Here is a trip report from Jim Craig and some of the FATC gang fishing the Meramec River
The pace of our fishing trips is starting to hit its stride this summer. Our guys are starting to test the waters of social distancing. Looks like we are getting trips on the calendar at least every week now. Last week was no different. Since we seemed to be hitting Montauk pretty hard and the spring has been a little more crowded than I prefer, I thought it was time to check out Maramec Spring and the river again. So, Wednesday, June 16th, Bill Lowry, Bill Cotner, Bob Beckett, Vernon Preston, and Jim Craig made the drive to Maramec Spring park.
Like most trips, we have good news and bad news. When we arrived, the park was CROWDED! Aren’t people going back to work yet? Well, I guess we are as guilty as the rest of them. All five of us started at the bend and picked up a few fish. All rainbows, no browns. Bill Lowry landed a fish right away using an olive woolybugger. The weather was beautiful, and I thought the fishing was going to be hot. The river fished well, but you had to keep moving to find active fish. Guys also caught fish on copper johns, leeches, and other streamer flies. I Czech-nymphed in the morning using a cerise worm fly I created for this technique. I have to say, I am pretty satisfied as it produced consistently that morning. The trick seemed to be — get it deep and get it deep fast. That gives you a longer drift in the strike zone.
I think the bright sun and blue skies had the fish hunkered down. We did have occasional boaters/fisherman floating down the river. Everyone was courteous, friendly, and just glad to be enjoying His beauty. Our resident bald eagle even made a couple appearances. We were lucky to find one of the last available picnic tables in the park for lunch. Like I said, it was CROWDED! It felt great to get off our feet and regain our energy. After lunch we planned to fish in the park. The fishing crowd had significantly thinned out. That was good news. The bad news was that the fish had also thinned out. We saw very, very few trout in the park. And that is also about how many we caught in the park.
By late afternoon, fishing in the park seemed pointless. As you can see in one of the pictures, Bob decided to simply grab a seat on a bench and enjoy the scenery. He and I eventually gave in and walked back to the river. We salvaged the afternoon with a couple more fish from the river. It might have been a hit-or-miss, somewhat-slow day for bringing fish to the net, but we sure enjoyed our fellowship that day. As you may know, (or maybe you don’t) we put Bubba’s Missouri Pizza restaurant on double-secret probation for sub-par service the last few times we ate there. We are happy to report that we had good service for our fellowship dinner that night. Yes, they were a little slow to fill the ice machine when we asked, and Bob’s favorite root beer fountain drink was out of order, but the pizza was delicious!
All-in-all, it was a great day. I HOPE YOU will join us next time! “
