Monday, April 30, 2012

4/26 - 4/28 Missouri Wild Trout..."Just What the Doctor Ordered"

P1010365 After almost a month of whining and crying about my recent lack of stream time I finally threw in the towel this past week. Mother Nature and the growing list of unfinished chores around the house be damned , I was going fishing come hell or high water (literally). I knew my best fishing partner would be ready to go , he never seems to have anything else going on and is always willing to drop everything for a chance to go fishing. P1010462 The plan was to head South and spend a couple of nights camped on one of my favorite little Blue Ribbon trout streams , fishing during the day and drinking beer around the campfire by the moonlight. Leaving Thursday morning and returning Saturday night , I hoped to miss the brunt of the weekend crowd and enjoy a little solitude with my best friend. P1010438 After the short 5 hour drive we pulled into the campground just before lunchtime , to my surprise the only other visible resident was the camp host. My normal routine would have been to set camp as quickly as possible and then scramble for the nearest section of water to get my boots wet. For some reason , maybe the fact that the stream was devoid of other fishermen for me to compete with , I just didn't feel like getting in a rush. Camp was set up , Joe and I ate some lunch and then we spent a couple hours just relaxing. I fiddled around with fishing gear while Joe was quite content to find a patch of grass and stretch out. Mother Nature was cooperating with us nicely for a change and it felt good to just sit around camp and soak in some rays while enjoying a cold adult beverage. After having achieved the "proper" attitude for an afternoon of fishing we grabbed some gear and walked across the street from camp to hit the water. P1010211-1 A quick look upstream and downstream , no other fishermen , it was all starting to come together nicely. That first step into the clear ,cold water and I could already feel the current stripping away all of my problems and concerns that'd been piling up over the past few weeks. Like a baptism of sorts for someone like me , I felt right with the world again , back in the one place I always miss the most...knee deep in a stream with a flyrod in my hand. I started off throwing a size #8 mohair leech and it didn't take long before I was rewarded with one of the streams wild little inhabitants. P1010346-1 P1010264 I know the fish are small (the two-weight makes up for that) but I sure never get tired of looking at those stunning little wild rainbows. What these fish lack in size they make up for in spunk and sheer beauty. We took our time , just enjoying the day and hiking from one small pool to another , catching a fish or two out of most of the good looking spots. P1010349-1 Although a few small BWO's came off in the evening I didn't see enough risers to warrant a fly change and ended up sticking with the olive leech all afternoon. As the sun made it's way behind the surrounding hillsides we made our way back to camp for a cold one (or two) , a nice campfire and a good meal..in just that order. P1010276-1 P1010287-1 P1010292 With a good nights rest under our belts , aided in part by several adult beverages , we woke early Friday morning to a gray overcast sky. The weatherman was calling for a good chance of precip throughout the day but I really didn't care , if anything I figured it'd keep the fair-weather fishermen away. After brewing a thermos of coffee and eating a breakfast sandwich we headed back across the road to try a few of the more productive holes from the day before. P1010316-1 P1010320-1 Again , we didn't see another soul on the water and enjoyed catching a trout or two out of most every hole we fished. P1010360 P1010340-1 P1010230 We worked our way downstream of camp and by the time we turned around and made our way back my stomach was telling me it was lunchtime. We spent a couple hours around camp before loading up in the truck and heading out to a new piece of water on the same stream after lunch. The lower sections of this particular creek are designated White Ribbon as opposed to the upper section I had been fishing which was strictly Blue Ribbon. I hadn't seen or fished this water before so I was excited to check it out. I decided to stay on the Blue Ribbon stretch just above where it changes over , figuring I'd still catch mostly wild fish with an occassional stray stocked fish. P1010328-1 To my surprise we pulled into the small gravel lot by the access and found it empty , just what I wanted but not what I was expecting. I guess the moderate rainshowers and intermittent lightning strikes had all of the smart fishermen safe at home , lucky me! The water down here was a little bigger but looked really good , with plenty of bank cover and some really nice riffles. Fishing a little heavier mink sculpin pattern we started working our way upstream , hitting any spot that looked promising. P1010332 It didn't take long to find the fish once again and I started picking up fish pretty regularly , probably 70% wild fish but there were a few obvious stockers thrown in. These weren't your fresh out of the raceway stockers though , they all had intact fins and some good color to them but it was still evident that they weren't wild born fish. We did battle with a few real chunks during the afternoon , giving the little two-weight all it could handle. P1010361-1 P1010381-1 P1010379 P1010446-1 As the afternoon drew to a close we worked our way back downstream , stopping off for the ritual of the "halfway back" cold beer. P1010268-1 P1010270 Another fine day on the water , even with the off and on rainshowers it never got bad enough to force us off the stream and once again we didn't see another fisherman all day. That evening we got lucky and the rain moved out of the area just in time to cook dinner and get a nice big campfire going. Even though it was a Friday night we were still the only campers in the entire campground making it a nice peaceful evening. The cool , damp air from the days rain made the fire feel that much better and we sat around poking coals until our eyelids began to get heavy and we called it a night. P1010426 P1010310 Saturday was packing up day once again , I was just happy that the rain had moved out and I wouldn't be packing wet gear in the back of the truck. After a quick breakfast and a cup of coffee we ventured back across the road from camp to try and catch a few more fish while the dew dried on the tent fly. We managed to land several more small wild bows before calling it a morning and getting back to the business at hand. P1010352 Once camp was cleared out we loaded up and hit the road , taking one last look at the water as we pulled out of the park I was already planning that next visit in my head...and it couldn't come soon enough. P1010359-1

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

4/14 - 4/15 The Best Laid Plans...Aren't worth a Damn when Mother Nature decides to Rain on your Parade!"

For just a fleeting moment I actually thought I was going to get out of town this last Saturday. Too much work and a lack of quality fishing time has had an adverse effect on my mental state here recently and a nice float with a cooler full of beer and a few fish mixed in was gonna be just the ticket to cure what ailed me.
Plans were made...shit was loaded in the truck...beer was iced down , it was all coming together nicely until that fickle bitch "Mother Nature" decided to throw a wrench in the whole works. I awoke Saturday morning to rain pelting the window and winds gusting well over twenty mph. After getting around I decided to check the current water levels for today's destination....
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That's not what you want to see when you're leaving the house in 10 minutes to drive for three hours and fish said piece of water. I was up , there was nothing else to do at that time of day and the truck was already packed so I figured what the hell I might as well make the best of it. A couple quick checks told me what I expected , anywhere I could make it to for a day trip was blown out as well. The radar screen for central and Southern Missouri looked like a finger painting from a little kid at Christmas , reds and greens splattered across the screen everywhere you looked.
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One option still open was to head down to Warsaw and try my luck below Truman Dam for some wipers. I havn't personally had any luck down there yet but know the fish are there to be caught.
Two hours later I was standing in the rain with a dozen or so guys chucking hardware , they were packed along the upper reaches of the West side of the spillway pitching big topwater baits halfway across the river.
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I took up position about 50 yards below where they were and started throwing some shad flies as far as the eight weight would allow (which wasn't nearly far enough). Every once in a while I'd hear someone up above me holler and look up in time to see another wiper or white bass come in , but for me the fish just didn't show any love. All I ended up with was a couple of dink white bass and a wet ass from standing in the rain half the morning. When the hardware guys quit catching the occassional fish I knew it was time to hang it up and call it good , it just wasn't gonna happen for me on this day. I threw my wet gear in and pointed the truck back North towards home.
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With Plan "A" shelved before it even got started and plan"B" looking a little soggy about now ,I was left with a two hour road-trip to devise a plan "C" to save the day.
While the weekend obviously didn't turn out quite as I'd planned , there's always a silver lining somewhere. I drowned my sorrows in a few cold ones after getting back and then spent the evening and a good part of Sunday chasing a few crappie at a couple of my favorite panfish spots.
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At the end of the weekend it was all good , I ended up doing pretty well on the crappie at a small city lake Saturday night and then pretty much tore the crappie and big gills up at my favorite little pond on Sunday afternoon.
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Not exactly what I'd hoped for , but enough to keep me from going postal until the next opportunity comes along......

Monday, April 2, 2012

3/29 - 3/30 "On the Hunt...White Bass / Wipers"

This past weekend I'd hoped to get away but an excessively long to-do list around the house kept me in town once again to my great dismay. I really wanted to get back out on some cold, moving water somewhere and try my hand with a few trout but it just wasn't in the cards. To help preserve what little sanity I had left after a hectic week at work I managed to get out on a couple of local lakes and ponds and chase some warm-water fish over the course of the weekend .
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Thursday morning I threw some gear in the back of the truck and Joe and I took off for Clinton Lake just outside of Lawrence , Kansas to see if we couldn't hook up with some white bass or wipers. The timing was still a little early for any real heated action but with the recent onslaught of above average temperatures I thought it was worth a shot. Another beautiful Spring day around here that felt more like mid-June than the end of March , although for this year it seems to be the norm.
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We spent several hours walking along the dam with me tossing clousers and various shad patterns to no avail , one little smallmouth was all I could interest in my offerings.
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There were several other people fishing the rip-rap along the dam and a few of them were catching crappie pretty regularly on minnows under a bobber. While I wouldn't have minded catching a few slabs to make the morning a little more entertaining , my eight weight and box of larger sized streamer patterns just weren't the right tools for the task so I didn't even bother.
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We enjoyed the beautiful morning and were off the water in time to hit our favorite sub shop in Lawrence on the way home , can't beat a good ole Yello Sub sammich.
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With one strikeout already for the weekend I still needed a fix to take the edge off and thanks to an invitation from a new fishing buddy I had just the plan. I had recently been in contact with Troy , who introduced himself to me through my blog , and we had discussed getting out on the water together and chasing a few whites down at Lacygne Lake. To make the offer even more tempting Troy added the incentive of having found a very large pod of gar and landing a couple of them on the fly on a recent trip. That was all the coaxing I needed and after a phone call or two plans were made to meet up at the lake on Friday afternoon. After a quick introduction at the boat ramp we headed out to try our luck , myself and my two new fishing buddies , Troy and Lilly.
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We spent a little time searching the area where he had spotted the gar the week before but it looked like they had moved on for one reason or another so we devised a plan "B". This lake is loaded with shad and Troy had been finding some active whites and wipers chasing baitfish in a couple areas so we put the rope flies away and started the search. It didn't take us long to find the telltale boils of feeding fish once we got in the right area.
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The surface action was spotty, with small groups of fish or singles busting shad , but anyone who's ever chased surfacing white bass knows it doesn't take too many fish to make for some fast paced action. We spent the evening chasing surfacing fish and tossing poppers and crease flies.
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It was an absolute blast!! If you havn't had the opportunity to watch a small school of whites chase your popper down and then proceed to knock it plum out of the water you're missing out. We weren't able to land anything very big in our evening of fishing but we ended up with a dozen or more fish apiece , all on surface flies.
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Even Lilly was getting excited with all of the action going on in the boat , she just couldn't wait to lick that next fish!
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We stayed on the lake until the action had all but stopped and the sun was disappearing over the Western horizon , nothing like watching the sun set over the lake to finish off the day.
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A very successful day in my book , not only did I catch a few fish but I made two new friends as well , I'm already looking forward to hitting the water with Troy and Lilly in the near future. With the first half of my weekend in the books I began thinking about crossing a few of those
"To-Do's" off my list with the days remaining....of course I've been wanting to get back out and hit that farm pond again too , I hear the bass are on the move. That story will have to wait for another post I guess,
but I have this itching feeling that it won't be too long.
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