Friday Float

[hank franklin]

Friday was a scheduled float trip for a week or two. The Thursday rains had swelled streams of the Meramec basin to chocolate milk. Huzzah was raging. Call to Bass River and he had chocolate on the Courtois. Skip's 800 number at Greens for whatever reason did n't work, but Cook Station gage was climbing like an early 2000's stock market.

But Meramec gage at Steelville was hardly bumping. What up with that? We went down for a look. Water at 19 bridge still had green hue to it. Dropped a truck at Bird's Nest, ran down to Riverview and were in smallmouth 10 minutes into the trip. River had good volume and flow the whole way but we found smallmouth holding in the quieter gurgling water. Picked up about 10 all told, including one at this spring entry in pic attached. What does one call this spring? It's not referenced in Oz Hawksley.

Anyway, we took out mid-afternoon at Bird's Nest. The surge from above was coming however, as when we hit Riverview to pick up the truck river was muddying. Later checking the gages the river rose about 2.5 feet from mid-afternoon Friday into the evening. So we hit that sucker at just the right time.

Just goes to show you, there are always rivers to be run, fish to be caught. You just gotta know where to look.

[cwc87]

That would be fishing spring probably the most gigged area on the meramec.