Trip Report: Westover Farms; Still Opearting and the Trout Are Willing

November 6, 2010 by MattTucker

2010-11-06pic002(Resized) A lot has changed over the years for at least one of Missouri’s private trout fisheries, Westover Farms. Rumor has it, that Westover Farms is now tied up in some sort of bankruptcy / foreclosure / FDIC debacle; but that doesn’t change just how special this particular piece of property is (hint: you can read about the rumors here). Rumors or not, Tom and Lisa (the caretakers), are still employed and operating the property for the bank and believe it or not, you can even still fish there and book lodging and what not.

Hannah, my 8 year old daughter, has been on me about getting her back down to Dry Run Creek, but work obligations have kept me in St. Louis more frequently than in years past and I haven’t found the time to get away. Enter Westover Farms. Kids 12 and under can (with reservation and possibly a paying adult) fish for free. A quick call and return call from Lisa and Hannah was all set up. With temps set to be in the low 20’s in the morning, I did my best to convince Hannah to postpone the trip (admittedly she doesn’t have near the clothing to stay warm while fishing in such cold weather), but she would have none of it and even teared up at the thought; so the trip must go on. I did my best to postpone the inevitable cold start with a long breakfast at Cracker Barrel and by 7am, we were off to Westover.

The fishing was, as it has always been, good. But it was apparent that this isn’t the Westover Farms of Springrise at Westover days. The fish in the “garden section” of the stream were actually pretty wary of people and casting a shadow on the stream caused them to disappear into the various undercuts and vegetation and what not. Because of this and the vegetation that was let to grow along side of the stream in this section, it required a little more accurate casting and line control than what Hannah possessed, so we headed off down to the creek section of the property; where Hannah found her grove and immediately started picking up yearling…park marked / white tip finned rainbows…..with relative ease in various riffles on a San Juan Worm that she had tied herself. As we walked the property, we ended up down where the “garden section” dumps into the creek and the fish were stacked up as they had always been. Hannah was mesmerized by all the fish in this section, but there was already a guy fishing this section (with little success), so we decided to try and wait him out, as he was there first. But there is only so much waiting an 8yo can do, so when the guy stepped out of the stream to take a leak, I told her she could start casting and she immediately started catching fish. The more she caught, the harder the other guy tried, but with no luck and he reeled up his line and walked away without saying a word. I am not sure if the guy was pissed that we “low holed” him…..if that is what you want to call it, or that he was being out-fished by an 8yo; but either way Hannah thought it was pretty cool that she was catching more fish them him……and quite frankly, so did I.

On a separate note, Brent McClane met us down there to try out some new video equipment that he is working on, and I am really hoping to see some uber cool stuff coming from him soon. All in all, it was a great couple of hours on the water with Hannah and looking forward to more in the future. The trip wasn’t really about shooting photos or what not, so i only snapped a handful of shots, but the gallery is below.

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The Sepia Files (Week 12)

March 10, 2010 by MattTucker

Set. Set. Set. Hit Him.

Hannah Tucker (age 7) on Dry Run Creek with her “sport” Parker Wise (age 6). Hannah and Parker took to raggin’ on each other about setting the hook on this trip, like we all do with our fishing buddies. On this day, Parker landed a 27″ rainbow on a fly tied by Hannah. What the photos don’t show are the proud fathers. Do yourself a favor, and take a kid fishing you won’t regret it.

Dry Run Creek — Another Dad & Daughter Trip

February 1, 2010 by MattTucker

My 7yo daughter, Hannah, and I have taken four trips to Dry Run Creek since her interest in fly-fishing began. Each trip is really special for me, as she always seems to pick up on something around the house and she applies it to the stream to “be like dad”. Just prior to our last trip to Dry Run in November, I had taught her how to tie San Juan Worms and gave her permission to get into my fly-tying stuff any chance she wants. Needless to say, she now has about 4 dozen sjw’s tied up ready to fish. She had been on me for awhile to fish again, but she didn’t want to go when it was supposed to be “too cold”. So I took advantage of the forecasted 50 to 60 degree weather we were supposed to have the weekend of January 23, and we picked to drive down Friday after work, stay in a hotel in Mountain Home, get up and fish until she grew tired and then drive back to St. Louis. I knew that I was going to spend more time in the car than on the stream, but that didn’t seem to matter as we were heading out fishing.

We got on the stream on Saturday morning about 7:15am and dawned our waders and hit the water. We fished upstream of the handicap access platform on the stream (which by the way they are extending upstream). She was in to fish pretty immediately, after a few words of encouragement about her casting. I netted the first fish and immediately she was reaching for it in the net to unhook it and release it. At that point, I was tickled pink as our first trip to the stream she really didn’t want to touch the fish, but now she was unhooking and releasing the fish in the water. I think she has watched too many of my home-made fishing videos and bass fishing guys on television though, as the first fish she caught she gave it a little kiss and back into the water it went. I tried hard not to laugh, and I don’t think she noticed.

We fished for a little more than 4 hours on Saturday, but quit because her feet were getting cold in the Cabela’s boot foot waders that she was wearing. In total she probably caught close to 40 fish (I quit counting at 25 early in the morning) and had me busy netting fish for her. I had brought all my photo / video gear with me, but she kept me busy netting fish that I didn’t really have any time to shoot any quality photos, and only used my P&S once to snap two photos of her with one of the fish. It was a nice change of pace to fish with her and not have a camera around my neck the entire time and just enjoying the time together.

She did hook into 3 serious fish on the trip — each well over 20″. The biggest fish that she hooked in to was the biggest brown that I have seen in the stream and when she hooked it the hook actually straightened and pulled out. She took it like a trooper throwing her arms to her side and then looked up at me and said….”oooohhhhh that was a big one.” I think she may be hooked.

Montauk State Park (Licking, MO) — October 8, 2005

October 8, 2005 by MattTucker

This weekend was the maiden voyage of the newest Tucker Family Camper (a 1988 Coleman Sequioa Pop-Up). My wife and kids took out of St. Louis by 5:30pm on Friday for the trip down to Montauk. I will say the pop-up tows like a dream behind the Blazer. We made ok time, stopping for gas and dinner — we arrived at camp site #111 at 8:30pm. We were camping with Mark Kotcher (aka mkotcher) and his daughter. They had the fire going and we set up the camper and hung out by the campfire.

It was a camping weekend, and not so much a fishing weekend from the get go — which is why the family came along. Saturday night it was frigid. We stayed in a basic campsite (no electric) and the pop-up doesn’t have heat we froze that night. We woke up, started a fire, and cooked breakfast (eggs, ham, sausage) then decided to take everyone to the lodge to get their tags and to head over to the C&R area to let the kids fish.

The temps in the morning were in the low 40’s with sunny skies and a wind that could gust fairly hard. This was my first chance to fish the C&R area since they rehabbed it last winter and I am impressed with what they have done. New to the area is now you are only allowed to fish from one side of that section of stream — they also tried to creat a little more current in the lower section of the run. Make no mistake, it is still like fishing to fish in a barrel as there are a ton of fish in this section of water. But there are also a ton of anglers, and the fish see a ton of flies. Today was about the girls catching fish though. Mark and Alyssa scoped out a spot near the bottom of the C&R area and I took Hannah and Kaitlyn further up. A white mohair proved fatal for Kaitlyn as she quickly landed a rainbow when the MDC employee pulled up to feed the fish — well the girls were off like a stampede of buffalo to help them feed the fish and the MDC employee let each of them empty a bucket of feed into the runs. My youngest daughter is still talking about it. A big thanks to the MDC employee that took time out of her work to let the kids “help” her. Definitely put a smile on all thier faces. After feeding the fish, now Hannah wanted to catch one — so we put on a madame x and started to fish it dry. Hannah quickly caught 2 fish with a little help from me (she is only 3 — so I was helping her cast and set the hook). She got a kick out of watching the fish blow-up on the fly. After about an hour of fishing, each of the girls caught 2 fish, and I caught a few as well, they were ready for lunch and a playground. On the walk out, Mark and I decided to have some fun and I started throwing the “x” in the slower water at the end of the C&R area and the fish were going nuts over the thing. The last fish of the morning actually sucked my fly through its gills. It came out of the water several times and was a nice fish of about 16″that appeared to be foul hooked (and fought like it). Upon landing the fish and trying to unhook it, the fish actually sucked the fly through its gills somehow and I had to cut my tippet to unhook the fish.

After lunch and pointing the girls in the direction of the playground, Mark and I decided to get in 2 hours of fishing before he and Alyssa had to head back to St. Louis. Because it was right there, and the girls were “playing” near the water we opted to just walk down to the river behind our campsite and we fished from campsite 111 until the end of Loop # 3. It was interesting water that I have never fished, and Mark had only fished it once or twice. We fished dry flies the entire time. I started out throwing the same madame x and Mark threw a small crackleback. The fish were not as plentiful as in other sections of the park — but there were fish to be had. Several of us missed fish on top, and then Mark got into a group of risers and proceeded to get what seemed like hook-up after hook-up on his fly. I ended up changing to a crackleback as well and got a few rises and LDR’s but didn’t get a hand on a fish from this particular group. I did pick up a fish in front of the handicap access, but that proved to be the last fish of the weekend for either of us. By 4pm, we headed back to the campground and Mark called it a weekend, while I tidied up camp and got dinner ready.

There was no fishing on Sunday morning, just packing up the camp and heading to the lodge for breakfast (youngest wanted pancakes). I did run into Norm when we were at the lodge — and just had time for a quick handshake / hello (starving kids wait for no one).

It was a good weekend by anyone’s standards. To see the look on my kid’s faces when they hooked up with fish was priceless (as I am sure the look on my face was too), and the camper proved to be a sound $400 purchase. Hopefully that is the first of many future camping trips with my wife and kids. My youngest is already asking to go fishing again…….