Great Trout Fishing Trip

So I got an email last weekend from my buddy Tom.  He is a good friend and reader of this blog, but more importantly he is an outstanding fly fisherman.  He told me that he had some luck catching rainbow trout at Liberty Park Pond in Sedalia, Missouri, and that got my attention..  It is stocked every year in early November with trout as part of the urban trout stocking program.  He said that he and his friend had caught quite a few trout that week and that was about all it took to get me packing.  Tom said he would be interested in tagging along as well and after a former student of mine agreed to join us, well we had a fishing trip panned that included three generations of fishermen.

While I don’t want to cheapen the trip to a statistic or brag about numbers, let’s just say we caught enough fish to keep us happy.  We caught them on worm imitating flies, jigs, and even dries.  I watched others catch them on woolies as well as nymphs.  While I wouldn’t consider any of the fish particularly large or memorable, there were lots of them.  Most people I talked to informed me that around 1,300 trout had been stocked within the last week.  Thankfully, those fish aren’t going anywhere since it is catch and release until Feb. 1.  I love that the Missouri Department of Conservation provides this opportunity to anglers and I would really like to see a couple of lakes around the Kansas City area follow suit for the simple fact that it keeps lakes from getting fished out too quickly.  Anyway, it is a great opportunity that anglers should take advantage of especially as most warm water species fishing starts to slow.