TR I was misinformed

The original plan was to fish the Eleven Point River
with a guide on Wednesday, make mental notes about
where the guide runs the rapids in his driftboat then
fish the same section of river Thursday and Friday from
my canoe. As even the best laid plans often do that one
went awry.

The Alton, Missouri area got six inches of rain on Monday
last and the guide called my house ten minutes after I
left Tuesday morning to tell me to forget trying to fish
on Wednesday. By the time I got down there late Tuesday
afternoon the river had gone down quite a bit and was
starting to clear some so we decided to make the call
Wednesday morning. Kipper and I camped at the Greer Springs
Forest Service campground and when we took a look at the
river Wednesday morning it looked good enough.

There are nine Blue Ribbon Trout waters in Missouri and I
was under the impression that none of them were currently
being stocked and that all contained only naturally
reproducing wild rainbow trout. I was wrong. The Eleven
Point River Blue Ribbon section, from Greer Springs to
Turner's Mill, has been stocked with hatchery trout for
the last three years. "Supplemental stocking" the guide
called it, a goddamn tragedy is what I call it.

I caught one wild, beautiful, deeply colored acrobatic
rainbow trout that jumped several times and some pallid,
pitiful, stockers that didn't jump at all. The wild fish
(it had all its fins unclipped) I caught on a crackleback,
one of those regional patterns that are reputed to work
well in a specific region but no one outside that region
has hardly ever heard of. Kinda like the Pass Lake, hardly
anyone outside the upper midwest has ever heard of the
Pass Lake but it's a killer fly in the upper midwest. The
crackleback is Missouri's Pass Lake and I had never before
caught a fish on one. I wouldn't have even tried to fish it
if the guide hadn't recommended I tie one on. The stockers
I caught on some marabou thing the guide handed me on a 6wt
rod with a half ton of lead. Phhhhht, to hell with that ****.

Not a lot of fish, the river was way high and murky and I
guess it's not much of a dry fly river even when it's running
ideal, but it was a beautiful day astream in the Ozarks and
I enjoyed the outing.

After all the rain the Greer Springs campground was a damp
and dismal swamp and when I woke up Thursday morning to more
rain and a rapidly falling thermometer it promised to be a
cold, damp, dismal swamp. They wanted $30 to shuttle my car
and I decided it wasn't worth $30 to me to fish the Eleven
Point again so we packed up, hit the road and got home in time
to watch an Instant Classic, Game 7 of the NLCS on the tube.

--
Ken Fortenberry