Pointe Royale

[Trevor K]

Hey guys,

I'll be down at Pointe Royale over Thanksgiving and am hoping to do some fishing. Does anybody have any advice on how to wade fish that area? I've been checking out the articles on ozarkanglers.com. I'd like to do some night fishing. Is it better when there is a full moon or new moon?

[dgames]

I stayed at pointe royale last weekend and fished from 11pm to midnight on both Friday and Saturday night. Caught 2 fish during the night fishing Friday and 3 on Saturday night and had several other strikes and fish on. Nothing big though.

I am no expert at night fishing, in fact this was the first time I had ever successfully caught fish on the fly rod in the dark. I was casting a PMS across and letting it swing downstream and stripping it partway back in. Friday night I was very much blind, they were running 3 units when we got there in the afternoon and I never got to see the water down in daylight. The water was down by the time I started fishing at 11pm, but I really didn't know the lay of the land very well. I also found myself struggling with my casting a bit in the dark. I didn't realize how much I rely on visual reference on the forward cast to keep my timing down. I found myself hitting the water a fair amount on my forward false casts. I was also probably being on the ultra careful side to not get too tight with my loops because I didn't want any tangles to deal with in the dark or to get a fly in the eye as I obviously wasn't wearing sunglasses. THe other thing that threw me off a little was that it seemed really hard to judge how far I had cast.

I fished quite a bit through the day Saturday, so I had a lot better feel for where everything was Saturday night, so I felt a little more comfortable. However, I still struggled a little bit with casting and having a sense of where my fly was while retrieving it. Friday I had pretty much stayed in one spot - right where the trail comes down to the river from the parking lot. Saturday, I walked upstream 200-300 ft and then worked my way down to the deeper water below where the trail hits the river. THere was a ton of fish in the deeper water during the day, but surprisingly, all the fish I caught that night were in the narrower upper section. I did miss a couple down in the lower section though.

If I had any advice, it would be to keep your rig simple and get it rigged ahead of time. I head a headlamp on, but never did turn it on.