Larry's

[NoLuck]

I'd like to see them stop rearranging the landscape down there and start concentrating on raising fish. That's one heck of a hatchery operation they have there for a 1 mile stretch of spring creek.

I can't fathom a good enough excuse for "so-so" fishing at Bennett Spring. The fishing should be excellent mores than not, and those businesses around there should be flourishing!

What is reason for the lack of awesomeness down there?

What exactly is your definition of excellent fishing Wrench?? I don't need to catch 150 fish a day. I would just like to catch better quality of fish myself. I would like to catch enough fish to keep me from getting bored though.

[fishinwrench]

You answered the question you asked me. But I don't even have to catch any as long as I know they are in there.

Having 3-5 year-classes of fish in a stream shouldn't be an impossibility for a hatchery of that quality and magnitude. It has been done in the past with a hatchery 1/4 the size and a skeleton crew of personnel.

They are taking the cheap and easy road, it seems, by producing buttloads of hatchlings, then unloading them ASAP to keep from having to feed them. Seems they only shoot for numbers. A years worth of those pellets might be a little costly, sure, but the amount of funding is pretty large too. No? And their facility is top notch.

The little Podunk hatchery of old saw to it that Bennett Spring was alot more than a ditch full of 10-12 inchers. Why with all this "progress" are they not progressing? Is it more important now in this day of "everyone is a winner" that everyone catches multiple fish easily?

[Wayne SW/MO]

Turning the stream from the dam to the spring C & R would help the fishing part, but hurt the visitor numbers eventually. That of course is not allowed. Bennett used to be a fishing stream that was a state park, now it's a state park with a fishing stream.