Trips: Kayaking the Meramec

Matt McClure and David Maloney put together a Kayak trip. Could there be more? Here’s Matt’s report:
David Maloney and I headed down to the Meramec River this past Sunday to kayak and fish from the highway 8 bridge to Scott’s Ford (9 miles).  We knew the weather could be a little sketchy but we were destined to take this trip.  The flow was up so that made for excellent kayaking.  We experienced an outstanding float and we had the river all to ourselves.  We spin casted rooster tails on the 2 miles down to Meramec Springs bend catching small large mouth bass and sun fish.  We parked at the bend for a while and pulled out our fly rods.  That’s when the torrential rains came.  No big deal as we expected this could happen and therefore donned our rain gear.  Unfortunately the fishing was terrible.  Oh well, it was time to move on down to Cardiac Hill.  Cardiac was fishing terrible also.  The rain continued.  We stopped several more times from Cardiac Hill to Scott’s Ford to fish.  Although the rain subsided the fishing continued to be less than stellar.  After a good 7-8 hours on the river we arrived at Scott’s Ford to pack up our kayaks and head home.  All in all the float was outstanding due to the high flow however the fishing was challenging.  It was a great way to see more of the Red Ribbon area and we look forward to doing again.
Matt McClure

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