Rainy Days and Sundays

The truth is that we could have been shoveling the several inches of rain that fell upon Lebanon, Missouri as the U.S. was ‘springing forward’ this past Saturday night; knowing that the area has been drought stricken for a couple years, I am going to give the situation a casual but cold look the other way. Vickie and I traversed the 400 miles from B’town to central Missouri and the Ozarks in easy fashion as we stopped in at our new favorite new lunch spot, Country Bob’s in St. James. If you are ever traveling west of St. Louis then set your GPS for exit 195 and go north about ¾ mile and the gals at Bob’s will serve you a lunch plate that is a remedy for any interstate ills that might be bothering you at that moment. Once lunch was over the next hour was almost all downhill into Lebanon, 11 miles west on highway 64 and you will find yourself smack dab in the middle of one of the neatest outdoor places around…Bennet Spring State Park!

After set up of the camper and camp spot, I got busy inflating my new Voyager float tube. I decided I would walk a couple hundred yards to the river and float/fish my way about a mile down river where Vickie would pick me up at the last point of access to the Niangua for the next 8 miles. I hadn’t yet had the ‘super float tube’ on moving water and I was totally curious to see how it would do in moving current. If I were to give the tube a letter grade after one 3 hour session….it would have to be an A- and the minus would be for the simple fact that I want to see how I feel after an 8 hour trip? I did manage to catch 4 decent rainbows along the way…but no smallies and that is always my main focus!

After a quick mile trip back up to campground #1, site 105, we settled in for what would be one long, cool and rainy night. After our big lunch we both were content with a nibble for supper and I keyed up season 7 of the Walton’s. I know this is season 7 because this is the seventh spring break that Vickie and I have spent in the same camp spot and each year we have made our way through an entire season of the Walton’s. I don’t know if you, like me, grew up on this loveable series back in the 70’s…but watching a series each year has reconnected me to the tough times that went on back when my parents were young and it gives me a greater appreciation for this great generation that defeated the Germans and the Japanese…and in fact season seven puts you right in the middle of many war time questions and controversies.

With the time change and my plan of floating about 8 river miles on Sunday morning…we turned in early and it seemed like the second I turned off the lights it started to rain and thunder. I have to say that at one point the thunder I heard on this night was without question the loudest rumble and reverberation I have ever heard in my fifty years. The spring and campground #1 sit in a valley and the noise from the lightning rolled from one end to the other, all night long! The amount of rain that I heard come down on the area changed any thought I had about floating the river for the Niangua can pick up pace and become quite a river fairly quickly…thus my Sunday morning was spent just above the dam in zone 1. I didn’t want to have to fish the spring on a weekend due to the high number of fellow fisherman…but the rain and cool temps had driven off all but the hearty (or crazy) fly guys.

The stream was up a bit and while it wasn’t its usual crystal clean aqua color, it wasn’t stained too badly. When the stream gets up and turns color it affects the fishing and for those who use nymphs and strike indicators, it can be cause for some big adjustments…but for us streamer guys it may actually help us out as fish move up on rainy days and start to chase aggressively. I chose to put a size 4, black wooly bugger with yellow legs on the end of 3X tippet. I would also be fishing with my new smallmouth rod; a 5 weight, 7’6” TQR rod with a Rio floating/sink tip line. This line is relatively new and quite frankly may be the best thing to ever happen to a streamer/stripper fisherman like myself…I won’t go into the many details here but let it be known that if you are looking for a nice line to strip woolies and other streamers, this is it!

As usual it took me a few casts to find and start to get some contacts with the fish but when I made a 45 degree downstream cast with a slight upstream mend in the floating section (thus allowing the fly to dead drift and sink lower in the water column) I hooked and caught my first nice fish of the morning. The next 45 minutes was filled with taps, tags, hook sets, retrievals and nettings of a nice stringer,  of which I kept 4 rainbows…all right at 15 inches,  when fileted they would perfectly fit the 12 inch frying pan back in the camper! Now I must say that while I felt like I could have continued to catch fish…the warm camper, a good bowl of soup and great company all called my name and by 10:30am local time I had cleaned up and was busy writing this very column…with my head full of anticipation for the next several days here in the Ozarks; if the fly fishing itch ever causes you to want to “scratch it a bit”, the give Missouri a try as we all Enjoy the Great Outdoors.