A last-minute trip was scheduled on what was supposed to be a “crappy” weather day. The weather man didn’t disappoint.  James “the Younger” Craig, James “the Elder” Anzer and Kenny “the Sensei” Klimes ventured out to check on Maramec Spring (there is only one spring) to see how the fishing would be.  It was scheduled to be only a half day of fishing.  Kenny wanted to fish the park to see what the fishing conditions were. The latest report was that woolybuggers were doing well but the three wanted to see for themselves.

The day was predicted to have a few light snow showers at around three o’clock which was fine with us since we would be out of the park before 2 pm.  We started the day around the island in the beginning of the park and saw lots of nice big fish in the fast-moving waters running directly out of the spring.  The three tried woolybuggers, midges, nymphs, egg patterns, stoneflies, leeches, etc.… to no avail.  What in the world was going on? We could have hit the trout on the heads with our flies as we watched them in the water. Jim “caught” a nice rainbow, about 20 inches, that he netted. Notice how I said “caught” – you’ll have to ask him.  Kenny caught a small trout and two Rock Bass and Jim struggled. From the pictures you can see that the so called “light snow” at 2pm came at 10am and it wasn’t so light! It was just one of those days but why?  Here is my theory:

Rainbows normally spawn in the spring but as we found out from Jennifer Girondo, our local St Louis fishery biologist at our annual dinner last year, they can also spawn in the fall.  We notice that many of the rainbows were setting up to spawn in the fast-moving water.  We could see the females using their tails to create deep depressions in the gravel bottom building their “Redds”. Here they will lay their eggs as a big male watches, ready to fertilize the eggs.  Other smaller trout were behind trying to get in on the action.  My theory is that none of the trout cared much about eating – they had other things on their minds – if you catch my drift.  We passed some egg patterns by the trout downstream from the Redds to see if they were waiting patiently for eggs to be released but since that wasn’t happening for real yet, they weren’t interested.  So, I say give them a little more time to do “their thing” and then the catching will begin again.