Winter Trout Fishing

[joeD]

Big jerkbaits. For big trout. For big smallies. For the Current. For the Meramec. For winter.

[FishinCricket]

Big jerkbaits. For big trout. For big smallies. For the Current. For the Meramec. For winter.

well said.. (just remember that the parks all have single hook fly rules)

[brownieman]

Myself, almost all my larger browns (25" plus) have always come during the winter months. Snow, ice just seems fitting to me for a cold water species like trout.

Call me an idiot but I enjoy fishing during the winter although I do get tired of dipping my rod in the water every 2 or 3 casts to keep the ice beat off the eyes of my rod. Since my Brittany died years ago I don't hunt much anymore. Generally when all the deer hunters are gearing up so am I... but for fishing not hunting.

In years past I have actually had deer hunters hear me along the river and try to sneak up on me while I'm wading up the river...least one has never taken a shot at me, lol. Used to I would fish as long as the temp was above 15 degrees or so.

Did have a close call (probably several) when I took my ex-brother in law fishing on a day about 20 degrees or so...not being real river wise he got a little close to a rootwad, lost his footing and took a complete dunk. Several miles from our rig I got a fire going fast as I could, got him out of his wet clothes and into my outer layer and dried him and his clothes out...coulda been a real bad situation thankfully I always carry some fire starter sticks with me in cold weather...can't remember how many little fires I've built along the river just to thaw my hands out some and knock the chill off.

The fish in my avatar is a 31 incher and he was caught if memory serves me right around the end of January.

I'll agree with joeD 100%...big bait big fish, that one came on a 7" rapala.

I'm not as young and gritty as I used to be but I still enjoy winter fishing for trout more than any other time of year. The cold water temp doesn't affect the feeding habits of trout but warmer water species metabolism slows considerably in the colder temps and they don't feed as much as opposed to warmer water temps.

One of the main things I enjoy about fishing when it's dog a$$ cold is you'll see very few other fisherman if any all day and seldom any conoes...to me that's a big plus.

In my book the fishin season is just about to start...to each their own, everyone else can hunt, I'll stick to fishin.

later on

bm

[fishinwrench]

Myself, almost all my larger browns (25" plus) have always come during the winter months. Snow, ice just seems fitting to me for a cold water species like trout.

Call me an idiot but I enjoy fishing during the winter although I do get tired of dipping my rod in the water every 2 or 3 casts to keep the ice beat off the eyes of my rod. Since my Brittany died years ago I don't hunt much anymore. Generally when all the deer hunters are gearing up so am I... but for fishing not hunting.

In years past I have actually had deer hunters hear me along the river and try to sneak up on me while I'm wading up the river...least one has never taken a shot at me, lol. Used to I would fish as long as the temp was above 15 degrees or so.

Did have a close call (probably several) when I took my ex-brother in law fishing on a day about 20 degrees or so...not being real river wise he got a little close to a rootwad, lost his footing and took a complete dunk. Several miles from our rig I got a fire going fast as I could, got him out of his wet clothes and into my outer layer and dried him and his clothes out...coulda been a real bad situation thankfully I always carry some fire starter sticks with me in cold weather...can't remember how many little fires I've built along the river just to thaw my hands out some and knock the chill off.

The fish in my avatar is a 31 incher and he was caught if memory serves me right around the end of January.

I'll agree with joeD 100%...big bait big fish, that one came on a 7" rapala.

I'm not as young and gritty as I used to be but I still enjoy winter fishing for trout more than any other time of year. The cold water temp doesn't affect the feeding habits of trout but warmer water species metabolism slows considerably in the colder temps and they don't feed as much as opposed to warmer water temps.

One of the main things I enjoy about fishing when it's dog a$$ cold is you'll see very few other fisherman if any all day and seldom any conoes...to me that's a big plus.

In my book the fishin season is just about to start...to each their own, everyone else can hunt, I'll stick to fishin.

later on

bm

Yep, a Casey's pizza and some of that cowboy coffee of yours is starting to sound pretty darn good.

[Buckshotdad1960]

Just ignore this because I’m in one of those moods probably brought on by lack of omega 3! I still haven’t found the crappie yet, again, probably because there are none around here. Or maybe the right dude just hasn’t picked up on my Batman signal yet! Only picture the image of a crappie on the moon. Anyway, I had to baby sit my grandson today, all 1 and ½ years of him. He’s a good kid but this afternoon he was testing my resolve not to kill my offspring! LOL It’s a good thing that I have watched enough cheesy B rated karate films to make me a certified self imposed kung fu master because when I figured out he was taking my kindness for weakness I was forced to use the iron claw and the 12 deadly kicks of death to straighten him up! LOL He was a good kid by the time his parents picked him up. However at my age having to give up that much Jew, as in Jew don’t know who you’re messing with, takes a lot out of ya! Can anyone out there relate to this?

With the house now reclaimed with peace and quite I went back to the game room where I put in a CD of the living planet. I was watching the segment on deep oceans and it wasn’t to long before I found myself stretched out on the couch looking for one of those old man naps. I must have had the TV up to loud because I was having the strangest dream. I dreamt I was a sword fish swimming around in the ocean looking for food. It wasn’t long and I found a school of giant minnows (I don’t know what they were) and began munching them like pop corn. Then from out of the blue comes this big whale shark and sucks them all up with one gulp. I put my fins on my hips and said, hey dude, do you mind, I was fishing here! Heck, I was starving too. Then the whale shark replied, hey buddy, you don’t own the ocean! That pissed me off so I said oh yeah, well I own this, and I rammed him in the side with my sword. I must have stuck him deep because I couldn’t pull out. The whale shark started to cry and said I’m gonna tell my dad then headed for the deep and I thought oh sh*t, this big old boy is just a kid. I wonder what his dad looks like. I tried even harder to get away but couldn’t. I struggled so hard to get away I woke myself up! I turned that darn TV off!

I thought to myself in my dazed and confused deep sleep state, that’s what I don’t like about trout parks. Their too crowded. There’s always some rude idiot throwing in where you just caught one. Someone’s always catching your line. Once or twice I can handle. Five or six times I’m looking for my service revolver! LOL I like to get away from the crowd, that’s the way it was meant to be, not shoulder to shoulder! In fact that’s probably why I gave up trout fishing now that I think about it. I fished for trout all the time as a kid. Now I’ve caught some whoppers in the 6-10lbs class down in Saddle Brook on Bull Creek but as a kid the biggest rainbow I had caught might have, with me holding my thumb on the scale, tipped the three pound mark. Which brings me to another thing about trout parks I don’t like. No matter how much you know, no matter how hard you fish, no matter how many dues you pay there’s always some goofy idiot who gets lucky and catches all the big fish. I’ve seen it I don’t know how many times. You come walking around the bend and there stands a crowd of people congratulating the idiot on his catch like he’s angler of the year and clearly you can see he’s not. He’s always weird and scraggly looking, missing half his teeth and using miss matched equipment. The story’s always the same too. Well, Golly gee wiz I don’t even know what I’m doing, I just got here and I threw in with this thingy a bobber here what ever it is and thought I got snagged! I screamed for bob cuzz I sh*t my pants but he didn’t hear me cuzz he went back for beer and I thought he was gonna break my line or maybe my pole but my fire line didn’t break and my ugly stick held together like the commercial said it would and I got lucky and my hook didn’t come out cuzz I hooked him in the throat! Does anyone know how to clean this?

I don’t know about you but when I hear the story I always have the same fantasy, I’m sitting on his chest with both hands around his neck screaming…DIE!….DIE!…DIE!..................AND DIE AGAN! LOL

Now here’s a story that’s hard to believe but proves my point. When I was a kid one of my cousins went to Merrimack Springs. He was a couple years older than me and about as goofy as the day is long. This guy had no business ever picking up a fishing pole and yet he caught his limit (5 fish) and not one of them weighed less than 8lbs! It’s true, I saw the picture in the news paper he had that clearly showed his goofy face and the fish! Now can someone please tell me how this can happen? It was as if he was fishing in the stock tank, you know what I mean; where they keep the fish they set aside for breeding purposes. Of course he couldn’t have cheated like that though or he would have gotten caught. Trust me this guy wasn’t smart enough to have gotten away with something like that. I hated him! Still do!

Here’s another quick story that I hope breaks your heart and helps prove my point. I grew up in Pulaski County in a town called Waynesville. We have a spring feed creek there that the DNR used to stock with Rainbow trout. Maybe they still do I don’t know because I haven’t been back there for years. Now, the very first time they stocked that creek they stocked it with brown trout. Every other time they stocked that creek after that they stocked it with rainbows. In the summer me and my friends would get together and jump off the wall into the spring to cool down. Sometimes people would come there with diving gear and go down in the spring. Personally I don’t like caving. I should know because I’ve been in a lot of them. But do to a near fatal mishap I’ll never set foot in another again and I sure wouldn’t have ever gone in one where your surrounded by cold water. But some people are crazy and every time these crazy people would come back up out of the spring they would tell stories of the monster brown and rainbow trout they would see just inside the entrance. I’ve caught trout there but never any monsters. Like all creeks and rivers they get reshaped every year by flooding where by old holes get covered up and new ones get dug out.

One year when I was 14 I was fishing one afternoon just below the town bridge not to far away from the spring as the crow flies. I didn’t see it at first but when it moved over the clear bottom out of the moss I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was the biggest trout I had ever seen and it had a hooked jaw. I didn’t know what it was but it wasn’t a rainbow that was for sure. It turned out to be a brown trout. I fished for it for about an hour, I threw every thing I had at it and I couldn’t even get it to look at me. I fished that creek every day and had no idea where that fish came from. Looking back of course it must have come out of the spring. I had already been up and down the creek and was the only one fishing so I just left my pole and tackle there and ran the 2 blocks to my friend’s house to get his help. My buddy Allen didn’t believe me at first. At 14 Allen was the best fisherman I knew and I was the best he knew. Allen had been abandoned by his parents and his grandparents were raising him. They spoiled him with every rod and lure they could find, he had it all. Finally he said ok, you better not be lying and grabbed his snag rod. I said what are you doing, this is a trout? He said yes but if you couldn’t catch it then it can’t be caught so I’m going to try another idea. He wanted to snag it!

When he saw it, it took him a couple of minutes to calm down. The greatest fisherman I knew couldn’t even tie his own hook on; I had to do it for him! Snagging that fish wasn’t easy but about a half hour later he did the imposable and snagged into it. What a moment that was! We were hanging on a little ledge and sure enough he slipped in the water but like the trooper he was he didn’t care he just went in further up to his neck and crossed the creek so he would be able to have all the room he needed to fight the fish but no sooner did he get there then the fish came off! He couldn’t see the fish from that side so he crossed back over and the fish went back to the original spot where he had first hooked it. It was Leary now and it took him about an hour to hook it again. This time we both crossed the creek and he fought that fish up and down the bank. Finally he wore it down enough to get it near the bank and just when we thought we were going to get it the darn fish got off again. It was the trill of victory and the agony of defeat all rolled into one. We crossed back over to try it again but by this time it was getting dark and we couldn’t find or see the fish. I had to get home before dark or risk a beating from my psychopathic mother and I lived a mile away so we made a pact with each other right there and then not to breathe a word about the fish to anyone and meet back the next day to try and get it. And with that I left him standing there casting in the dark.

For the next three days we searched every where for that fish but never seen it again. We thought it must have died. As the days went by we told others about the fish but no one believed us. Then two weeks later Allen, the two Taylor boys and a punk by the name of Darrel where all swimming just down river from where I had originally found the fish and they saw it. Allen ran home and grabbed the snag pole and hooked into it for the third time and again it got away. The next day the very same 4 sneaky snakes again found the fish but this time it had moved back up river to the original place I had found it and again the same scenario played out. (only without me) Allen snagged into it 2 more times with it getting off each time only this time when it got off for the second time the fish was worn out and in shallow water so Darrel jumps on it like it’s a football and hand catches it. Just for the record I would like to point out in case by chance Allen is reading this (you bast***) that no one told me that any of this was going on. I found all this out after the fact when I see Darrel’s picture in the paper holding up a 9lb brown trout. He said he caught it on cheese but nothing could be further from the truth. More like he was cutting the cheese! And he was holding up the good side of the fish for the picture because the other side had to of had at least 5 holes in it. From what I understand after a little investigating, nothing was even said about the holes in the fish. Now only Darrel could have gotten away with that! It must pay to have a rich daddy! Anyway after that I hated Darrel! Still do!

[Ham]

Zig Jigs

[Paola Cat]

Fishin' in the cold months .... nothing like it. Solitude and some potential great fishing. I like the Current the best in the winter. I also like the Niangua ..... can be awesome if you catch it right.

I'm with Cricket on the Suzy Hole at Bennett. I've been known to ditch the fly rod (yes I said it) to get in on some of that Goggle-eye and SMB action. PC

[Murdoc]

Winter fishing!!!!!!!!!!! is bundling up next to God's creation!! LOVE IT!!!!!

[Wayne SW/MO]

I hope it isn't legal to keep them... Although, I really don't think we should be allowed to keep smallies anywhere... But that's another subject for another thread.

It is illegal to keep them, but some do and finding an agent can be tough.

[Brian K. Shaffer]

Any outlook for Roaring River shootout ?

Opening day.. best fish of the day buys all the others guys tag money ?

That wound be nice.

Or other stipulations... you name them ... for a R/R shootout :

OPENING DAY c/r season - rain or shine - smallest fish - biggest fish

? - Brian