| Broken Bow @ Beavers Bend State Park Fishing Guide Report: Lower Mountain Fork River
The fall colors are probably going to start popping out within the next week or two. I'm starting to see some of the trees turning red and orange splotches, getting ready to really pop. Should be a beautiful scenery in the next coming weeks. I think we're at the tail end of the monarch migration. That was a beautiful sight to see, with hundreds of monarchs all around you all day long.
We shared one of our spots with a bald eagle all morning long one morning, perched right above our heads in a tree. I was out scouting in a couple places I've never been before and noticed an eagle dive at a fish. I remembered an episode of one of those Alaskan reality shows where they live in the woods. One of the guys said he follows the bald eagles to the fish, like we follow the Seagulls to the fish. He was right, my new bird friend was definitely on fish that day as we slammed them. He even had some skeletons below his tree of some pretty spectacular fish. Mr. Eagle even made me jealous.
At this current moment the river is semi-full of 10 to 11 inch wild stocker rainbows. They are obviously stocking a couple bigger ones as I saw a couple 20+ inch bows in the Evening Hole and a couple other spots. The big girls get yanked out quick if stocked in a blue zone. Catching small fish is really just not my thing, so right now we are fishing for walleye, smallmouth bass, spotted bass, crappies, and monster bluegills.
My main target is the Walleye right now. I am pretty sure, there are actually more walleye in the river then there are trout now. There is one pocket that we know of that has over 100 baby walleye. 12 to 13 inches. They absolutely just everywhere in the river system. From Spillway Dam to the Red River. There are a bunch of deep pockets from the Spillway Dam to the Evening Hole, but be very careful going there. If you don't have polarized glasses you're pretty much wasting your time. Slick rocks can send you in a 12 ft hole. When your scouting, If you cannot see the bottom of the river in a pocket, there's probably a walleye in there!
~Anyways, we are flyfishing and using spinning tackle. For fly fishing, we are throwing clousers, streamers, and Sparkling Olive Near Deere's at the fish. Clouser colors vary from white and chartreuse, green, green and chartreuse, black, gray and white. Streamers very in all shapes forms and sizes and colors. I tend to do well on olive or black crawfish imitations or shad streamers in white or grey with flash. Most streamers and clousers are 2-4 inches long. On occasion we will hook up on the Game Changer pattern. It's a segmented fly. Very fun to tie and mostly to fish, but, the profile is to big for most of these fish. So weather it's fly fishing or spinning rod, I will get you on these fish. If you would like to learn to fly fish as well, after about two hours max, you will be doing everything on your own. All I will have to do is tell you where the fish are.
Spinning gear: we are using 4 pound mono with a 4 pound floro leader on 7-9 ft rods. We will use rooster tails, tiny flukes, curly grubs, and small jigs used for catching Crappie's like a Thump Buddy in glitter clear, and small cranks like Rapalas. If they just will not hit a lure/fly, we will switch over to live bait ( rarely do I use live bait) which includes earthworms, crickets, and live minnows. Sometimes they want very small minnows or they'll end up wanting 4 inch minnows. You just have to pay attention to the shad hatch and match the size of the bait swimming around. There are shad at the spillway dam as well. Net one with your trout net. Put it on a hook and hold on! You will see them early in the mornings and the walleye, Sandies, and larger trout smash them against the sides of the concrete below the dam. When the sun comes up, the fish move a bit deeper usually. But some days, even on a bright sunny day, they might be sitting in 1 ft of water and sometimes even in the rapids. Most of the time we are off the beaten path power fishing the deep pockets where most people don't venture.
The White Bass are very abundant in the river as well. Just Sunday morning, I landed well over 100 Sandies that were 15-18 inches long with only one small dink on a jig. The fish were ten feet in front of me and would school on the surface chasing my fly. About an hour after that they would not touch an artificial lure/ fly at all. I tried for about 20 minutes to no avail. I threw grubbs cranks rattletraps, rapalas, and all I got was just that one dink. Switched to minnows and casted to the same pocket and immediately hooked up. I caught sandy after sandy for 2 1/2 hours every cast 10 feet in front of me. Sometimes I would catch 2 to 3 Sandy's on the same minnow. But still, they wouldn't touch any lures after that time they quit hitting them. It was very very odd. Normally we don't have an issue catching them with lures and flies. They were just really zoned in on live bait this day ( not normal ) But still super fun with 4 lb mono.
As for the trout, same flies that usually work, work. Near Deere flies still whacking them. White midges and grey RS2's bumped on the bottom. No pics cause nothing was over 15 inches lately. Nothing has changed except for the size of the fish. A few monsters here and there but very rare at the moment. If you have a 3 weight, bring it. Walleye and Sandies I recommend a 5 weight.
( Cody's epic day on the river)
For the bait fisherman for trout: bump a real salmon egg on the bottom. Find the Cold Hole and fish your way upstream less than a 1/4 mile and bump the eggs on the bottom with 4 lb line and a small split shot. After you get your limit, please put the bait up and switch to lures to prevent gut hooking every fish after your limit. You may only have one fish over 20 inches out of your six.
I would assume they will start stocking the wild hold overs soon, when it gets a bit colder. But again I've not looked into this, it's just an assumption.
( 17 plus inch fish are active at night mainly but we will still catch some monsters here and there during daylight hours. )
It's very hard for me to fish for trout right now, when the walleye are in the same waters- and they are bigger than most of the trout. If you hire me for trout, so be it then, we will go catch trout.
Facebook page : Carey A Thorn
$350 for 6 hours fishing
1-3 people
Group trips up to 8 persons with two guides available. |
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