ozark trout fisher

Thanks, I'll try those.

I'm headed down the day after tomorrow... Probably will mostly fish Parker Hollow, maybe a little at Baptist too depending on how things go. I haven't been down in awhile, been too busy hunting as well as doing other less enjoyable stuff, so I'm pretty clueless as to how it's fishing. General consensus based on what I've been reading seems that it's been pretty tough though. Have you all been having any success on egg patterns, or is the water just too low for that? If not what else have they been hitting on? Even if it is tough it'll still be worth the trip. I sure do miss the Current.

The nymph box looks good. Certainly you've got just about everything you need for fishing the wild trout creeks. I like the simplicity. No reason to complicate matters on those kind of streams where the trout just aren't very selective. Even though I probably do 40-50% of my trout fishing with dries, my selection isn't all that diverse. That makes me pay sometimes when the fish are extremely picky to a certain hatch, but generally it works fairly well. 1. Adams and Parachute Adams, in all sizes from #12-20 2. Ausable Wulff, #12-16 3. Black Gnat #18-22 4. Dave's Hoppers #4-12, plus a few ants, beetles, and other terrestrials 5. Elk Hair Caddis #12-16 That about covers it, and I would say that about 95% of the time I won't get caught without what I need. Trout just aren't as picky as some people make them out to be. But there is that other 5%. I end up using the Adams and Parachute Adams more than all the others combined. They work at least passably for just about all the mayfly hatches we have on our rivers and creeks here, and have even been known to work quite well during caddis hatches.

Well yes, that sounds about right for me too.

Well...Most of us occasionally have bad days and post stupid stuff. I wouldn't worry about it too much.

That is a very interesting book...One of my favorites.

There are undoubtedly a few stockers in the Lane Spring area, but the vast majority of the fish are wild, if that can only be evidenced by the fact that most of the fish are considerably smaller than the stockers they put in down on the lower part of the creek. Any fish over 11 or 12 inches could conceivably be a stocker, but even then it would probably be the exception to the rule. I think most of the hatchery fish in the Milldam Hollow area end up on a stringer before they would have much chance to migrate upriver. I have encountered a number of clearly stocked fish in the Vida Slab area, especially below the slab bridge, which acts as at least a partial fish barrier. As a matter of fact, in the stretch from the Slab to the upper end of the White Ribbon section, you're likely to encounter as many stockers as wild trout (and in some areas very few trout at all.) Despite being part of the Blue Ribbon "Wild Trout Water", not much spawning goes on downstream from Vida due to seriously degraded habitat. It's a classic example of a stretch of stream that could be capable of supporting a quality wild trout population, but it suffers from every kind of abuse known to man,including cattle in the stream, gravel mining, and maybe worst of all, a lack of any kind of trees or other vegetation in the riparian corridor. All of this leads to a wide, slow, silty stream with water temperatures that are far higher than they need to be. So you end up with a relatively lifeless stretch of river with nothing but the odd migrant trout in a few of the riffles, lots of chubs, and the occasional smallmouth. Very sad. It would be an excellent candidate for some kind a TU stream restoration project, but I digress.

There are certainly some interesting characters that fish the Current. There is one person I've encountered several times while fishing in the Parker Ford area. She says she always waits for a string of horses to cross the ford, and fishes directly downstream of them, in the belief that it stirs up the scuds and mayfly nymphs and other critters in the stream-bed. Kind of like what they call the San Juan Shuffle, except greatly multiplied. It's not a tactic I think I'd use, but to each their own. The Current is an odd river. You can find all types, from old fashioned gear anglers in overalls throwing rapalas and stickbaits, to hard core streamer fisherman, dry fly purists from out east wearing Orvis waders and sporting high end bamboo rods, every kind of fisherman on earth really- even people who will stand below a ford horses use in the belief that it will stir up a feeding frenzy. That's part of what makes it such an interesting place to fish.

Could be wrong, but I'd be very surprised if the MDC tried to enforce the felt ban on March 1st, that being the first day the rule becomes official and the first day the official 2012 regulations will be out. It would be a nightmare and very bad publicity, probably 50+% would be in violation. One thing that will complicate enforcement somewhat is the rubber cement option, which could cause some gray area potentially in figuring out who's legal and who isn't. But I'm still glad that the MDC provides the option to do that and not have to buy new boots. It isn't ideal, but, it's the way I'm going for sure. I do hope folks that go that route actually choose to do it correctly though, if not the rule won't do much good.

Well...There is always ebay. I know that may not be the most classy way to get them, but I am by nature a cheap person, so I don't really care. After a quick search to make sure that I wasn't completely full of it, I can guarantee you that you can find a pair of acceptable boots under $60 on there, provided you aren't all that picky. Or you can use rubber cement, which I think most of us can pretty easily afford:)

Oh well, it's gonna happen, and the $60 or so that we'll have to pay to replace them is pretty small compared to what we are spending on gas money to get to the river, flies, fly tying material, rods, reels, leaders, and tippet, (or spinners, powerbait, jigs, hooks, line and such) and all the other stuff we end up buying in a year of fishing. We knew this was coming way in advance, and in any case everyone has still got two months to come up a pretty small amount of money, compared to what we're spending to get on the water anyway. Or there's always rubber cement.

To the extent that I fish the parks at all, I've often done pretty well on Pheasant Tails and Hare's Ears...That they aren't known as the "hot" flies doesn't mean a thing. The trout don't know and presumably don't care which type of fly is popular this week. Some of the best fly fisherman I've ever known hardly use anything else besides Adams and Hare's Ears.

Beautiful pictures, thanks for posting. That's what fly fishing is all about...Small streams and beautiful wild trout.

Who really cares what strain of trout they are? The wild rainbows in the Blue Ribbon section of Little Piney for example are descended from hatchery raised trout that the MDC only stopped dumping in that stretch of creek about 10 years ago...Same with Mill, Spring, Blue Spring, and just about every other wild trout stream in the state,except the stockings in those creeks stopped anywhere from a few years to a half a century further back. And yet the trout in these streams act as wild and fight as hard for their size as any wild trout I've caught in Colorado in Montana. Except in true wilderness streams, I'm afraid that "pure strain" trout of any sort are pretty much a thing of the past, so personally I think I'll be satisfied with any kind of self-sustaining trout population.

My guess is that with the water temps dropping quickly through the 40s with this cold front, they probably don't want to chase something down that's moving as fast as a spinner or a spoon. Trout begin to get a bit less active when the water temp drops down to around 45, considerably more so when it gets to 40 and below, because their metabolism drops as the water temp does. They don't really need to chase down food, so you have to go to something slower moving.

People always talk about how hard it is to fool the big browns on rivers like the Current or the North Fork of the White. That's certainly true, but I think that the few 20" plus fish on our little wild trout creeks offer a more difficult challenge...If only because there are only maybe 3 or 4 of them for every mile of stream and everything is in such close quarters. I've hooked into those lunkers several times, usually when I'm tossing streamers or larger nymphs in the deep holes, but I've not been able to land any over the 20" mark yet from any of those streams. As well as I think I'm playing them, they always figure out how to wrap me around a log or a submerged rock or something and break me off.Which means I've got to keep trying.

That's sad to hear. He seemed like a really good guy, always a pleasure to camp down there.

I really like the Parachute Royal Wulff, but I consider it more of a broken water fly. It's just too much of an attractor to be all that effective in calm water. For the dead calm water on the little creeks (or on the larger rivers for that matter), I think it's really important to have a good dial on whatever hatches are coming off. And whatever is hatching, it always seems to help to be tossing a fly that is both pretty imitative and a size or so smaller than the naturals. For some reason that often seems to help a lot. Most of the time I don't want to mess with all the complications involved in fishing the dead still water and just toss attractors in the riffles. I must admit I enjoy that a good deal more.

Well that's good. I dang near did this weekend, had an eight pointer within about 50 yards of my stand (which would have been far and away the biggest buck I've tagged in that part of the state), but when I raised my rifle the movement spooked him and I was busted. Oh well, just an excuse to head back down next weekend.

Seems no one told you all that it's deer season, so it's quite possible to spend the weekend actually doing stuff outdoors, which I do believe is the general idea behind this forum. Speaking of the original topic of this thread, Missouri is indeed blessed and we're lucky to have all the public land in the southern part of the state to allow us to enjoy so much of it. I spent the weekend down in the south-central part of the state, about half the time deer hunting (saw a couple including a nice buck, but didn't get any shots) and the other half fly fishing a beautiful little tributary of the Current. Such amazing country down there. When I moved to Missouri, I couldn't have possibly imagined there would be anything like this here.

Not really very weird for an OAF thread. Pretty typical actually... If it goes past two pages it's gonna be a disaster.

The Ozarks are blessed with a better than average percentage of good water that is open to everyone, which is a large part of why this is one of the better fishing destinations in the country...But it's a constant fight, and it's just a matter of time until someone like Donny Beavers sets his sights on the region and tries to by up as much good water as possible for "fishing clubs" only open to those who can pay extremely hefty amounts of money. It's happening in most good fishing destinations across the country and it could happen here. Indeed, it has to an extent, with some of the "trout farms" that have bought up good spring creeks, although to their credit most of those places have rates that most people can afford, if only occasionally. Personally I don't have much of a problem with private campgrounds or other people that own land along the river charging $5 or $10 for fishing access. That's a whole lot better than them selling their land to someone who would charge 10 times as much, or deny access altogether.

Nice, looks like a very good trip. It's too long since I've been on my favorite little trout creeks. In a couple weeks when I'm done deer hunting I'll have to change that.

I imagine that the folks at Ozark Mountain would let you camp there then, though I guess I'm not 100% sure. It's a nice place anyway, infinitely better than Montauk campground and closer to the blue ribbon water. I mostly just camp on the river anymore, but if I've stayed there a few times and if I were going to stay in a campground that's where I'd go.

Most of the areas have probably just been stocked this week, or will be in the next few days. Things should be in full swing within the next week.