Opener

[Haris122]

Anyone go, and if so how was it. Any nice catches, funny stuff happen, etc?

[Haris122]

Guess no one on the forum made it there this opener. Once my knee heals up good enough I’m hoping to make it down there and try it out. Haven’t been there in a few years. 

[jdmidwest]

Meramec has never been on my go to list of trout parks.  Too close to Montauk and on the way for Bennett Springs for me.

It was the first trout park I ever fished.  But something is never right there for me.

[BilletHead]

5 hours ago, Haris122 said:

Guess no one on the forum made it there this opener. Once my knee heals up good enough I’m hoping to make it down there and try it out. Haven’t been there in a few years. 

                   Heal up Haris and hope you get there soon and give us a report. Only got there twice and that was several years ago. Have fun guy.

[Seth]

I haven't gone the past two years. My urge to go on opening day has dwindled since I started doing the winter trout tournaments on Taneycomo. I'm taking some high schoolers down for a field trip on March 24. I'm not sure if I will mess with going down before then or not.

[Johnsfolly]

I have never been to an opener at any of the trout parks. I did hit the PA trout openers every year. Lots of people. Folks that camped overnight in the spots you scouted, etc. But with limited numbers being stocked only once or at most a couple of times during  the spring, it's  a get them when you can situation. In MO most years I would have fished several times for trout outside of the parks and most of the time would have the river to myself.. So I didn't have that same level of "I need to go trout fish" that would get me over the aversion of fishing in a big crowd.

[fishinwrench]

I'd love to take this dude down to Bennett on opening day, and throw a stick out in the middle of the stream. 

Boy that'd create some chaos!  😅

[Haris122]

Yeah I definitely can’t say it’s the most awesome place to fish for trout but I still enjoyed going there. Even the few times I’ve been during the opener. Not usually as much as wading downstream of it and having more water to yourself but I did like going there, and seeing what the opener also was about. Not usually my type of fishing but once a year I could do it. I usually picked the less used spots to try my luck in anyway, so I still had a little bit of room.

Last few years I think in general I kind of shifted away from fishing quite as much back to shooting more (I know, kind of backwards with the way the costs have been going) but I will definitely find some more time for fishing this year once I get to better mobility.

[jdmidwest]

I enjoy the park itself.  Usually take wife, kids, grandkids to the spring, feed the fish, museum, and visit the artifacts.  Last time up, we stopped in and hiked around the old mine pit looking for morels.  Park was full of Mexicans meat fishing, did not wet a line.

[Foghorn]

A buddy of mine and his son hit Maramec  for the opener and said the water was off but they did each catch a limit of decent fish. He saw one guy at the cleaning table with a fish in the 7# range that was really doing some talking. They were fishing the old pellet "dough" bait.