Cyber Monday Morning Sidewalk Don’t Run

Separating Fly Facts From Fictions

Good Monday Morning once again! I hope all of you fortunate enough to celebrate last week’s Thanksgiving – did so, and survived, or thrived with gravy on top. I am certainly hobbled beyond any time in the last ten years, with the exception of cancer, from going anywhere for any holidays with my family – none of whom are within range of this blessed North Texas homestead. It’s kind of like the tides; sometimes that’s just the way it goes.

BLACK FRIDAY MAIN EVENT

While I continue to pay the vig there was just enough air in my cell to escape to the Blue River for a few hours on Black Friday. It’s one of those trips that has a long pedigree. Through the years, I did the Blue River in Oklahoma, and when blessed with cash flow, even made it home to see the family in Houston, doing the Black Friday Flounder Run in Galveston more than once.

That flounder run was more than fun, but has been impacted in recent years by our freakish weather, and the ease the meat-eaters have with catching a limit every single day (or two, or three, or however many trips they make to their cars) at Sea Wolf Park.

So with limited time, and extraordinarily limited resources, the Blue River was my ticket to ride. There has been a new crop of fly fishers made aware of my website recently, and I have no doubt many of the newbies will never take the time to HIT THE SEARCH BOX to find out more about the Blue River, so let me start afresh.

• MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE BLUE RIVER – Click that for deeper reading
• [ppw id=”183911194″ description=”Oklahoma Fly Fishing Information” price=”.25″]
  • The Blue River resides outside Tishomingo, Oklahoma, about 91 miles north of Denton via HWY. 377
  • It has two distinct areas I call 1- Catch-and-Kill (CnK), and the other 2- Catch-and-Release (CnR)
  • Catch-and-Release is where the real fun is — less crowded / better fish / more natural / fantastic scenery / long hike (short bike) – a real adventure.
  • For some strange reason the wise folks at Oklahoma Department of Wildlife don’t stock any brown trout anywhere on the Blue River, although I bet one slips in on stockings.
  • No guiding is allowed to my knowledge, but some legislation was working last spring.
  • Temperature and flow make this a seasonal stocking schedule
  • CnR turns to kill in March (used to be Feb. 29).
  • Regulations on the Blue River are HERE

  The above box is an audio addition to this information that was recorded on the Blue River C-n-R last Friday. You should be able to download the audio, and listen to my eyewitness account of Conditions on the Blue River right now. If the file is not downloadable, just click play for God’s sake!

  DOWNLOAD BlueonBlackFriday

  If you are interested in the week ahead, and perhaps going to the Blue River, I would keep my powder dry … and wait for a lot worse weather, some water to start flowing and some of the CnR stockings to take hold.

  IF YOU want to know more about flies, rods, lines and specifics – just ask!

  MIXED SIGNALS FROM BENDBOW – TELL ME TRULY

  If you are thinking about the other Oklahoma fly fishing spot that is easily reachable from North Texas – BendBow* – then you’ll only get mixed signals. Officially, as of approximately ten days ago there was a problem with one of the gates on the Lower Mountain Fork Dam. It’s a problem that left flows down the spillway and onward, significantly throttled down, and water temperatures went up.

  What’s most interesting is, that in what appears to be a bit of a knee-jerk “marketing reaction,” there quickly (over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend) appeared a glorious slo-mo video of trout being released in the BendBow. Since the two can exist – low flow, and New Zealand size rainbow trout – at the same time, it makes me wonder just a bit about both reports. Make no mistake, a video image on Instagram now qualifies as a report for those who don’t use the written word to file reports.

  Instagram is the “new” Cliff’s Notes of fly fishing, a little more cliche infected, but now (after all these years of doing it myself) in high fly fashion. I am guessing (because no BendBow guides ever take the time to write a response) that it’s a completely legitimate report (of a guide-caught fish), and one with no follow-up whatsoever (meaning a single (1) photogenic fish). Otherwise, there would be more (of those Instagram reports), am I right?

  NOTE TO INSTAGRAM REPORTERS – There’s no ROI for all that time you’re wasting on Instagram. People will still read, if you will write.

  I consider the way Oklahoma stocks trout to be much more beneficial to the State of Oklahoma / fly fishers in comparison to what TPWD does in Texas, although the Blue River is NOT a year-round trout fishery. I see many more children (as a percentage) with parents on the Blue River every year, than I have at the ponds Texas stocks. Here is the Oklahoma Trout Stocking Press Release.

  The official Lower Mountain Fork line from Oklahoma’s Don Groom, Region Fisheries Supervisor, is here – ODWC Update Lower Mountain Fork Flows.

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  Thanks for listening or reading this Monday Morning, and if you have something to say in words or decent photographs, please feel free to send it my way! I am always happy to run YOUR REPORTS and STORIES on fly fishing in Texas.

  *”BendBow” is the affectionate name I gave to the area of Oklahoma that is called “Broken Bow” for romantic reasons, and the area called “Beaver’s Bend” park which is actually where the fish are. I just bastardized it into “BendBow” because that’s what a Bow does – Bend.

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