Can there be ice fishing in Oklahoma?

 

We live on the edge of the Southern Plains; some of us by accident, some of us on purpose. The Arapaho, Southern Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kiowa lived here on purpose. They wintered here. They knew a good thing when they saw it.

The hunting was always good, the weather never bad for more than two or three days at a time, with long sunny stretches in between, and the fishing which, truthfully, didn't much interest them, could be unbelievable. It still is most of the time. Great fishing, I mean, even in winter.

One year a few duck seasons back, Dave Hladik and I were hunting mallards on the east side of Blackberry Island up on Grand Lake. The birds were in, rafted up by the thousands in the mouth of Horse Creek, making daily runs that made the air rumble into nearby milo fields. It was bitter cold, a light wind out of the north, and a good day to get a sunburn. Once the sun was high, the cold seemed to melt from the air like midmorning frost.

The shooting was good, but sometime around noon I decided the decoys needed moving and waded out into them to get it done. The water, gin clear, was only about two feet deep at the farthest decoy and I started the rearrangement there. Looking down, I was startled to see about a three-pound black bass swimming between my legs.

On impulse, I reached my right hand into the water, slipped it under the fish's belly, and that easily lifted the fish straight into the air with hardly a wiggle. I was stunned and called Dave over to look at what I'd done. We both examined the fish from nose to tail, could find no blemishes such as might have been caused by an injury or disease, and released the fish as quickly and easily as it had been obtained. The last we saw of it, it was headed for deeper water, apparently none the worse for the wear.

You couldn't do that in South Dakota in January, I think. I mean kill a limit of mallards and noodle for bass in the same day.

The best fishing in this country is often in January and February. I don't mean crappie fishing in the heated docks, either. How about right out in the wide open where you can really get your arm into a back cast and catch a fish that can pull hard and act disagreeable?

One day this past week I caught the water low below Keystone Dam and took a light, open-faced spinning rig and some white tube jigs on quarter-ounce heads to see what might be going on in that tailwater fishery. Same ol' same ol'. For years I have been able to chase cabin fever away down there by fishing jigs slowly and nearly on the bottom.

Freshwater drums always oblige the method and pull just as hard as I want them to. Six to ten fish an hour is common, and about all the action an old guy can tolerate in waders surrounded by icy water. The other day I caught those six regular drums plus a sand bass and one hybrid striped bass of about four pounds. Had the fish broken off I would've sworn it to be a twenty-pounder.

I picked up some new fly-fishing tackle over the holidays, and I'm anxious to give it a try on those same hybrids and sand bass. I could wait for Bennet Spring and Roaring River up in Missouri to thaw out, or make the drive down to The Illinois River below Tenkiller, but why? When the winds out of the north, I can hear the Corps when they sound the siren to open the gates below Keystone. Close enough, don't you think?

It's been years since stripers over twelve pounds could be found commonly in Keystone. The lake kills big stripers in the summertime with high temperatures and low oxygen levels, but there are still plenty of eight to ten pounders in there, and the dead of winter is likely the best time to catch them.

To keep the gas fresh in my outboard's tank, I like to run it several times a winter up into the backends of timbered coves on both the Arkansas and the Cimarron Arms of the lake. Leon Mears taught me that using stout braided line and large plastic swim baits. You won't get away using light tackle in the backs of those coves. You won't get as many hits as you will below the dam, either, but when you get one it will be attached to something strong enough to make that braided line squeal on the reel.

My deer hunting is done; Brian Loveland's, too, I think. The deer have been processed, packaged, some turned into summer sausage as in days of old, and laid by .... Well, next summer. Brian called the other day.

“Conrad,” he said, “it's about time to go catfishing, don't you think?”

Well, come to think of it, it is about time. It was about this time last year Brian and I took his bass boat up the Cimarron Arm of Lake Keystone, threw out some shad-baited jug lines, killed the motor and drifted with the jugs trying to catch one another in a lie while waiting for a fish to bite.

On such trips, I like to fetch along an old wooden, army-surplus ammo box in which I keep two frying pans, a bottle of cooking oil, cornmeal, salt and pepper, an onion, some paper plates, a welder's glove to handle the pans on the fire, a long handled fork, a long handled spatula, a roll of paper towels, and one potato for each adventurer, no more, no less. I've left something out and can't remember what it is.

Pam usually remembers. “Don't forget the such-and-such,” she'll say, and I won't. Whatever it is.

The trip Brian was remembering from last winter, we caught a thirty-pound blue, too big and coarse for proper frying I say, but we kept an eight-pounder, just right for a wintertime shore lunch.

On the bank, Brian filleted the cat while I gathered firewood, got a fire going, and started the potatoes first, and then some, because they take longer. Only turn them once, and right before you think it's time to eat.

I started a big can of baked beans by opening the can and placing it on a rock close to the fire where it would bubble and spit brown sugar and molasses into the air.

Brian chunked the fillets, and laid them on a paper plate heaped with cornmeal close to the fire where I could reach them with the fork. I started the second pan with the fish grease and threw wooden matches into the grease until one of them caught. Grease ready. Hand me that cornmeal. Eat in five minutes, no more than six.

And so it was, almost.

“You forgot the ketchup,” Brian said.

“I did, but betcha' a dollar Pam didn't. Look under the potholders.”

Powder blue skies, potatoes brown, baked beans, crispy catfish fillets, and ketchup. Well of course it was there. You looked too, didn't you? A fine country for old men in the wintertime.

Copyright © 2012 Conrad M. Vollertsen