Southwest Missouri Fly Fishers, P.O. Box 14523, Springfield, MO 65814-0192 June, 2013 June Meeting The June meeting of the Southwest Missouri Fly Fishers will be held on June 13, 2013 at the Missouri Department of Conservation Nature Center in Springfield. The Business meeting will start at 7:00 PM followed by the program. June Program At this time the program has not been finalized. Please check the facebook page of the club for the latest information on the program. The Prez Sez I hope that you can make it to the meeting the 13 th.the program has not been verified as of this momentso will have to facebook the program.do NOT forget the outing to Bushwhacker on SaturdayThe 15 th. This will be a fun trip for those that have a means To get around a large body of water. The smaller walk in Pond holds nice fish too! You will take your own lunch and drinks for this one! I had forgotten the date and have made a commitmentfor that day to help the Handicapped at the Andy Dalton Shooting Range needless to say I have messed up!!will not do that again for sure. The rains have been terrible on some of the rivers around here with Some not being fishable while some of the state parks are doing OK for fishing. I know the Eleven Point and Jacks Fork rivers Were way to high to fish or float safely. I hope you have gotten your fishing in during these less than favorable times. Looking forward to seeing you at6 the meeting. Dennis
Minutes From May Meeting Thursday, May 9th the meeting was called to order at 7:10 PM. Minutes and treasurers report from April was approved. Old Business: $250 donation was given to Joe Curry's "little brother", Chris Webster to attend fly fishing camp. Tim Homesley provided the rod and reel, "Thanks for SMFF". Sharon Yoker motioned that $300 be donated to Reeling& Healing, a group that promotes cancer rehab through fly fishing. A check was sent to Patti Hummert. New attendees at the meeting, John Lafrin, William St Clair, Keith and Annette Oxby. New Business: A trip is scheduled to Bushwacker CA June 15th, Saturday at 9 AM. Bring your own lunch. Be prepared to fish for Bass, Bluegill, Redear, Crappie, and Channel Cat. Lunch at 1:00 PM. Additional details at the next meeting. It was revealed that Larry Wegman was the author of the newsletter article, "Boys will be Boys". Has anyone tried the precopulatory scud pattern? Russ Doughty and I were on Crane Creek where I tried, but the water was too high for a proper presentation. Program> Keith Oxby presented his experiences starting with fishing he British Isles to his current home in the Ozarks. Keith presented to club with a collection of his Soft Hackle series of flies that were won by Dennis Slane in the club raffle. Keith was especially advocating the cream bodied with black ribbing soft hackle fly for tailwater fishing in the White River watershed. Treasurer's report We have a new member, John Lafrin. The checking account balance is $4781.36 Checks were written to Joe Curry ($250), Patti Hummert ($300) and Merkel Insurance for liability coverage ($341). Last year at this time the checking balance was $6059.21. Fishing report: Russ Doughty and I had a great morning fishing the White River at Big Spring in Bull Shoals State Park in late May I started off with a Ruby Midge, black body and red wire ribbing with a black tungsten bead. I was catch a trout on every cast and suddenly everything stopped. This was on about the 12th fish caught on this midge. I brought it in and noticed that after 12 trout caught on the inside of the top jaw, their maxillary teeth had frayed tying thread and it trailing behind the hook bend. Then a thought came to me that I should cut the thread about one-half the length of the fly body to represent an emerging wing. Caught another 5 trout until the thread was past the body again. Cut it again and same story. I retired the midge on the 20th trout. The generators ended our fishing at Big Spring at noon. We moved downstream to Wildcat Shoals. Russ caught a 19" brown. We both total around 45 fish each. Russ was using the Harvester midge, Green Butt Soft Hackle and an olive Woolly Bugger. We stopped by Tony Spezio's to check on his recovery from a third knee replacement on the same leg! He is building more 1 weight bamboo rods and had his river boat in the dock stall. Things seem to be back to normal. Larry Wegmann
August 24th, Jason Randall will be giving two free seminars at Dally's in Cotter Ar. Jason is a frequent contributor to American Angler and has written two books, "Moving Water" and "Feeding Time". At 2 pm he will have a program on "Nymphing Bigger and Better Trout" and at 4:30 "Lock in on Large Trout". Jason will also have his two books available for sale. I have used components of his first book in the MSU fly fishing class, with permission. After getting permission using his material, Jason and I scheduled to meet on the White. Jason and his buddies met Dave Tucker and I on a cold afternoon in February. The purpose was to video my articulated rabbit streamer with an underwater camera for possible inclusion on the American Angler website. We had trouble getting a good take because trout would attack the streamer as I was bringing it into position for the camera. There were 12 strikes in 12 cast. Jason commented that it obviously has the right action and attraction for trout. BUT, he thought the editors of the magazine would not think it was an attractive streamer to "catch fishermen". It turns out that marketing is more important than catching fish in the publication world. We warmed up with coffee and apple pie at the Wagon Wheel in Bull Shoals. Jason is a gentleman on and off the stream. I think you you will come away from the seminars with new knowledge. LW Lake Hinkle Recently Louisa and I took a trip down to Lake Hinkle in Arkansas. You might ask where is that? Well about 1 hour south of Ft. Smith. Weather wise the forecast was shaping up nicely so we made plans to rendezvous at a local gas station to fill up & transfer cold foods to the fridge in her camper and then head on down the road. I brought along our walkie-talkie s since it was going to be a five hour drive figuring it might be good to be able to communicate some on the way. We were headed to Little Pines Recreation Area in Waldron to camp. Now this is a forest service campground and most of them are pretty primitive. However, this one has water and electric and it was right on the lake.but they only have 9 spaces and they are first come first served. Scary thought when you re driving that far. We did have a back up plan in case, but fortunately when we got there, there were 2 available spaces. Let me just say, for a forest service campground, I was impressed.very nice campsites and as I said electric and water at each site. They had a nice shower house and a dump station that was conveniently located and lots of space if needed. We brought our yaks and the first day out, Friday, the lake was like glass that morning and really remained very calm most of the day with a few windy periods. Fishing
however was tough in terms of numbers of fish. Lou caught a NICE bass and I later caught a good one and we both caught a few bream. It really was a great day just to be on the water and NOT RAINING! (most every time I ve tried to fish this year, it has rained on me!) Lou talked to another fisherman that afternoon who showed her his live well, that was full of big bream and she found out from him where he caught all those fish. Well, it was in a cove, across the lake.she says they re over there across the lake in that cove(pointing), we ll have to paddle over there tomorrow. Now, let me explain, this lake is 1,000 acres and has LOTS OF STUMPS.!!! That cove was a L O N G ways away!!! But I figured, I d go, no choice but to follow in my yak. We met up with three other friends that night who came from Sapulpa and Fayetteville with a drift boat and Saturday morning we met up and headed out. Now, the night before, Lou got to talking to a local who explained how to drive to a boat ramp that lead right into that cove!!! WHEW!! I was relieved because I knew that when I fish with Lou, we fish until our arms have muscle failure and then having to paddle back across that lake was going to push me to my limits.;-) Saturday, in that cove, Lou found the fish along a grass bed and we anchored off and we started catching fish like there was no tomorrow! I caught the biggest redear I ve EVER caught and it was just fish after fish. So much fun! We paddled over into another cove and caught up with our drift boat buddies and they were catching a lot of fish too. Lou caught a nice catfish, and then I hooked into one. That was my first ever catfish so I had to learn how to handle them.yuck is all I can say.but what fun pulling them in! We later found another cove and Lou spotted some fish. So we again dropped anchor and it was almost every cast. Lots of big beautiful bluegill, SO orange!! After a while our seats were getting tired so it was time to get off the lake. Back to the campsite and prepare food as we had invited our friends for dinner at the site. Good food, good friends and then a trip back into town for ice cream and more fish stories from the day! Lake Hinkle is, as Lou says, a do over, although next time we decided we d stay at the motel in town! Sharon
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