NoLuck

Hey Pat, I am back home now and ready to go as soon as we get a small shut-down done next week. I need to haul my camper down and leave it soon. As soon as I get freed up I'll give you a PM and let you know.

What is anything worth for that matter. To me it is nice to look and see what the conditions are before I decide to drive 2.5 hours and see that the stream is blown out or just way too crowded. Gas is just too expensive to rely on what a business tells you. They are out to make money and get you down there and they will tell you everything is fine to boost sales. As long as I get a current pic I am good. I don't need it to be streaming to decide what I want to do.

I believe that if someone interferes or harrasses with a person fishing within the banks of a stream or river that has been accessed by way of a public boat launch put in by the Missouri Department of Conservation, then the harrasser/interferer should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. The state of Missouri has laws in place to keep this from happening and yet it still happens all the time. The only way to stop this type of harrassment and intimidation is to punish the law breakers. This stream, Shoal Creek, has obviously been deemed navigatable by someone in the higher powers of the states government, or the MDC would not have put a public boat launch on the stream in order for the public to navigate it. I,Rich Polacek, a resident and taxpayer of the state of Missouri, demand that something be done in order to correct this wrong doing and to insure that it does not happen again.

No reason to be jealous Pat. It's just work brother.

Yeah the report is nice but it is lacking a little something compared to the previous owners. The owners just don't seem to be in tune with Bennett like Jerry and his wife were. They need to get down to the stream more and really get to know how things work there. The reports and nice pics are great and I still look at it all the time but it could be a lot better.JMHO

Hey Kim, Like usual I'm out here for work. I'll check out the link you posted and maybe I can find some local help. I hope to be off on Sunday and get out and about. We are doing some water blasting on some emission scrubbers. It will probably take a few weeks and I should be headed back home. Steamboat has a couple flyshops I want to get to and ask around a little. Maybe they can give me some advice. Cya, Rich

OK I'm here for a few weeks for work and I need to know if anyone on here has fished around here. The Yampa runs right through here but I heard you need to get closer to Steamboat.

To me 1.9 to 2.3 is almost perfect with a little stain. The fish are a little more spread out then, and people don't have to congregate on a "Hole" as much.

Just been working Pat. Not super busy but steady. I found out this winter while here in the home area it is cold. But we still water blasted down to 5 degrees. Worked fine as long as you didn't stop for about 30 seconds. Froze solid in about a minute. I sure missed being out west this winter as it was the last 2. And for your info, all I had back then was a little Ranger p/u. We used to camp in the bottoms there before they flooded in the lake and the corp didn't care where we camped as long as we were out of the dirt roads. I wouldn't have been able to turn my work rig around on those dead end county roads we camped on after they flooded in the lake.I should be down to Bennett in a couple of weeks after the water goes down some. I'll let you know a few days ahead of time if I can. Cya

They probably don't want you sleeping in your car or truck because there is a campground close by that they want you to spend your money in at the state park. We used to sleep in the back of my camper shell on my P/U at Mark Twain Lake until the campgrounds opened up and then they started to issue warnings at first. If they caught you again it would be a ticket on your windshield when you came out of the woods. Personally I think it is BS as long as you are not in the way and not making a mess. People camp out on the sand bars all the time. So why is this any different??

Charlie, I think the key words were "not have to pay".

5-10K???? That is a huge variance there Cricket. The state trout parks combined may only have 10K total on the opener. I have been fishing openers for quite some time and I have never seen it more crowded than it was about 4-5 years ago when it was on a Saturday and it was about 60 degrees. There was close to 4k tags sold that day. 10K would be a huge stretch there bud. Just sayin.

It does not matter if they are caught in the river or stream. People will keep them and they will end up in a fish fryer or pan . It's what they were intended for anyway. I hardly ever keep any but if that's what people want to do then more power to them.

3 ft is about max for most fishing. I may go someplace else if it is still that high Tuesday. The ground is pretty much saturated and it just won't take any more water. If it rains more it will stay high. I just hope that they didn't stock it with all the fish yet because it may get higher and wash it out again. Usually trout can find calm water but fish right out of the hatchery don't know about that yet. The fish that have been in the stream and know how to deal with high water can make it with no problems. Warm water is a whole different story.

It is just a matter of time before felt is not allowed in MO's streams. Last year when I was in Colorado Springs the fly shops had a trade in deal on your old felt sole boots to get the new rubber soled ones. I just don't know if the rubber with studs even will give you enough grip on slimy rocks.

I did a search on MDC website and it basically said that chumming is widely accepted across MO and LEGAL. But, it did say that it was ILLEGAL in the trout parks. Maybe that is the place that I heard about it being not legal. Either way I don't really know if it would be any help other than at the hatchery outlets at Taney.

Ok then, so you are telling me that I could go to the outlets and chum with trout pellets and fish with a pellet fly?? Not that I would,but that is crazy. I could have swore that I read in the code book that chumming was illegal in MO for fishing of game fish.

Shuffling to me is the same thing as chumming. Isn't chumming illegal in MO for trout?? Basically it would boil down to, to much judgement on the agents part. Even if they did pass a law against shuffling it would be a hard case to prove and uphold. JMO

Do you see this as a bad thing?? Part of what is wrong with people now days is how demanding customers are. The option for them to call someone else is always there. I will do all I can to be available when I am in town, but I let them know when I am leaving the area and I expect them to respect that. We don't get paid for being on-call so I don't feel 100% obligated to be there 24/7. Now if I was being paid to be on-call then it would be my obligation to do all I can to be there as quick as possible and have my cell with me at all times and in the area so I can respond in a timely manner.

Barring a health emergency I can't think of one thing that I need to have a phone on me for. I am on call most of the time and if they call while I'm fishing they will have to just wait as it's a 3 hour drive to get home and to work anyway. People can wait just like they did before we had cell phones except I can check for a message when I get back to my truck. If I lived in town where I fished it might be a different story. But, as it stands people will just have to wait just like we always did before..

You know the Indians had a word for a Bad Hunter......VEGITARIAN.

Looking at that I would say that it is no where near a finished product. The pit there and the amount of area between the bank and stream tells me that they will pour another outlet similar to the one at the bridge hole. You know...The one where everyone catches fish feeding the gut hatch.

Yeah JJ another reason to go barbless. Nothing like reaching down to release a fish when it makes that last little wiggle and it buries the hook all the way to the end of you bone on your thumb. 2499spbl's come out easy but they go in just as easy.

Well I just had to go look and see.... Ok the sky is still up there. Move along.

I am going to try to be there Saturday afternoon and Sunday. I have an annual foreman's meeting Saturday and I hope to get out of there at a decent time and head down. Its been a long time since I have done anything so I need to get out before I go nutz.