Blue River Fly Classic

Blue River Fly Classic
A One Pattern Fly Event

Friday, April 5, 2013

Post Season Trout On Blue River

Each year as trout season ends at Blue River, the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife comes to Blue for an end of the season celebration in the form of one fine fish fry.  Each year, the fly fishing community at Blue River receives an invitation to join in the feast and this year's contingency included Scott Dittner, Van Stacey, Michael Merurio and yours truly. 

The fish was rather darn good along with all the other fixings.  The company was quite grand also and this gave the Blue River Fly Fishers an opportunity to present the proceeds to the wildlife department from the One Fly 2013.  Scott Dittner handle those honors presenting Matt Gamble and Matt Mauck with the check.

Of course, after the luncheon there is always fishing and that's exactly what we did today.  Merc said he knew where there were a couple of nice size bows and it was decided to work our way to that channel. 

Merc would start things off by drawing first blood with a trout on his first cast.  Scott caught a bow rather quickly as Van worked the water below First Falls.  Van had landed a couple of trout earlier in the day.  As for me, my first two trout ended up being quick releases.



Merc and Scott decided to pursue the nice trout Merc had reported.  Merc landed a really nice one and Scott caught a really beautiful and fat bow also. 

While Van was fishing a bluff, Merc caught up with me and we decided to head upstream.  On the way, I told Merc about a run I use to love to fish five or six years ago.  I loved to fish it because it always yielded bows and nobody ever fished this pretty run of water.  However, the last four or five years the trout simply have not been there because of low flow.  The river was up however and the flow much better and today this seemed to make a difference.

As Merc was working his nymph magic with an upstream cast and his mending prowess he thought he was seeing risers.  I went upstream and scouted for him and sure enough... trout were rising.  It was about that time a bow took Merc's indicator down to the depths.  I cast my brown bugger in a seam and a bow came to me.  Merc plucked a couple of more and I did the same.  Van came up and caught a bow on his first drift and Scott soon followed suit.  We had found the hole.



 
 
Now Merc is one dandy fly fisher and today he brought his favorite rod to Blue River - a 9 ft. Scott.  The Scott was certainly doing it's job and I watched the beauty of this cracker jack rod.  However, sometimes a little bad luck comes the way of the fly fisher. 
 
As I was working a seam I heard Merc say something to the tune of, "I just broke my damn rod!" so I turned my attention downstream and there was Merc holding two pieces of the Scott - one piece in each hand. 
 
As he stood there looking at his dismantled rod his fly was still in the river when the indicator disappeared beneath the surface.  So... what does Merc do?  He lands the trout my hand - it was almost primitive in a sense. 
 
 
I cringe at the thought of breaking a rod like a Scott, but Merc took it all in stride since there's a lifetime warranty with this dandy. 
 
When you're with good company and having fun fly fishing time seems to fly by.  Today was such a case and three hours passed like thirty minutes.  Merc had to get back to Texas and the rest of us needed to go also.
 
We could not have asked for a prettier day fishing post season trout on the Blue River. 

 

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