High Plains FlyFisher

HighPlainsFlyFisher

For just a fleeting moment I actually thought I was going to get out of town this last Saturday. Too much work and a lack of quality fishing time has had an adverse effect on my mental state here recently and a nice float with a cooler full of beer and a few fish mixed in was gonna be just the ticket to cure what ailed me.
Plans were made...shit was loaded in the truck...beer was iced down , it was all coming together nicely until that fickle bitch "Mother Nature" decided to throw a wrench in the whole works. I awoke Saturday morning to rain pelting the window and winds gusting well over twenty mph. After getting around I decided to check the current water levels for today's destination....

That's not what you want to see when you're leaving the house in 10 minutes to drive for three hours and fish said piece of water. I was up , there was nothing else to do at that time of day and the truck was already packed so I figured what the hell I might as well make the best of it. A couple quick checks told me what I expected , anywhere I could make it to for a day trip was blown out as well. The radar screen for central and Southern Missouri looked like a finger painting from a little kid at Christmas , reds and greens splattered across the screen everywhere you looked.

One option still open was to head down to Warsaw and try my luck below Truman Dam for some wipers. I havn't personally had any luck down there yet but know the fish are there to be caught.
Two hours later I was standing in the rain with a dozen or so guys chucking hardware , they were packed along the upper reaches of the West side of the spillway pitching big topwater baits halfway across the river.

I took up position about 50 yards below where they were and started throwing some shad flies as far as the eight weight would allow (which wasn't nearly far enough). Every once in a while I'd hear someone up above me holler and look up in time to see another wiper or white bass come in , but for me the fish just didn't show any love. All I ended up with was a couple of dink white bass and a wet ass from standing in the rain half the morning. When the hardware guys quit catching the occassional fish I knew it was time to hang it up and call it good , it just wasn't gonna happen for me on this day. I threw my wet gear in and pointed the truck back North towards home.

With Plan "A" shelved before it even got started and plan"B" looking a little soggy about now ,I was left with a two hour road-trip to devise a plan "C" to save the day.
While the weekend obviously didn't turn out quite as I'd planned , there's always a silver lining somewhere. I drowned my sorrows in a few cold ones after getting back and then spent the evening and a good part of Sunday chasing a few crappie at a couple of my favorite panfish spots.

At the end of the weekend it was all good , I ended up doing pretty well on the crappie at a small city lake Saturday night and then pretty much tore the crappie and big gills up at my favorite little pond on Sunday afternoon.