Hwy 8 To Scotts Ford

[ColdWaterFshr]

Thanks for the report and glad you got to put the boat on finally.

Its a fickle river, thats for sure. The odd trip that I do fairly well keeps me coming back just enough to swear that I'll never go back again, but then I always do. I bet the streamer bite could be really good, especially in the drifter, if you caught it when it was on a nice steady rise with the water slightly off color. Like tomorrow morning. Lets go!

[stlskyline]

I fished outside the park on Sunday and it was windy. I believe I saw you and the drift boat fishing at the spring. Ended up landing 6, 4 rainbows and 2 browns, oh and 2 chubs. Drifting a MH leech under indicator at about 7 feet. The jet boat came and went throughout the day, but when they came up, they'd get right on top of my I indicator and I'd move. It did suck as on my way down from StL I got a speeding ticket in Crawford county by MHP. I guess it was a caused by a good dose of coffee, slow big rigs, Steve Earle and stupidity. All in all it was a good day.

[MattTucker]

Yeah, it was us (only drift boat out on Saturday). Out of curiosity, did you see the guy fishing inside the park (above the falls)? I thought the park was closed, but it was too loud to say something over the river and I didn't feel like rowing over to shore. You should have said hello, i would have tossed you a beer.

[stlskyline]

I did see the guys fishing in the park...only one guy who was fly fishing just above the bridge .....as we walked down to the outside of the park...didn't say anything...just laughted. I thought he might have special privileges. I figured after getting the ticket. the last thing I needed was to get into an argument. Sorry I missed the beer, but I brought the flask. We started fishing just above the spring and eventually crossed so we could fish on the nice gravel bar below the spring entrance to the river.

[hank franklin]

Nice report, I imagine you saw eagles? Looking forward to the pictures. I didn't make it down.

I always get confused with Cardiac and Suicide. I've actually never walked in from Cardiac, always Suicide. Suicide Hill thus is visible in this photo, the far-off ridge. I'm not sure where the Cardiac trail actually hits the Meramec. So in this regard maybe this chute is below Cardiac, though it's clearly above Suicide.

[Greasy B]

The Cardiac trail meets the river at the head of the pool
just up from that gravel bar. There was a good shoal with a deep eddy that was always
the first spot to fish after walking down the hill. I have a lot of fond
memories fishing that part of the river. A while back someone on this forum
wrote a dear Jane letter about that river, something about a love lost because
she was just a shell of her former self, it struck a chord with me.

[hank franklin]

Yeah, when I first got into fishing this was one of my go-to haunts. This was early to mid-late 90's, it was very consistent and I pretty much always caught fish. The water right at the foot of the Suicide trail almost always gave up something. The reach from Suicide up to the gravel bar pictured above was my favorite, you could fish through there all day and catch em consistently.

I also liked to walk in at the Spring park and then bushwhack downstream. Here again, very consistent and often with big numbers. About mid-way between the spring and Dry Fork used to be a deeper shelf type of feature, one year I caught them by the handful off there, one after the other, including the biggest trout I ever caught, a 24-inch or so rainbow that I released. One of my first big smallmouth was also caught through there, on river right against a cut bank in 4-foot of water. The cut bank remains but the deep chute is filled in.

The area above and below Dry Fork of course used to be never-fail. Just below the Dry Fork entry used to be a very deep hole; it's still there (or was last year) but it is not as deep as it used to be. One year we hit it just right and literally caught them one after the other.

Not sure when the fishing went south, maybe mid 2000's or so. The last several trips it seems have been very poor. No idea why. Probably the most disappointing to me is the stretch below the spring to Dry Fork used to be much richer in terms of habitat and fishing features. Deeper holes, deeper flowing chutes, etc. Maybe it's low water or just selective memory or what but it seems this stretch is just flat, shallow and feature-less these days. I'd be interested to hear if others have had the same experience.