St. Louis Fly Fishing Escape

The sun going down around 8pm offers some amazing summer fly fishing opportunities while traveling for business.  Work took me back to St. Louis this week for a packed schedule of client meetings.  This week, I was able to manage 2 different fly fishing adventures into one trip.  Spending more time on the water fly fishing is pretty easy as long as you are creative and do a little planning.  Getting a solid 6 hours of fly fishing in outside of business hours is pretty awesome in my book.  Packing was a challenge for sure because I needed to bring 2 fly rods, a 5 weight & an 8 weight, waders, boots, pack, multiple fly boxes, net, and extra clothes...not to mention all my business clothes and work gear.  You know you are a pro when you can pull that off without checking a bag on your flights!  

 

 

Gear List:

El Cinco Combo

El Ocho Combo

El Bolso Sling Pack

Carbon Net

Waders

Boots

NEW Patagonia Bag: Black Hole MLC 45 L:  This is my new solution to bringing waders, boots, net, rods with me on business trips.  To meet carry on regulations, you can only bring a suitcase and personal item(brief case or backpack).  With this bag, it acts as my brief case, even though it's pretty large, and I can get my actual work brief case, waders, boots, net, and pack fly rod combo inside.  I'm constantly looking for a better system for traveling with fly gear on a business trip, and this is the best I've found.  I'm not sponsored by Patagonia, but maybe I should be, my wife says I look like I just stepped out of their catalog.  What can I say, I love their stuff!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the first adventure, I was able to connect with a friend Patrick Ritter, of @carpstl fishing club.  Patrick was kind enough to take me out to one of his secret spots for us to see if we could connect with some carp on the fly.  We got to cast at a ton of fish, but they were not interested in our flies this time.  We did connect with some random little fish, Patrick even managed the illusive cat fish on the fly!  Impressive!  The water was a bit dirty from all the rain, but these carp just didn't seem in feeding mode.  I had a blast fishing with Patrick, we actually work in basically the same industry for our day jobs, who knew!  I also need to send a thank you his way for bringing me some boots, it got a bit muddy and I would have enjoyed cleaning mud off my shoes in the shower of the Marriott that night, but Patrick saved me!

 

 

The next day, I finished up downtown St. Louis around 4:30 and headed south west.  I found a cabin on Airbnb in the middle of nowhere, but only about 3 miles from Meramec Springs Park.  The cabin has no wifi, no cell phone signal, and was VERY quiet.  A very nice change from my normal Marriott.  When I pulled in, I thought I might be at Crystal Lake, the scene of Friday the 13th.  Good news I found a solid fireplace poker for personal protection that evening (picture below), as there was no lock on the front door.  

That evening, I made it over to the Meramec River around 6:30, for around an hour and a half of throwing a streamer.  I thought I might be in for an incredible evening, as I hooked up with a rainbow on my first swing through the current.  I was fishing a green dead head sculpin.  They have a super cool fish skull head that gets down very fast in the current.  This is my go to streamer right now.  I've got a lot to learn about streamer fishing, but I'm studying up a ton right now.  I decided to get some dinner around 8 and headed back to the town of St. James, MO which is about 6-7 miles from the water I was fishing.  In St. James, I found a place called Missouri Pizza Company.  If you are anywhere near this place, it's a must stop, pizza was amazing, wings were amazing!  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I got up early the next morning to get on the river by 6:30.  What a gorgeous morning!  When I pulled in the park(there is a trout park at Meramac Springs Park, not where I fished), there were about 30 cars...must have been stocking day!    I walked past all the action to the actual river and began my morning swinging sculpins again.  Just like the day before, I hooked up on my first cast!  

 

 

I was able to land a couple of rainbows in the first 30 minutes, then the action grinded to a halt.  What a great morning, to be out.  This was a killer fly fishing adventure during a business trip.  As the days get longer, it's pretty easy to get a ton of extra time on the water outside of business hours.