Closing Out The 2023 Missouri Trout Park Season
Well, we wrapped up the trout park fishing season this past weekend with a very successful trip to Bennett Spring State Park.
It’s always a bittersweet moment, knowing that the weather is becoming less accommodating, and that most are thinking about planning their next trip to a regional trout park - next year. There’s still some winter fishing to do, but this is the last of the official ‘catch’ season, and we have to wait for the rifles to stop sounding for a couple weeks before ‘Catch & Release’ season is open in the parks.
I fished Bennett Spring in 2022 in the last days of the season (10/30), and my tag number was 110123. A few more tags were sold this year in 2023, as my tag number on 10/29 was 112384. That’s a lot of tags sold this year in one park!
Last weekend 2023 daily trout tags, and a pre-view of the new 2024 100th Anniversary Patch!
We started fishing late morning Saturday, with overcast conditions and scattered to medium showers through the mid-afternoon. We always gravitate to fish the Spring here first, as the currents are moving, and the fish seem to cycle through the feeding lanes more frequently and are generally more active than some other areas of the park.
We fished through the day with quite a bit of success, on several patterns, fishing the usuals - Yarn Egg Pattern, and Scuds under a Stimulator Dry Fly.
At one point late in the afternoon, the rain picked up fairly heavy, and the disturbance of rain on the water seemed to key fish in on our flies, and the bite turned on hard! We started on egg patterns, and a fish about every three casts! We also changed to a #18 scud under an indicator on 5x tippet and caught fish about every fourth of fifth drift - we couldn’t miss!
Here’s a little look at what we caught fish on this weekend:
Salmon Egg Pattern - The Pompadour
Fall Orange/Deer Hair Stimulator with dropper
#22 Green Midge / Emerger with CDC Wing
#20 Trico Black Dry Fly with White Yarn Wing
#14 Red and Blue Crackleback
The rain continued through the night, and picked up to a steady rain through the morning, and mid-morning we fished below the hatchery, with success again on the egg pattern, and a few takes on some small midges in different colors but no fish in the net. Fish seemed to be rising to the surface at the bottom of the hatchery outlet run, so I threw a small #20 black trico in the far side current seam, giving it just a little wiggle and tug, and caught some there.
The rain picked up again, and we fished below the main bridge, working nypmh and scud patterns with some success. This area is fun to fish as it generally holds fish in feeding patterns in seams, behind rocks, and along ledges on the North side of the spring.
Rainbow Trout
Was a longer than normal fish - and a dark olive and rosy colored lateral line.
Size #22 midge right up in the frong center of the upper lip!
Late morning Sunday we made our way back to the spring, as the rain stayed steady with medium showers, and the majority of park visitors had retreated somewhere else, somewhere warmer and dry. We kept at it, and I switched to a Red Crackleback with a blue ribbing, and fished the uppermost end of the spring, drifting as a dry fly, and swinging it under the surface as a streamer at the end of the drift. Caught a few here this way - this is personally my favorite fly to fish this year.
All in all, we had an incredible last weekend of fishing and we can’t wait to get out and do it again - because as we all know, ‘The Tug is the Drug’!
