Reports For The Weekend?

[dnj21]

Anyone have a report for this weekend? Heading down tomorrow afternoon, time is going so slowly trying get honey do's done.....

[Wayne SW/MO]

It will be normal, it always is. The weekends are crowded and if you stay below the spring and above the long hole it will also fish normal.

[dennis boatman]

...I love Bennett Springs fishing reports...THEY RELEASE FISH EVERYDAY!!!...Go get em...

[laker67]

Wayne says normal, but the truth is that bssp has no t been normal for years. It has become the proving grounds for everything that you could possibly do wrong with an artificial trout stream. Once upon a time someone from mdc or dnr concluded that they could improve and maintain the stream better than mother nature. They brought in the dredging tools and proceeded to dig deep holes. I suppose in their wisdom they visioned deep holes full of trout. What they got was deep holes filling up with moss like never had been seen before. Moss that totally encapsulated all aquatic life that needed gravel and stone. So now we have deep holes with mostly moss. They then allowed their consigners to dictate what is and should be the law of the park. To cater to out of staters with huge campaigns and allow the bread and butter for most of the local business people to slip off and attend other trout parks. And during all this improvement they totally forgot how to raise fish and stock a stream. Bitter? You bet. You can take all the MIke Mitchels and Jim Rodgers creek dredgers and hang them out to dry. Hopefully when they retire, things will once again be "normal".

[NoLuck]

They already have people waiting in the wings to continue the money making machine. Sad but true.

[Wayne SW/MO]

Hopefully when they retire, things will once again be "normal".

I doubt it. I thought when the Sam Welch and Jim Rogers love affair ended things would change, but after nearly 30 years, each new super follows the norm. They bought most of the watershed, and that was a good thing, but other than that most of what they do is aimed at the $ under the guise of improving the park. Actually most of the big expenses have been toward making Rogers rich. They bought Vogel's to give the park access to the river, and then closed it public launch. They ran the campers out of the bottom in order make the park more "natural" and then built high dollar condos and cabins for Rogers to rent. It's a joke... on us.

[ruthead]

This is the new normal. I'm afraid the "Good Old Days" are long gone. It is what it is. NoLuck ur correct, sad but true. Commercialism or what ever you want to call it is what we have to deal with now. Wish I had the financial means to alter it but I don't so it becomes the age old adage of "You play by the rules set by the ones with the money and power". I agree. Sad but true. I just wish I would of got to experience more of the good old days. Only been goin down ther the last 17 years.

[Wayne SW/MO]

They already have people waiting in the wings to continue the money making machine. Sad but true.

The sad part to me is that it's the park that is a big part of the machine. I don't worry about the outside business, although I think the river outfitters could have been regulated in how many units they could put on the river, but the push to keep the money in the park. The park is a state entity held in trust for the people, not a state run business..

[NoLuck]

JR is probably looking at this laughing all the way to the bank. There was surely some things that got outgrown at Bennett. But there was also a lot that was done to increase revenue to the concessionaire. I'm sure there are some channels that had to be followed. But if there is someway to influence the higher ups it sure has been carried out there.

Will it ever get better? I doubt it. But it still is where I want to be for fishing and relaxing.

It's a shame that it could be a ton better if left alone commercially.

[dnj21]

I heard many of the above comments sitting on the bank beside a gentleman that had fished here for years. He was also quite displeased with the state of affairs over the last several years.

His parting comment was I should revisit Montauk if I want a really good experience......