cself

Can't wait to get down there! Did any of the weather last night create any flash flooding? I know my pond went up 2 feet (FINALLY)

Was at Bennett last week for 5 days and Cicadas were on the water quite often, however I never saw a single fish rise to them. But I think that was mainly because the water was deep and dirty. There was a small black bug hatching good in the morning as welland they didn't want anything to do with them either. However they were hitting stuff just fine under the water.

Thanks for the update, kindof a bummer, My buddy called Tim yesturday and we are changing plans to head to Bennett instead. Thanks as always Tim

I saw on radar that the storm that went through Joplin this pas weekend went near cassville, did you guys get hammered or is the water still in decent shape? I'm heading down regardless on Thursday, just curious.

I agree about switching patterns and still catching tons of fish, wasn't the point of my question/theory, I've been going to Bennett for 24 years now, and still my park of choice since its been my family destination so often, and never thought any different until several years ago when I started exploring many more parks and wild streams, I see fish all the time swim out of the deeper holes down there and eat guts, then return back to thier normal feed lanes, and guts are full of protein, so a fish can get most of his daily intake off a gut pile versus slurping dozens of nymphs or fly’s. Take a lunker into consideration, a lunker fish on average is going to go for a egg pattern, worm, sculpin, leech, minnow versus going after something that is going to take a lot of energy but not gain a lot of food to fill him up. The lazier they can be the better, however if the see a injured minnow, huge gut pile, they will use the energy on that one meal because they know they'll be filled up for a while, so imagine when a smaller fish takes a big meal, they may not eat again all day. I think alot of it is the "daily stockers" however if you go to RR you have the same "daily stockers" and yet you can take someone like my wife, or a kid, or a newbie, down there who chooses to fish toward mid-day, and they'll catch fish, put them at Bennett and they will struggle without having someone constantly coaching them on what to change too, and how to switch your drift, depth, etc. However they are completely different rivers too, whereas Bennett is way more action packed in the first couple hours, whereas at RR I have my best fishing an hour or 2 after the buzzer and late morning, so they can't be 100% compared to each other, which is why I share my time between both rivers several times a month. In the end I'm not really bringing this up to "improve the fishing in the mid-day" Usually when I go down there I just fish till noon and go have lunch anyway, then go back dink around in the heat of the day catching them using cracklebacks/dries/buggers and then really fish hard in the late afternoon/evening. However I just am thinking out loud a bit, and was hoping they'd get a cleaning station put in some day, so A) the river stay's clean I don't get yelled at for cleaning fish in the hotel room

Has there been anymore talk about putting a fish cleaning station at Bennett like they have at Roaring River? Seem's to me that RR the fish are active and hungry all day for the most part even in the middle of the day where as Bennett has always been catch fish like fire in the morning, then they fill up on fish guts in the river and go stale until later in the afternoon/evening. May just be a theory I have, but even asside from that it would be nice to have a spot to fillet your fish out and keep the river clean. I've been going to Bennett since I was 6 and love it, just suprised they have never put one in. Anyone?

Down in Campground 3.

We were down there Friday night through Sunday afternoon and caught a good number of fish once we got them figured out. Found a couple pool's where we fished above the rock areas where the water slowed down enough to get good drifts and caught fish pretty consistantly. The water was murky enough that you couldn't site fish at all, but just fished the edges of ripples where I knew they should be and fished deep and it worked. Caught 60% of my fish on bright 3 colored egg patterns, and the rest were caught fishing sinking fly line with either a spinner of some sort or whooly buggers. Was worried when we saw the river friday evening, but was a great weekend after all. The river has changed a bit, mostly in the fly fishing zone around the handicap ramp with all the gravel being pushed in areas, and the washout of the banks. We saw a decent improvement on sunday morning, however the rain that came in around 11 probably didn't help much.

Sounds like a perfect excuse to break out my Sinking Line set up. Be down there Friday night to give it a shot, better then sitting at home! Keep the update coming! hopefully we don't get more rain.

Will the park be fishable by the weekend? Hopeing it goes down a bit.

Huge python!!! jk yes its my rubberized landing net, makes it nice for handling fish without loosing too much slim on them. (and you don't bury your hooks in it. Normally I won't lay them on the ground for a pick but it was in some nice green grass so figured it wouldn't hurt him. The flyrodd pic like that never does them justice. Thanks guys, was a hell of a trip, just wish I was still there.

Me and some buddies went on our annual guys trip for the last 4 days. Caught a ton of fish, most everything on buggers and stripping of some sort, but targetted big fish for a while each day, first day caught a 20 inch bow about 4lbs (pic by fly rod)and then a 21 inch approx 6 lbs or so. Was a hog and hellofa fighter, luckily there was a nice gentlement fishing up stream that snapped my pic for me. Got my buddy Ben down with me and spotted one for him that he also caught in the same area, his was 19 inches about 4 lbs with a nice hook jaw, Was pretty exciting because it was his biggest trout to date. One thing that was cool was the day before in the same hole we were hog hunting and Ben caught a small blue gill while drifting a nympth, and while he was bring it in, a nice big Brown chomped it, lost it, then attacked it again, and immediatly snapped his line off! Got the heart pumping a bit, was one of the coolest things I've seen in fly fishing. Beutiful weekend, will be down there next month to try again. Me and my 21 incher Uploaded with ImageShack.us Ben and his 19 incher Uploaded with ImageShack.us Uploaded with ImageShack.us My other lunker, 20 inches about 4 lbs. All three were caught and released. Uploaded with ImageShack.us The release Uploaded with ImageShack.us