I made a trip to SE Oklahoma this past Thursday to check the Lower Mountain Fork through Beaver's Bend State Resort. The buzz has been fairly heavy about the area - message boards were filled with dread about the proposed repair to the turbines and the associated flood of water that was to be released through the spillway to moderate the lake level. Evidently "Plan B" - a solution involving repair of the turbines one at a time while allowing flow through the dam directly into the park water - is a happy compromise and will allow angling in Zone 1 for the next few months.
G. Tolle and I left Denton EARLY Thursday morning and were on the water before 9 am. There were only three cars at the lower nature trail bridge parking area when we got there - one was a hiker that headed off through the woods and another was two guys from the Okla. Fish and Game Dept. waiting on the stocking truck. The truck pulled up a few minutes later and we witnessed the transfer of trout to the pickup. It kind of like sausage . . . if you like it, you probably don't want to see it made! The stocking process is much less precise than one would think given the frail nature of trout. The OWD guys said they were adjusting their stocking placement because they could not cross the stream with the water level. So, they were going to put a few more fish upstream. If you have ever waded upstream from Cold Hole to the lower trail bridge, you might have noticed a 10" diameter blue PVC pipe on the right side of the stream. This is a stocking pipe. They back the truckdown to the other end of the pipe, attach a large hose and let'em slide. The trout get what has to be (for them) a terrifying 100' water park slide that ends with a dump into the stream.
Thursday was bright and sunny and as long as the sun was directly on the water, fishing was tough. All the fish we hooked before lunch (at 2:00pm) were holding DEEP. The water level was perfect for Spillway Creek - enough water for lots of fish cover but not too deep/fast to make wading difficult. We did not catch many fish in larger pools and, if we did, they were holding in pockets at the tails of the pools. Most trout caught were holding in smaller, deep pockets in sections with boulders or other "hydraulic" producing structure. The area downstream of the upper bridge was especially productive in the afternoon.
An interesting fact is that all of the fish we caught were large - we didn't catch a fish less than 14" and most were around 16. They were pretty beat up stockers with the usual blunt fins and less than magazine quality coloration but some of them fought very well. Glenn caught one just upstream of Cold Hole that jumped several times and took of upstream, leaping the whole way.
All fish were caught on some variation of the usual "Oklahoma rig" - an 8 foot 4X leader with a #14 heavy BH Prince and a #18 little black or olive midge as a dropper on 6X.
On another note, I fished my new 7'9" TFO Finesse 4 wt. and LOVED IT for the type of short range, "weave-through-the-woods" fishing we do at Beavers Bend (and especially on the Blue). It was just long enough to allow a good drift and was SO easy to maneuver through the tight cover along the stream. It had enough backbone to cast the nymph rig and fight the larger trout we caught (my biggest of the day was a 17" that just about "maxed out" the little rod).
