Spring Fed Trout--Moving Beyond Where I Am

  

I fish for trout because of where they live. I like cool, clean water that moves beyond where I am.

Because they are good to eat, and leap three to four feet high out of the water when hooked is secondary to me. Channel cats do that, and are better eating to boot.

When I moved to Sand Springs in ‘66, Park Fennell took me to the Illinois River below Tenkiller and introduced me to the trout fishing there, and the access to it through old Mr. Stanfill’s gate there at riverside; the white, gallon coffee can nailed to the gate post to receive a fifty-cent donation for a day’s trout fishing. Honor system, of course, as there still was honor in the system, though it was disappearing fast.

The water moved cold and relatively clear there as I remembered it did as a boy in the Sierras. No snow capped peaks or ten thousand foot elevations, but the water was cool, clear, and going somewhere else beyond me. Trout fishing.

The closest “town”, Gore, was maybe a mile away and had an old-fashioned general store whose front was covered with as much Cherokee language as there was English. I liked that.

There was a hamburger joint where Park and I frequently ate a burger when we arrived in town preparatory to fishing Stanfill’s. It was common for me to filch at the table several of those little paper salt and pepper containers before leaving.

A couple hours later, down on the river, I would gather small pieces of drift and build a small fire just big enough to skewer my trout on sharpened willow sticks and roast them over the coals, sticks jabbed into the damp ground at just the right angle and elevation. Sooner or later Park, a good and hard fisherman, would show up and join me. I always stole enough salt and pepper to share. We would eat and talk quietly of the most inconsequential things, watching the water move. Trout fishing.

I trout fish now, two, sometimes three, weeks out of the year up at Bennet Spring State Park ten miles north of Lebanon, Missouri which is about an hour northeast of Springfield. It’s as far in that direction as Beaver’s Bend State Park is in the other direction down in Broken Bow, Oklahoma. I prefer Bennett Spring because its terrain is easier on my ailing back. It’s that simple.

Bennett is stocked daily from its resident fish hatchery based on the previous day’s sale of permits sold at the park store where you can buy both your license and daily tags, similar to the set-up familiar to many who have fished at Roaring River State Park in Cassville, Missouri.

The main difference between the two sate parks mentioned? The pools, separated by foaming falls, at Bennett are bigger, wider, allowing a greater spread of the fishermen (and women) using them. You are allowed to wade at Bennett, both the sections set aside for lure and bait fishermen, and for those choosing to use only flies. All good. Dealer’s choice. My grandson Lane and I choose flies, devil take the hindmost.

Pam takes books, whodunits, and sits in the riverside shade of gorgeous, open-leaved sycamores, occasionally lifting her head to see if either of her boys has drowned.

We understand park rangers not wanting Conrad starting any fires or cutting willow sticks to roast fish. We take them up the hill about a mile back on Highway 64 to either Vogel’s Camp or Bennett Springs Inn, both of which have sheltered us for years.

Trout tackle? Literally right across the street (Highway 64) at Weaver’s Tackle Shop. Licenses, gear, et al.

Both camps have clean, air conditioned kitchenette set-ups where you can hang your waders outside to dry, prepare your own meals, and eat them in privacy. I don’t have their numbers in front of me (what, you think I’m a professional journalist?). Google them, I guess, or dial information Lebanon. They’re quite reasonable at any rate if I can afford them, and will deal with you after Labor Day.

Lane has all the signs of a good-fisherman-to-be. He fishes hard, hard, hard.

And then a little bit more. Like Park used to.

I watched him the other day catch a limit (four) right in front of me while I tied trout flies for him to use at a picnic table by the water. Pam finished her second novel, I think, in two days just a few feet to my right. Lane left the water, cold water streaming from him, and walked up to me with his limit of flipping fish on a chain stringer.

“Papa,” he said, “I’m done.”

“Forever?” I asked.

“Let’s go eat,” Pam said.

Which we did, right after Lane borrowed my knife and sat down in the icy water to clean our dinner.

Trout fishing. The same, but all different, and moving beyond where I am.

 © 2015 Conrad M. Vollertsen