The 15 X 15 Challenge: When fly fishing boggles the mind
It never ceases to amaze, what a little bit of thread and feathers can accomplish in the water
Every style of fishing has its weaknesses and its strengths but I have to say that fly-fishing consistently boggles the mind more than any other because of the relative simplicity of the baits, and its versatility.
Sign up for this summer’s 15 X 15 Fly-fishing Challenge leveled by the local Oklahoma Chapter 420 of Trout Unlimited group, complete the task, and you’ll see what I mean. Officially the name is the All Fish All Oklahoma Fly Fishing Challenge, but “The 15X15” is shorthand for the challenge for fly fishers to catch of 15 different species of fish in Oklahoma in the 15 weeks between Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends.
The experience is an eye-opener. I did it last year and I’m doing it again in 2021.
The example of boggling the mind comes from an outing early this week with Trout Unlimited member Scott Hood. He let me know he was going to take a couple hours to hit the Arkansas River before the water came up again and I dropped a few things to run and meet him out there.
Earlier that day, it just so happens, I was cruising through Facebook comments and toying with the idea about a column focused on catfish baits. It would be interesting to focus on the lengths people go to on catfish baits, like letting chicken guts rot, soaking chicken or cut fish in Kool-Aid, spraying baits down with WD-40 and the like. Sometimes the enough to just to catch live bait to go fishing can be chore enough.
Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with that style of fishing. I’ve been there done that, still do, and sometimes gathering the bait is a big part of the whole fishing experience. It’s fun.
But even after all that bait cooking and concocting, the catfish can make you crazy—especially when you’re not catching them and the group on the other side of the river can’t seem to keep a line in the water more than 2 minutes. Really been there, really didn’t like that so much.
On the other hand, ask most casual anglers if they think you can even catch a catfish on a fly rod and they’ll just chuckle.
I mean, it just doesn’t seem right, right?
The fly I ended up using Tuesday in the Arkansas River near Tulsa was a #8 brown woolly bugger. That’s a relatively small streamer fly. The hook is just a hair shy of 1¼ inches from the eye to bend of the (barbless) hook and the gap is just a hair over ¼ inch.
It has a brass colored bead on the font of the hook, a brown hackle collar behind the bead, a brown feather tale that extends an inch past the end of the hook and it has fuzzy chenille body with some flashy thread along the body that continues out the tail.
In the water it puffs up and the head drops faster than the tail and it mimics a small crawdad.
The three channel catfish I caught in our short time on the river all hit this hook with a bit of thread and feathers on it in the same manner: It was a downstream cast to a seam near slightly deeper, faster moving water to the left and shallower slower water to the right. And in each case that little brown fly hit the water and within a second or two a channel cat hit it as it first sank, turned toward the deep water and hooked itself in the upper left corner of its mouth.
No live bait, no cut bait, no let-it-ferment recipes, no stinky scents or WD-40, and I caught three catfish out of the river in a short evening trip by splashing a little pile of threads and feathers in the right spot at the right time. Plus I caught several white bass.
Hood, with is own creation he’s dubbed The Fly That Catches Everything (TFTCE)—which is similar in appearance except olive color and one hook size smaller than my brown one—caught catfish, striped bass, spotted bass, white bass, drum and a gar. That’s several fish of six different species on one fly in one section of the river in the space of a couple hours. That’s just nuts.
The best catch of the night had to be the gar. Even Hood said he had never actually hooked a gar so perfectly, right inside the mouth at the end of the nose. And he fought it in on 4-pound-test tippet.
Gar eat small fishes and invertebrates so the catch wasn’t a total surprise, but to catch that variety of fish in an evening outing on a river near downtown Tulsa on nothing more than some hooks wrapped with thread and feathers? Still just boggles the mind.
Enter the Oklahoma Fly Fishing 15X15 Challenge
All it takes to enter the Third Annual All Fish All Oklahoma Fly Fishing Challenge is $25 donation to Trout Unlimited and a Facebook account. The fee for a team of four is $100.
The contest starts at 4 a.m. Saturday, May 29 and runs until midnight Sept. 6, Labor Day.
Online entry can be completed at TU420.com. Click on the “Tournament” link. Then you’ll need to join the private Facebook page, All Fish All Oklahoma Fishing Challenge.
There are team challenges, individual challenges and big fish challenges.
The winning team gets a guided fishing trip hosted by Donavan Clary. Other awards and prizes (not cash) are given for biggest fish in categories for rainbow trout, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, striped bass, sand bass and bluegill.
The 15 fish that must be caught, photographed and submitted in a timely matter include, rainbow trout, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, Kentucky bass, striped bass, hybrid striped bass, white bass, crappie, bluegill, longear sunfish, green sunfish, redear sunfish, channel catfish, drum, and a wild card fish, which is any fish not among the previous 14.
The TU420 site lists the rules and there are plenty of reminders and Q&A on the Fishing Challenge Facebook page.
Last year several anglers caught well over 15 species, to include things like carp, buffalo, blue and flathead catfish, redhorse and chubs.
The winning individual gets half the pot and a traveling trophy. Trout Unlimited gets the other half of the pot.
Usually several people will complete the challenge, so the lucky winner has to be drawn from among the names of the successful at the September club meeting to actually claim the payout and bragging rights. All who aren’t drawn must walk away admitting they just can’t win for losing.
No, not really.
Complete this challenge and you’ll walk away knowing you’ve done something that boggles the mind of most folks in the fishing world, and I guarantee you’ll become a better angler for the experience.
Congratulations on taking that Gar. With #4 tippet you must have set that hook near the tip of the nose or it would have cut itself free.
The Gal who comes to clean our house every two weeks was fishing under the Jenks bridge on the west side and caught a Saugeye. Such a beautiful hybrid that the wildlife department has been stocking .