Brian Sloss

Fox, I don't have any pics of the flies where we sell the flies and my camera won't take good enough pictures to make it worth posting them. If you live in St. Louis, Hargrove's sell Don's crawdad's as well and if you do a search for 1-800 phone flies you should be able to to get pics there. Many different Stonefly patterns will work, though I'd use weighted ones as we need to fish deep around here most of the time. The MOAT is real easy. Size 6 hook, 3 tungston beads, peacock dubbing, and brown or black legs (two pair on the back and one for the tail). Our shop is located in Alton, Mo at the intersection of hwys. 19 and 160, you can't miss us. We have a bunch of canoes in the yard. If you need lodging when you come down here, we can help you find that as well. Brian New2trout, You are right access is limited because all of the trout water runs through national forest. There are places you can go with your SUV, such as Greer, Turner Mill, Whitten, Bliss Spring, and Boze Mill Spring. My favorite for fishing is Greer, though there is a camp host, though maybe not until May. Floating to a float camp(most you can't drive to) or any place you like along the river is the best way to get privacy and access to some of the best holes on the river. You can camp anywhere on the river you want, as it is all National forest except one small plot of land on the lower end of the white ribbon area. Given good weather, April is ussually a good time for fishing down here and an ultralight with 6lb test line should work just fine. If you would like to learn how to use the fly rod, let me know and I'd be happy to help you get started. I forgot to mention, that greer does charge like $10/night to camp, but the other places are free. All campgrounds are primitive, and only Greer has even water spickets, though we do have showers you can use at our shop, if you need to clean up during your five day trip.

Thanks for the story, I enjoyed it. Hope you can come down here again sometime so you can have a better catch rate on those smallies. They are here and in good numbers.

I do offer guided trips down the Eleven Point River for trout fishermen. You can look up my site at www.11pointcanoe.com and I am located in Alton, Mo. I'm happy to help you with any questions you might have. I get to fish quite often and place regular fishing reports here. Do you have any specific questions?

The Ozark Rivers Fly Fishing club out of West Plains came over today to fish and eat chilli at island one (graveyard hallow) and I was able to get away for a couple hours and join them. In total I caught 14 or so with 2 in the 16-17 inch range. All my fish were caught on brown stones or Don's Crawdads fished right on the bottom. I did catch one smaller wild one and another wild one of about 14in. Everyone was nice and in good spirits and from what I could tell catching fish. The youngest of the group was really on a roll and had been out fishing us all with a total of 17 and counting when I left. The water is kinda low and gin clear right now, but with the overcast skies, were still plenty catchable as long as you fished deep. I missed out on the chilli, but it was nice to get to fish with these guys.

Had a father and son fish the blue ribbon area today from a rented canoe. The boy of 11, caught 3 trout on rooster tails with one pretty nice fish. Dad fished woolies with sinking line and caught quite a few more from what I understand. I'll be getting out tomarrow for a while and will have a more detailed report. By the way, we got up to near 60 degrees today and the forcast looks good for the next few days, so get out there and fish. Also, they reported seeing a lot of Eagles today, which I think is cool.

Got over to Tany the evening of the 26th with my Mom (her Christmas gift) and was able to get out for a little fishing. Hit the water below the dam from 8-10 o'clock at night and was the only one there (nice) and caught three browns on black wooly buggers about 20 yards below outlet 2. The best one was a beautiful 17 incher. It was great having the water to myself. The next day after trying to get my mom onto a fish for about 30 min. before she gave up from the dock at Lilly's, I headed for the dam about noon until 4. The water was low and I mean low. They were working on the hatchery and outlet 3 was nonexistant except for some off color water coming through. I hadn't fished Tany for 2 years and I have to say I can't remember it ever being as crowded as it was that afternoon. Being in the 60's that day, I guess everyone had the same idea. I've had more successful days there, but I still got into plenty of fish to make me happy. Only one brown during the day though and the rest rainbows with the biggest fish ranging in the 15-16 inch range. I didn't see anybody catching fish after fish, except for 2 guide trips going on. Goes to show how valuable a guide trip can be. I caught most everything on grey and black scuds and black zebra midges. I was only able to get into the rebar hole shortly, just too many people. I found the most space above outlet one before the cable. At the end of the day I got a little top water action with crackle backs. A few hit on top and a couple others hit while stripping them in just under the surface. Stopped by the dam the next day on the way out of town and it was crowded again, but not nearly as bad. I couldn't fish as I didn't want to make mom wait around for me. I had almost forgot about how the trout line up right behind you and peck at you trying to dislodge food from the bottom. Crazy. When I'd walk out a feeding frenzy would start in my wake. I think I may have accidently stepped on a fish or 2 just walking to shore. That is insane. Anyway, I had a great time. Thanks for the hospitality Phil.

Last summer they started adding a few of the Brood stock from the hatchery to the White Ribbon area stockings and I believe they will be doing it again this summer. The end result being that a lunker will be hooked more often in the White ribbon area, which is cool.

Went fishing for an hour and a hlf yesterday evening with my business partner at the 19 bridge. I caught 6 or 7 seven trout and 1 smallie. Water is a little of color still, but good for fishing. It is still moving swiftly. We caught our fish on Stoneflies, MOATs, eggs and crawdad patterns. About half were hooked on the swing. Fished very deep as well.

By wild, I mean stream bred. It wasn't until the last couple of years that MDC started stocking the Blue Ribbon area, as for the decade or so before they relied on natural reproduction. That had limited success, but there was and is some successful reproduction going on. Of course stockies were and are coming upstream from the White Ribbon area as well, but most of the fish in the blue ribbon area are wild or stocked there. All stocked fish in the Blue ribbon area are clipped (anal fin). That is the best clue. The stockies do color up and start acting more wild, but you can always look at fins and the wild ones tend to color up better and often fight better. I'm always positive when I catch a young of the year fish with all its fins. No mistake there. Sometimes I might confuse a larger trout that may have come up from the white ribbon area and been in the water a long time.

I had some fly fisher customers get out and fish the Blue ribbon area the last couple of days with limited success. The water still looks to be too stained and so you really need to practically slap them right in the face to get a strike. By the weekend I'd expect it to be much better and the best fishing might be early next week, when the there is a little stain, but not too much. I'll be gone for Thanksgiving until Sunday, so I won't check in until then. Have a good holiday. Brian

If the diameter is the same as 5X rio, why give up the extra 2lbs of strength? The rio is 4lb test. I'm not really familiar with the vanish product (assuming by the name it is florocarbon or something like it). If it works better, I'll try anything once.

The past couple of days we have gotten some much needed rain. The water levels are currently 4 ft over normal levels and have risen over 4.5 ft in 2 days. It is running like chocolate milk right now and won't be fishable probably until next week. Hopefully, this will help raise water levels for a good while to come. Also, I'm hoping this will help our spawn this fall. The fisheries biologist has told me that part of the reason for poor spawns in the past has been a lack of good fall floods to clean the small rocks in the river. Well we just got that and the fish were just beginning their fall spawn. Hopefully as the water recedes, the trout trying to spawn will have improved results.

My business partner, Ryan Griffin and I got out for a full day of fishing in the blue ribbon area in my MacKenzie drift boat Tues Nov. 8th. Ryan decided to keep an exact count of how many fish he caught that day as he reeally wanted to be able to give an exact number for this report rather than guessing. His total was 37. My total was somewhere in that range as I quit counting by 10 am. We were catching fish on both black and tan size 6 and 8 Norfork specials, eggs, stoneflies (black and brown), olive leeches and wooly buggers. The biggest fish were in the 15 - 17 inch range and the smallest being a 5 or 6 inch wild yearling. Near Mary Decker, I won't say exactly where, I came accross a female about to get on to a redd. I caught a big hooked jawed male that was showing beautiful colors and was dropping milt. He wasn't the first I'd seen doing that, but then the next fish was a big hen full of eggs. She didn't drop any and was full of fight. I don't think the redd was active yet, but it probably is now. Because they were in deeper water, just below a gravelly run that drops into it, I think they were stagging to come up and start laying eggs. Anyway, I hope that female produces many young trout. All and all, a great day. The weather reached the low 80s and the fishing was great. The good fishing should continue through the winter, so I'd suggest coming down. By the way, we only saw 2 other poeple the whole day.

Trafic is very light right now, even on the weekends. I will be submitting a fishing report later today, but as a quick preview, my business partner Ryan and I fished all day Tuesday and saw 2 other people and caught around 70 fish. It is fishing very, very well and no one is really taking advantage it. You can pretty well have great fishing and almost no company right now if you will just make the trip down here. The weather has been unreal as well. Brian

The Blue Ribbon area between Greer and Turner currently has betwen 1400-1500 trout per mile after the MDC stocking in September wtih a lot of the stockers between 8 and 12 inches. There are plenty of fish that are bigger up to the 26 inch range, though the numbers of those are smaller obviously. They are of course harder to catch. Does anybody have any good fishing reports or stories from the Eleven Point?

I just thought I'd thank Phil for starting this forum. I'm looking forward to answering any questions about the Eleven Point, which I believe is a hidden jewel for fly fishing in the Ozarks. I am ready to go.