TR 8-16

[JestersHK]

Made it down Saturday night.  Had not been to Bennett since the flooding, and had to check out our camper for some water damage.  Luckily leak was minimal, but still have some repairs to do so it cut my fishing down to just Sunday.  Sunday turned out to be a beautiful day weather wise.  A bit warm, but nothing too bad, and the wind stayed away for most of the day.

My internal alarm clock woke me up early at 6:00, so being I was flying solo this trip and nothing better to do I geared up and went down to wait for the whistle.  Started above the dam in my usual spot by the bench.  Caught a few fish here and there on the olive wooly bugger, 1/32, gold head.  Fish were a bit smaller, although with my fishing recently at Taney I am a bit spoiled on the size of the fish.  

I moved on down stream and noticed the water was pretty clear and about normal depth, a definite improvement from some of the pictures I saw from a few weeks ago.  It had a bit of a murk to it as you got down past the riffles on the other side of the bridge, but still pretty decent visibilty.  I switched to a white 1/8 maribou and started rolling fish up off the bottom of the deeper holes.  I continued this down to the bluff wall with good success just jigging and retrieving low and slow.  I fished the big wide section before the whistle bridge and caught three filet size fish.  I threw them on the stringer and headed back to grab the cutting board and get them cleaned.  

After dropping my filets off in the freezer and grabbing a quick bite I set out to work on my drifting skills.  I used a black ant pattern and started getting some consistent bites down by the bluff wall.  I had 3 on 3 casts in a row at one point. As usually happens I got broke off on my only ant pattern so I switched back to jigging and headed up towards the whistle bridge.  On the far side of the bridge it was pretty cleared out so  I started jigging a black 1/8 oz maribou up by the big overhanging tree there.  Caught a couple decent size ones there, and missed a bunch more.

I finished up fishing by the spring hole.  It was late afternoon and being a Sunday the stream was starting to empty out of anglers.  I ended catching 28 fish total for the day.  Not a bad day and scratched my itch to get back in the water.  My plan was to fish the Niangua or Montauk on Monday, but work called and I had to head back early...  No pics this time out... Batteries were dead or dying on the phones, and fish were a bit smaller and just the usual stockers.  

Good luck out there.

JestersHK

 

 

 

[rcguy]

Thanks for the report. Sounds like a pretty good day!