Seth

LOL..I do always seem to pick this shirt when I go fishing for some reason. I wanted to wear something that would stand out so shawncat wouldn't miss me and this was the brightest shirt that I had.

People must have read how bad people hate Maramec Springs on here because it was dead yesterday. Forum member shawncat and I had a terrible time catching 50+ trout up up to 17" on our fly tackle. Here is a pic of a high water escapee that I caught in one of the busiest holes in the park not long after the buzzer. Please add Maramec Springs to my list of least favorite places to fish as well. Please avoid at all costs.

I met forum member Shawncat down at the bathroom hole shortly after the buzzer. We caught a bunch of fish on fly tackle drifting a copper john, #10 grey scud, and white micro jigs. In the first few hours, we landed around 25-30 fish, with the biggest going 17". For the rest of the day, we piddled around by the second cleaning station until shawncat left for home and only managed a few more. After he left, I went fished up to the pond hole and back down to the bathroom hole. Fishing was slow for me until I got back down to the bathroom hole. I ended up catching five or six in a short time on orange trout worms and brown 007 dough bait before keeping a my fourth nice fish and headed home. Our total number of fish on the day was probably in the 50 range. There are quite a few little trout swimming around in there right now. I'm guessing they are escapee's from the hatchery rearing pools. One of the runts that I caught wasn't more than 5" long. I actually caught a creek chub that was bigger than the smallest trout yesterday!

We eat between 5:00-6:00pm most days. I get off work at 4 and my fiance leaves for work at 6 so it works out well for us. I cook on days she works and she cooks when she is off. If we are both off, I usually handle the meat and she tskes care of the sides.

Cold and nasty days during the catch and release season are the best. You have the park yourself and the fish always bite well on those type of days. Catch and keep season isn't always bad either. In fact, I can't think of anytime where it was that bad other than opening day. Even on the opener, there are so many fosh that you can find water that aint crowded and holding plenty of fish. I was down last Sunday between 2-4:30. There was just a few folks in the same area as me and it was loaded with fish. We caught around 20 fish in just a couple of hours. Why would you want a refund if they were cutting moss in one spot? There are decent holes all throughout the park. My worst spot is the Gasconade down close to the Missouri. I've never caught much down there. It gets trot lined so hard that I think a lot of the nice catfish get cleaned out. It could just be that I suck at catfishing too.

We caught a lot of fish on the Banjo minnow as well. I'm sure a fluke or other soft plastic jerkbait would have produced just as well on those days. Now the helicopter lure was a different story. I got one of the helicopter lure kits as an xmas present from a family member and tried it, but could never hook a fish on it. Got a few blow ups in some farm ponds, but never actually hooked and landed a fish that I could remember.

An I-70 series would be wild! Last year was sooooo close!

We have a lot of little tomatoes on the plants but still a ways to go before we have anything ripe enough to eat. I just gave them their forst dose of Espoma Tomatotone. I plan on fertilizing them around the first and middle of each month. I am curious to see how they do compared to before when I didn't side dress them at all. Hopefully we will get more large fruit instead of the first few tomatoes off each plant. One a side note, we just weeded and laid down some newspaper as weed barriers around the plants. Two days later we got sme heavy wind from the storms and most of it got blown away. So mch for that idea....

I haven't caught as many big smallies as most of you here, but I think the 18-20.5" fish that I have caught when the water as over 75 degrees are some of the hardest fighting fish I have ever caught. None of them have cleared the surface either. They just keep bulldogging towards the bottom. I do think a 2-3# largemputh fights harder than a 4+ though. The bigger ones just seem yo slosh on the top a lot like somebody else mentioned.

I'm just hoping they don't fizzle out come October. It seems like the years they dominate during regular season and win 100+ games, they don't go very deep in to the playoffs. The years they have to fight for a wild card spot is when they seem to go the deepest. Either way, they sure are fun to watch right now!

Fished 2:00-4:30pm and caught about 20 fish between my fiance and I. We stayed by the second cleaning station the whole time. She caught her fish on an orange worm and 007 below an indicator. Most of mine came on a green and white rubber legged jig. Another angler next to me was also doing very well on a rubber legged jig. The overall size was very good. Of our eight trout that I cleaned, only one was below 13". The others were 13-16". The water was still very dingy.

I use a 3 foot handle net with a rubber snag proof net. It's small enough to fit in a rod box out of the way wxcept for when I need it so it's ot really in the way. Five pound bass and trout are about all the bigger it will handle, but 99.9% of the fish I catch arent near that size.

Do you spray the entire reel or just the spool with Reel Magic? I'm bad about not breaking down and cleaning my reels so I should probably start doing something like this.

I still have the ones you gave me from the MSA meeting earlier this year, but I keep forgetting to put them in my tackle box. They are sitting on my computer desk not doing me much good. The Dolphin that SB gave me is sitting right besides the craws.

The few times I've crappie fished Mark Twain, it was lots of fish and very few nice ones while trolling Bandit 300's all day long. I want to say the last time I went, we caught 60-70 fish and only had 10 or 11 over 9" long. It was ridiculous!. Put me on LoZ and I can catch a good mess of decent sized fish. That was a few years ago though so maybe the average size has improved since then? It sure was nice being able to fish on a summer day and not get beat to death by monster cruiser wakes. It's very nice up there.

I like the Pflueger President. I've been using one a 6930 model spooled up with 15# Power Pro on a 7' medium 13 Fishing Omen Green soinning rod for two years and it still works as good as new. For $60, I don't think you can go wrong.

A guy I'm friends with on Facebook has posted several pics of toad latgemouth that they have caught in the past two days. They have something figured out.

You win the internet for the day with this one. I want an honest answer. How long did it take you to get those split rings attached? It takes me and my fat fingers an hour to replace hooks on anything that uses a split ring.

Cool story! Congrats to Micah on his big catch.

Rest in peace my fellow angler

We just throw them like normal and the trout will come screaming up from the bottom in 12' of water and attack them.

We didn't wear them out like Phil did, but everybody caught a few and was happy.

Browns bit even better today before the rain set in. Nothing huge, but caught several up to 16" fom Short Creek down to Lilleys dock. Mother in law caught her first trout on a grey scud in the trophy area. It ended up being an 18" beauty!

gold and dark green with orange belly. I have some bigger jerkbaits that I use for bass in the winter, but I didnt bring a rod that can handle them.

Phil, I think I may have seen you this morning at Short Creek. We tried drift rigs with san juans and grey scuds from Lookout to Fall Creek and powerbait and crawlers from Fall Creek to your dock with nothing to show for it. We finally tried some 3" rogues on the bank and started catching a few. I was able to catch a few rainbows on a oink trout magnet 7' under a float in some eddies as well. Ended up with a dozen rainbows and five browns. The best was a 16" rainbow. I had a brown pushing 20" hooked, but he pulled of during the fight. My FIL had a brown pushing 2' follow his rogue to the boat too. I almost forgot how much fun it is to catch trout on a jerkbait.