Worth Driving 1500 Miles With The Rain/flooding?

[Longs for Cutts]

Former Missouri resident here. I was planning a trip back starting late this week and ending around the 22nd to fish and see family, with fly fishing for smallies in the eastern Ozark streams paramount, focused on the upper St. Francis, Castor, and Black. The flows on those streams went completely berserk a couple days ago. I have "tentatively" cancelled my trip, but things now seem to be mellowing out.

My question is simple: should I make the drive and spend the money, or will there still be so little fly fishing that it won't be worth it? I tied up a ton of bass flies and hate to let them languish another year, but I also don't want to drop probably $600 just for the gas if the fishing is going to stink. I can't postpone the trip as my guiding season starts about a week after I planned to get back here to Montana.

[Greasy B]

Sorry, can't answer your question of whether it's worth it. It seems our rivers have been blown out on a weekly basis for a month or more. With every high water event we "locals" have been both disappointed at the loss of our spring fishing but relieved that this won't be another drought year. This most recent bout of rain was not as bad as the last couple, you could find a stream or two that's fishable if you willing to travel Ozarks wide. We are in the middle of leaf out, I think that will help decrease runoff over the next couple of weeks but you never know. Funny that you should ask because I'm looking at the mountain snow pack and asking myself if I should tentatively cancel a trip out west later this year.

[jdmidwest]

Nothing normal about the Black, Castor, or St Francois right now. It has rained all day today and they are calling for more this week. Friday and Friday night dumped alot of rain in the watershed also. I would probably look elsewhere.

[oldasdirt]

the little st francois is in my back yard its up a 3 feet.....I make the trip to the Madison around ennis twice a year leon is my guide.....it will be a while before they or anything near fishable condition good luck

[Al Agnew]

Yeah, spring is always a crapshoot in the Ozarks. My fly fishing buddy from Montana has come to the Ozarks a couple of times in the spring, and both times was unable to get in a good smallmouth trip. Of course, he may be jinxed, since he also came one time in October and that happened to be the October where we had a huge rain and all the rivers were blown out.

There are streams that go down so quickly that you'll be able to find fishing a couple of days after a big rain. They'll still be high, but fishable. They tend to be the small, marginally floatable streams or the headwater sections of some of the larger streams, and they'll probably still be high enough to make wading difficult, so you almost have to use a canoe of kayak to fish them. So if you luck out and it's dry weather while you're in the Ozarks, you could find some fishing even if there was a big rain a couple days before you came. But with the ground so saturated from all the rain we've had, if it does happen to rain while you're here, it doesn't take all that much to blow everything out again.

[ozark trout fisher]

Wouldn't risk a trip that long, unless you can be happy hiking up in the hills and doing other non-fishing, non-floating things (or if you're willing to switch over to lake fishing.) I'm not saying that you couldn't find a few headwater streams that would be fishable but it's not looking good. Best of luck if you do go, and maybe you'll find something if the streams drop extra quick and the rain in the forecast doesn't amount to much. And who knows what things will look like in 10-12 days. But I would recommend against driving all the way from Montana at this point, unless it's for the spring scenery.

Sorry.

[Longs for Cutts]

Thanks for the replies. I'm staying in Montana. There's a lake in the eastern part of the state where I can head for a few days to get my warmwater fix (maybe including a few pike), and I've wound up booking a couple early trips on some of our local private lakes (basically farm ponds with giant trout instead of bluegill and bass). Given the conditions, it's a better bet for me to make a few hundred bucks than burn it on gas.

In regards to the water conditions out here: we had a low snowpack and it's started melting in a hurry the past few weeks, but things will be fine everywhere except maybe California (which got NO snow this winter) until at least early August and again after September 10. Late August will be a crapshoot depending on how hot and dry the summer is where you're planning to go. Last year we had fairly similar snowpack numbers and the melt started around the same time, and we had no closures of note here in the SW Montana and Yellowstone areas, though the lower Yellowstone didn't fish well on afternoons in August (the upper was fine) and we had some fires. No way to predict how that'll play out until we see if we get the extended runs of 90+ daytime highs with no humidity in July and August like we had last year.

If anyone's curious, I'm head guide here: www.parksflyshop.com

[Ham]

No. Find something closer that is fishing better.

[jdmidwest]

Yep, more tonight and going thru Sat now. I wish I was somewhere else. I am going to bite the bullet and go out Sat with rain gear on.

[ozark trout fisher]

Thanks for the replies. I'm staying in Montana. There's a lake in the eastern part of the state where I can head for a few days to get my warmwater fix (maybe including a few pike), and I've wound up booking a couple early trips on some of our local private lakes (basically farm ponds with giant trout instead of bluegill and bass). Given the conditions, it's a better bet for me to make a few hundred bucks than burn it on gas.

In regards to the water conditions out here: we had a low snowpack and it's started melting in a hurry the past few weeks, but things will be fine everywhere except maybe California (which got NO snow this winter) until at least early August and again after September 10. Late August will be a crapshoot depending on how hot and dry the summer is where you're planning to go. Last year we had fairly similar snowpack numbers and the melt started around the same time, and we had no closures of note here in the SW Montana and Yellowstone areas, though the lower Yellowstone didn't fish well on afternoons in August (the upper was fine) and we had some fires. No way to predict how that'll play out until we see if we get the extended runs of 90+ daytime highs with no humidity in July and August like we had last year.

If anyone's curious, I'm head guide here: www.parksflyshop.com

Good choice, I think. It can be a bit frustrating to drive halfway across the continent to find muddy, unfishable water. I think given the conditions most of us wish we were headed up to Montana, not the other way around Another torrential downpour today at least here in mid-Missouri. Looking at the water gauges nothing really looks fishable now, except a couple spring brances, and the upper sections of a few streams with really high gradients that rise and fall extremely quickly. But I don't think we're done with the rain, so I'd expect that pendulum of rising and falling water in those places to keep going.

Off topic, but when I spent some time in Montana a few years ago, while I mostly fished for trout, I enjoyed some pretty great warmwater fishing up there too. I spent most of my time in the northwest corner of the state....some of those lakes up in the Clark Fork basin are really good for bass, perch, and pike. It was a pretty huge surprise when I found good sized largemouth in the same lakes where I was catching trout and whitefish. Not what you expect to see in a lake from which you can see 9 and 10,000 foot peaks in all different directions.