Fishing in southern Missouri
Friday night while eating downtown I got to thinking about my plans for Saturday. I knew I was going to be watching the KU game Sat. night and I knew that Lawrence's forecast was for cool temperatures and rain on Saturday. I could always go to the office and work but on a whim I checked the forecast for SE Missouri, just in case. The phone brought up a forecast of sunshine, 10% chance of rain, light winds and a high of 72 degrees--a perfect day to go fishing. Well about any day is a perfect day to go fishing. I made a quick and sudden change of plans. Despite the late night Thursday for the KU game, I'd go ahead and get up before 5 and head down to Missouri, fish all day and drive back in time for the 8:00 game. Carol asked if I was going to see if anyone else wanted to go. I answered that I didn't think many folks would commit to such nonsense at such a late hour but then I remembered that GMAC had said that I should call next time I was heading out. I really didn't think he'd want to go down and back in one day--too much driving and not enough fishing but I sent him a text, just in case.
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I thought the IHOP stop might have been a deal breaker. Needless to say I was surprised but I shouldn't have been since he had told me before that he had never fished this blue-ribbon stream but had always wanted to. I went home and loaded up my truck with all my gear and went to bed early.
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oops, this is the best shot of the sign--somehow, I didn't get the name of the creek in there.
The next morning I picked him up at 5:30 a.m. and we headed down for a 3.5 hour drive to southern Missouri. Greg an amazingly nice guy. We swapped fishing stories all the way down, picked up his license and got to the creek about 10-10:30. I made sure to pre-load Greg with all my excuses for why we might not catch any fish and the fish we might catch would likely be very small--just in case. For good measure I also let him know that I'm not responsible for the changes caused by the floods over the last two years. I was beginning to run out of excuses by the time we arrived but I think I had just about covered my incompetencies as a fishing guide. Just as we were rigging up another group of 3 fly fishers drove into the parking lot. Ummm, that's not good. They looked us over pretty intensely. But, once they took one look at Greg they knew we were pretty serious fly fishers.
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They turned around and fished another section of the stream. That was good for all of us. The stream really is too small for two parties over one morning. Greg and I really appreciated their decision. Thanks guys, if you ever end up reading this.
We talked to them later in the day as they finished up their section of the stream and sure enough like almost all the folks I've run into on this stream they were great folks--willing to share this great little resource, valuing it and respecting others on the stream. Maybe it is something about catch and release folks that are on the stream for reasons other than just catching fish.
We walked downstream about a mile or so and proceeded to work our way upstream. The stream was different but amazingly the same. It had weathered the floods well. Here's where we started. This area is part of the area where this creek disappears and goes underground in dry years. The sky was cloudy and every thing was perfect. The stream comes off a nice riffle with a great feeding shelf here and flows hard against an undercut bank. Greg was first up.
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Greg hardly got the first cast out when an eager rainbow hit his nymph like it was a dry--before it had sunk. Unfortunately, trout aren't real good at catching a nymph flying through the air but I took it as a good sign. Once Greg was able to get past the aerial trout and get the nymph up against the bank he quickly hooked into a couple but some how the mojo wasn't quite there yet and he lost them.
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Of course the sun came out bright and shiny. Still, I thought we were in for a banner day. Naturally, the stream and the trout had a different idea. It was more than an hour later before we finally hooked up and landed a couple of small trout. We both were trying all sorts of flies and keeping our eye out for any sign of surface action. Still, the weather was great, the water was beautiful and we were having a great time.
Greg caught a couple of small trout. Here's a couple of his photos from the stream.
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Pretty little fish, aren't they? It's my experience that the little ones are particularly prone to dries in some of the faster water. The larger ones tend to concentrate under the pools that form under the big root balls characteristic of this stream.
We started leap frogging each other as we made our way upstream. I finally caught a little one next to the root ball on a small olive elk hair caddis across the stream here.
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This riffle tailing out into this pool under a root ball is typical of this stream. When you have the right combo of flies and stealth you'll almost always get a hit or two. But that is abut it. It doesn't take much to spook a hole.
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We each hooked a number of fish and brought to hand maybe 3 or four each.
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Greg wrapped up the day with the largest trout just as we needed to hustle back to Lawrence and be disappointed by the outcome of the game.
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Overall, a great day, great companionship, and great fishing. We saw lots of keeper fish in the deep holes. Notice that I didn't discuss our success with those. Of course, it is the lack of that success that will be pulling us back to this little stream sooner than later.
