Comments (1)

By MattTucker, March 2, 2010 6:00 am

During the 2008 and 2009 Missouri Trout Odysseys were my first taste of fishing Crane Creek.  During our first visit to the stream, we admittedly hadn’t done enough homework to know where to effectively fish and we had our asses handed to us.  The fish were spooky in the City Park, which is where we spent our time fishing that year.  We were itching to head back there for the 2009 Odyssey, and had done a little more homework and fished the upper river at the Wire Road Conservation Area.  It was during this time that both Brian and I really appreciated all that Crane Creek had to offer, or so we thought.  Fast forward to this Saturday.

Brent McClane and I had had a trip to Crane on the calendar for awhile now, and with the nicer weather this was the weekend that we could make it happen; although a dead alternator in McClane’s truck on Friday almost kept him from making it to my house to depart, he overcame that and we were off, for 4 1/2 hours of highway driving bliss.

I am normally a planning son of a bitch, but as time goes on, the less I like to plan things out.  I didn’t really remember which town Wise and I had stayed in last November near Crane and hotels / motels aren’t exactly lining the streets once you get away from I-44; so a quick 10pm call to Wise and a reply of “i don’t freakin’ remember” meant that we would just drive our way back to I-44 and the metropolis of Mt. Vernon, Missouri.

Late to bed, late to rise, we were on the stream by 8am on Saturday morning at the middle Wire Road Conservation Area parking lot.  Armed with my 7ft 3wt, I headed down to the stream while McClane rigged up and was rewarded with my first McCloud Rainbow of the day.  A pretty little fish, for sure, and like that we were in for a great day.

We fished our way upstream from the parking lot, until we got to the area where the river bottom is both on the right and left of the stream, it was there that we ran in to another angler (who had introduced himself earlier that morning while looking for an access, turns out that he and I visit the same internet forum from time to time, so running into him was cool) and decided to quickly fish our way back to the car and check out some of the other accesses.  The flies that picked up fish were micro eggs (#18), san juan worms (tan), copper johns, psycho prince nymphs, and yellow wire rib soft hackles, all fished under an indicator (most of the time it was a micro thingamabobber).  The fish were holding in the deeper water around structure, not sure if that was because of the winter time, the clear water, or both; but we didn’t pick up a single fish in any riffles (but did in some tailouts).  I did manage to hook up with two nicer fish on this section of stream, the first had a deep red band but that is all I was able to see and after about 3 seconds it was over.  At the end of the day, I hooked up with a nicer fish (that I never saw, but felt heavy) but in an effort to land the fish and take out my camera at the same time, the fish headed for an undercut ledge and dislodged the fly — so it goes sometimes.

The big fish landed on this section of stream went about 15″ and was 100% wild (as are all the trout in the stream), it was McClane’s biggest Missouri wild trout to date which was really cool and it was one of only a handful of fish I actually pulled the camera out for while he was fishing.

After wolfing down on some lunchables and power-aide in the parking lot, we headed towards the City Park and in search of the ever elusive “Dairy Farm” access; but not before noticing a surveillance camera in the parking lot we were parked in.  The camera was perched on a new light pole at the end of the lot and can easily get the license plate numbers of all that park in the lot and visit the area.  I was really glad to see this installed there, and hope this is a sign of things to come at other MDC accesses.

The rest of the day was filled with trying to avoid the crowds at the Crane City Park, wasting too much time fishing to a sucker that I thought was a trout, and fighting the wind with my 7ft pencil of a 3wt.  Frustrated with my lack of success in the city park in the 30 minutes we were there, and at the crowds, we headed downstream to our last stop of the day.

The lower section of Crane Creek is phenomenal.  It has a little something for everyone.  The water is bigger here and there are lots of places the river can not be crossed.  We weren’t going to fish this section, as it was already 2pm and we still had to drive back to St. Louis, but the water looked too good not to fish, so we grabbed our rods and hit the stream.

We fished downstream picking up some fish, and losing some more.  I had just lost my last fly for the day, so I headed over to McClane to see if he was ready to call it when we were greeted by a fellow who introduced himself as “Ray from Crane”.  “Ray from Crane” was an interesting character, as he walked up to us with his two hunting dogs wearing his gun holster.  Only in Missouri after watching scenes from Deliverance did I have backwoods thoughts running through my mind.  But come to find out we had common friends and we got to talking a bit and what not and he had offered to show us the rest of the river.  And with that, we got a tour of the river and conservation area that couldn’t be bought.  We hiked an old railroad track high above the creek as Ray pointed out spots to fish and ways to fish it.  Old timers like this certainly are a wealth of information, and I appreciate him taking the time to pass on his experiences with us.  If there was one mistake that I made, it was asking about the deer hunting on the property, and with that McClane and I took off on a upland hike with “Ray from Crane” and his dogs to see the rest of the conservation area (I have no idea how far we walked, but it was awhile).  We got back to the parking area shortly before dark, shed our waders and hit the road; home by 10:30pm.  Not a bad day of fishing in my book.

More of the photos are below.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Comments (0)

By MattTucker, January 29, 2010 8:00 am

The alarm seemed to go off a little earlier this morning, largely because we weren’t sure where we were headed.  We knew we were fishing Crane Creek, but we didn’t know exactly where we were going to fish the creek.  Last year, we decided to try our luck at the Crane City Park and other than spooking some sizeable fish, we only had one hook-up.  This is the one creek, which we wanted to definitely catch something on and we weren’t going to leave until that happened.  We rolled into the access, and followed the trail (in the dark) down to the stream and decided to try and walk a pretty good length until it was light enough to really fish effectively as well as to put some distance between us and anyone else that might have wanted to fish on such a stellar morning.  Crane Creek is a really neat place, although having seen the topography and the characteristics of the stream side…I can assure you that any rumors you heard about cottonmouths and copperheads on this stream must be true.  Some places look fishy….this stream simply looked “snakey”.  Brian was up first on the stream and after a little scouting was able to put eyes on some fish, and it was game on.  Shortly there-after, Brian had landed his first McCloud Rainbow out of Crane Creek.  What the fish lacked in size, it made up for in color and was a fine specimen.  During the excitement, we moved further upstream and as I was rolling tape Brian started to geek out at a nicer fish in the water.  I peered over the edge and laid eyes on a nice 18″ rainbow with a deep red band; but like that, it was gone.  Brian did pick up another fish on the hike out and then we traded places and it was my turn to hook-up on the stream.  I didn’t want to cheapen what Brian had done earlier in the morning, but I whacked two fish in about 5 minutes and like that we were off to Capps Creek.

Capps Creek is a put-and-take fishery, but as put-and-take fisheries go….Jolly Mill Park ranks really high up on the list of places for cool fishing shots.  As a fishery, I still don’t know what to expect from the stream; having only ever fished it at Jolly Mill.  From the looks of it (it flows through private land), it looks like it could hold some nicer fish and might be worth more exploring.  At any rate, we rolled into Jolly Mill and I grabbed a rod and hit the water.  Drifting / Swinging a streamer was the ticket and I was rewarded with a quick hook-up (while watching an even bigger rainbow rise on a feeding lane 30ft away).  I don’t know if I actually landed said fish or not, we were trying to remember that on the drive back; because I hooked up and lost two more fish.  All in all, Capps Creek produced exactly like we thought it would.  And with that, we were off to Hickory Creek, near Neosho, Missouri.

Hickory Creek is a shit hole.  I won’t even begin to sugar-coat it.  There are no fish in that stream, unless the hatchery truck comes and dumps them in there.  And when that happens, all the “trout fisherman” come out of the hills to load up the freezer and as quickly as the fish were stocked they are gone.  In two trips, we never even so much as saw a fish (although I think Wise got a take there last year).  To be super blunt, I don’t really care if I ever lay eye on the town of Neosho, Missouri.  It is just too damn hard to get to, and there isn’t much trout fishing to be had there.  In short, Hickory Creek ranks up there with the Urban Trout Program in my book.  Nothing more than a stream grocery store.  And with that we turned our backs on Hickory Creek and headed toward Roaring River State Park.

As Missouri Trout Parks go, Roaring River State Park is the mac daddy of trout parks.  Your chances of catching a “pig” within this section of water are greater than any of the three other trout parks (don’t believe me, check out some of the photos that Tim’s Fly Shop has of the pigs caught down there).  Both Brian and I were pretty excited to be headed down there again, the problem was that the weather was phenomenal and what should have been a nice quiet afternoon on the water turned out to be a really crowded hour or so spent at Roaring River Trout Park.  We quickly found a section of water, and I grabbed the rod and after a bit of time had picked up my first fish on an egg.  After that, we headed to a different section of the park to see if we could spot any of the larger fish….but we came up short.  With limited light left in the day, we hopped in the rig and headed to Roaring River Conservation Area to tackle the river outside of the park.

We rolled into the parking lot at Roaring River Conservation Area around 4pm, just as a fisherman was walking out.  He was an older gentleman that was severely out of breath.  We struck up a conversation about the fishing in this area (as neither of us had tried this section of stream before) and the old man called us over to his truck as he was stowing away his gear.  He told us the hike to the river was a “pretty good walk” and convinced us not to follow the trail, only to “turn left at the scared up tree”……i don’t know what concerned me more, the fact the guy was carrying a pistol, the fact that the stream was on our right as we descended and not our left, or the fact that he told us to rub our flies in powerbait before using them.  After grabbing a flashlight and Garmin, we headed down the trail and found the river after a “pretty good walk”.  Brian was up and he quickly laid eyes on fish, but they were a bit skittish and in the half hour or so we had before dark he didn’t bring one to hand.  We walked the stream up to where we thought the car was and bushwacked out to the rig.  This section of stream left us both wanting to explore a bit more of it, had there been more light and I think it would offer a good place to get away from the crowds if the people are too much at the state park.

After stowing some gear, he hit the road towards Lake Taneycomo.  It was going to be the second year in a row that we had planned to fish Taney after dark.  We rolled into the Outlet # 1 parking lot and I strung up a 7wt sinktip rod and put on a new streamer that IdleWylde flies had sent to FeatherCraft to test and after a few casts, the horn blew and i suddenly was sourrounded by other wade fisherman….at night…..what a croc.  Brian was messing around with painting photos with a flash light while I fished, and was rewarded with a nice strike about 30 minutes into fishing.  It felt alot bigger than it actualy was…maybe a 16″ rainbow.  We were starting to get crowded out by guys fishing at night with thier headlamps on…….so we de-wadered and headed into Branson to grab dinner and decided our plan of attack for tomorrow.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

12►