About 10 miles north of Columbia, MO is Finger Lakes State Park. The lakes are the result of Peabody Coal’s extensive strip-mining operations in the 1960s and represent a hugely successful reclamation and restoration effort of the pits Peabody left behind.
Deep dredging here in pursuit of rich veins of coal left man-made canel-like troughs that, when connected and flooded, produced a rich fish and wildlife habitat.
I, Al Harper, fished this park with some success previously but not this late in the year. Nighttime temps have now fallen below 50 degrees while afternoon temps still reach into the 80s. Quite a range.
On my first day of fishing here, I launched an inflatable drift boat on 50-acre Rocky Fork Lake which is part of a 2,200 conservation area bordering the actual park. The conservation area has about 60 small lakes and ponds within its borders. Within a half hour I was catching large panfish on a blonde Maribou jig under an indicator. They hit the jiggs six to ten feet from shorelines that couldn’t be fished from the bank because thick brush made them inaccessible. The dozen or so lakes in the park are linked together and form a labirenth of the mounds of earth stacked up by huge excavators six decades ago. Trees and bushes have since taken over and in many cases their limbs extend out over the water. It makes for a casting challenge to land a fly under the green canopy and close to the shaded banks.
When a breeze came up on the open lake, I made my way to the leeward shore and began casting a deer hair popper fly that bass began to hit.
By experimenting, I selected a popper “meaty” enough to entice a bass but with a hook small enough to catch panfish too.
As the still fall afternoon wore on, I oared over to a long shoreline where tall cattail reeds grew in the water. I found that if I could cast a fly close enough to the aquatic vegatation and get a couple of “pops” out of it, I got some vicious strikes by bass lurking within.
The largemouth were ensconced in the thick cover. The water was about a foot and a half to 2 feet deep. Flys other than a noisy popper seemed unfishable because of moss and aquatic vegetation not far below the water’s surface.
These conditions gave the fish an advantage: when I managed to get a hook set following a strike, they would head for the safety of the shore or dive a short depth to try to dislodge the popper in the moss on the lake bottom … which they succeeded in doing more than once.
Fish struck the surface fly better as sunset approached. I wanted to continue the action but had to row a good distance while there was still daylight.
I fished the next morning in a different set of interconnected lakes within the park and caught several fish by quietly easing the boat along shorelines and casting as far ahead as possible. I knew I was being stealthy when a snapping turtle, about 2 foot long from snout to tail, floated quietly to the surface not more than a rod’s length from my driftboat. He saw me and pawed the water with large webbed feet to quickly submerge again.
The dry fly that worked best that day was a small frog imitation that produced a subdued pop when worked with jerks of the rod tip. The sudden hard strikes that broke the peaceful surroundings left little doubt about when to try to set the hook. Yet strict attention had to be paid to the fly because in some cases a bass would suck the fly under with minimal surface disturbance.
Blue gill bream in these lakes can easily grow to about 5 inches from back to belly and fight hard enough to really test a four weight fly rod. I haven’t caught bass larger than about 2 pounds here. I suspect larger bass inhabit the deep holes where Peabody dug to extract coal. I encountered places where 25’ of rope didn’t allow my anchor to reach bottom. But I was having so much fun with the fish on the surface I didn’t explore deeper options on this excursion.
Canoe and kayak rentals are available at the park. I will submit a photo with the rates. Color coded water trails are marked throughout the park and there are buoys to follow as one explores. The park is also one of two parks statewide that cater to off-road enthusiasts but those trails are well away from the quiet lakes.
I was camping during my visit but with Columbia hotels and restaurants so near many options are accessible to visitors. More information is available at Mo state parks.com.
