FATC newbie and career Navy veteran Denny Garner took the plunge into drift boat fishing when he did a 9-mile Meramec River float in a Flycraft with me, Al Harper, on 6/7/22. It was a glorious morning near Steelville, MO when we put in at the Woodson Woods Access point on Highway 8. Weeks of periodic rain east of Rolla caused the Meramec basin to saturate and kept the river too high (cfs rates climbed to more than 10,000 in April and May). The river finally dumped all that water into the Mississippi some 200 miles away and receded to a fishable 570 cfs so we jumped at the chance to float and fish. We saw plenty of downed trees and debris from the recent high water but no obstructions deterred us on our float. A couple of miles down river Denny caught a smallmouth on an olive Wooly Bugger at the head of a nice riffle. Then at the confluence with Meramec Spring, we began to connect with rainbows on streamers. While relatively new to fly fishing, Denny quickly caught on to the concept of swinging the streamer and was soon getting strikes in the chilly water oxygenating the river. We anchored up in a few good spots and pulled in three bows. One big boy used the current to his advantage well darting from one side of the drift boat to the other to avoid the net before we finally wrangled him aboard.
As many FATC members know, the 100 million gallons infused into the Meramec each day by the spring beefs up its flow considerably and cools the river for at least 10 miles downstream.
Between that spring confluence and the next one — Dry Creek flowing out of St. James — an eagle’s nest the size of a bathtub sits high in a majestic cottonwood providing the birds a great view of anything swimming in the river. We spotted both mature and juvenile birds periodically through the afternoon. While we didn’t see a lot of fish in shallow water near there, Denny caught another smallmouth pulling a streamer upstream and we got another rainbow by drifting a crawfish imitation alongside a deeply submerged log.
We floated and fished on through the big bend below Cardiac Hill and Suicide Hill and then tied on a popper. That’s when Captain Garner decided to try out his skill at the oars giving me a chance to stand up front and fire away at the banks with a bulky dry fly with some frog-like coloration and a feather tail. Aggressive short jerks on the fly line made the popper noisy and visually irritating enough to get the attention of smallmouth bass lurking nearby. While a trout eating a dry fly usually strikes me as rather elegant, these Meramec smallmouth hitting the popper were like veteran linebackers stopping a rookie halfback at the line of scrimmage. The strikes were violent and fast. And often when the popper didn’t get whacked by a smallmouth, large bream were hitting it multiple times. Usually the large hook prevented the panfish from getting hooked but they didn’t like this surface menace around their home waters. Rock banks and big boulders with a slow current flowing around them provided the habitat the smallmouth needed. We ended up catching about five hard-fighting bronzebacks and missed at least that many more that would sometimes slap the big bug with their tales before coming in for the eat. I pulled one halfway to the drift boat before he got off, but then to our amazement he returned and hit the popper again. Watching this kind of action unfold in water with good visibility was really fun and we lost all track of time for a long stretch of the river.
I had brought along an electric trolling motor for this float and while the river flow was sufficiently strong all day, it was still nice to take an occasional break from oaring in deeper, slower runs and enjoy being pushed along at a good clip for a while. All in all it was a great float with enough action and scenery to make it very memorable.
