Spring Break - Avoiding the "Place" and finding "Space"

Spring Break snuck up on my family this year.  A last minute camping trip to the Lower Mountain Fork River near Broken Bow, OK was made and canceled.  Yep, I made the reservation, and told everyone we'd be camping and fishing the spillway creek area.  Looks like a great place to introduce kids to the fly.  After getting everyone excited, I woke up the next morning and found out that they had opened the spillway gates to release water.  The cool thing about the LMF is when the COE's generate from the powerhouse, the spillway creek area is still wadeable.  Not so when they open the spillway, the area was deemed unsafe for children (normal flow is about 110 cfs, it was over 1000 cfs when I canceled).  More on the worst fishing trip ever in part 2.  To be continued....Part 2 here

No big deal, my wife was just humoring my camping idea.  Honestly, she was probably relieved that we weren't camping.  My plan being unsuccessful, she suggested driving to Little Rock and spending a few days with family.  I'm not against the idea as long as I get to fish.  I was just humoring her, b/c a trip to visit family in LR is code for "girl trip".  Here's how it works...I suggest a trip to BassPro.  It gets replaced with a girl trip (aunts, nieces, sister-in-laws, mother-in-laws, girl friends, etc) to Children's Place, the "Place".  I suggest a hike up Pinnacle Mountain, replaced with the Zoo.  You get the idea.  I've found a way to combat this, and now all the guys in the family have kayaks.  What do we guys do when the "crazy ladies" start talking about Dr. Seuss live at the kids theater?  We pack the yaks and find some water.  Great news was the White Bass were on the move.

The plan didn't include staying awake BS'ing until 12 am and getting up at 5 am but that's what happened.  Staying in someone else's home has it challenges.  Like checking out of the conversation at a reasonable hour Friday night.  OR, brewing a cup of coffee Saturday morning.  The Keurig was lit up and ready to brew my favorite morning elixir.  However, all I could locate was decaf...50 plastics cups of decaf coffee.  I searched high and low, and located several more boxes of DECAF!  Seriously, is there a more useless item than decaf coffee?  Not wanting to waste any more of my life, I jumped in the truck and drove to the nearest McD's.  16 miles later I was enjoying a warm coffee and life was back on track.

Located the fleet of kayaks waiting on me to arrive in the dark and unloaded.  About that time, 200 powerboats with similar plans locate the same boat launch.  It's the weekend and the 1st day of Spring Break in AR...it was expected.

The fleet departs but  I decided to hang back and test a few areas that everyone passed up in the hurry to get back in the creek.  They were productive and a few whites were quick to take the clouser I had tied a few weeks earlier.

After about 30 minutes, I decided to join the group and made my way up the creek.  It was just as I expected.  Boats packed together, so close you could have walked from one end of the creek to the other w/o getting wet.  I managed a few more whites but the fishing was slow, casting a fly nearly impossible.

Around 11 am, the boats moved on and the fishing improved for me as I had more room to work.  Tried a bunch of techniques, sink tip with unweighted and weighted streamers/clousers.  Floating line with heavy clousers.  Everything caught a few fish but the best pattern was sink tip and unweighted white streamer.  Getting the fly to suspend or fall slowly was the key to getting a take.  Of course, I hung my best producer in a tree...casting can be a challenge in the area (see pics).

Getting hungry I vacated my area and went looking for the yak fleet.  Best idea of the day.  I found them warming up some lunch and happily beached the yak for some grub.

Wasn't long before everyone was full and ready to make a trip up to the bridge to see if we could find some space and more fish.

I located a few right away.  The wind picked up and made standing and casting the sink tip a little more of a challenge.  After an hour we were all ready to pack it up.  It was a good day.  Brought some fish to hand and avoided standing in the checkout line at the "Place"!


Part 2 here :  Part 2