Trip Summary - Bennett Spring, June 2015

Keeping with the tradition of this blog, I am writing this out by hand as I sit in on a SLU Law continuing legal education seminar. I’m in downtown St. Louis at the new SLU Law building, and my buddy Pat Eckelkamp, another attorney and fly-fisherman, is sitting next to me, also not paying attention. But hey, we both need the CLE hours to keep our law licenses, and this seminar is free. It’s been raining non-stop in St. Louis for a solid week. Water has been slowly but steadily seeping into my basement bathroom, and all of the streams in Missouri are completely blown out.

When I was fishing down at Bennett Spring back in mid-May, water output was at about 150 cubic meters per second. As I write this, output is over 1550 cubic meters per second. Insane. A few weeks ago, towards the beginning of June, my dad, Al, and I ventured down to Bennett, and although the water was a bit high and a bit fast, it was manageable, about 800 cubic meters per second.

This pic of the Bennett Spring bridge from mid-June 2015 comes from Weaver's Fishing Report.

So even though conditions in June weren't as good as May's, I'm starting to come to realize that "good fishing conditions" don't necessarily equate good fishing. Conversely, I'm finding that I tend to catch fish in high, fast, murky water fairly regularly. That was the case last week at Bennett Spring. It was my second trip there in three weeks, and instead of traveling with a family who were all expert fly-fishers, I was going with my dad, who swore off fishing at a young age.

Al Voss, the Selfie King