Last Day of Catch & Release Season at Bennett Spring

What a beautiful day to be on the water.  There were a lot of others enjoying the day as I was. Not too much wildlife spotted, but lots of fish were available, had a good conversation with a man from Kansas City who is on a week long journey to fish. He's headed to either Mammoth Spring or the White from Bennett, wasn't sure where he would end up. Saw a lady on cross country skis.  I told her she doesn't have many days of this snow left, she replied that it had been awhile since she was on the skis and was learning all over again.


 Most of the snow was gone, the water was actually warmer than I expected.  I thought the snow melt would have cooled it down more than it did.

This is the guy from KC standing on a large rock in the middle of the stream.  He said it would be harder getting down than up. I laughed and said I hoped he didn't get down unexpectedly.

Best fish of the day was about 16-17 inches on a caddis green soft hackle, most fun was a smaller one on a size 20 blue wing olive dry. (LDR) The strangest thing was a trout I saw swimming around with what I thought was a large fly in its lip and another trout chasing it.  When it swam by closer, the "fly" looked more like a live sculpin.  I don't know why it was hanging out of its mouth, but that's sure what it looked like. Also had success with pink lady soft hackle and a purple and starling soft hackle.

All in all, a great day.  Tight lines.

Flies for Reel Recovery

Sleet, now snow and apparently lots of it coming.  Blizzard warning for today until 6 AM tomorrow, so this guys not leaving the house for awhile.  What to do? Tie flies.  Shown above are 3 dozen that I just tied for Reel Recovery Missouri's event in April. They will have up to 15 men with cancer in the program.  It sounds like a good thing for these men, so I thought I'd do my part to help out. So far, I've tied 15 size 20 Griffith's Gnats and 30 size 14 Cracklebacks (15 each in two colors). The materials for the gnats are in the picture, along with a bobbin I just finished.

I'll add the web site for two of my favorite organizations, Reel Recovery (for men with cancer) and Project Healing Waters ( for disabled vets).  Both of these help their members through fly fishing.  I've met some wonderful people through PHW. 

One of my buddies just reported that he caught 46 nice Rainbows at Taneycomo yesterday.  He said number 47 broke him off and he was too cold to tie on another fly.  Way to go Russ!!! One of these days I'll have to see how well he counts.

We're waiting for confirmation of our flights for Alaska.  I'm going to fly fish and Gary will use spinning tackle. I expect we'll both have fun. Now its time to tie some more flies for the Alaska trip.