Roaring River, Cassville, MO. October 14th & 15th: River up, Trout hitting on Wooley Buggers big time

I got a chance to get on the Roaring River for two short spells this week. I got a new pair of waders (we finally retired the old Hodgeman waders due to leaks that we could just not fix) so I wanted to give them a try out as well. They performed excellent and were so much lighter than the old Hodgman rubber/canvas one boot waders. I got a pair of Simms goretex w/ seperate felt soled boots....big difference!

The first visit I got out on the water around 4:00 p.m.--fishing closes at 6:30, so I only had a couple of hours to really fish. My favorite part of Roaring River is the fly fishing/catch and release waters. Started off throwing a Zebra Midge...I have had success throwing these along with a yarn strike indicator. The water is up about 5-7 " with quite a pace, so I figured maybe I should move to something else. Tied on a grey wooley bugger and started to get hits right off the bat. Caught a nice one right before the horn went off, but it snapped the tippet I had on....I had a 7X tippet tied. After some thought, I realized that the tipppet really needs to be adjusted to the water conditions. Light tippet is great if you have gin-clear waters that are low and especially if you are fishing midges, but for these conditions, and throwing heavier flies like wooley buggers, I realized I would need something like a 5 or 6x tippet. Weather was overcast, cold, with moments of drizzle....perfect!

The next day, I came back to the same spot. I only had a two hour break, so I knew I need to be more efficient. I changed the tippet out to a heavier one (5x) and started to throw grey cone bead wooley buggers with a couple of pieces of split shot as well to get it down in the water column.

Here is a technique that worked out really well for me. Cast straight out into the current, and then start stripping line. got it about 20' downstream, then started to slowly stripping it back...got it right in the seam where the main current and the slack water hit. These streams are like a conveyor belt of food for the trout, so that was the perfect spot. Caught 4 trout that day using this technique. Cool and totally overcast skies. I think this brought the trout out of structure and into the main channel.

fish ON!

MLT