(1.) Blue River, Oklahoma: Memories Of This Free-Flowing, Spring-Fed Treasure
BLUE RIVER, OKLAHOMA:
Memories Of This Free-Flowing, Spring-Fed Treasure...And More!
An Information, Opinion, Photos, & Sources Report
Compiled by Ocklawahaman Paul Nosca
With the assistance of A Cruising Down the River Captain Erika Ritter
Article Originally Posted to Internet: 13 March 2011
Webpage Created: 23 November 2014
Last Revised: 07 October 2020
NOTE -- IF NEEDED: Right-click-on individual photos then "Open image in new tab" to ENLARGE them!
IS IT REMOTELY POSSIBLE that somewhere in the south-central part of the Sooner State there could be an Oklahoma version of a Shangri-La for stream anglers? A clear-water, free-flowing, spring-fed paradise for river fishermen (and women) who enjoy wading and bank-walking where there are so many waterfalls per mile over limestone ledges that about the only boat traffic you'll ever see is college kids floating on air mattresses in the crystalline pools during the hot Texoma summer? Cool, tumbling waters containing 3 black bass and at least 3 bream species, plus 2 kinds of catfish along with a wintertime bonus of rainbow trout? Could this Okie oasis possibly have free campsites and plenty of bathing holes to boot?
All of this foregoing stuff was probably too good to be true and cried-out for expert evaluation. But who could possibly take-on this dirty job? Only a dedicated stream angler, accustomed to using man-power instead of horse-power fishing methods and skilled in the use of buzzbait, spinnerbait, and in-line spinner lures, would possess the unique qualifications that would be required for this type of rigorous examination! So it was that Ocklawahaman, obeying the orders of Uncle Sam, was in the right place back then to conduct an independent investigation of the Blue River Public Fishing and Hunting Area to determine if it was FOR TRUE, really.
Ocklawahaman was a much younger Old-Soldier during two years back then of stateside at the U.S. Army Field Artillery Center and Fort Sill located just north of Lawton in Comanche County, Oklahoma (OK). The spacious Fort Sill is about 25 miles across and is split into 3 artillery firing sectors: East Range, West Range and Quanah Range. The downtown section of the garrison with the PX (post department store) and the commissary (post grocery store) is situated between East Range and West Range. It was not that unusual to hear an M-109 Paladin--Have Gun Will Travel--155-mm mobile howitzer (cannon) booming down-range and then notice the whistling of its artillery projectile hopefully incoming somewhere many klicks (kilometers) away!
BUT FIRST AN ODD DETAIL THAT I RECALL ABOUT MY SERVICE AT FORT SILL
Some other Old-Soldier and/or Marine-types, who also did a little time in Fort Sill, have written to me about some of their own memories of that sprawling military post with 3 spacious artillery firing ranges. I remember thinking that this was really STRANGE--the Army would annually send us TDY (temporary duty) on chartered buses some 275 miles east to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas to fire .50 caliber machine guns, M-203 grenade launchers, and M-72A1 LAW (light anti-tank weapon) rockets--instead of letting us test fire these weapons right there on Fort Sill where there was certainly plenty of room. But it was a pleasant trip to an interesting region and a soldier got to bunk in those "highly sought after" WWII wooden barracks!
Fort Chaffee, where Elvis Presley was inducted into the Army, is just south of Fort Smith, Arkansas (which historically had the famous hanging judge). This area, along the Oklahoma-Arkansas border including portions of the Ozark and Ouachita ranges (Winding Stair Mountain, etc) was a major part of the immortal John Wayne movie classic True Grit plus played a huge role in the great Clint Eastwood film Outlaw Josey Wales as Josey outwits Union Red Legs chasing him from Missouri into the Indian Nations then on to Texas. On our yearly Fort Sill to Fort Chaffee TDY bus trip, I-40 went through Checotah, Oklahoma--the hometown of future country music mega-star American Idol Carrie Underwood. Was she the blond haired infant girl in a crib, crying her lungs out, that I had seen many years before? Ha! Ha! She might not have been born yet. Just to the south in McAlester, Oklahoma, I was able to see the hometown of one of my favorites--country music legend Reba McEntire--she did a terrific USO show for us GI's in Korea. Well, I reckon that if we had fired our .50 cals, M-203's, and LAW's at Fort Sill, maybe I wouldn't have ever seen this part of eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas! So looking back, the Army done right by me and I've got no bad itches that need scratching!
MORE ABOUT OKLAHOMA, FORT SILL, AND MY PRE-ARRIVAL TO THE FORT BACK-THEN
Oklahoma is very rich in Native American Indian culture and history. The great Chiricahua-Apache leader Geronimo, who was never permitted to return "home" to Arizona or New Mexico, is buried at Fort Sill--he died as a prisoner of war of the U.S. in 1909. Several times a year, my unit and I did 5-mile jogging runs to Geronimo's gravesite--I am quite certain that today's soldiers still do. The graves of the famous Kiowa Chief Satanta along with the noble Comanche Chief Quanah Parker are also at Fort Sill. Comanche County plus several other bordering southwestern Oklahoma counties comprise the present geographic limits of the Comanche Nation with Lawton as its tribal headquarters. The State of Oklahoma is forever tied to the American South because of the forced removal in the early 1800's from the southeastern U.S. of the 5 Civilized Tribes which are the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole Indian Nations to the land area that would later become Oklahoma. Later on the majority of those Tribal Nations sided with the Southern Confederacy during The War Between The States. Many other designated Indian Nations besides those formerly so-called 5 Civilized Tribes exist in Oklahoma today.
After I had received my latest PCS (permanent change of station) orders back then, but before I ever arrived at Fort Sill, my future 1st Sgt welcomed me to the unit with a long distance phone call. My new-to-be Top (First Sergeant) said that if I was interested in fishing during my off-duty time, I would probably enjoy the many bass-stocked man-made lakes of Fort Sill and the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. His very cordial conversation with me that day mentioning waters teeming with bass immediately sparked my investigative curiosity.
At the library on the post that I would soon be leaving, I proceeded to examine any available information about Oklahoma fishing plus topographic maps of interesting natural areas near Fort Sill. This has always been standard operating procedure for me when exploring a new (for me) wilderness. As the only outdoorsman in my city folks family--you can blame Davy Crockett (Fess Parker) in 1955 for my Southern outdoors addiction ever since--I learned fishing and hunting myself by reading about it in town then experimenting, usually alone, with various methods in the field seeking those that enabled me to bring home some eats.
My preference for riverine fishing begged me to study the Oklahoma streams available within reasonable driving distance of my soon-to-be Fort Sill home. I figured that I wouldn't need a boat to fish natural streams (unlike most of the man-made lakes) and maybe I would even try to take a Polaroid camera with film along on some of these Oklahoma river and creek expeditions to record some of the goings-on! My exploration in library books back then did yield some useful data about the streams that would be within reach of a Fort Sill soldier with a pickup truck.
Fort Sill's surrounding Comanche County offered West Cache Creek, Medicine Creek and East Cache Creek as likely freestone streams (dependent on rainwater). BUT IF SOMEHOW I COULD ARRANGE some non-duty weekends for overnight camping trips inside Oklahoma, away from the Fort Sill barracks, 135 miles to the east in Johnston County and within the confines of the Chickasaw Tribal Nation there was the fish-filled BLUE RIVER! This scenically beautiful limestone-aquifer spring-fed river, which flows generally south emptying into the Red River (south Oklahoma's border with Texas), was populated with largemouth, smallmouth, and spotted bass along with plenty of channel catfish plus winter season stocked put-and-take rainbow trout. From my readings, BLUE RIVER really appeared to be the Oklahoma version of a stream fisherman's Shangri-La. The Blue River Public Fishing and Hunting Area, located near Tishomingo with about 4 miles of the stream, had many scenic waterfalls over lime-rock ledges next to streamside granite boulders and plenty of free campsites for my pickup camper too!
By the time I had arrived at Fort Sill back then, I already was quite familiar (through reading and viewing maps) with the four Oklahoma streams that I had planned to fish over the next maybe two years: West Cache Creek, Medicine Creek, East Cache Creek, and BLUE RIVER. I had learned, for example, that BLUE RIVER was a steep gradient artesian spring-fed stream with a drop of 31 feet per mile in the section that interested me--820 feet elevation (above sea level) down to 710 feet elevation meant possibly 35 waterfalls or so in 3.5 miles of river!
MORE ABOUT BLUE RIVER, OKLAHOMA AND ITS SPRING-FED WATERS
The headwaters of south-central Oklahoma's Blue River, supplied by the pure Arbuckle-Simpson Aquifer (underlying the ancient Arbuckle Mountains), are located near Ada in southern Pontotoc County which is part of the Chickasaw Nation. Blue River then flows south-southeast through Johnston and Bryan counties some 95 miles, mostly through private property not accessible or navigable to the public, until it empties into the Red River (Oklahoma-Texas border) many miles DOWNSTREAM of the Lake Texoma Dam.
JUST HOW RARE A "TREASURE" IS BLUE RIVER? VERY RARE INDEED!
There are NO man-made structures controlling its water--Blue River is a totally free-flowing, spring-fed stream (one of the very last in Oklahoma) from its source to its mouth at the Red River. There its contribution of pure aquifer waters flow-on many hundreds of miles down the Red River into Arkansas and Louisiana then on to the Mississippi River emptying at the Gulf of Mexico un-impeded by any dams all along the way!
Reading about this extremely rare STILL-FREE-FLOWING-FROM-SOURCE-TO-THE-SEA quality of Oklahoma's Blue River got me to hearing Burt Reynolds speaking part of that line from Deliverance (1972) that goes something like this, "[J]ust about one of the last un-dammed, un-polluted, un-******-up rivers in the South." It also had me thinking about a 2-word term that is still spoken from time to time, at least way down here in the Southland, which goes something like this--"By God!"
THINK ABOUT YOUR OWN FAVORITE FISHING STREAMS FOR A MINUTE
Do any of them flow un-dammed from their headwaters to the ocean? I wish that I could say that about my Ocklawaha River of Florida, but I can't. Rodman (Kirkpatrick) Dam blocks the Ocklawaha's Silver Springs Floridan Aquifer source headwater to almost all By God fish migration from the St. Johns River and the Atlantic Ocean.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) Blue River near Connerville, OK stream-flow gage located upriver from the Blue River Public Fishing and Hunting Area reports the river's discharge at usually between 40 to 160 cubic feet per second (cfs) from a 162 square-mile drainage basin--along with a winter-summer water temperature range from 48 degrees F to 80 degrees F.
http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/uv/?site_no=07332390&agency_cd=USGS
I seem to recall measuring Desperado Spring, an artesian outflow from the west bank north of the Blue River designated campsites, at about 64 degrees F during the summer. Blue River is a Texoma cooling-off oasis in the summer and a popular cold-water trout stream in the winter!
The approximately 6.25 miles of the stream that flows through the enlarged Blue River Public Fishing and Hunting Area is chock-full of limestone ledges and granite outcrops. The end result of all these rocks is beautiful pools, riffles, and waterfalls along with scattered islands of bushes and cedar or sycamore trees that separate the river channel into a braided multi-channeled stream in many sections. I don't remember ever seeing any baldcypress trees at Blue River. That famed Red River Valley certainly has cypress trees but they don't appear to grow this far upstream on its tributary Blue River.
ABOUT THE UPLANDS ALONG BLUE RIVER, OKLAHOMA
Some limestone bluffs occur along Blue River while in other places the banks are bushy or wooded with cedar, cottonwoods, and sycamore trees. Interesting outcrops (sometimes mixed) of lime-rock and granite boulders work their way upland into prairie-type grasslands or cross-timbers forests of cedar combined with a couple of scrub oak species.
ABOUT THE UPLAND WILDLIFE ALONG BLUE RIVER, OKLAHOMA
Upland wildlife that I've observed along Blue River includes: whitetail deer, wild turkeys, coyote, foxes, striped skunks, cottontail rabbits, gray squirrels, armadillos, rattlesnakes, copperheads, and more. One memorable evening while frying bass fillets on a Coleman camp stove by the light of a Coleman lantern, a falling flying squirrel just missed landing in my frying pan! On another note, the skunks at the Blue River camping areas were few and far between--very unlike the extremely abundant skunk population in Fort Sill where they were frequently encountered trying to steal MRE's (rations) from soldiers on field duty!
ABOUT NON-FISH AQUATIC AND WETLAND LIFE OF BLUE RIVER, OKLAHOMA
At Blue River I've seen sandhill cranes, Canada geese, mallard ducks, river otter, raccoon, plus the rare alligator snapping turtle (along with other common turtle species). There were cottonmouth moccasins to be carefully walked-around. When shining a strong flashlight into the clear stream waters at night or when bathing/swimming during the day, I remember sometimes observing rather large crawfish (crayfish or crawdads) possibly beyond 6 inches in length. I'm thinking now that these were some type of Macrobrachium species (giant river prawn also known as brackish-freshwater shrimp). Blue River is not blocked from long distance migration to brackish water, which giant river prawn require for natural reproduction.
ABOUT THE FISHES OF BLUE RIVER, OKLAHOMA
Blue River is blessed with abundant ground-water plus lots of excellent in-stream rock and wood fish-holding structure along with great waterfall induced dissolved oxygen levels. This combination results in a robust fish population! As far as I know, Blue River contains the following native (naturally reproducing) fish species: northern largemouth bass, northern spotted bass, channel catfish, flathead catfish, bluegill, green sunfish, longear sunfish, longnose gar plus some form of river sucker along with many minnow-sized fish species.
Non-native smallmouth bass were stocked into Blue River in the distant past and are self-sustaining (naturalized). I presume that these are the northern smallmouth variety--MORE ABOUT THE DIFFERENT SMALLMOUTH BASS VARIETIES OF OKLAHOMA later on in this webpage report.
Non-native rainbow trout are stocked into the tumbling waters of the Public Fishing and Hunting Area northeast of Tishomingo during the cold weather months making Blue River a designated Oklahoma trout stream from the last Saturday in October until the end of March. The coldwater rainbow trout are strictly a put-and-take fishery as they can't survive water temperatures above 70 degrees F for very long. Local anglers told me of the supposed existence of a large river pool named The Glory Hole, with cold springs in it, below a waterfall downstream in a long stretch of private property. Rainbow trout reportedly could survive the hot summer in this Glory Hole and carry-over. I know NOT whether this Glory Hole was actually for true or just a myth!
ABOUT MY OWN BLUE RIVER, OKLAHOMA FISHING EXPERIENCE, TECHNIQUE,
AND CREEL SURVEY RESULTS
My best guess is that I fished Blue River some 45 different days while I was stationed some 2 years and 4 months at Fort Sill, OK. The Blue River Public Fishing and Hunting Area, being almost a 3-hour drive away from base, required overnight camping--it was never just a day trip for me. Whenever I managed to get a pass for 3 non-duty days in a row, I was headed to camp at Blue River right after quitting time of the last duty day before. Many times, with only a full weekend (2 days) off-duty, I arrived at camp there Friday night in the dark and fished all-day Saturday plus part of Sunday past noon then returned to the post on Sunday night.
Hopefully, if I got an early enough start in the morning, I tried to fish as much as possible of MY FAVORITE 3.5 MILES OF THE RIVER--from near the private log cabin about 2.25 stream miles north of camp back down to the camp for lunch then down to the south boundary about 1.25 stream miles south. Camp chores like coffee-making, cooking, cleaning, bathing and the like do consume precious time. My boat-less method of fishing consisted of casting lures using ultra-light spinning outfits while bank-walking, wading, and hiking along that cascading river. This was done very cautiously during warm weather (especially) while trying to avoid upsetting any copperhead, cottonmouth, or rattlesnake that I happened-up on!
BLACK BASS
1/8th ounce buzzbaits and spinnerbaits produced almost all of the approximately 350 BLACK BASS that I caught from Blue River, mostly during the 7 warmer months of the year, which included largemouths up to 19 inches, smallmouths up to 19 inches, and spots (spotted bass) up to 17 inches. 20 to 30 bass caught in a day was not unusual. Kentucky spots infested the stream and were ferocious lure attackers. I would put a couple of black bass keepers on the stringer daily for camp eats and the overwhelming majority were released. My Fort Sill barracks home didn't have much freezer space for bass fillets! The black bass species catch ratio at Blue River was about 60% spotted bass, 20% smallmouth bass, and 20% largemouth bass.
Smallmouth and Largemouth Black Bass
SMALLMOUTH BASS
Let it be known that Blue River, Oklahoma provided me with just about all of the smallmouth bass that I've ever caught in my entire life--Cowpasture River, Virginia produced maybe 5 smallmouths for me while I was trout fishing for a couple of days in the distant past there. That is the only other water that I've ever caught smallies from.
I have to come clean and admit that MY BIGGEST BLUE RIVER SMALLMOUTH BASS, which was just shy of 22 inches in total length, was caught on a 6-inch un-weighted purple plastic worm (I used them only very rarely) from a gin-clear pool below a gorgeous waterfall. This beautiful fish, which just about matched the then Oklahoma state-record smallmouth bass in length, was easily visible swimming around in the clear water--so I cut-off my buzzbait, re-tied and tossed her a plastic worm with embedded hook. She engulfed that worm that was moving downstream in the current by itself and the battle was on. But after that bass jumped several times my line apparently broke at the knot.
TO MY ASTONISHED SURPRISE, I could still plainly see this big smallmouth bass slowly moving in the crystalline current running between two jagged limestone formations. So I tied-on another purple worm double-quick and round two was on. After several jumps and runs I was able to grab MY BIGGEST SMALLMOUTH BASS EVER by her lower jaw and retrieve both of my purple plastic worms. I admired my catch and quickly measured its more than 21-inch length with a tape then put the bass on a chain stringer back into the highly aerated flowing river so it would stay alive.
My Polaroid camera was about a mile away in the truck and nobody else was with me, so I decided not to try to snap a photo--I didn't want to kill this trophy fish that obviously weighed 5 pounds or more. But maybe one of those Oklahoma conservation employees in pickup trucks would happen to drive along the nearby road so I could flag him down to witness and photograph this lunker smallmouth bass? After about an hour of no luck waiting around for anyone to help me celebrate this angling achievement, I LET HER GO BACK INTO BLUE RIVER--never to see or catch that almost 22-inch smallmouth again! That is a bass picture that I would have liked to have had.
Many years later I was given a copy of the March/April 1993 edition of Outdoor Oklahoma magazine. It listed the then Oklahoma state-record smallmouth bass as 6 pounds 14 ounces with a total length of 22 and 5/8 inches and a girth of 16 and 1/4 inches caught on 4-14-1990 from Lake Texoma. Note that a more recent Oklahoma state-record smallmouth bass--that I have noticed--is listed as 8 pounds 3 ounces with a 23.5-inch total length and a 19-inch girth caught on 3-4-2006 from Lake Eufaula.
LARGEMOUTH BASS
SPOTTED BASS
RAINBOW TROUT
As for the RAINBOW TROUT fishing, I normally used Rooster-Tail 1/8th ounce treble-hooked in-line spinners as the lure of choice during the 5-month winter trout season. I caught about 100 stocker rainbows at maybe 9 inches up to 18 inches long from Blue River. That 18-inch rainbow was taken on Thanksgiving Day during a 3 non-duty-day camping trip of mine. It was not that unusual to catch your limit of 6. Although rainbow trout are excellent in the pan, I just couldn't eat 6 per day--so I released most of them.
BREAM (SUNFISH)
1/8th ounce buzzbaits and spinnerbaits also produced probably 500 or so Blue River BREAM for me as incidental catches while bassing. They consisted of big-mouthed GREEN SUNFISH up to 10 inches long plus BLUEGILL to 9 inches and colorful LONGEAR SUNFISH to 7 inches. If the bream were what I call magnum size, 8 inches or longer, they sometimes were kept for the frying pan. Occasionally, the smaller sunfish were cut-up for catfish bait.
CATFISH
Every once in a while, I would slow down and fish for CATFISH using cut bream for bait on plastic worm hooks tied onto my UL spinning outfit. I caught maybe 40 CHANNEL CATFISH up to 23 inches long plus 3 FLATHEAD CATFISH up to 18 inches long from Blue River. Several LONGNOSE GAR up to 44 inches long, were hooked every once in a while catfishing with cut bait. Most of those tasty channel catfish were released but field duty makes a fellow hungry for fillets and a Coleman camp stove was waiting in my truck camper--along with a frying pan, cooking oil, meal, and such.
LONGNOSE GAR
OTHER FISHES
Although I saw native river suckers in the clear waters frequently, I never saw a common carp in Blue River. Carp, of course, are an exotic rough fish that have become naturalized in much of the U.S. They might be found somewhere in Blue River, but I never observed any carp in that stream.
UNDERWATER OBSERVATIONS AT BLUE RIVER, OKLAHOMA
During the hot summer if the water was clear, I would occasionally wear a diving mask and jump-in to experience what it was like to be underwater with the fish in a pool below a waterfall. Prior to taking-in my last deep breathe of air, I would grab a good-size granite or limestone rock to hold and use as a weight--to be able to stand on the river bottom easily. The view was very interesting in the pool below the turbulent bubbles with different black bass and sunfish species looking-up towards the falls for food items tumbling-in. Suckers and minnow-sized fish species would also be present. No rainbow trout were ever to be seen in the summer. Small caverns in the lime-rock walls often held channel catfish and crawfish. 45 seconds or thereabouts is about my limit underwater and then it was up for air until the next dive.
NOW MORE ABOUT THE DIFFERENT SMALLMOUTH BASS VARIETIES OF OKLAHOMA
It appears now that smallmouth bass may include (and I stress the word "may") at least 3 varieties now (I am not sure if "subspecies" or "clade" may be a better term to describe them--it is confusing). The three are: Northern smallmouth (Micropterus dolomieu dolomieu), Neosho smallmouth (Micropterus dolomieu velox), and Ouachita smallmouth (Micropterus dolomieu ?). The State of Oklahoma seems to have all 3 of these varieties, thanks (or no thanks) to stocking.
Excerpted from my copy of Outdoor Oklahoma (MARCH/APRIL 1993 edition) official magazine of the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation:
"In an effort to learn more about smallmouth bass, angler use, and economic importance, the Department is funding a study through the Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at Oklahoma State University. One study being conducted will survey populations in Ozark streams to determine if a pure population of Neosho strain smallmouth still exists. Biologists suspect this strain occurs in the northeast due to the fact that Ozark smallmouth populations often consist of small, slower growing fish, which is characteristic of the Neosho strain. Ouachita stream smallmouth tend to be fewer in number than northeastern populations, but are larger-growing. If a pure population of the Neosho smallmouth does exist, fisheries biologists want to avoid contaminating the gene pool. No one is quite sure of its importance yet, however, introducing a new subspecies in the northeast could disrupt the food web in this delicate ecosystem. Biologists hope the study will shed some light on this subspecies as well as help them determine suitable management techniques. Yet another subspecies of smallmouth--a reservoir strain originating from the Cumberland River system in Tennessee--is being stocked into Oklahoma lakes and creeks without existing smallmouth populations..."
I haven't had a chance to read if the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation has updated the preceding smallmouth bass data since 1993--so I am quite willing to believe that ODWC may have issued some newer information about the status of the Neosho, Ouachita, Northern, and whatever other forms of smallmouth bass there are that reside inside the State of Oklahoma.
IN CONCLUSION
YES, "Ocklawahaman" was a proud "OKIE" with an Oklahoma resident fishing license for a couple of years "back then" (even though I had a Florida driver license) all thanks to the "Be All That You Can Be" U.S. Army.
The aesthetic and fishery qualities of BLUE RIVER, OKLAHOMA ranks it up there with some of the finest artesian-spring-fed rivers that I have ever bass-fished in Florida or coldwater-freestone, trout-fishing streams that I have ever been lucky enough to experience in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia.
Oklahoma's Blue River Public Fishing and Hunting Area certainly ranks as one of the
Ocklawahaman's favorite "camping-homes-away-from-home" of all-time! FOR TRUE!
Visit these LINKS for CURRENT INFORMATION about BLUE RIVER, OKLAHOMA:
http://www.wildlifedepartment.com/facts_maps/wma/blueriver.htm
http://www.wildlifedepartment.com/maps/Blue%20River%20WMA.pdf
http://www.wildlifedepartment.com/facts_maps/wma/blueriver_brochure.htm
http://www.wildlifedepartment.com/facts_maps/wma/blueriver.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_River_(Oklahoma)
https://www.oklavision.tv/home/video/blue-river/list/water
http://www.nature.org/images/arbuckle-3.pdf
NOTE: The driving mileage from Eureka, Florida to the Blue River near Tishomingo, Oklahoma is about 1100 to 1200 miles.
"There are lake fishermen, and there are river fishermen, and seldom do the twain agree!"
- Original author unknown.
Email: ocklawahaman1@gmail.com
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