How Is The Fishing For Trout On The Meramec?

[Al Agnew]

One of the problems with fishing the Meramec is that quite a few of the very best runs are full of logs, and very tough to fish without getting snagged every drift, especially the runs between the spring and Dry Fork. And the spring itself, as well as Dry Fork, can be very murky and keep the river quite murky. When it's murky, the fish can be up in shallow riffle water and most people overlook those places, fishing the deeper runs. Is the Current better? Yes, but the Current is also getting more and more pressure. It's really getting pounded these days. The Meramec is challenging to be sure, but you can catch fish from it. I like fishing it. Nymphs are always good. Pick your nymphs by water conditions. Any good, proven nymph--hare's ears, Prince nymphs, pheasant tails, scuds, etc--will work, but size is important. When the water is clear, go fairly small, like size 16, when it's murky, go bigger, size 12 or so. Use a two nymph rig with plenty of weight to get it down in the faster water. What I usually do when fishing the Meramec is wade one way fishing the two nymph rig and concentrating on faster water, and when I've waded as far as I want to go, I put on a big attractor dry fly with a small nymph dropper and fish that rig through the slower water on the way back. Or if the water is murky I'll put on a streamer and fish it through the slower water on the return.

[Gavin]

The Meramec is an interesting fishery...It has a fine gravel bottom that shifts around alot during high water events, plus there arent allot of hard bottomed riffle areas with chunk rock to support bigger food forms like craws, sculpin...Wood seems to rule because there arent many big rocks. Its mostly a minnow and small bug river IMO. There are some good fish, but they arent easy, or abundant.

[ColdWaterFshr]

This past weekend the Current fished a lot like the Meramec. Had to work hard for very few fish. Didn't even see many fish.

[joeD]

The Current is absolutely getting pounded. Weekly, certainly, daily, just about. Not the Meramec though. But here's the thing, for me anyway. One has a better chance, pressure notwithstanding, of catching more, and bigger, trophy size included (say 5 lbs plus), trout on the Current than the Meramec. Yes, the Current can be vexing, but the potential on any given cast is so much greater than any stretch on the Meramec. Honestly, there are just a scant few areas that reliably (if that) hold trout on the M. Your chance of catching a big, bruising, brown trout is negligible. Unlike the Current, picture evidence is almost non-existent.

Time is running out. Fishing days are finite and, increasingly it seems, harder to come by. Use them wisely.

[fishinwrench]

Time is running out. Fishing days are finite and, increasingly it seems, harder to come by. Use them wisely.

Signature worthy. Stolen!

[ozark trout fisher]

Trying to compare the upper Current and the Meramec Red Ribbon water is a bit like comparing the Jacks Fork and the Bourbeuse as smallmouth streams. They're just too different. The Current is really just a small spring creek that's hardly even floatable, steady flow, water temperatures that rarely leave the 55-64 range. And it's almost 100% spring-fed. The pools and riffles change a fair amount with big floods, but not nearly as much as the Meramec. And, big surprise, it's a consistently really solid trout stream, probably one of the three or four best in Missouri.

The Meramec Red Ribbon stretch on the other hand is pretty big river, and only fed partially by springs. The water temperatures vary wildly, getting well into the 70s in some areas during the summer, and very cold during the winter. After every big flood, it looks like more or less a completely different river. The flow is anything but steady, varying from below 200 CFS in times of drought to 20,000 or more in times of flood. Is that a recipe for consistent trout fishing? Of course not. But it's still a pretty decent trout stream, at least in a few of the better stretches. That in itself is actually pretty amazing. And when things do go well on that river, I think it's a lot more satisfying than on the Current, where unless the conditions are terrible or you're really having difficulties you'll almost always catch fish.

Here's the final difference that really comes close to evening the two out: everyone knows that the Current is the better trout stream, and it's really paying the price right now with all the pressure. I don't think it actually hurts the fishing all that much, but it sure does hurt the atmosphere. Baptist and Tan Vat can be real zoos on the weekends throughout the year, and all the time during the summer. Those of us wanting a little solitude can usually find it in less popular parts of the river, but you'll almost never have the river to yourself the way you sometimes can on the Meramec outside of floating season.

[hank franklin]

I love the Meramec trout water, I just never catch any fish there.