Jan 8th & 9th, 2021 Bennett Springs trip

Environmental Conditions:
Precipitation: Trace of snow; None to speak of
Discharge: Between 200-180 CFS (dropping steadily)
Gage Height: 2.20 – 2.10 feet (slowly but steadily dropping over
previous 6 days)
Conditions:
Friday, mostly cloudy. Occasional spit of snow flurry or two.
Highs in the mid 30s. North winds around 10 mph.
Saturday, Pretty cloudy all day.
Highs in the upper 30s. Light wind.

Friday Jan 8, 2021
The Drive down is about 2:00 hrs from Gray Summit & US 44 to Bennett Spring. This is only about 15 minutes farther than to Montauk. The intrepid FATC fishermen were Mike Oldani, Vern Preston, Dan Staggenborg, Jim Craig and Steve Baker, who all met right about 8 am with AL Harper joining shortly later. After suiting and gearing up, we spread out to various spots. AL and Steve went to the stretch below the hatchery in zone 2. Vern fished under and around the stone bridge.
Jim Craig was lured into trying his hand at the 20 or so trout that were hanging tantalizingly near the surface on the upstream portion, around the side of the bridge nearest the lodge. Jim eventually pulled out several from that spot above the stone bridge.
Mike Oldani and DanStag were anxious to get to Euro nymphing in the fast riffles below the stone bridge. Dan caught one there on the side away from the lodge and then proceeded to snag every tree, bush, underwater branch, moss bed, fishing line or big rock, for pretty much the rest of the day. Mike O reported similar frustrations.

There are also difficulties in wading, even with a staff. Those big rocks (greasy bowling balls) were tough to be navigated in fairly fast current. The water below the stone bridge is fast and about 18” to 2 feet deep with plenty of good sized rocks. It appears to be awesome ESN water. However there were lots of hangups. It seemed the difficulty was caused by too heavily <3.2-2.8 mm> weighted flies falling between the rocks. Mike felt that 2.0 mm beads were easier to control in that particular water. We both had probably missed several takes which were very soft/subtle. As Mike said, its very tough to feel the soft take with numb fingers. Many of us ESN newbies are still trying to master the art of being aware of the line stopping momentarily. Sounds easy doesn’t it? But with the water rushing by, your eye is tricked into not being able to notice, and a guy tends to depend on feel, hence missing takes.

Sometime later, it looked like Euro nymphing wasn’t going to work out, so back to the car where Jim Craig was tying on. He had fished that stretch and said he had used an indicator on his Euro rod in those same riffles. He felt his chances would be better with his normal 5 wt rod, so he was re-rigging for soft hackle. I said I’d join him shortly. About 10 minutes later, made my way to Jim who was netting a fish. Jim was almost breathless when said that was his 5th fish in a row in that water(in the 10 minutes since I’d seen him). Jim had fished with a black #18 soft hackle with a sized #20 Manhattan midge as a dropper. Jim figured it out and was really having a good time of it.

As we fished there you could notice fish that were just barely poking their heads out of the water after taking in the film. The sky was dark/cloudy; the area was shaded. The bottom of the stream was almost black and running quickly and the trout’s head is nearly black so it wasn’t really apparent to the casual observer what was going on. You had to really be looking for it. Great job, Jim, of noticing and making the successful adjustment. Jim ended up with 11 for the day, all together, a pretty good day. Reading the water observations: Throughout the day, here and there, in the more flat, but still moving water, you’d see fish swirling at the top. Dry flies (2 different crackle backs) got a couple takes, but no fish. At times fish will jump straight up out of the water. I’m starting realize there’s a subtlety (there’s that word again) between dry fly takes, and fish feeding in the film or just below it. Yeah, I know about the porpoising and all. But most times you only catch the “tail” end of the swirl (punintended). I’m beginning to think when this swirling situation presents, try a couple different colors of soft hackle flies FIRST, maybe with a small midge dropper (#20 or smaller), and THEN fish a dry fly as a second choice (instead of the other way around). Hard for me to say that since I love fishing dries…

Mike Oldani had moved upstream to an area between the 2 handicap wing dams and had picked one up before lunch. He headed up to the spring area to try his luck. Mike left for home mid afternoon after fighting through a tough day. (I was right there with ya, brother…) AL Harper reported that he’d caught 4 trout and 1 smallmouth bass (!) on brown and olive streamers in the lower half of zone 2. Steve caught 1 Friday on a size 20 midge in zone 2 below the hatchery outflow. He fished in zone 1 after lunch. Jim and Dan went up to the spring area. In the last 15 minutes, of the day, Dan caught 2 more in the area on the far side of the spring area, above the gage house using an pink, yellow and chartreuse egg pattern. This small success gave a clue for what to fish the next day.

Winter fishing observations:
OK. It WAS winter, January, after all, the temp was in the mid to upper 30’s all day both days. We all remained pretty warm, having dressed for it in layers, gators and hats. The hands (particularly fingers) were a problem, we all agreed. Even with heavy gloves, some wool and black nitrite “under gloves” everyone had experienced discomfort. There had to be a trade off between keeping fingers warm, and having enough feeling of sensation of the fly line in one’s hand. Tying knots was a problem, of course. Nitrite gloves helped a bit, but sharp hooks have a way of getting stuck in wool and grabbing in the rubber. Many fish were lost by breakoff or coming untied, due to poorly tied knots and old, possibly brittle tippet. For me I’m blaming the cold, but truth is I’m a lousy knot tier. Bad tippet didn’t help. It IS hard to concentrate when fighting the cold. The second day we found that popping into the car for a short break to sit & warm up with the car heater, helps a lot. A fortunate thing about Bennett Spring is that you’re never more the a couple hundred feet from your car. There is parking all along the stream. Having a cold drink for lunch didn’t help and AL remarked that he might invest in a Yeti to keep hot soup in (sounds like a good idea).

In summary: As always, make it a point to enjoy the experience whether catching fish or not. When temps are no lower than 38, without heavy wind, is a personal low limit from now on. After the 4 pm siren the first day, we all caravan’ed to the end of the park to see where the Spring stream meets the Niangua River. While there, a park employee stopped by to say “Hi”. He said that the fish really stack up above the whistle bridge (the non traffic bridge with the pipes going thru) in zone 2. He said people having the most luck using scuds, sow bugs and shrimp imitations there. Good for future reference and probably would have been a good thing to try the next day (but didn’t.)

Jim took off for home and AL & Vern headed over to Sand Spring resort. Steve and Dan fished the river for about a half hour with NO luck. Funny thing, there was a local guy across from us fishing with minnows, pulling in smallmouth and google eye (rock bass/red eye) every couple casts. He was a local guy who said you can catch trout there (at the junction of the spring stream and the river) but we didn’t have a single bite. Friday night, the remaining guys (AL Harper, Steve Baker, Vern Preston & Dan Staggenborg) stayed at Sand Spring resort just past the end of the park. The rooms were clean and though not modern, were comfortable. A good deal for $55 per night. Across the parking lot there is a restaurant there which served bar type food. We ate there because it was close by. Not bad.

Saturday, Jan 9th, 2021:
Next morning the group got up early and headed back into downtown Lebanon for breakfast at the Elm Street Eatery
where I had…oh, never mind…

Back at the stream on Saturday morning tied on an egg pattern which immediately broke off on a bite. Re-tied one on and broke off again. (Oh no, a repeat of yesterday !) Finally changed to 5X flourocarbon tippet and didn’t break off the rest of the day. (slow learner, eh?). Settled on an egg pattern pink, yellow, chartreuse on a white lead headed jig. A red manhattan midge that a kindly man had given to me, made an excellent dropper 10” below. Fished the far side near the spring and then my luck changed for the good, catching 6 there. 4 were on the egg pattern and 2 on the manhattan midge, sized 22, a really cool looking fly. Also, quite unintentionally, foul hooked 3 (not in the count), either by “flossing” or when they bumped the egg and the setting hook caught them with the dropper. It’s bad to foul hook a fish. The poor creature has this “WTF ?”, sad look on their face as they try to swim away, attached by the belly or fin. Quite embarrassing for all concerned. (fish do have “looks on their faces”, don’t they?)

At one point, straight across from the gage house, went to step in the water which is about 2 feet deep right at the edge and saw a nice fish swim away. Decided to fish in close, within 10 feet of the bank, for a couple casts and see what happens. Right away, caught 3 and had other several bites. It reminded me what my grandpa said about the 3 F’s, “Always fish your feet first”. Turns out to be good advice, since you might be walking right through catchable fish that don’t get fished to very often. (especially true in the parks) Steve Baker fished in zone 1 near the spring at first picking up several fish, and later between the 2 handicap areas above the dam. Steve netted 4 trout Saturday; 3 were on an egg pattern and 1 on a black stone fly pattern size 18. A pretty respectable day.

AL Harper caught 5 Saturday mostly in zone 1 under an indicator using small bead head nymphs (black or green in color) and another fish on a red San Juan worm. Nice !
About 3 pm Saturday afternoon we were all chilled enough to call it a trip. The quip of the trip came from AL Harper. When asked what methods he saw people fishing, he said “ Most fishermen were fishing under indicators. One guy was streamer fishing and a couple guys were possibly fishing emergers. I don’t know what the DIVERS were using.” That’s right ! We saw a group of people doing a scuba dive in the spring. Saturday at the spring, around 10 am a group of 8 people pulled up to the spring. They started suiting up and getting tanks out.

Steve Baker and Dan went over and found out that they got permission, and dive into the spring several times a year on Saturdays and Sunday during the winter fishing season. They were from Y-Kiki dive shop in South St. Louis county. The leader, was the dive master and cave diver. Cave diver certification means they can go in 130 feet deep. Some of the people were cavern certified which means they can only go in far enough to where they can still see the light of the entrance. We caught the guys after the dive (after we had warmed up in the car…). They said the water flow was so strong that they were swimming hard and couldn’t go in any further, so they had to come back. They also said they saw lots of fish deep inside. Interestingly they said that the spring goes down on a 45 degree angle and heads in the direction of straight downstream. There’s a very interesting 14 minute video of a scuba dive at Bennett Spring on YouTube under “SCUBA BENNETT SPRINGS CAVERN TO THE KEY HOLE”. Lot of fish down there. What the fish down there in the spring could possibly eat, is beyond me. Anyway, it’s worth a viewing.

All in all, it seems everyone had good time, in spite of the hardships of the cold. Plus we learned a lot. The good-natured ribbing, information sharing and fellowship of fishing with good FATC friends is hard to beat.
submitted by DanStag