January 2015: New Year at the Bennett Spring State Park

A view of the stone bridge from the base of the dam

January 5, 2015: It has been difficult finding a day to fish the state parks, with Christmas and getting to spend family time; Ann had a total knee operation at the end of the year and is recuperating. So, Monday there was an opportunity to get out. I had not been to Bennett Spring State Park for more than a month and decided to return to familiar water.  The day was cold with a light wind and very bright skies. The area above dam had very little fish activity with two fishermen at the end of the point catching a few trout. I decided to fish near the stone bridge and wade up stream to the dam. The fishing was a bit slow until the fly could get near the water below the dam. This water had a broken surface and the trout were eager to take a fly. I was on river left and as I approached the dam, made a decision to climb on top of the dam and slowly fish the waters immediately under and below the dam. 

A walk on the dam

The #20 dry fly was fished dry, wet, dabbed and skated across the surface. The trout made many attempts to take, drown and eat the fly. I had three hours of constant action and stop counting released trout after twenty to hand. I was amazed to the number of trout swimming in the seams below the dam; it looked almost like the mass of trout seen in the hatchery.  The footing on the dam was good with solid traction on the concrete surface. It was a good time catching trout and it is always a joy when you get the key to unlock the secrets to catching many trout. Hope to return next weekend.

The footing is better than it looks

January 16, 2015 (Friday): The weather forecast for this past weekend, called for sunny skies and temperatures in the upper fifties. I took Friday and Monday off from work to fish Bennett Spring State Park. On Friday there were fifty to sixty fishermen in zones 1 and 2. I fished in offbeat areas to find some solitude. The water was clear and difficult getting the trout to take a fly. I saw only a few people in view catching a trout here and there throughout the day. I did see a fellow standing on the dam fishing with a fly rod wet wading in his bare feet. Later that day came across a turtle sunning himself on a tree limb in the water. 

I checked the calendar and it is still January. Yep… There’s something strange with the weather; 2014 was recorded as the warmest year on record. Maybe 2015 is on track to top that record. Needless to say to the catching was tough with seven trout released from hand for four hours of fishing. Hope Monday is more productive.

It's too nice to fish

January 19, 2015 (Monday): I went back to Bennett Spring State Park on Monday. The day was warm with temperatures reaching the lower sixties, a bright sky with a variable wind from the south. I stopped in to see Charlie Reading and purchased some barbless hooks (Daiichi #18 and #20 1190). I was in the water before noon and fishing below the whistle bridge in zone 3; I try to fish this water at least once during the catch and release season. There was not much surface activity but managed to take a few with a dry fly. I did try a brown jig and took a few more rainbows. There was a crowd on hand with people dispersed all through zones one and two. There were several people fishing off the dam, so I passed up fishing below the dam. The water just above the dam in zone was vacant so I finished my day fishing along the weed edges hoping to hide my presentation. 

The mayflies made a brief appearance

With the bright sun, the line hitting the water made enough ripple to cast a shadow on the bottom of the creek, spooking most of the fish. It was a disadvantage to throw a long line. I found it somewhat better to slowly walk to places the trout had shelter and lightly land a dry fly along the edge. I managed to release eight from hand with my last cast last fish two minutes before the whistle blew. That was after breaking off two trout with 8x tippet after 3:30 PM. There are only three more weekends left for the catch and release season.

January 25, 2015 Sunday: I met Bill Taylor at six AM and he drove to Montauk State Park us for a day of fishing. The day was cloudy with occasional rain showers, a moderate wind with wind gust to twenty-five knots and the air temperatures in the mid-forties. For me, excellent conditions to fish; a rough water surface and no shadows on the water. There were a few fishermen in the park, but I had very few fishermen in view most of the day. Bill and I started below the dam and fished our way upstream and finished nearly a mile towards the spring at the end of the day. There were a fair number of spawning trout on or near redds. I fished mostly dry flies throughout the day. We released from hand twenty-one trout with Bill catching one rainbow over sixteen inches. There was a small hatch of mayflies and midges swarming on the banks. We finished the day of fishing at 4 PM with the sound of the whistle and left the park. We drove to Rolla to dine at Bandanas BBQ. It was after 9 PM when I returned home. A fifteen hour day of traveling and fishing made for a long day. Montauk is a very enjoyable park to fish and visit, consider the journey for your next destination.

Bob Randall lining his rod getting ready to fish Bennett Spring SP

January 30, 2015 (Friday): Bob Randall and I made our first fishing trip together. Bob is retired federal worker having worked for the US Forestry and National Park Service. We met at the Springfield Nature Center at 9 AM and drove together heading for Bennett Spring SP.  The day was sunny with a light wind and the air temperature in the mid forties. The park had a dozen fishermen above the Holland dam with two fellows above the dam. We started our day to fish by walking the dam. We managed to catch and release a few from hand and fished it until noon. 

Bob fishing from the dam releasing a trout

There was no one fishing near the top of the dam with four fishermen up stream near the access path. The water was clear and the sun was bright. There was a good hatch of pale morning duns and the trout were chasing them down. Getting them to take a dry was difficult at the beginning of the hatch. I fished near the intake for the hatchery and worked around the aquatic plants. I was only able to get a few in the area. Bob walked up to fish in the slough and took a few with a wooly bugger. It was after 2 PM, many of the passing fishermen were voicing frustration with the catching and many left. The dry fly was starting to get the trout’s attention and more came to hand. Bob and I fished to the whistle at 4 PM and returned to Springfield to help with the MDC teen club by teaching the teen club members how to tie a wooly bugger. John Dozier lead the discussion and provided the presentation. Overall, Bob and I had a good day, with 37 trout released from hand. There is one weekend left and I am undecided were my next destination will be.

February 2, 2015 (Monday): My daughter called at 9 AM to let me know it was too cold to fish. We made plans to fish Roaring River SP the week before. So with this news, I decided to fish Bennett Spring SP. There was a light snow flurry when I left Springfield with the air temperature near fifteen degrees. It was forecast to be above freezing by 2 PM. When I entered the park, it was empty; no one fishing and no one parked. There was some sunshine beginning to break through the clouds with a brisk north wind blowing up stream with a wisp of fog dancing above the water surface. It was 11 AM when I started at the dam and fished my way up stream. There were some mayflies on top, with the trout being very selective allowing the insects to float some distance before slurping them down. I used the #20 PMD with a white tail, bright green body and light blue dun wings.  The line was kept tight and short to reduce the ice in the guides. A bald eagle did come into view and perched near the dam in a sycamore tree for a short period. The clouds moved on before noon with the sun coming out, a light tippet was used and several trout brought to hand managed to shake a head and break the tippet taking the # PMD with them, that happened eight times. The cold light tippet (8X) did not have enough elasticity with to cold temperatures. I did manage to bring to hand twenty-two trout for the day. It was a good day to fish with no other fisherman on the water, a serene setting at a Missouri state park.

December: Catch and release trout fish at Missouri State Parks

December 5, 2014: Rod Pennington and I met at Montauk State park to fish for a three day weekend. I left Springfield Friday at 9 am, driving Hwy 60 in the fog. By the time I drove through Houston on Hwy 63; the fog started to lift and the rain started to fall. It rained all the way to Licking and on to Montauk.  I stopped at the lodge, and paid for two nights’s lodging and we stayed in cabin #31. The rain continued to fall and I waited 45 minutes before, moving the gear into the cabin. A pileated woodpecker was seen outside the cabin door, with the sounds heard throughout the weekend. Rod was delayed and did not get to the park until 3:30 pm. The rain let up at 1 pm and I made my way down to the spring creek and started to fish near the power lines, making my way up stream for the next three hours. The clouds were low with a light rain until 3 pm. I tied on a small dry fly; the flies worked best when pulled under and fished with a tight line through the water. I managed to release fifteen with a last sat last fish before 4 pm. We stayed in cabin 31; it is located on the hill near the stream and walking distance to the lodge.

It was after 4:30 PM when I met Rod at the cabin, he was able to get fifteen minutes of fishing before the siren sounded. He caught and released three trout fishing near the low water bridge. We ate at the lodge. The lodge is open on weekends serving a very good meal at very reasonable prices. They serve breakfast, lunch and dinner and opened until 6 pm on Friday and Saturday nights. On Sundays, the lodge is open for breakfast and lunch, but closed in the afternoon; so plan according with Rolla the other place one can travel after a day of fishing for an evening meal.

December 6, 2014: Saturday morning, Rod and I had eggs in a hole and bacon. We were on the water shortly after 8 am starting at the power lines.  Again, I worked my way up stream and Rod went down stream. The day was overcast, in the high thirties. Warren Wilkerson and Joe Davis planned to leave Springfield and be at the park before 11 am. Warren is the president of the Missouri Trout Fishermen's Association and a meeting was scheduled to meet with the three chapters at noon in the lodge. I fished until a few minutes after 11 AM with nine fish to hand.  Warren and Joe finally caught up with me with Rod walking up the road as we left the cabin for the meeting. The meeting lasted an hour and we returned to the cabin. We warmed up the smoker and prepared the evening meal. We all brought a variety of meats. Rod brought chicken, pheasant and quail. Warren and Joe brought a pork loin and filet mignon. I provided a chunk of halibut.  All of this was placed in a smoker for three hours with mesquite wood. Again, we walked back to the spring creek to fish until 4 pm. Rod returned before the rest of us and placed some corn still in the husk in the smoker. We had quite a feast, with more food than we could possibly eat. We sat around that evening discussing a variety of topic and turned in before 10 PM.

December 7, 2014: The morning alarm went off at 6 AM, with Joe cooking bacon and eggs. After breakfast, we moved our gear back to our vehicles and the keys to the cabin returned to the lodge. Two does stood next to the truck looking at Rod and I for some time. I moved for a camera and they took off down the hill out of sight. We were on the water and fishing after 9 AM. Rod planned to stay only a few hours before driving back to Rogersville. Warren and Joe fished near the hatchery; a place Warren calls the honey hole and stayed there most of the day. I started below the dam and fished to the blue hole. The day started cloudy with temperatures in the low thirties. There were only a few breaks in the clouds with the sun peaking out. For me the fishing was excellent. The mayfly hatch was light, but the duns I saw on the water were quickly dispatched by the trout. I took fifteen trout below the dam, before moving above the dam and fishing to the blue hole. Five of these fish were in the sixteen to twenty inch range caught on#20 hooks. Some took a dry, or a wet fly or gently pulled give the fly some movement. I release thirteen more trout above the dam before the day of fishing was over.

 This was a good weekend of fishing. There were only a few fishermen on the water, most of the time I was out of sight of other fishermen. The trout went for the dry flies one a dun was seen on the water. Five of the trout were over sixteen inches with the largest twenty inches in length. There was plenty of wildlife seen with a variety of raptors; bald eagles, turkey vultures and hawks. I had several encounters with white tail deer. With a doe and twin fawns at the end of the trip, they scamper, played and head butt each other before moving across the stream for the evening. The four of us totaled 105 trout caught and released for the three day weekend. The round trip distance from Springfield to Montauk and back is about 220 miles. I would recommend fishing Montauk and plan to stay at least two days. I will return before the end of this year’s catch and release season.

December 13, 2014: I woke late in the morning, started the coffee brewing and packed the truck with fishing gear to make the trip to Roaring River State Park to fish for the day. I plan to fish three state parks in the month of December, so this would the second park. It was after 9 AM when I left Springfield. It was seasonally warm with foggy condition all the way to Roaring River S.P. It was a seventy mile one way trip on Hwy 60 and then south on Hwy 37 at Monett then on State Hwy 112 in Cassville to the park. 

The park was not crowded with the fishermen dispersed from the hatchery to the lower reaches of the boundary waters. I fished the same area where Jenn, Des and I camped earlier this fall, in waters one can wade and fish. It’s not great water with only a few spots for trout to find cover but it did provide solitude. There were only a few fishermen in view for the afternoon with seven trout caught and released for the day. There was not a surface hatch seen while fishing and it took a wet fly to hook the few trout. I fished until 4 PM and returned to Springfield. Beware, most of the bathroom facilities are closed for the season. So, make the necessary stops before entering the park. My next trip will be Bennett Spring S.P.

November: In Michigan fishing the Pere Marquette River then on to Bennett Spring S.P.

I made a trip to Michigan to fish the Pere Marquette River in the area called the maple leaf. The Coho salmon finished their spawning with most of these salmon dead and decaying in the river. If there is a high water event, the decaying fish will eventually wash out to Lake Michigan. There are usually some late salmon spawning and on redds, and these will be the places the steelhead, brown and smaller trout will be to eat any salmon eggs dislodged or floating down river from spawning fish. 

My brother, Kirk had success in previous years fishing for steelhead trout after the salmon spawn in the month of November. The steelhead will move up late fall and winter over in the river, waiting for the return of spring to spawn. The steelhead can return several times to spawn with the largest males being six or seven years old, weighing over ten lbs. and measuring thirty inches in length.

I have fished these waters off and on since a kid and we have seen the change of the river and named special places on the river to those memories. My grandfather had a cabin on Hwy 10 between Branch and Walhalla. We would go the cabin the summer to spend time with family. My grandmother would take us out on hikes, walking the fire trails and waiting by railroad tracks for a locomotive to pass by. Over the years we discovered this was a great river to swim and fish. The Pere Marquette was the first river in the United States to get brown trout planted in the stream from Europe. It was designated as a wild and scenic river in the seventies and stories written about in by Ernest Schwiebert telling of his childhood fishing the upper waters near Baldwin.

One place named on the river was a place where an old cabin once stood; there was an event that occurred before I was born. There was a plaque marking the spot a fellow hung himself on a limb of a white oak tree. The tree still stands with the cabin near by all but gone. We call the area below this spot the hangman hole. Another spot we remember fondly was the birch tree hole. A birch tree leaned over the river marking a popular spot to catch steelhead trout but the tree washed out and carried downstream several years ago. Then there was Ackerson’s Cabin, I remember the cabin and it burnt to the ground forty years ago. The property was sold to the federal government and is now public property with access to the river.

I had two days to fish with Kirk. It was a trip nearly eight hundred miles to Walhalla from Springfield. It took fifteen hours with several traffic jams in Michigan on I-94 and I-96 due to road construction. Kirk fished all day Monday, he drove to Ludington to look at the water. The lake was dirty from recent storms and unfishable from the surf. He spent the rest of the day fishing the Pere Marquette River and had a very good day catching and leasing steelhead, brown trout and smaller rainbows.

I met Kirk at 10 PM that evening at a cabin/motel we usually stay. We talked weather. The forecasted storm moved to the north with Marquette, MI getting 42 inches of snow. We had at least one day without snow.

November 11, 2014: The next morning we woke before 5 A.M. and walked the trail to the river in the dark before morning light. We were fishing with just enough light to see. Throughout the day, we moved from hole to hole and covered the length of the river from the Birch tree hole near the cabins downstream to Hangman. Needless to say, the fly rod and I failed to catch many trout. I had a few hits with a dangling fly. Kirk caught three steelhead. One of the trout was left bleeding and was saved for the icebox; it was a hen that measured 29.5 inches in length. He caught a number of smaller trout, which were released.

Kirk with a 29.5 inch Steelhead Trout

I saw several ospreys flying overhead and a bald eagle flying treetops later in the day.  The rain started to fall afternoon with the cool air moving in before dark. We fished until 5 PM. We returned to the cabin and ate at Emerson Lake.

November 12, 2014: The next day was to be cooler with snow in the forecast. I decided to switch from the fly rod to natural bait, hoping to get a few hookups.The next morning, we packed out and on the river, fishing by 9 PM. The day was over casted with the temperatures in the high twenties. There was a light flurry of snow most of the day. I managed to find small trout behind down trees in the river and several brown trout. One of the brown trout was nearly fifteen inches. I cross paths with my brother at noon, he lost two steelhead trout in the fight. One of the fish actually jumped out of water and hit a tree trunk in mid-air. We fished until 4:30 PM.

It was good to get back to the Pere Marquette River to fish. I discovered how difficult it was climbing the hills and crawling along the banks. Hopefully, I will get back to fish in March.

A photo of Brant, Rod and me going right to left

November 30, 2014: I arranged to meet Brant Koetting for breakfast at a Springfield Village Inn and then on to Bennett Spring State Park for the day a day of fishing. Brant lives in California, MO (near Jefferson City) and spends his summers guiding at Saltery Lake Lodge. Actually, he was our guide this year when Rod, Bill and I fished there in September. Brant made a trip to Bennett last year, so this was not his first visit at the trout park with us.

It was an unusual warm day with the air temperature near 68°F, there was a southern breeze blowing downstream. With a change in the air by mid-afternoon, the wind switched out of the north dropping the temperature 30 degrees in a few hours. Most of the fishermen around us talked of the weekend events and they probably fished Friday, Saturday and Sunday. They were concern for the freezing precipitation forecast for Monday morning. They talked of leaving the park and not staying for another day.

Brant and I were in the water shortly after 9:30 AM with four other fishermen in zone 1, fishing the water above the dam. By noon time, there was probably a dozen in the same area, most of these fishermen knew each other and there was constant chatter among them. Rod was to drive in before noon, but neither Brant nor I saw him. Brant and I decided to move down stream, there were only a few fishermen below the stone bridge. I reentered the water below the hatchery outlet and fished my way back to the dam, and finally started to see a mayfly hatch with rising trout. I saw a family fishing near the stone bridge, with the teenage daughter wearing pink shorts and boots wet wading above her knees in the spring creek. Who would guess the last day of November, that one could wet wade? I was impressed.

Rod fishing infant of the stone bridge

It was 2 PM; Rod spotted me in the water just below the dam. We talked a bit and then he decided to walk across the stone bridge and fish the opposite bank. Brant was downstream and out of sight.

It was 3 PM, Rod and I decided to finish the day in zone 1 above the dam. It was unoccupied water, with most of the previous fishermen gone for the day. Brant was fishing near the dam and I saw him trip and dip into the water with water filling his waders. I told him, “today you could get away with wet waders but tomorrow you wouldn’t” knowing freezing temperatures would be moving in overnight. Rod and Brant made their way to their vehicles before the 4 PM whistle; I managed to hook a trout five minutes before the siren and called it last cast last fish for the day. The afternoon with a light hatch made up for the slow morning and I was able to release twenty trout. Only one trout was of size, measuring sixteen inches. It was a day of contrast, with the air temperatures, wind direction and wiliness for the trout to bite a fly. My next trip will be to Montauk for a three day weekend.

An unusually warm day before the front drop the temperature thirty degrees