Stream Hopping

[Riverwhy]

I had a friend drive in from northern Illinios Monday afternoon and wanted to experience a little Missouri trout fishing. Now, I'm mostly a smallmouth bass guy but I set up a little trip to several different trout streams. We started out Monday afternoon at Westover Farms and engaged their local guide Tom to show us the ropes. The setting at Westover was just terrific. The spring is split into two sections with one being a traditional Missouri stream through a wooded setting and the remainder through a prairie type setting meandering through a meadow with numerouse short runs and fast chutes of water. We mostly fished the lower end of the stream where the two streams rejoin to form a larger and deeper water system. We strictly fly fished with a large hopper or similiar bugs as our top indicator and pheasant tails, hares ears, and midges as our droppers. We had steady action all afternoon and evening with my highlight being a double with a rainbow on both of my flies at once. That evening we stayed at the Lake House and grilled steaks and enjoyed the fireplace. The accomodations at this place are simply terrific.

The next morning repeated our performance with another double coming my way. We then loaded up and drove to meet a couple of locals from Licking that took us to the Current River. We took a couple of vehicles and dropped one off a couple of miles down stream and then went upstream to put in. My buddy took a fly rod but I broke down and took my spinning reel. As soon as I hit the river the action was on. I started off with a countdown rapala and took a nice brown trout from the first pool right below the shoal. I continued to wade downstream about a hundred yards and landed a nice rainbow a little over 19 inches. Meanwhile, my buddy landed another rainbow on his fly rod while fishing a small dry fly just past the fast water. We continued to wade and fish the rest of the afternoon. The best action for me was definitly in the swift water at the head of the pools. The extremely low and clear water conditions made it pretty tough to catch fish anywhere except in the deepest pools below the riffles. Fly fishing was slow for my friend but countdown rapalas and rebel crawdads yielded fairly well.

That evening we drove to Rockbridge Trout Farm and spent the night. The next morning we fly fished the little stream and as always even an amatuer like myself found it pretty easy to catch nice two pound rainbows on an assortment of dry flies. There was definitely an insect hatch going on when the sun warmed up the air and they looked like small mayflies. I'm not sure of their proper description but the trout didn't mind. Small dry flies with a decent presentation and the fight was on.

We packed up about noon and my friend headed back to Illinois. I then headed for the upper end of Lake Norfork and met up with my brother-in-law. We slid a canoe in and worked a small section of the lake with a variety of crankbaits, in line spinners and swimmin minnows. The water was gin clear and we could see the bass hanging right off the rocks in about 6 to 8 feet of water. The bite was very slow until around 5:30 in the evening. I think the evening shadows gave us a break and at one point I caught three bass on four casts. They were nothing to brag about but were between 15 and 16 inches. I caught a few more later in the evening and then around dusk my brother-in-law caught a nice crappie jigging over a submerged tree.

It was a nice sampling of our great fishing options in southern Missouri.

[OzarkFishman]

Nice report.

How do you fish the countdown? I never seem to get much action on them (user error for sure).

[Riverwhy]

My favorite method with the countdown is to wade as close to the center of the shoal that I can get and then make a long cast as far down into the center of the pool as I can get. With six pound test line and a long rigid pole I can normally get a very long cast. I wait a count of two after it hits the water and then I retrieve the lure slowly.