Post by dainw on Apr 26, 2016 12:05:54 GMT -6
Dan Orr and myself made the trek from Oklahoma City to Missouri this weekend to do a little trout fishing. We fished the Current River all day Friday and Saturday until about 2. Then we headed south to chase smallies on the Jack's Fork saturday evening, and then Sunday we floated the North Fork of the White blue ribbon section.
The Current River - This is a beautiful ozark spring creek that's really managed well. The first 3 miles caters to the bait chunkers and people fishing for food. It's a trout park with a hatchery on site that stocks daily based on the number of daily park tags that they sell. We avoided this section for the most part and focused our efforts on the 7 miles of blue ribbon section below the park. Blue ribbon in Missouri essentially is the same as a red zone in Oklahoma. 1 fish over 18, per day, flies and lures only. We fished the Tan Vat access on Friday and it was good to us. Caught several nice rainbows and one nice brown. Rainbows aren't stocked in the blue ribbon section, they either escape from the park or there is (reportedly) some natural reproduction. Generally speaking, if you tangle with a rainbow in this section, it's gonna pull pretty hard, and these fish were true to form. Browns are stocked once a year, and there must have been a stocking recently because Saturday we tore them up. Between the two of us, Dan and I must have hooked 50 browns (and 1 small rainbow) at a spot on the Baptist Camp access further downstream from Tan Vat. Most of these were stocker browns, but we caught a couple nice ones, and I hooked into something that felt like a sizeable fish. I set the hook into what I thought was a rock and then the rock took off for the bluff wall across from me. Unfortunately the hook came out as it sometimes does on a size 20 midge. Oh well, a fun time was had by all. Hot flies were stonefly nymphs, prince nymphs, pheasant tails, midges, even caught one on an egg. So pretty much anything you wanted to throw. We even fished a dry dropper rig, stimi up top and nymph below for a while. TA would have been proud.
The Jack's Fork - This river is gorgeous. I think it's still a little early for smallies, we caught two dinks and a handful of goggle eye. Seriously though, maybe one of the prettiest rivers I've ever been to.
The North Fork of the White. - This is another gorgeous river. No rainbows have been stocked here since the 60s. We caught about 15 cookie cutter 12-14 inch wild bows between the two of us. These fish pulled well above their weight class. Major take away from this one, next time, hire a guide with a drift boat. We rented a canoe and had to pass over a lot of choice water that we couldn't fish from the canoe but would've been able to really crush from a drift boat. Big stoneflies, prince nymphs, and hare's ears all worked here.
All in all it was great trip. We saw like 5 snakes, high centered the canoe on a rock, and Dan got bit by a dog, but it owner swam down stream and retrieved our missing ore (lost in the wreck) for us, so we couldn't be too mad about it.
Here are some pics
The Current River - This is a beautiful ozark spring creek that's really managed well. The first 3 miles caters to the bait chunkers and people fishing for food. It's a trout park with a hatchery on site that stocks daily based on the number of daily park tags that they sell. We avoided this section for the most part and focused our efforts on the 7 miles of blue ribbon section below the park. Blue ribbon in Missouri essentially is the same as a red zone in Oklahoma. 1 fish over 18, per day, flies and lures only. We fished the Tan Vat access on Friday and it was good to us. Caught several nice rainbows and one nice brown. Rainbows aren't stocked in the blue ribbon section, they either escape from the park or there is (reportedly) some natural reproduction. Generally speaking, if you tangle with a rainbow in this section, it's gonna pull pretty hard, and these fish were true to form. Browns are stocked once a year, and there must have been a stocking recently because Saturday we tore them up. Between the two of us, Dan and I must have hooked 50 browns (and 1 small rainbow) at a spot on the Baptist Camp access further downstream from Tan Vat. Most of these were stocker browns, but we caught a couple nice ones, and I hooked into something that felt like a sizeable fish. I set the hook into what I thought was a rock and then the rock took off for the bluff wall across from me. Unfortunately the hook came out as it sometimes does on a size 20 midge. Oh well, a fun time was had by all. Hot flies were stonefly nymphs, prince nymphs, pheasant tails, midges, even caught one on an egg. So pretty much anything you wanted to throw. We even fished a dry dropper rig, stimi up top and nymph below for a while. TA would have been proud.
The Jack's Fork - This river is gorgeous. I think it's still a little early for smallies, we caught two dinks and a handful of goggle eye. Seriously though, maybe one of the prettiest rivers I've ever been to.
The North Fork of the White. - This is another gorgeous river. No rainbows have been stocked here since the 60s. We caught about 15 cookie cutter 12-14 inch wild bows between the two of us. These fish pulled well above their weight class. Major take away from this one, next time, hire a guide with a drift boat. We rented a canoe and had to pass over a lot of choice water that we couldn't fish from the canoe but would've been able to really crush from a drift boat. Big stoneflies, prince nymphs, and hare's ears all worked here.
All in all it was great trip. We saw like 5 snakes, high centered the canoe on a rock, and Dan got bit by a dog, but it owner swam down stream and retrieved our missing ore (lost in the wreck) for us, so we couldn't be too mad about it.
Here are some pics
