11/18/2016, Roaring River fishing adventure

By Bob Randall on Saturday, November 19th, 2016 in Fishing reports, Fishing Trip, Fishing Wisdom, Flies, No Comments

Remember that it’s catch and release season in our state trout parks.  Special regulations apply.  Six of us went on the first cold, blustery day of this fall/winter season to Roaring River State Park.  We’re tough!  From Branson we had Fred Lauher and Ron  Ward.  From Springfield it was Dennis Stead, Rick Merritt, John Bush, and myself.  We met and mostly fished just across from the old Store (CCC Lodge).  I started out with a whitish mega worm and it was immediately hit by a smallish trout.  It turned out that the tail was too long as there seemed to be no way to set the hook on the next two fish to hit it.  I switched flies.  I tried a light colored wooly bugger as well as a few other flies, no interest. Then I noticed a few very small midges flying around and decided to tie on a tan crackle back with a dark brown top secret midge (size 20) as a dropper.  I caught several fish on the dropper and a couple on the crackle back.  John moved further upstream and had some success near the outflows.  Fred and Ron both caught fish but I don’t have a number.  Dennis and Rick tied on a lot of different flies.  One thing we learned was that after catching a few fish in a pool you might as well move to another pool as they tired of the flies quickly.

Ron Ward emailed me with his list of successful flies on our RRSP trip. “I caught fish on white chamois worm, white jig, green crackle back, and soft hackle (best for me)”. 

Come to think of it, I believe Fred told me that he caught his fish on soft hackles. Notice the continuity here: Midges were emerging and were caught on flies representing them both low and high in the water column. While I only saw a few surface hits, I did catch one on my crackle back as it remained on the surface.  Obviously, it wasn’t a big hatch but our results and observations indicate that a hatch did occur.

One of the best parts of our fly fishing trips is the camaraderie around the picnic table at lunch time.  It’s a time for talking fish and flies, telling a story of long ago, and just enjoying the company.

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