Upper Cossatot River Exploration Day-Jaunt
Jul 1, 2018 8:15:16 GMT -6
Fenwick, slim, and 1 more like this
Post by jonbo on Jul 1, 2018 8:15:16 GMT -6
I'm going to say the Upper Cossatot River is a "local" stream, even though it's in Arkansas rather than Oklahoma. It's practically the next little watershed to the east. Anyhow, the other day as sometimes happens, I was able to take off one of the last days of the month. As usual, this had to be a sort of last-minute decision. I would rather have asked amongst my warm-water experienced fly-fishing buds a week or two in advance to see if someone wanted to join me, but this decision got made just a few hours in advance of leaving when I was sure I was completely caught up on my work duties.
I went warm-water exploring instead of to the LMF because, you know, 'tis the season if you're ever going to do it. My target was the Cossatot River up around Gilliam/Wickes/Vandervoot. This is where the Cossatot River State Park is. There's two parallel highways that run. The lower, from the south, runs NW from Umpire to Wickes, I think. I think it's Highway 270, something like that. The upper highway is 246, running from Athens to Vandervoot. In any case, 246 runs just a few miles to the north of the other and they're closely parallel. From what I can tell (didn't do much research), the Cossatot State Park makes up the area where it is between the two highways. I remembered at Trout Camp Danimal telling me that 246 is the one I wanted to take for good smallmouth fishing. Whether I remembered right, I wasn't sure, but that's what I went with.
At the crossing of the Cossatot on 246 is a really sweet little day use area right next to the river called Brushy Creek (I think). That's where I parked. It was about 7:30 when I got there, the sun not quite peaking through, yet. I had brought largish wooly buggers and gray/white clousers. The river was about 1/2 - 2/3 the flow of the LMF at Beaver's Bend. There was a large shallow pool about 2 ft deep mostly and several deeper narrow pools and some very skinny water. The water was quite clear with the 2 foot water looking like it was 6" deep. I saw bass, mostly 6" or less, with some about 10 or 11 inches. I didn't see anything larger than that. In the first hour there were some risers, some quite noisy as though they were the larger bass. I couldn't tell if they were after some of the large mayflies I was seeing, or chasing baitfish as they may have been as they were along the shoreline, mostly. I decided to assume they'd be wanting baitfish and stuck to throwing the woolies and the clousers.
Well, I didn't have any luck with my streamers. I fished that shoreline of the large pool. I tried the middle. At the deeper pools I tried to run streamers off of the ledges and along the bottom of the base of the ledges. I never got a take in about 3 hours of fishing. I wasn't terribly disappointed as this was my first attempt at warm-water fly-fishing and this was an explorational trip, in any case. I have no idea if the bass I was seeing were smallmouth or some other species, just that they were bass shaped fish. I also wasn't sure if my setup was correct. My streamer leader is about 4 1/2 feet of larger Maxima Chameleon followed by about 16" of 12 lb MC, with about 2 feet of 2x mono for tippet. Was I "lining" the fish by using too short of a leader in that clear water? I don't know.
Anyhow, that's my report on the upper Cossatot River, folks. I probably should have gone downstream toward the other highway and fished, but I'm old and get tired and didn't have a lot of confidence in my setup having not gotten a take. But I enjoy exploring some, even when the fish don't cooperate too well.
I went warm-water exploring instead of to the LMF because, you know, 'tis the season if you're ever going to do it. My target was the Cossatot River up around Gilliam/Wickes/Vandervoot. This is where the Cossatot River State Park is. There's two parallel highways that run. The lower, from the south, runs NW from Umpire to Wickes, I think. I think it's Highway 270, something like that. The upper highway is 246, running from Athens to Vandervoot. In any case, 246 runs just a few miles to the north of the other and they're closely parallel. From what I can tell (didn't do much research), the Cossatot State Park makes up the area where it is between the two highways. I remembered at Trout Camp Danimal telling me that 246 is the one I wanted to take for good smallmouth fishing. Whether I remembered right, I wasn't sure, but that's what I went with.
At the crossing of the Cossatot on 246 is a really sweet little day use area right next to the river called Brushy Creek (I think). That's where I parked. It was about 7:30 when I got there, the sun not quite peaking through, yet. I had brought largish wooly buggers and gray/white clousers. The river was about 1/2 - 2/3 the flow of the LMF at Beaver's Bend. There was a large shallow pool about 2 ft deep mostly and several deeper narrow pools and some very skinny water. The water was quite clear with the 2 foot water looking like it was 6" deep. I saw bass, mostly 6" or less, with some about 10 or 11 inches. I didn't see anything larger than that. In the first hour there were some risers, some quite noisy as though they were the larger bass. I couldn't tell if they were after some of the large mayflies I was seeing, or chasing baitfish as they may have been as they were along the shoreline, mostly. I decided to assume they'd be wanting baitfish and stuck to throwing the woolies and the clousers.
Well, I didn't have any luck with my streamers. I fished that shoreline of the large pool. I tried the middle. At the deeper pools I tried to run streamers off of the ledges and along the bottom of the base of the ledges. I never got a take in about 3 hours of fishing. I wasn't terribly disappointed as this was my first attempt at warm-water fly-fishing and this was an explorational trip, in any case. I have no idea if the bass I was seeing were smallmouth or some other species, just that they were bass shaped fish. I also wasn't sure if my setup was correct. My streamer leader is about 4 1/2 feet of larger Maxima Chameleon followed by about 16" of 12 lb MC, with about 2 feet of 2x mono for tippet. Was I "lining" the fish by using too short of a leader in that clear water? I don't know.
Anyhow, that's my report on the upper Cossatot River, folks. I probably should have gone downstream toward the other highway and fished, but I'm old and get tired and didn't have a lot of confidence in my setup having not gotten a take. But I enjoy exploring some, even when the fish don't cooperate too well.
speaking of crawdad patterns the double cheeseburger is a favorite on the upper Illinois 