February 11, 2017

I was fortunate enough to get down to Bennett Spring and enjoy a little of the last weekend of catch and release season.  I arrived late Friday night, stayed at Sand Spring Resort, and woke up WELL before my alarm was set to go off.  I was on the Niangua at 5:30 and fished until about 7:15 with nothing to show.  I then met up with my old high school basketball coach at 7:30 to catch up before we hit the water together.  We hadn't had the chance to spend any substantial time together in almost 20 years.  After some time catching up on careers, family life, and fishing stories, we hit the water together and enjoyed the rest of the day together.  There were a lot of things that happened over the course of the day and I have decided to list them out below or this post would be incredibly long.  I know I am long-winded as it is, and this is an effort to avoid boring you with details.

- The water was low and murky.  I'm not sure how these things go together, and the folks I talked to seemed baffled as well.

- Things started off fast and furious and tapered off until about 12 and then things got downright difficult until the horn sounded at 4.  From 8-8:30 I was getting a strike on every cast.  That trend slowly faded.

- One the bright side, during that time of prosperity I landed a 17 inch rainbow and a 14-15 inch brown that was really thick above the spillway.

- In the afternoon, Coach taught me how to fish a soft hackle and I caugh my first trout on a soft hackle.  It was a small, pretty brown and it came between the spring and the spillway.

- I used a GoPro for the first time and I am working on editing some of the footage.  If I got anything good, I will post it at a later time.  I am also thinking about starting a YouTube channel.  If anyone has any good tips for using a GoPro or editing videos, I am all ears.

- At first, the spring wasn't very crowded but people slowly trickled in over the course of the morning and then tapered off in the afternoon.  I expected a pretty good crowd with temperatures in the 80's and it being the last weekend of catch and release.  My expectations were met but no "combat fishing" took place.

- At about 2:00, everyone that was sharing the same stretch of water (below the spring) had their fishing licenses checked by an agent.  This was only the second time I have ever had my license checked and first time at Bennett.  Coach and another gentleman had been coming to Bennett for over 40 years and had NEVER had their licenses checked.  We were all in good standing and didn't have any problems.

- After having our licenses checked, an older gentleman told me a story about a time he saw two guys have their licenses checked.  He told me that he had been fishing near them for a while and also noticed something reflecting light up on the hillside above them on the opposite side of the stream.  It turned out to be an agent watching them through binoculars.  The agent later showed up behind them and asked the guys to see their stringers.  They were happy to show him they each had two fish per stringer.  The agent then asked them to take off their waders.  As they lowered their waders, each angler had 7-8 trout fall out onto the ground.  It turns out that they had been stuffing fish down their waders so they could conceal their nefarious enterprise.

- Sorry I didn't have any good pictures.  With catch and release season, I didn't want to risk getting in trouble, ticking someone off,  or killing a fish.

- Overall, I probably caught 20-30 fish with two of them being browns.  It was a beautiful day with a man that I respect a lot and was glad to reconnect with.