Stocking Trout

This school year we were able to help out with stocking trout at South Mountains again. Before the truck came we had a little time to fish. This guy was super eager to eat and he chomped at my fly as soon as it hit the water. I didn't set the hook then, but I hooked him and brought him to hand a little later.

Stocking trout there has been such an awesome experience. I love getting to be so close to the trout and I love feeling like I'm helping in some way. The students really get into it as well.

Over spring break I took a family friend up to Wilson's Creek to fish and scout out a good place to camp with the scouts. We fished the stocked section for a couple of hours with no success and hardly a sighting. We decided to try and find a campsite and followed a side trail for a little while. We found an awesome place to hammock alongside a stream. We wet our lines and both of us within a couple of casts caught our first wild trout. These were brookies, and they were eager to eat. We didn't even have to get the fly close to them, they swam several feet to eat our prince nymphs.

Looking forward to coming back here in a week from today with the scouts.

After spring break, I headed back to SoMo to help stock the LCS trout. We had plenty of time to fish that day and I found a bridge that the fish were holding under. There was a monster trout that I kept hitting on the nose with several different flies, and he never cared much. I have been looking into some streamer patterns to hopefully target these big fish better. I did catch three other fish in the process. Here are two of them:

Video

This is a video one of my students showed me. He and his dad are pretty big fly fishermen, and we talk about it every so often. His dad took this at South Mountains State Park. It's really cool to see the trout take his fly, and to see the fight.

Stocking Trout with the Outdoor Club

On November 5, I went up to South Mountains State Park with my Outdoor Club at work to help stock trout. I had heard that hatcheries sometimes need help with stocking smaller rivers and creeks through another blog, and thought I would find out if that was the case at South Mountains. It turns out that they were super excited to have our help. SM has delayed harvest designated water, which means that they are stocked four times a year, most of the year is 100% catch and release, and during the summer months you can catch and keep seven a day with no size limit. In the November stocking, the rangers usually have a training, so there is only one ranger in the park to help the hatchery truck stock. It takes several people to do the process efficiently because they have to take the fish from the truck to the river in five gallon buckets. For that reason they usually call up a nearby juvenile delinquent center, and ask for help from those kids. They were pretty excited to have a school group come and help with the process. Ten students came, along with one other teacher who helps with the club pretty often, and a bus driver I paint with over the summer named Johnny who loves to fish. It was a good size group, and the kids absolutely love the trip. We learned a lot about trout, and their habitat, as well as the importance of riparian zones. The students learned pretty quick how to identify brooks, rainbows, and browns.

Helping Out

This past week I gave South Mountains State Park a call to see if they needed any help stocking fish in October and November. They put 2000 trout in the water starting near the picnic area at the beginning of each month. I have been wanting to do this for a while after reading about it on another blog. They can't dump all the trout in one spot, so they have to spread them out using 5 gallon buckets going from the truck to the creek. I have an outdoor club that I run at the school I teach at, and I thought it would be a great way to get the students to learn about the environment, and how important trout are in an ecosystem. They are a great indicator of a clean and healthy water system. Anyway, the ranger was very excited to hear that we were interested in helping, and we are planning on heading up in the first week of November to help out. I called a little late to get the trip set up for the beginning of October. I'm super excited!

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As a side note, this is a really cool video I found this past week. I agree whole-heartedly with it. Whether we admit it or not, our health and our spirits are connected to the environment around us. A healthy environment = healthy us. I have always marveled at God's creations; I love to get away from civilization and soak them in. I find that one of the places I feel closest to Him is whenever I am furthest away from man.

Little Brookie

Catching my first fish made me even more thirsty to catch another. I continued, but never caught. One trip out to Cape Hatteras produced one small fish for my cousin, Maximus Prime, but that was the closest I got for a long time. 

Maximus Prime and Michaela

One day, returning from an errand with an older friend from church, we somehow got on the subject of fishing. I mentioned to him that I was super interested in fly fishing, and he said he would loan me some equipment that he hasn't used in years. He used to fly fish, but somehow fell away from doing it. I jumped on that offer. After getting his gear, I looked up a ton of videos on how to cast, and on all of the other basics. I started practicing in my back yard. I tried to fish a few times, but after about 4-5 separate fruitless attempts I was getting frustrated again. 

In October of last year, I took my Outdoor Club to South Mountains to do a hike. We knocked out 7 miles in only a few hours, and had some extra time to run around and explore the creek by the Jacobs Fork parking area. I saw several people fly fishing, and I saw SEVERAL trout. I was astonished because I hadn't ever seen so many before. I convinced my wife to go up there the next weekend with some friends for a picnic. I brought my friend's gear, and did a little fishing. I had (and have) no clue what I'm doing, and I saw the trout sucking in and spitting out my fly before I could hook them. After about half an hour I finally hooked one, and was able to reel it in. I called my friend's daughter over to take my picture (she was running around exploring with my SLR) and I tried my best to keep him in the water close to me and only pull him out when she took the pic. It took her a little while to get to me and when she did, the fish got off. I had several witnesses though that I actually caught one. It was about an eight inch brook trout. My first fish (and only fish as of yet) on fly. I was stoked.