Great Trip!

[Troutdude]

Friday 12/9/2011:

Drove down to Bennet on Friday and got the line in the water around 2 pm. Had moderate success with about 8 to hand in the park. Siren sounded and I headed back to Sand Springs where we were staying and hit their access point for about 45 min. Holy cow!!!! Caught a 16" smallie and a 12" on back to back casts. Sweet!!! Everything caught on an olive wooly bugger, no need to change, as I missed around a dozen takes. I know, I need to sharpen my skills.

Saturday 12/10/2011:

Loaded up my Wenonah Spirit II and got on the river at Sand Springs about 9:45. Started slaying the rainbows from the get go and it didn't stop. Half mile down from the last MDC access brought another 16" smallie to hand. I'm on fire, I'm thinking. Rainbows continue to hit consistently, all day. I honestly lost track. Awesome!!!! Found a nice hole with a couple of browns that came to hand a few miles down from the last MDC access. One 14" one 16" . Slightly up-river from NRO I landed two large mouth back to back. Everything today was taken evenly between an olive wooly bugger and with my spinning rod casting a spinner with either a ginger, cream or brown maribou jig. Again, I have no idea how many rainbows came to hand, lost track. EPIC!!!

Saw my first hellbender in the wild, must have been between 18" and 20", crazy prehistoric looking creature! Also saw tons of eagles, a pileated wood-pecker, (it was enormous) and a couple of otters. One carrying a large mouth along the bank that was so big it kept on tripping over the thing, very funny! Had the river to ourselves, not another boat to be seen all day. A great day, to say the least!

All fish were released to fight another day.

[Al Agnew]

The hellbender was the coolest thing of all on what sounds like a great trip. Nice to know the Niangua still holds hellbenders!

[mic]

Sounds like your skills are fine. That is one hell of a trip.

[XP 590]

May just need to sharpen your hook a little! I got a hook sharpener recently and I think it does make a difference. I love throwing woolies in that whole area, definitely my go-to fly on the Niangua. I've read that the fish are often coming at woolies from the rear, they may bat at the tail or try to inhale it from that end. If I miss too many, I'll sometimes pinch off a little of the tail. Another technique I read about, and tried with some success, is to drop the rod tip down after a missed hit and let all the tension off the wooly, the fish will often take a 2nd grab at it. Nothing like that kind of tight line fishing where they yank the line out of your hand.

Thanks for the report.

[Wayne SW/MO]

It was good to hear about the hellbender. There were some in the river as late as the 80's but the river has changed a lot since then. The gravel has filled in a lot of their potential cover.

[Scooper]

Thanks for the report. The Niangua's low water levels should start to recover after the rains last week and more forecast in the next 3 days. Nice to hear you saw a hellbender. Their numbers have dropped substantially in the past 20 years according to the MDC and no one knows why. Everything from herbicide to trace levels of birth control hormones have been speculated as reasons why. Back in the 1970s when I was attending MU, we took a field trip for a herpetology class in southern Missouri. Over the course of that weekend in late April, we tried to catch and identify as many species of reptiles and amphibians as possible. We stopped at the 64 bridge over the Niangua to see see if we could catch any hellbenders. We probably caught 10-15 in about an hour. Nowadays, as I understand it, you would be lucky to see one in that time.