The Chase Is On!

[FishinCricket]

The river and the spring are back down to extremely wadeable and pretty. I had to be in town in time to get my wife up and feed her breakfast, so it was a quick trip. Also I am in angst right now about the fly rod, so I chose to leave it at home, thinking I had better go with what I know..

Strapped on The new frog togg waders and tied on my trust spoon (which ain't caught a durn thing so far this year in the high water) and waded downstream (zone 4) from the spring to the rock ledges, which are highly visible and have bright blue pockets behind all the boulders.

25 casts and 20 fish! Not just any fish either, I had at least 5 good 2 pounders and one that may have went 20 inches and 3 pounds, but he chose the LDR option.. Plenty of dink bites (you could see them following and hitting, very exciting) and chasers to fill in the gaps. Even hooked two browns, one smallie, and a goggleeye. It's obviously on right now, eh?

Didn't have a camera along, but maybe one of you will be inspired and go in the next few days.. If so, feel free to provide us with some "fish porn".. LOL

Rainbow colored Kastmaster Spoons from Wally world..

Also, I will mention that the outfitters down here are reporting very low turnouts for canoes, so the aluminum hatch is apparently a few weeks behind schedule. I didn't see one canoe today, thought I will admit I was in and out quick..

[ozark trout fisher]

The river and the spring are back down to extremely wadeable and pretty. I had to be in town in time to get my wife up and feed her breakfast, so it was a quick trip. Also I am in angst right now about the fly rod, so I chose to leave it at home, thinking I had better go with what I know..

Strapped on The new frog togg waders and tied on my trust spoon (which ain't caught a durn thing so far this year in the high water) and waded downstream (zone 4) from the spring to the rock ledges, which are highly visible and have bright blue pockets behind all the boulders.

25 casts and 20 fish! Not just any fish either, I had at least 5 good 2 pounders and one that may have went 20 inches and 3 pounds, but he chose the LDR option.. Plenty of dink bites (you could see them following and hitting, very exciting) and chasers to fill in the gaps. Even hooked two browns, one smallie, and a goggleeye. It's obviously on right now, eh?

Didn't have a camera along, but maybe one of you will be inspired and go in the next few days.. If so, feel free to provide us with some "fish porn".. LOL

Rainbow colored Kastmaster Spoons from Wally world..

Also, I will mention that the outfitters down here are reporting very low turnouts for canoes, so the aluminum hatch is apparently a few weeks behind schedule. I didn't see one canoe today, thought I will admit I was in and out quick..

Thats impressive. Its been a long time since I've done that well on an Ozark stream. Thats a pretty incredible catch anywhere here in Missouri, let alone outside of a trout park.

By the way, read some of your articles from hub. They're excellent. Especially the one about trout fishing in the Ozarks. I write a few articles for ezine (its basically the same thing as hub), but there not nearly as good.

Heck, I learned more than a few things from it myself.

And by the way, I have "hobo dinner" after about every float fishing trip LOL

[DoveTail]

Sounds like a great morning. Maybe with the cooler temps the boat hatch isn't out yet. When summer heats up, I'm sure the floaters will.

[flyfishmaster]

Cricket,

Welcome to the wonderful world of wader fishing. So Are you still wanting my spare set? Or will your new set work for the rest of the year? Also 20 fish in 25 cast.... I will take the ratio any day. you dah man!

Later,

FFM

[FishinCricket]

Thats impressive. Its been a long time since I've done that well on an Ozark stream. Thats a pretty incredible catch anywhere here in Missouri, let alone outside of a trout park.

By the way, read some of your articles from hub. They're excellent. Especially the one about trout fishing in the Ozarks. I write a few articles for ezine (its basically the same thing as hub), but there not nearly as good.

Heck, I learned more than a few things from it myself.

And by the way, I have "hobo dinner" after about every float fishing trip LOL

Glad to hear you read it and actually enjoyed it.. I always nitpick my own work to death, LOL

I went home after having such a good morning and convinced my wife to go and float (with the promise that it would only take 4 hours to float from Bennett to NRO)... I know, I couldn't believe it either...

Turns out the bite was still on at the mouth of the spring and I had the wife hookin' up on a rattlin' crawdad within 100 yards of the put in. I tried to fish the kastmaster from the boat and hooked up a couple times, but the hook set is different when your moving downstream, and part of my comprimise with the wife was NO ANCHOR (dang it!).. So I switched to a swimmer too, but a little green Strike King Bitsy Minnow. She and I also ended up switching back and forth between lures (for some weird reason) later, so it's hard to remember what I picked up on what, but here's the final tally:

Patty:

6 hook sets on trout (one really big one, but my wife ain't much on settin' the hook or lettin' 'em fight)

4 trout to the boat, largest was 14 inches

3 chub minnows, largest was 4 inches (we hate these things! Nasty little buggers, got no use for 'em)

Cricket:

5 hook sets on trout (don't recall any monsters that got away)

2 rainbow to the boat

1 brown trout (been so long since I hooked a decent one that I had the wifey take a phone pic)

2 smallmouth, largest was a whoppin' 6 inches!

1 Goggle-eye 5 inches and fat as a tick

8 freakin' chub minnows! Largest was 7 inches! (did I mention we despise these things? LOL)

(I ain't countin' the dink perch either)

The brown was a really pretty one, and it fought like the dickens! I fought it for a good five minutes or more, and once I thought I had it settled and got set up for a picture he started up again! Flippin and floppin around like he wanted another fight.. If you look close at the picture you will see I had to get a pretty good grip on him in order to take the picture.. I felt bad about it, but I assure you he went right back into the stream and swam away when I was done with him...

Patty had that one that took her drag out straight downstream for a good five seconds, with her pointing the rod tip straight at it and me practically screaming "Hold your rod tip up!" and "Quit horsing him!" at the same time (which came out as "Honey, hold your rod..no...you gotta... baby, don't reel, turn your drag down.. that's the little knob on the top of the reel, baby.. NOOOOO, you gotta let him bend your rod, keep it up in the air! Oh, hell, just hand it to me!"), then it jumped. And spit both the freakin' treble hooks. And I am not relating a fish story when I non-comittally say it would have been the biggest fish of the day, maybe the biggest trout of the year for the Staggs family.. But alas, more work shall have to be done on her hookset and fish fighting technique... Especially if she intents to continue occupying the front of the boat... LOL

Anyway, the Aluminum hatch still wasn't that bad, but there were some folks coming out of the woodwork to swim.. Oh, and the snakes were out in force! We came within 15 feet of three different snakes, one of which was a 3 foot long cottonmouth! At least, it was a big long black snake creeping between the rocks and ledges in the water...

Hope you all can make it down soon to enjoy the river before it gets overrun.... Or the rains come back and return it to this again:

[FishinCricket]

Cricket,

Welcome to the wonderful world of wader fishing. So Are you still wanting my spare set? Or will your new set work for the rest of the year? Also 20 fish in 25 cast.... I will take the ratio any day. you dah man!

Later,

FFM

Yes, I still want that spare set, they were sweet! ( thought they weren't for sale? LOL) But, yes, my new set should work for me for quite a while (which translates to 6-9 months in guy talk, right? LOL), and they are nice and dry.. Nothing like the five gallon buckets I had before.

As for the great ratio this morning? #1 even a blind dog finds a bone every once in a while #2 I even out my average for the day by convincing the wife to go floating (see the above post) and #3 I didn't bring my fly rod with me, so today could have been even more perfect! LOL

(PS, I bought a stock of thingymabobbers, LOL)