Trying Something New

I went camping last weekend.  One of my friends lives out of the country, and when he and his family are back in town a bunch of guys take him camping.  The past few times have been on some private property on the Meramec River.  A friend of one of my friend's father-in-law has a campground set up on the river with chairs, grills, and even an outhouse.  We headed out midday on Friday for a night with the guys in the middle of nowhere.  Now, it's been a couple of months since I've been able to go fly fishing.  And from having camped out at this spot of the river in the past, I knew that I wasn't going to be catching any trout on this trip.  The water is too warm and there is too much float trip traffic scaring off the fish.  But, maybe I could try catching bass.

I've caught bass with worms real and fake, but I've never gone fly fishing for bass.  I had gotten a gift card for my birthday so I went to Bass Pro on my lunch break and picked up some fly fishing bass lures.  The salesman recommended a 3-Pack of poppers, a red crayfish, and a dark purple snag-less worm.   I had my bass lures and was looking forward to the weekend.  But to be honest, I didn't have any idea what I was getting myself into...

We got to the campsite around 3:00 PM, unpacked the car and set up the campground. As soon as camp was set up, I geared up and headed down to the water. Two years ago, when we last went camping at this property, the river was about 30-40 feet across with vegetation on both sides.  But with the rain and flooding we’ve had in Missouri, things had changed.  The river was now at least 80 feet across and the only vegetation where the fish might be hiding was on the other side.  This wasn't going to be as easy as I thought.

I put one of the poppers on my line and waded into the water.  My initial thought was to wade in as far as I could and try to cast over to the opposite bank.  In the past while practicing casting in my back yard I was able to cast with some accuracy to about forty feet.  I look for the narrowest section of the river and waded out.  I tried a couple of false casts and then let the popper fall to the surface of the water.  Something felt off with my casting.   I lifted my line for another couple of false casts and when I let the popper fall to the water my line was in a mess right in front of me.  I kept casting, but it seemed like every other cast landed in a mess.  So, maybe I could get a roll cast to work better. There was pretty good current so I let it take my line out.  I pull back slowly and when my rod was in position I whipped it forward.  And instead of a mess of line five feet in front of me I had a mess of line fifteen feet in front of me.  I know my casting is not great.  And it has been a while since I’ve gone fly fishing.  But I couldn’t have regressed that far.

Unfortunately, I have to say it didn’t take me long to give up attempting to reach the far bank.  Nothing I did seemed to give me any progress towards making decent casts.  And with friends watching, I quickly decided to stop looking like I was trying to beat the fish into submission with my rod.

I think that my casting problem was two-fold.  First, the conditions were a little windier than I was used to casting in.  And the wind was coming from my right (casting arm) to my left, moving my fly line across my body.  I was definitely not used to this.  All of my previous casting in wind I was making short casts.  In this situation I was going for distance, and ending up with a pile of fly line in the water.

Second, I don’t think I was used to the weight on the end of the line.  Having only fished for trout at hatcheries, I haven’t really had to use any weight on my nymphs.  The water was never deep enough that I had to get the nymph down quickly.  And my practice casting has always been with negligible weight.  I only had a piece of yarn the end of my leaders.

But I didn’t want to give up.  As I look to my left and right I saw that I had two options.  There were a couple of dead trees sticking up out of the water to my left.  They looked like a spot where some fish could be resting.  And there looked to be pools of calm water under bluffs to my right.  Still having the popper on my line I headed to the trees to see if I could get a bite by floating it with the current past the trees.  The trees were close enough to the bank that I didn’t wade into the water for fear of scaring any fish.  I started casting and seemed to be doing OK.  Granted, I was casting a much shorter distance, around twenty feet instead of forty, and the added height of my line above the water seemed to help as well.  But now I was having issues with my back cast.  The rocky beach behind me sloped upward, and no matter how much I focused I couldn’t keep my line from tailing down and hitting the popper on the rocks.  Soon I noticed that I couldn’t see the white of my popper on the water.  I pulled in my line to take a look and found only cork and a hook.  I’d hit my popper on the rocks so many times I’d broken my lure!

Not wanting to ruin another popper I decided to try something else.  I put on the snag-less purple worm and head to the pools by the bluffs.  This was a whole new world, both with the casting and with trying to wade into a good spot to cast from.  This lure weighed enough wet, that when I was trying to pull it from the water to cast I couldn’t tell if I was pulling up the lure or a fish.  My rod was bending over from the weight of the lure more than it had from the trout I caught at Bennett Springs.  And as I was wading into my first spot to cast from, I didn’t know if I was going to be able to get out.  It felt like I was sinking into quicksand.  After a few minutes of sinking and awkward casting I moved on.  I climbed up one side of the bluff and down the other for a different pool.  And after two casts I permanently snagged my “snag-less” lure on a log three feet under the water. 

And done.

I did try to fish a little more the next morning without any greater success.  I switched to a hopper and was able to make some decent casts.  And even with my fishing failure I wouldn’t say that my trip had been ruined.  I had an awesome time hanging out with a great group of friends.  We shot some pistols, smoked cigars, floated down the river and had a great menu of steaks, brats, and Dutch Oven Cobbler.  We got some great pictures and as soon as a friend emails them to me I’ll post them on the blog.

Even with barely a nibble, it was worth the effort to climb into my waders and hit the water.  To quote A.K. Best, “The fishing was good; it was the catching that was bad.”