ozark trout fisher

As much tactical advice as there can be, I have to come back to this: In order to be in the right mindset to catch fish, you just have to stop worrying so much about catching fish. Feelings of desperation, frustration, etc, get in the way of being able to concentrate on the task at hand. Just think of it this way: you're standing in a river, while untold millions of poor schmucks are sitting at home watching TV. In the most important sense, you've already won. So just relax and enjoy yourself. If you keep doing it long enough the fish catching will come. It's possible to have fun in the interim, and not feel like it's been a wasted trip if you get skunked.

The methods you're using should be picking up some fish. Maybe not a lot, but getting skunked for that length of time is a little surprising because it sounds like you're generally doing what you should be doing. I don't know that stretch of the James at all, but for lack of a better way of putting it, it sounds like it must really suck. Have you just tried worms? I mean, it's not exactly classy, and you won't catch big fish, but a half a nightcrawler drifted on a #6 hook with a BB splitshot a foot up the line would almost have to produce something. Then, if you aren't catching anything on that, (or only 1 or two fish in a long trip) you really need to find somewhere else to fish.

Yeah, the rainbows are always there. Not always in great numbers, and catching them isn't a given, but they're there. I've been skunked on the Meramec several times, but I've never been where I haven't at least seen a trout or two. They can be really spooky in summer/fall and that makes it seem like there are less of them than there probably are in reality. Higher water (as long as it's not muddy/unwadeable) is the time where I can often really get into them.

It's definitely worth an afternoon. It's not like what you describe a couple decades ago, but it's not exactly a barren, troutless wasteland either.....it can still produce a very good day if the stars align.

What a fantastic trip, and we're all the better for you having shared it with us. I have been blessed to have spent some time up in the Bighorn mountains, and between the scenery, the native trout, the wildflowers, and the moose, it's enough to break your heart. I call it Alaska South. It's the kind of place that just kind of sticks with you.

Yeah, it's not bad. With the rain yesterday, I thought it might be high and muddy but no such concerns. If anything it's a little low, but nothing to worry about.

Got on the river today for a short two hours of wade-fishing in the middle stretch of the Bourbeuse*. I hadn't been on this stream much this summer, but I was glad to find it at a decent summer flow. It was clear, wadeable, and inviting. I decided to bring the fly rod this time, and a woolly bugger ticked across the bottom on the swing was a pretty good tactic. All three species of black bass were represented today, with an unfortunate emphasis on the spotted bass. The biggest was a largemouth of maybe 17 inches, pulled out of a classic, deep hole that was below a riffle and full of timber. I caught something like a dozen bass in total, which given the short trip I considered pretty decent. Only one was a smallmouth bass. It was 7 incher that was, without question, the catch of the day (if also the smallest bass I caught.) In all, a pretty nice day on the water on a river I really do need to get on more often. *(never mind exactly where. It wasn't private water, so you can find it on your own if you're so inclined.)

Worst idea ever? Yes, and enough said. There are enough Republicans that actually like to hunt and fish without paying exorbitant access fees that this (hopefully) should die pretty quickly. Though it never pays to feel too secure from anything like this, especially in the last few years.

#32, and 8x? That's hardcore. I do admire people that have the patience for that kind of thing. The way I fish a tiny hatch like that is by pretending it doesn't exist and tying on a #16 Hare's Ear Nymph. There are usually a few fish with enough sense to ignore the tiny stuff.

Yep.

I think it depends on skill level as much as anything. I consider myself to be a decent fly fisher at this point, but I really don't want to try to haul in a 20 inch brown on a 7x tippet. For me, both of the two outcomes are going to be bad (I land the fish and he dies from the ridiculously long fight, or he breaks off.) Anything else is too unlikely to even be worth contemplating. I know this from experience. I got a little "confused" on the absolute necessity of light tippet early in my fly fishing career. I read somewhere (probably on here) that I needed to use 7x, so I did that for 100% of my trout fishing for a year. Even big streamers. Dumb, I know, but fly fishing can be complicated when you don't know what the heck is going on. I still laugh at some of the moments that misunderstanding created. And while I'll use 6x fairly often in touchy situations, I still prefer not to dip below 5x if I can avoid it. During that one year I heard my tippet go "snap" enough times to last a lifetime.

Well the dries we used were bigger than the nymphs but not much bigger, #14-16. It fit through the eye just fine, as it did with little #18 nymphs... The drift was terrible but somehow worked anyway. Just one of those weird situations where you have to trust what the guide is telling you even when it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I'm not suggesting anyone use 2x except for big streamers (as soon as the guided trip was over, I went back to 3 pound tippet, which is heavy enough but still felt reasonable) just that it apparently can work even when it seems like a drastic mismatch between the fly and tippet.

It is not the Osage, although I can see how it looks like it (based on sheer size) in this picture.

"Fished 11 straight days" is a phrase we all want to be able to say more often. Looking forward to the full report.

Funny story: I was fishing with a guide earlier this summer in Colorado. We were using relatively small nymphs #16-20. Since we were fishing a heavily pressured, difficult tailwater, I asked him if we were going to use 5x, or if we'd need to scale down a bit. He grins and pulls out a spool of 2x flourocarbon. I thought he was joking at first but apparently not. We even stuck with that rig when we went to dries later on. I caught plenty of trout that day, and the fights with the smaller to medium sized fish were almost too short and most businesslike. The dries, especially, drifted like they were tied to a chain (which, in fact, they nearly were.) But again, the trout still ate them so who am I to argue? Not suggesting you try 2x on Bennett Spring as that's probably not going to be a recipe for success (unless you're tossing big streamers)...a spring branch is a lot different from a western pocket water stream. But even here in MO I wouldn't ever think of going smaller than 6x.

This one's right right across from a popular access on a very good smallmouth river......

I love that river but 6x to Ross is not where you want to go. Not only crowds but the kind of crowd that can ruin a trip in a heartbeat if you're there for the right reasons (ie, anything this side of loud partying and mass alcohol consumption.) It's firmly on my "stay away list" and that's a list that isn't very long. Al is right, the scenery is great, but it's not enough to balance everything else out IMO. Other parts of the river feel completely different though, and the Big Piney is a jewel outside of that unfortunate stretch. Smallie fishing is good everywhere I've been on it, not a challenging river to fish most of the time.

Oh I agree. It's just, given all that, it seems like we have plenty of rationale to be careful with the smallmouth that are still in the river. Overharvest (legal and illegal) may not even be the main cause for the decline, but no one can reasonably argue that it doesn't hurt. And to be honest, it's a heck of a lot more practical to curb than danged near any of the other issues you just detailed.

We're probably meant to be a part of a healthy ecosystem. We just choose not to more often than not.......

You'll have trouble bringing in even the average stocked trout without stressing them pretty badly. Only time you could make a case for that is if you plan on fishing #28 trico imitations or something. But I wouldn't use it under any circumstances whatsoever.

Maybe the only reason the rainbows seem to be doing better is that there are more of them making their way into the river from Maramec Spring than there are browns being put in the river. Hard to tell, I guess. Dry Fork Creek is really the biggest problem with the trout fishery there. It really is dramatic the difference in the quality of angling just above and below its mouth. Sure, you can catch fish down at Cardiac/Suicide HIll well below Dry Fork but it's way more hit and miss, and more miss than hit.

Got to be the Big Piney River at devils elbow.

I'm glad to see they're clearly not giving up on the Meramec. It's not a great trout stream, and I doubt anything any manager can do would change that.....but given it's location it has pretty significant value. I actually like the Red Ribbon part of the Meramec, if for a fairly backwards reason. It's just good enough where when I fish it I always expect I'll catch a trout or two (and it usually happens, one way or another), but just challenging enough where that expectation can easily be wrong. Whereas on the Current, or most of the other trout streams I fish, there's not the same level of drama because whatever else happens, you can almost bet that eventually something will come to the net. Catching a couple of fish on the Red Ribbon waters of the Meramec can feel like a real accomplishment, under the right circumstances. If brown trout survival doesn't improve, maybe eventually the time will come to give up on the whole enterprise and just manage it for the rainbows. For whatever reason they seem to do okay, whereas the browns are not.

I do tend to agree that enforcement is an issue. With that said, it's inherently challenging on our Ozark smallie streams. If we were talking about trout water it's a completely different story, with something like 100-150 river miles to keep track of. But smallies live in untold thousands of miles of stream in Missouri and you can't (even on a fairly occasional basis) have someone everywhere. If you were to pin me down on it, I guess the best allocation of resources would be to have people as much as possible on the streams that see heavy fishing pressure (mostly, I mean the big, jetboatable rivers like the G'nade, Meramec, etc) because those are the ones that are hurting the most-and they are naturally easy to patrol with motorized boats being an option. But then, one poacher can do more damage on a little creek with only a few good pools where the fish are highly concentrated, so you could make a valid argument in the other direction. But you're not getting both, probably. So bottom line, I'm not sure there is a good answer.

I think you're a lot more right about the cattle than the river otters. But without immediate scientific evidence to back either of our claims, there's not much further we can really go with this.