Tulsa Trippin’

“We don’t need no stinking waders.”

I admire my friend John’s bravado. And perhaps we could have gotten away with it last September when we first started to plan this fishing trip near downtown Tulsa. But high water conditions led to rescheduling until late January was upon us and we knew that a wade across the Arkansas River in shorts just would have attracted the attention of the local news station thinking they were covering a bizarre fund-raiser.

In a pinch, one might be tempted to purchase a product called something like: “economy vinyl stocking foot waders.”  After all, $7 sounds a lot better than a $120 may-be-years-before-I-wear-again commitment.  But think vinyl long-johns. Without the insulation.  And not, “I’m drinking cocoa by a roaring fire at a ski lodge in an L.L. Bean catalogue” long-johns.   More like the bottom-half of a swamp creature novelty costume.  Something you (or John in this case) would wear once, blowout the crotch (I’ll spare you that photo), then chuck.  Not to be outdone with a fashion statement, I sported my duct-tape-patched, mouse-chewed hole mid-thigh on my neoprene chest-waders.  We were a motley crew crossing Riverside Drive that afternoon.  And proved once again that you can wear anything in public as long as you are holding a fishing rod.

Despite the algae-covered rocks which threatened close encounters with broken bottles and protruding rusty cable wires and the flashing lights next to the big sign warning that the water is rising when the lights are flashing (“they’re always flashing,” they consoled me), the wide area below the small dam has lots of potential.  It has a bit of everything:  swift main channels, walls, edges, eddies, riffles, boulders…   Plenty of places to hold fish. Duncan, our guide for the afternoon had never been skunked here.  On light spinning tackle he catches white bass (“speed perch,” he likes to call them) or stripers… even snagged a paddlefish once.

Standard lures are spinners or jigs.  By shrewdly snagging rocks every few casts, we were able to work through a wide variety of colors and trailers.  Losing lures is just part of fishing thoroughly and we did our best to appease the Snag-Gods.  Even tied jigs in tandem so I could lose two at a time.  But I never threw any lure that I didn’t mind losing.  Perhaps that is what made them angry that day.

Urban fishing has its own unique brand of discovery…  Even if that discovery is wads of line, dozens of sinkers, lures, a fishing pole, and some golf balls.  It’s not exactly the romanticism of combing a warm, sandy beach but when fishing becomes an exercise in futility, there is some appeal to the opportunity to break even, more or less, with all the tackle thrown to the rocks.

By the hike back to the car, we had gained about 2 pounds.  In the tackle bag.  Just in lead. Duncan topped us by plucking a $5 bill from the exposed river bottom rocks on the way back. I got skunked on yet another fishing trip, but the beer money was a nod from the river that we should return someday.