Skeeter ZX190

I fished Sunday, October 6 in the lower area of Belt Creek. Water is low and gin clear. Didn't see many fish but was able to land 9. 1 brown, 1 cutthroat, 1 whitefish, and 6 rainbows. Gave it another go on October 8, but this time I went farther upstream into the Little Belt Mountains. Much better results. Probably my best day ever trout fishing. I caught 40. Also caught a Grand Slam+1. Brook, browns, rainbows, cutthroats, and some cuttbows. Biggest fish was the brown and it was 17 inches. Had several rainbows and cutthroat in the 14 to 15 inch range. Caught most of my fish on a france fly, size 20. I suspended it under a Caddis type dry fly. It's my own design but it is patterned after a foam front end loader. Weather has been gorgeous . Headed back to Missouri tomorrow.

My very first boat was a 16' Richline that I got in 1987. Not sure what year the boat was. It had a 10 hp Johnson with electric start. I put a foot controlled Minn Kota on the bow. Caught a lot of fish out of that boat from many places. One year my wife and I went up to Minnesota with it. We were in Duluth so I put it on Lake Superior. I launched and took it out past the jetty so I was on the main lake. I turned around and put it back on the trailer. Didn't want Gordon Lightfoot writing a song about me! 😁

The Decorah Visitors Center which is in downtown, has the trout fishing maps for all 4 counties of the Driftless area. These maps are free and show the public water with parking also marked.

I fished 3 different creeks on a quick trip up to the Iowa Driftless. North Bear, Pine Springs, and Waterloo. Caught fish in all 3 with it being an equal mix of browns and rainbows. No brookies but those 3 creeks aren't known for brook trout. Fished a dry-dropper. The dry was a size 14 Caddis pattern. The dropper that produced the best was a size 20 mustard colored Walt's worm. In the 6 hours of fishing that I did I probably caught around 50 fish. Biggest was in the 13 inch range. That's the good news. The bad news was the bugs. I have never seen anything like it. Primarily gnats. Might have been some mosquitoes mixed in there but the gnats were a plague. Hundreds of them constantly buzzing around your face. I only lasted 2 hours on my second day of fishing. When I got back to the truck I took off my hat and it was covered with gnats. I will NEVER go back in the summer. It's a beautiful area, but next time I'll go in the fall or spring.

Is the splash pad done and operational, or is it part of the 2025 plans?

Not sure who publishes them, but there are 4 county maps that show the public access trout streams in the Iowa Driftless. I believe you can get them at the Visitors Center in Decorah. Here is a picture of 2 of them as well as part of the map of Winneshiek County. Excellent resource if you get up that way.

I remember driving through Stockton after their tornado. Unbelievable destruction. But nothing topped the destruction I saw in Greensburg Kansas. My brother lives there and we went in to try and help him salvage a few things. That tornado was a mile wide and hit that town dead center. The town is a little over a mile wide so most of it was leveled. There were vehicles that you couldn't make out the brand or model. When we were there we saw a young lady walking around town in a blue checkered dress wearing ruby red slippers!

I read your post before I looked at who wrote it. First thing I thought was " that has to be a typo. No way somebody buys 28 dozen!". Then I looked at who wrote it and had a V8 revelation! 😃

Rik Hafer wrote a book about how rainbow trout ended up in Missouri. Fascinating read. He talks about Crane Creek and the myth of it being a pure strain of the McLoud trout from California. Puts a pretty big hole in that theory. I was thinking I watched a video produced by Chris and Amanda Miller and they talk about Crane Creek and how they were involved in a sampling DNA study to try and determine how pure they are. I've never heard the results though.

Is it also referred to as Old State Park?

We got 3 inches of rain in Belton from Saturday afternoon until Sunday morning. I heard that Adrian Missouri got 5 inches.

This topic started from a fishing report, went to Bigfoot, politics, and then to bridges. This must be the SLOW season! 😁

Any idea what the water temperature was?

February fishing. No ticks. No chiggers. No snakes.