Where's Waldo?

 

I was upriver a few weeks back, the Cimarron River, fishing for striped bass with Leon Mears of Mannford. We found them, and caught them on swimbaits, in all the regular places you would expect at this time of the year. Leon has been catching them in those places for years. 

For me, there were several interesting features to the trip, not least of which was the water temperature. In one spot it was 49.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Both stripers and sand bass spawn in water at, or near, 55 degrees, and, remember, I said we there several weeks ago. That would be January, and several of the female bass I cleaned that night had eggs, and one male a fully developed sperm sac. 

No matter the date on the calendar, the fish were obviously taking their cue from the temperature of the water; probably from the amount of daylight available in the sky, and who knows what else. Like I said, to me it was interesting, and very instructive as to where to go when to catch fish in Lake Keystone. In January, February, and March you'd better be headed upriver if you're looking for stripers or sand bass. On any lake in the state. 

You can see that lately I have been thinking about fish and their movement. It's mysterious, and not completely understood. 

In their wisdom, and with your tax (read "license fees") dollars, back in the 1980s, the Oklahoma Wildlife Department undertook some early-spring tagging projects to determine just where in Lake Keystone striped bass could be located as they worked their way upstream to spawn. The tagging program and its ongoing evaluation took place during most of one year, spring to fall, and, no, I don't remember what year. 

Whenever the project was concluded, printout-maps detailing the spring migration and return to the lake of recovered, tagged stripers were offered up publicly; I got my hands on some of them, and in a rare moment of personal intelligence, saw their future value and filed them. I got them out last night thinking about my fishing trip with Leon and the fillets I smoked for him and me. They tasted better than government printouts, but were not as informative. 

One of the printouts had stamped on it "1985", so there you have it. That has to be about how long ago was said project. It's value as revelatory material will last every bit as long as the lake lasts, and it is silting-in fast. Those stripers and sand bass will be swimming upriver (uplake?) at least that long. 

When the rivers are back, totally, and the dam has crumbled, the fish will go back to the sea, which is where they always have wanted to be. Don't doubt it. When you have time, get out the dictionary and look up the word "anadromous". 

In the meantime, I will several more times this year include in this space a picture of one of these old charts (think of them as a sort of pirate's treasure map) indicating where the stripers should be in our favorite lake at about the same time as the column appears, and, in a way, your tax dollars will still be working for you in a manner hardly anyone could have anticipated. 

If said benefits you, thank the Oklahoma Wildlife Department, not me, and get behind any license fee increase they say they need. They do need it. What goes around, comes around, right? 

It has always struck me as ironic that none of us are living in the exact place where we were born, for no apparent reason. We are wanderers, born under a wandering star to parents who were on the move like their parents before them when they had us, and always wanting to go back home. 

I am still thinking about the movement of fish, and all of its mystery.

© 2013 Conrad M. Vollertsen