More Than We Can Chew Monday

Yeah, I bite off some of that myself … that is more than I can chew, and I am short a few teeth these days!!

This Monday begins in another universe called Texas, and the blueness of it all? well it has a lot of people feeling a lot of different feelings, doesn’t it? What a difference a week makes in the turning world of the United States of America, doesn’t it? Score ONE for those of us who love fly fishing and the outdoor life.

In all my years, and there are a number of them behind me, I have never been a part of or seen the faster movement of a society – from one side to another. Blame it on what you will. I tend to think the reason websites, like this one, are so unpopular this decade – is because the general internet savvy person wants to “go faster” than they THINK a website goes. Very few realize how fast and responsive to fly fishing this website actually is! And I gave up pushing that fact … a real long time ago. NO, people went from wild west websites, to Facebook, to social media, and from dialup to blazing speeds that let you watch TV on your phone … and it all happened in the blink of YOUR and MY eye. But you are not here to hear about the relativity of time, are you?

Fly Fishing the Blue River Oklahoma Fly fishing the Southern Oklahoma Blue River, set inside the Chickasaw Nation, and inside one of the few remaining RED States in the United States, is a gift. It is a gift that the Blue River happens to be so close to my home Fish Camp in Denton, Texas. It sits at 92-miles, end to start, start fly fishing for those put-and-take* rainbow trout stocked there in a longer arc these days (think global climate change for a half-second), from about November 1st. to (possibly) April of the next year.

While I was there the week BEFORE Halloween I talked a short while with Jason, the proprietor of Scotty’s Blue River One Stop, about doing a WEEKLY report about the fishing at the Blue River when the season was in swing. He, rightfully so, didn’t know me from Adam, but in referring to a particular fly tier who ties flies for him to sell there, I was given the “stamp of approval,” and we are going to give this idea some time and see if we can figure out how to make it go THIS WEEK.

Basically, I want to skin this cat any way Jason wants to do it , but it would help shape this video series MORE – if you told me what you want to know on a weekly basis – – about the fishing conditions at the Blue River in Oklahoma! And the reason you can help is because you may have questions I already had answers to from my experiences and years past. I might not think to ask some things that would help YOU decide whether to go all the way to Oklahoma this week to go fly fishing! The last thing anybody needs is another echo chamber of Q-n-A about the Blue River fly fishing, right?

The Rub But, there’s a rub. And I know I can actually talk about these things here – because none of my non-fly friends and NONE of my family ever reads ANYTHING here.

Remembering that this video was canned a week before I started a NEW video on the LBJ Grasslands last Friday (11/6/26), I am in the middle of the Grasslands, in the middle of a lake, and I get a phone call from the hospital.

A friend of mine, who I am (a smaller) part of a care-giving friends team, was being prematurely sent from the hospital to a rehab facility via wheelchair bus. This is a guy recovering from one of those old style modern technological chest cracking open heart surgeries. Sometimes they still pull out the Dremel and attach the rotary saw to get to the problem, and this was one of those kinds of surgeries … they are more rare these days, but still happen when it’s the final. Now, this guy as I predicted, is NOT a good patient, but we know … It Is What It Is.

I pulled off the lake, and loaded back up just after 2-pm. Based on my past entries in the YouTube Series on the LBJ Grasslands, this story is/was incomplete. Heck! It wasn’t even 30-minutes long! I kid with that last, and accept the heat I am getting for these long videos. All I can say to defend is, “It Is What It Is,” and that the more I do these “LONGS” the more I enjoy doing them … so fair warning to those of you who come near me when I am on a LONG shoot.

Someday soon I will fill in the blanks on why I LIKE doing these long videos, but suffice to say (for now) I am getting a little bit of creative buzz from the ENTIRE process of making these fly fishing videos, and the chips must fall where they fall. A 30-minute video takes anywhere from 4-8 hours on the back end to make it “go” – look, sound and feel right. I have said a million-and-one times, “I would rather you be the subject in these videos,” but few step into the light.

The rub is a friend in rehab who wants to go home when he wants to go home. It rubs with this Blue River report, and that rubs with an incomplete LBJ Grasslands story, and that rubs with the North Texas weather this week. Another rub? The long awaited phone interview, potentially this week, with the LBJ Grasslands National Park office. I may as well be breaking a wild stick pony barebacked … my nads may end up in my throat by the time this week is over.

*Put-and-take rainbow trout are purchased by the State of Oklahoma, and placed in publicly accessed waters across Oklahoma every year. Stocked trout are popular and are one of the high points in the Oklahoma angling calendar. Different companies, in different States nearby, get contracts from the State of Oklahoma yearly. Fish are stocked by the pound, and sometimes that can be a lot of small trout, other times from other suppliers? there are some nicer trout stocked. This year, as it was last year, the emphasis looks to be on the “put-and-take” areas of the Blue River, and not, I repeat NOT on the catch-and-release area. There are many reasons for this, and I have covered them in past articles on this website (just search).

More Than We Can Chew Monday

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