Best Fishing Memories Of 2011

[Al Agnew]

So since we finally got a blast of Arctic cold today, I thought it might be time to dredge up some memories of the past year to keep us warm.

For me, I had some of the best big trout fly fishing I've ever had, both in Missouri and in Montana. The April afternoon on the Yellowstone when I experienced about three hours of the best streamer fishing, with 13 fish from 17 to 22 inches, and a 21-22 inch brown and a rainbow of the same size on dry flies as a bonus. The May day on the upper Current, with the water high and murky, fishing with my buddies Montana Tom and Missouri Tom, when we all caught browns well over 20 inches. The day with the two of them on a small Missouri trout stream which shall not be named, where I caught a 22 inch rainbow.

And then I caught the largest fish I've ever caught on a fly rod...a 44 inch grass carp from my pond on a 4 weight.

As for smallmouth...I haven't reported this one before. Didn't really wish to, because it might be almost hard to believe. But here goes...

My brother wanted to go on a float trip on the wonderful small stream where I'd taken him last year and we caught so many fish, including his biggest stream smallie, a 20 plus incher. But I'd just been on a three day trip on it and didn't do too well. So I was racking my brain trying to think of a creek to show him, one he hadn't floated before, and where we might get into some decent fishing. Of course, I won't name the creek I finally decided upon. It is another of those marginally floatable streams, and while it isn't as wild and remote as a couple of others, it is a very pretty stream. It's also one where there is no way you'll ever find somebody to shuttle you for a float, so we both had to drive separate vehicles to it. We dropped off his truck at the take-out at daylight and drove to the put-in, about ten miles upriver. There were a couple of guys trapping minnows at the informal access, planning on using them to wade upstream from there. Local guys. I kinda figured that since they were using minnows, they'd probably be keeping a bunch of fish. But we talked for a while and they said they never kept smallies, though they would be keeping some goggle-eye.

We started down the creek in the early morning mist. The sun was just beginning to show, and for a bit it was coming up straight downstream, giving the fog a golden tint that was breathtakingly beautiful. We reached the first decent pool, and Don got a strike from a big smallie on topwater. It didn't get hooked, but I cast back into the same area and there was another blow-up, which turned out to be a 17 incher. We caught a couple smaller ones from that pool, and in the next pool, Don caught a fat 19 inch largemouth.

I remember those first fish, but I have to say I don't really remember everything we caught...because we caught so many, and had blow-ups from so many more. This creek is NOT good habitat. It has a lot of shallow water, pools that are no more than two or three feet deep at most, with a lot of rock. Some pools will never be any deeper because they have bedrock bottoms, but most have filled in considerably with gravel. There is a simple reason for that. On the headwaters of this watershed there is a lot of agriculture and quite a few housing developments. The more development there is in the watershed, the more gravel ends up in the stream.

But the length of the float, the low volume (riffles were almost never floatable without a lot of scraping bottom, and in many we had to get out and walk), and the inconvenient accesses mean that this creek isn't pounded to death. And maybe one other reason is because of the rather poor habitat. I've floated this creek in the past when the pools were in better shape, and the fishing has always been good but back then a lot of people fished it. Now, it just doesn't look as good. Other than that, I can't explain why it had so many big fish this year. But here's the score as near as my brother and I remember it...we kept count of the number of fish, but didn't do really well remembering to keep score of the big ones. We ended up with 105 bass, mostly smallmouth. We think that between the two of us we caught 15-17 smallies between 17 and 19.5 inches (didn't quite beat 20 inches, but came very close). And we know that we had strikes from at least twice as many big fish as we actually caught. The fishing was nothing short of amazing. Don caught a few fish on jigs, which he likes to fish, but nearly all the bigger ones came on topwater, on walk the dog lures.

And Don was impressed with the beauty of this stream, with its very clear water and big, impressive bluffs. It was simply an unbelievable day, one of those days that many years later, the two of us will be talking fishing and one will say, "Remember that day on **** Creek?"

[mic]

Your right, I don't believe you...what is the name of the creek again?

[Mitch f]

The special part of that story to me was the fact you got to spend it with your brother. The only time I ever caught that many smallies was on the Gasconade on labor day with my brother as well, or on the Menominee river. The fact they were mostly on topwater is even more special! I know the topwater is always your first choice in the summer. I'm mainly a jig fisherman like your brother but I usually only fish topwater until 9:00 or 10:00 o'clock, unless I never have a reason to put it down. It sounds like that was one of those days!

DON'T TELL HIM AL!!! :)

[Guest]

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[Outside Bend]

Good read Al, and great fish Saluki!

I didn't fish as much as I would've liked in 2011, lots of long workweeks cut into fishing time. But probably my favorite was the handful of times I went down to the Current and fished the Cicada hatch- ridiculously big fish coming up and slurping big gaudy dry flies is always fun

[Greasy B]

Great year, indeed. Probably my most memorable trip was when my nephew Art and I floated overnight on our own marginally floatable no name creek. Art had been on only a few canoe floats, always with me on the paddle. This trip Art and I went solo, Art’s first time paddling his own canoe. Typically mid July had this water barely passable, dragging, walking required. The day before our float the area had a soaking rain. When we got to our put in you could see that the water had risen just a bit and was still clear as ever. We went ahead up the creek to the next slab. The water was perfect, clear, cool and up about 8”-10”. I was a little concerned; this is pretty tricky water, lots of blind corners and down trees. I was ahead of Art most of the weekend, whenever I went through I tight spot I would turn back to see Art drawing, drawing and prying his paddle, ducking, dodging limbs. As it turned out Art is as good at handle a canoe solo as he is at catching stream smallmouth, he’s way good.

The first day we shared the river with three people and a big dog in tubes and a canoe, they were having a blast, swimming, throwing sticks to the dog and carrying on. Usually this would bug the crap out of me but on this day they stayed way ahead of us, mostly all we heard was laughter in the distance, the fish seemed unaffected. When we finally caught up we introduced ourselves, they noticed we had overnight gear and invited us to stay on their property. How rare is that? Great folks. We camped just downstream from the recommended spot on a gravel bar that did not have any footprints or fire rings. What a great evening we had, cooked up some big steaks, gazed at the stars and enjoyed the peace and quiet, paradise.

The second day was just about perfect. We enjoyed the creek with no one but us fishing. It was one of those days where everywhere there should have been a bass there was a bass. Whenever Art would catch up with me he had a Spit eating grin from the fine smallmouth he was catching along with white knuckles from the canoe ride. Art had experience Ozark float fishing at its finest and I caught my best smallmouth and largemouth of the year, a memorable trip indeed

[laker67]

It is really hard to pin point a "single" trip outweighing another during the 2011 season. I had so many good trips with big fish caught. It has been my best season for big numbers and big fish since 2005. Seventy lunkers caught in 2011 with 3 of those over 10lb.

Reading the replies above, it appears that alot of good fish were caught, and alot of great times were had. Congrats to all.

[LittleRedFisherman]

Here's a few of mine from the past year! Had to put a few on here to show how us "flatlander" fish sometimes..lol. I think my favorite is the 4th down, I took some friends of mine fishing, the first time they had ever trout fished, Cade is in 8th grade, and he caught his first trout, it was awesome to watch his excitment! The last pic isn't a fish pic, but it's my favorite pic I took last year while picking cotton. The haze was just right with the sun to snap a neat pic.

[ColdWaterFshr]

2011 was a good year for ole PD. Didn't get out as much as I wanted, what with coaching soccer, baseball, and running kids to and fro, but mostly it was a dandy. Seems like I caught more big fish than usual, but fewer overall.

Jan - can't remember

Feb - fished that pay per pound place south of Springfield with my brothers, caught 20 lbs of fish in about 10 minutes, paid the $100 tab and left with sacks of fillets. Also had WFT 2nd outing - always a good time, watched Dennis fall in river 2 or 3 times

Mar - Hoff and I hit a local creek and didn't catch much, except for a19 inch smallie that slammed a buzzbait

April - can't remember except that it rained and was colder than usual

May - might've hit the upper Courtouis with Hoffmeyer, skinny water, very few fish, got sunburned

early June - can't remember - might've hit a creek or two with Hoff and Blanner and I think Al met up with us as well, had that miserable nighttime boat drag out of that one access; also took family to Big Piney for a short float, rained and stormed like the dickens one night, rescued wife from large spider that was preparing to kill her

late June - bought me a Curado for fathers day then fished with Gavin, Al, Jeremy, Mitch, Cricket on the middle Gasconade and Big Piney -- good times, except for that 17 miles of paddling

July - drawing a blank, think I lived at the ballparks; went to Florida

August - remember sweating and drinking cold beer

Sept -- can't remember; hiked to Angels Landing out in Zion National Park - scared crap out of me

Oct - vaguely remember hitting the Little Piney and doing pretty well for a couple hours

Nov - showed my brother in law and his son from Green Bay the Eleven Point River - their first time. Had a 80 degree weekend, we caught fish like crazy, swam in the river and had a great time

Dec - got out maybe once to Blue Springs, caught some dinks

[stlfisher]

Mine would be catching this brown on a Cicada fly I tied after consulting with Craig at Hargroves. It was one of those days in which it was miserabably hot and lot's of people out on the stream. Tried for a homerun shot and fished an area that doesn't seem much traffic...ended up with my largest brown to date.