step in this section of the river or you might find yourself slipping on a 40”+ long nose gar. Unfortunately fishing for the gar hasn’t been the agenda as the biggest stick I have is a 6wt. That and I really want to have a waterproof Optio so I get some of those swanky underwater shots all the cool kids post these days. I plan to target the gar very soon and will report back with the results, but until then I need to decide if I can going to go with rope flies or not. On each of my last two trips I have hooked a gar with a nymph. My precious 4wt bends hard and the line starts to zip out giving my trigger finger a bit of line burn. The first time I got about a one minute fight out of the fish and I saw its huge spotted tail break surface a few times. It was a pretty big fish, but I am not an IGFA guy so landing a long nose gar that weighed 10+ pounds on 6x tippet isn’t really a skill I have down. This last outing I got the familiar short fight, but this time the gar was nice enough to give me back my fly. Of course I didn’t check my rig at all before casting again and I promptly broke off what must have been the largest rainbow I had hooked on the Lower Illinois.
Since I had gotten my most important agenda item off the list, getting my mom on a trout, I was able to really focus in on my personal goals for the trip. I recently read Active Nymphing by Rich Ostoff and have been trying to take a few things from the book to the water every time I fish (thanks to The Tennesee Valley Angler for mentioning this great book). While I am not employing Ostoff’s techniques on every cast I am branching out from my standard flies and dead drifting techniques. I have a go-to nymph I have been using this past year that has been a great producer on our Oklahoma tailwaters, but I went ahead tied up some of Ostoff’s Soft Hackle Woolly Worms and rigged it up per Osthoff’s suggestions. I began fishing spots a little bit differently trying to move the fly around rocks and objects both upstream and downstream. I still have a lot to learn about actually executing well on the water, but what I really got from the book more than anything is a different way of looking at the water and fishing it more effectively. Next time I go out I will be trying an even more Ostoff approach by going out on my own and really trying to cover 3+ miles of water in a day throwing a woolly worm in lots of interesting lies looking for big fish. I know there are some nice browns in the Lower Illinois and hopefully the hack and slash mentality Ostoff brings to fishing will serve me well.
Last on my agenda was to capture a picture of a wild rainbow in the Lower Illinois. I have never read anything about spawning in the Lower Illinois, but on the trip before this last one I am sure I caught a wild rainbow trout that was around 5” long. There is no hatchery on the river so we don’t have fish escaping and I have heard no fish with parr marks are released. It’s not unheard of for there to be spawning rainbows in Oklahoma, the wild trout in the Lower Mountain Fork are well known and I have lots of great pictures showing off their stunning colors. I wasn’t able to hook up with any young ones this trip to the Lower Illinois, but hopefully on my next trip I will find one hiding behind the same rock as I did a few weeks ago.
Fishing with an agenda isn’t about catching numbers of fish or even large fish. Going to the river with a plan in mind and trying to accomplish a few things such as improving your tuck cast, catching fish on a few different flies, or fishing some lies you wouldn’t normally try, and imparting a little action on the flies are great ways to improve your skills. This last summer I was able to set some concrete goals and while it will be some time before I reach my goals, I think I have become a much better fisherman. In the past I was always concerned about catching fish and I never really contemplated my attack on the water. It would have been a crappy day had I been skunked, but being able to go out, put my mom on a fish, and further my fishing abilities made this trip really rewarding.
October 8th, 2007