Upper river 6/22

[jfrith]

Was able to hit the upper river this past Monday after a few days spent at table rock/the white. 
 

Started out early that morning at 5am. Told myself this would be solely a fly fishing day so I packed up my 7 wt. and backpack and left the car and spin rod behind at the low water bridge. 
 

I first tied on a sculpin (the ones with the helmet) and was able to get a couple smaller smallmouth to run it down in the shallow water tail outs. The big fish however didn’t seem to pay much attention to this though so thought I would totally change it up. I tied on a popper, placed my first cast behind a turned up roof wad and BAM. Huge blowup from a 13 inch smallmouth. I tried a couple more pools and then remembered I had some mouse flies in my box and thought it would be pretty cool to get one on that and I did! Caught another 5 smallmouth on that and then picked up several more fish skipping a crawdad across the bottom. Was finished by noon and didn’t see another person the entire time.

 

Success on this stretch, and I’m sure any stretch of skinny stream is greatly affected by the amount of people using it that day. I tried this exact same access two weekends ago and did not get one fish, but counted over 50+ people floating the river that day.
 

Anybody care to share some favorite Smallmouth flies they use in the ozarks? I was hoping to see how a Game changer would work on these fish but I left that in the trees down below Gaston’s.

 

 

 

[FishnDave]

That's a fun day when you can catch them on whatever YOU want!

Gorgeous Longear, too!

[jfrith]

Yessir!

That Longear, I should say, actually came from Dogwood canyon. However, there were a ton of beautiful, bedding Longear on the Mac as well. It’s that time of year for them.

[snagged in outlet 3]

50 minutes ago, jfrith said:

Yessir!

That Longear, I should say, actually came from Dogwood canyon. However, there were a ton of beautiful, bedding Longear on the Mac as well. It’s that time of year for them.

Did you pay to fish Dogwood Canyon??

[jfrith]

Haha yes. I would never normally, but it’s what my dad wanted to do for Father’s Day. We also hiked the park. Despite the dent in the check book it was a good time, there are some huge bass to play with in there.

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30 minutes ago, jfrith said:

Haha yes. I would never normally, but it’s what my dad wanted to do for Father’s Day. We also hiked the park. Despite the dent in the check book it was a good time, there are some huge bass to play with in there.

If you don't mind....  How much?  Was it guided?  I've paid the $20 just to ride my bike through it.  And it was pretty cool.

[jfrith]

Didn’t look at the breakdown but for a single person it was $52 for general admission and 2 hours of fishing. They charge by the hour. We fished for almost 4 hours though. 
 

Very few trout in there. And about as unnatural looking as it gets.....There are some other species though. We've been going as a family since the early 90’s (such a fun place back then when few people new about it) and the fishing section gets smaller and smaller every year. Now it’s pretty much a theme park, fake waterfalls and all. You guys think they turn the power off to those at night? 😂

 

The guided fishing in the upper sections of the park cost an astronomical amount.

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14 hours ago, jfrith said:

Now it’s pretty much a theme park, fake waterfalls and all. You guys think they turn the power off to those at night? 😂

Sometimes they are off during the day.  I won a bet with my wife when she insisted they were real.  We stopped one of the workers and he said they are real if it rains...😁 

[jfrith]

Hahaha that’s funny