After a rumor from Matt McClure came out that browns from the Shepard Hills hatchery were stocked at Scott’s Ford access on the Meramec river, Jim Craig, Bill Byington and Kenny Klimes went to check this location out. Scott’s Ford is very rarely fished by the FATC since it is at the very end of the Red Ribbon area. The three showed up at the access early, fished for around 20 minutes and did not see one fish. If the browns were stocked there they had probably headed upstream to cooler water by this time. The next stop was to fish the bend outside Meramac park and down stream from there.  Kenny started the day off right with his sixth or so cast pulling in a beauty of a 17 inch, FAT brown.  Our first thoughts were – this could be a good day.  The morning fishing was good but by noon when the sun got high the fishing slowed down.  We only fished to the riffles in front of the MDC cabin.  Blue Copper Johns seemed to be the best fly in the morning but was not the only fly used.

In the afternoon, Terry Seaton showed up with Ken Fleischmann, one of our brand new guys to the FATC. They had just come back from fishing in the Busch wildlife area as the MDC has stocked many St Louis lakes for the winter (good place to go to practice after work!!).  Then it happened!!  As the Beatles sang, “Do you want to know a secret, do you promise not to tell….” – a truck pulled up to the river.  See the picture.  Yes, they dumped in trout by the hundreds as they began their winter stocking program. The browns seemed confused and hung around for us to pick off one by one.  Congrats to Ken Fleischmann for his graduation into the FATC.  After catching a few more fish in the afternoon we stopped fishing around 4pm and had a fun, fellowship dinner at Hicks in Cuba.  Best flies seemed to be the copper john (especially blue color) and midges – brown, P&P and black zebra. Get ready for some awesome winter fishing!