I met Jim Collins at Denny’s in Eureka at 6am and we headed down to “the springs” after a bite of breakfast and looking over his deer pictures from South Dakota. It was beautiful weather, and I expected all the “weekend” fishermen to be out — and they were. As we were leaving I counted 22 cars in the parking lot (that is alot for the C&R season). Fishing was not that crowded however, there was only one hole (my favorite hole, and also were I caught that 20″+ fish last Sunday, that was crowded. I wonder if it had anything to do with my photo and story being posted in the internet message boards (i doubt it, but you never know)?
We spotted 2 HUGE fish today — one was near the outhouse on the bank and it had something seriously wrong with it as it was floating really close to the surface and let me bounce my mohair leech off of its nose; the second fish was an easy 28″ and was ABSOLUTELY huge. We saw it on the far bank near the bottom of the park — it was almost impossible to fish too (I was given the task at trying to catch him, but Jim lost site of the fish and the stalk was over). It would have been a really horrible day fishing, but I managed to pick up 4 of my 5 fish within 30 minutes on the tan/ginger mohair leech on the far bank near the second spring. The biggest fish of the day was a nice plump 14″ fish — the other 4 fish didn’t have any size to them (oh yes, I also caught a chub minnow). In two trips, Jim still hasn’t caught a trout at the Springs (he did manage a rock bass though).
On the way back, we decided to stop by Blue Spring Creek and do some scouting. It is a very small creek near Bourbon, MO that has wild rainbow trout in it. We stopped at the two MDC access points off of HWY N and got out to scout the stream. We did see some trout — although not many and with no size whatsoever (but they are wild trout — something I don’t think I have ever caught). Jim noticed lots of insect larva on the rocks, and the stream did look very “fishy,” we left and decided that we would make it back in the early spring or perhaps when there is some snow on the ground and the water is a tad higher. We also stopped by the actual spring feeding the creek, it is a campground (a very nice campground), and noticed lots of stocked fish in that section of stream — but almost impossible for them to move downstream due to the series of spillways they have. — Matt Tucker