First trip to Crane yesterday

[DainW]

Made a quick holiday weekend trip up to Missouri from OKC this weekend. Last couple fishing trips had been pretty rough, so we fished roaring river Friday to get our confidence up and then yesterday morning hit crane creek for the first time. 

Fished the city park up stream and down stream of the bridge by the ball fields. The creek was really low which made things tough. Not much moving water to be found, fish were mostly stacked up in deeper pools. Fishing was tough but did manage to catch a couple including the prettiest trout trout I've ever seen. My guess is it was about ten inches or so, which I counted as a win. Thought about going down to check out lower wire road access but figured it was probably low like the rest of the creek and needed to get back to okc. Definitely a cool little creek and would like to come back when the water is a little higher to check out the lower wire road. 

 

 

[Johnsfolly]

Congrats on your success at Crane. Great looking rainbow! Glad you got to experience this special creek.

[Buzz]

Nice! It's not really about size when it comes to Crane.

[2sheds]

Hey DainW,

Glad you had success on a true wild-trout challenge.  Great color in your photo.  Some nice fish hang out near the ball fields, always a good place to enjoy the creek.  In fact, I lost a very nice one last summer in the downstream shadow of the highway bridge.  

But there are lots of difference "faces of crane".  Next time you get in the area, you would enjoy reserving time to explore Upper Access and Lower Access, in addition to downtown.  Each has its own beautiful character.  I don't know a closer campground than Roaring River, which is well-managed.  You can also get some great RR & Crane insight from Tim @ Tim's Fly Shop which is about 1 mile north of RR toward Cassville on the left side of MO-112.

Drove through Crane this Thanksgiving and found the "losing creek" aspect of Crane to have drained the Upper Creek almost 1/2 mile upstream of the southern Upper Access (near the railroad bridge).  Got to walk the dry creek through some of my favorite fishing spots, but somehow did not recover all of my lost flies !