FlyFishinFool

Yeah, I know there was a lot of discussion, but everything at that time came with the caveat "pending public discussion/responses". Now they are not even hedging their comments - just saying it is effective 3/1/12 - so I thought this was a "final" ruling. I tried the link I had and also got the "page not found" - not sure why, I copied the link directly from the MDC website. I will try copying it again and pasting t into this posting - see if this works better..... http://mdc.mo.gov/newsroom/mdc-bans-porous-soled-waders-help-protect-trout-waters-invasive-algae

If this is duplicate information, my apologies. There have been discussions about banning felt soles for quite some time. For those who have not been following the MDC publications, it is apparently a done deal. The Missouri Conservation Commission has approved a regulation change banning the use of porous-soled waders or footwear incorporating or having attached a porous sole of felted, matted, or woven fibrous material when fishing in trout parks and other specific trout waters. Pending public comment through the Secretary of State’s office, the new regulation will go into effect March 1, 2012, the opening day of catch-and-keep fishing at Missouri’s four trout parks. For more information see: http://mdc.mo.gov/ne...-invasive-algae

There have been discussions about banning felt soles for quite some time. For those who have not been following the MDC publications, it is apparently a done deal. The Missouri Conservation Commission has approved a regulation change banning the use of porous-soled waders or footwear incorporating or having attached a porous sole of felted, matted, or woven fibrous material when fishing in trout parks and other specific trout waters. Pending public comment through the Secretary of State’s office, the new regulation will go into effect March 1, 2012, the opening day of catch-and-keep fishing at Missouri’s four trout parks. For more information see: http://mdc.mo.gov/newsroom/mdc-bans-porous-soled-waders-help-protect-trout-waters-invasive-algae Guess it is finally time to get my Simms boots re-soled with the new Simms Vibram soles.

Looked through your photos - nice job. Can you provide any specs beond 12' long? What is the width, weight, carrying capacity? Thanks,

I fished Mon-Fri the last week they were open for the regular season in October, and they did NOT cut any moss that week.

Twice in the last 2 years I have stopped and talked to law enforcement in unmarked vehicles in the parking lots along the stream (don't know if they were Conservation Officers or Park Rangers) and they were checking every single fisherman's daily tags via binoculars and comparing them to the "list" of legal tag numbers sold that day. Both officers stated that they often catch folks fishing on prior day's tags, and sometimes actually see people culling stringers or keeping more than the legal amount. Then they just watch for the individual to walk out of the stream and write them up. This year I also observed a Conservation Officer wearing waders and a vest with a flyrod as he ticketed a poacher fishing with bait in Zone-1. So believe it - they are definitely out there! I wish them all the luck and help they can get to catch wildlife thieves!

Well, I managed to get enough time, $$, etc. to make a multi-day trip down to BSSP. Water was at/near nomal level - e.g. about 2ft at the Gauge House, and a bit shallow in some areas - actually too easy for a lot of folks to walk all the way into the middle of the stream. Strange to see people standing in the middle of the stream so they can reach the far side with their casting, when there are fish swimming all around them and (of course) many swimming behind them. Water was absolutely crystal clear - which made the need to use smaller tippet (or use fluorocarbon) and smaller flies to be consistently successful. There were a lot more folks than I expected - guess the nice weather and good water conditions drew them out to the stream. Weather was cool in the morning (about 50), but great in the afternoons (highs of 72-80), but mostly very sunny. Only difficult day was on Thursday when the front moved through and the wind was blowing 20+ mph almost all day, and a stream carpeted in falling leaves - added a little extra challenge to your casting! I talked to a couple of folks who were having success with the old "early morning standby - black & yellow maribou micro-jigs" first thing in the morning; but even more common, people were catching fish on small white thread jigs and small white marabou jigs, while folks having the most success were using little brassies in pink or red. I fished a lot of small dark midges with (what I would call) slow but steady success all day long, averaging a fish every 10-15 minutes or so. Olive colored flies were just not attracting fish for me, regardless of size or style of fly. There were several short periods where the fish were hitting drys very aggressively, but this action did not seemed to be timed to any hatches - rather, the fish just decided to hit the top-water flies for some reason. When they were hitting the top you did not need to be delicate, they would hit size 12-14 Renegades, sixe 10-12 bright yellow woolies, and almost any size 10-12 light-to-medium colored Crackleback. Overall, simply a good week of fishing down at BSSP; could I have caught more fish? or the weather been warmer in the A.M., or cooler in the P.M.? or less windy? or more overcast?....sure - but when you add together all the conditions it was simply a great time to be out on the water with the flyrod! Just like anytime (and everytime!) is a great time!!!

X2 TFO has the best customr service with the lowest cost for repair/replacement. Last rod I sent to them I had back in 6 days including shipping BOTH directions, and at NO cost.

X5 I have used "Gun Dog" to train multiple German Shorthairs to work as pointing AND retrieving dogs. I also agree with crate training - the crate becomes their safe area, for sleeping, etc.; they will often go there if they are scared by anything such as fireworks or even loud thunder.

Orvis is currently running a sale on the original Battenkill Disc Drag reel (this is not the newer Battenkill Barstock reel). They have the small reel for line weights 3-5 on sale for $75. Here is the link - you will have to determine if it is light enough to balance well on your rod. http://www.orvis.com/store/product.aspx?pf_id=0385&dir_id=758&group_id=25724&cat_id=25725&subcat_id=25726&CampaignID=2096&ADV=116221&cm_mmc=orvisemail-_-FISH_PICKUP_8_3_09_08_11-_-02-_-P4

I think you are really going to like the product also - I have been using the Simonton's furled leades for about 18 months, and performance has been outstanding!

http://www.thesimontons.com/Fishinggear.html

Most of the time I strip fairly high in the water level. I would imagine you are using some pretty heavy tippet stripping deep - what lb. do you use? Is it actually tippet or do you just use regular mono/fluoro?

People with the rods in the water are normally using full sinking lines. With a floating line or sinking tip attached to a floating line sticking the rod tip in the water serves no positive benefit.

Just a follow-up to this thread that I started a while back - I was fishing down at BSSP this week (love the parks on weekdays after school gets started, almost no one there at all!). While fishing a young lady walked down the stream behind me to a shady spot, set up a folding chair and proceeded to sit down and crack out a book - about 10 feet from where my backcast was passing an easy 5 feet behind where her chair was placed. I turned around and very politely advised that she might want to relocate her chair, because fly fishing requires a significant amount of room for backcasting; unless she wanted to risk acquiring some new pierced ears with feather flies to match the feather extension in her hair. She immediately closed her book, picked up her chair, said "Thanks for the warning" and relocated more than 100 yards upstream to a different shady spot. I guess the lesson here is: 1) polite, 2) truthful, and 3) painfully accurate description (or is that an accurate painful description?), anyway it seemed to get her attention.

While I mainly fish with midges, I have been known to strip a few flies from time to time. Best flies I have found to strip at BSSP are the cracklebacks (green, chartreuse, purple, blue holographic), woolys (yellow, green, olive) and woollybuggers (olive, green, black). A lot of folks fish them on full sinking lines, but if you do not have one, or prefer not to use one, I could try some of the following to get the fly down in the water - a sinking tip or at a minimum a flurocarbon leader, with fluorocarbon tippet, a weighted wooly or weighted woolybugger (or even a conehead woolybugger when the water is up a bit)or if absolutely necessary a small split shot,. Basically anything to help weight the fly down and get it down in the water. I tend to switch back and forth between fishing methods, so I usually strip with a floating fly line, with a furled fluorocarbon leader and flurocarbon tippet, and then just attach the crackleback and cast it as a dry, then give it a jerk to pop it under the surface and then slowly strip it back - doesn't run deep but it does draw strikes! The weighted flies will get deeper, but definitely are harder to cast, so I usually use non-weighted cracklebacks and woolys.

ksbass, No kidding - I was down there Sun through today (Friday) and if I had known you were there on Sunday I would have tried to look you up. I did manage to finally break one of your spiderwire furled leaders, a 4wt I had been using since June 2010. I also finally switched out the 5wt spiderwire furled leader that I had also been using for more than a year as well. I guess you could say I got my $$ worth out of those leaders. So, I will send you a note via email and then snail-mail a check to order a couple more of your leaders - they simply cannot be beat! Back to the fishing report, I spent most of my time up in zone-1 throwing midges using a couple of your furled leaders. Had a decent week - caught fish every day on a "slow-to-medium but steady" pace, and caught quite a few nice fish in the 1-2 lb size. I used primarily green, olive, brown, and off-white midges; changing colors as the fish got tired of one or the other. Mostly size 16, but dropping down to size 18 when the water flow dropped a bit. Once the crowd from the weekend left, the park was very lightly populated. I think most of the crowd was due to the fact that this was the last weekend before most of the area schools started classes. Most mornings and evenings there were no more than 4-8 people fishing zone-1 from the wheelchair access fishing piers all the way down to the big hole above the hatchery dam. RCguy would have loved fishing the island - this morning I was the only person fishing the entire length of the island from the whistle until 10AM! Maybe we can make connections the next time you are heading down!

I have stayed at the Riverfront Campgrounds (just up the hill from the Sand Springs location) several times. It is run by the Glendenning family and has a large "primitive area for tents, and trailer/RV locations. The trailer/RV locations are away from the tent areas and are spaced out a lot more than any other place around Bennett. The Glendennings strictly enforce quiet hours and rowdy groups, and they will throw out groups not behaving. I have personally seen them give a noisy group a warning right before quiet hours and within 30 minutes they were being evicted. Check it out before you drive your RV there, the access road can be a little bumpy!

At over $300 for a Silverback sleeping pad, it should massage your back and offer you a drink on top of a good night's sleep - wow, that is pricey!

I would also go with the Cortland. Rio has been having some manufacuring issues with the Rio gold (I was told this directly from a customer service individual at Rio). The problem usually shows up with the outer plastic portion of the line cracking and/or breaking right at the base of the welded loop. I had 2 Rio Gold lines replaced by Rio - a WF5F was replaced once, and a WF4F was replaced twice, all due to the outer coating breaking at the base of the welded loop. Net result is that you get a hinging effect on your line, specially when casting drys or other light flies. I have talked to several people that have experienced this exact same defect - the issue occurs primarily with fast or med-fast rods, the line outer coating is apparently just too soft for faster rods. The Rio Gold appears to work OK for medium or slow rods, so you may want to use it if that is the flex of your rod.

The Signature series rods only come in 2-pieces. If you want a 4-piece TFO you have to go up to the Professional series rod, which is also a litle faster rod than the Signature. I have both and enjoy fishing them. And I agree with troutbum's comment, TFO has a great warranty - replacement usually only takes a week including shipping.

If you think the sellers market was a couple of month's ago - think again!! Look at this current ebay auction bidding;;;; http://cgi.ebay.com/Whiting-Eurohackle-Rooster-Saddle-Grizzly-Feathers-/180677642422?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2a113a08b6&clk_rvr_id=242363732441&afsrc=1&clk_rvr_id=246427448608&afsrc=1 and I understand that a couple of grizzly hackle saddles have gone over $900 - what a bunch of idiots!

brittsnbirds - The water water level & flow-rate continued to drop when I was there, perhaps that improved the fishing? All I know is I had a blast! rcguy - I will also be going back down in August. Let me know when you are going down and I will look for you & the silver egg!

Went fishing at BSSP for 5 days (Mon - Fri) the week before the 4th of July weekend (you could not get me to a state park over a 3-day holiday weekend, all the yahoos come out in droves)! Anyway - the water depth was close to normal, clarity was pretty good and the flow was decent. They cut the weeds in zone 2 & 3 the prior week, and cut the weeds in zone 1 on Tuesday while I was there - actually the weeds almost did not apprear to need cutting, probably the cleanest weed cutting I have seen in a very long time. The number of people was suprisingly light - I thought there would be more people visiting the week before the holiday weekend to make a really long vacation week, but only one day was the stream even slightly crowded in the mid-morning (8am-11am) and only once in the mid-afternoon (3pm-5pm)timeframe, all the other days and all other times, the stream was pretty empty with lots of room to fish, wade, and move up/down stream. Several mornings there were ony 3-4 people on the entire island section of the stream, and a couple of evenings, by 7:30pm there was no one from the big hole above the hatchery dam all the way as far as I could see beyond the disabled access piers. Overall fishing was very good, of course some folks complained about the size of the fish, but I caught a lot of fish; I caught a few small ones, many average sized ~12+", quite a few really decent fish (14"-16") and a bunch of great fish well over 16" - all in all a really good week of fishing. Fish were being caught on red copper johns, yellow/black maribous, and almost anything small, brown and fuzzy (woolies, midges, scuds, etc.). I also saw folks catching a decent number of fish by stripping brown or bright green woolies, and green or blue cracklebacks. All in all, I had a great week fishing, met some nice folks who came all the way up from Texas to fish Bennett Spring, and on one day I caught more fish than I have ever caught on any single day while fishing at Bennett Spring (more than 30+ years). Maybe I will see y'all down (or up) on the stream the next time I go to BSSP. A side comment - very early one morning, as I walked down to the stream, I saw an older gentleman walking onto one of the disabled access piers carrying what appeared to be an extremely large plastic tacklebox - you know, the kind that is usually carried only in a large bass boat and probably weighs about 20 lbs? All I know is he was tilted to the tacklebox side quite a bit, so it must have been pretty heavy. The stream was very foggy that morning, and you could not see more than 50 foot or so....so about 30 minutes after the whistle blows, you could hear the most god-awful racket coming from a couple hundred yards upstream by the disabled access pier - sounded like a metal box of tools falling down a short flight of stairs. Apparently someone (the older gentleman?) had fallen over the tacklebox and dumped the contents onto the concrete walkway. I only heard a couple of muffled comments, but for the next 10 minutes there was a constant noise of someone droping all kinds of "stuff" back into the tacklebox. I guess the lessons to be learned are: 1) don't bring anything you don't have to when you go fishing - e.g. less is better, and 2) close and latch your tacklebox after every time you get something out or put something in - it will save a lot of headaches in the long run. I watched someone learn the last one the hard way on a float trip when the canoe flipped with an unlatched tacklebox and he lost all his gear!