Last Bennett Spring Trip of the 2025 Season

 

Bennett Spring State Park | Missouri State Trout Park and Lodging

The Ozarks in late October—my annual bittersweet trip. I love nothing more than camping in the fall. The breeze carries a slight chill, making a hoodie and a campfire a necessity. The hardwood timber is a mix of green, orange, and yellow. Squirrels scurry around as if they feel winter right around the corner, and they have acorns to cache. Family groups of does munched roadside acorns, seemingly without a care in the world. Though the conditions were ideal—less crowding, fewer nuisance insects—the cool perfection felt like a final, lingering farewell to the camping season.

We arrived at a surprisingly busy park on Saturday. Anglers lined the stream and occupied the usual spots, determined to fill a stringer on this final weekend of the catch-and-keep season before it closed on October 31st. I thought the rain would deter some, but the cool drizzle did not faze the diehards. The campground was just as busy, with only one site left unoccupied. We backed in, leveled our home away from home, and that was it for the day. For the rest of the evening, we simply watched the rain from under our awning.

Morning was no different. The rain was steady and showed no sign of letting up. While waiting for our breakfast of biscuits and gravy, I eyed the forecast: a break in the rain just after lunchtime. The new plan was set: hit the stream around 2 pm. As we ate, we watched the weekend crowd slowly disappear. The once-full campground was left to just three others and us. All was quiet in campground two.

Pulling up, I relaxed—the stream was clear and the fishing pressure, thankfully, light. A soft mist gathered on the windshield as I shifted the Ram into park. While I wrestled into my waders, my wife's voice cut through the quiet. 'Look! The fish are really hitting the surface,' she urgently called, pointing toward the water.  It was a rookie mistake—the kind that costs you a day—but I routinely tied on the usual: an elk-hair caddis with a zebra midge dropper. This combo had been effective on previous trips, so I ran with it. I should have waited until I reached the water before making a fly selection. The activity my wife spoke of was what I assumed to be a blue-winged olive hatch. There were bugs everywhere, and the fish were in a frenzy. The water swirled, not with current, but with the frequent churning of trout heads slurping up emergers.  Fish launched themselves from the water like the great whites on the Discovery Channel. The cool, damp air was filled with a silent, whitish blizzard of tiny wings lifting from the water's surface. I should have known better, I thought, staring at the chaos: the fish were in a frenzy, and I was rigging from memory instead of the current conditions.

It only took a few casts before the dry fly dropped from sight. A hungry trout smashed the black Zebra Midge, immediately bull-rushing the thick weeds nearby. I fed slack, hoping the fish would work himself free, but the sudden snap of the light tippet confirmed the loss. I found myself retying, standing knee-deep in the current. Making lemonade from lemons, I seized the moment. My lost rig was replaced by the smallest white dry fly in my box—a perfect match for the surface blizzard. I added an emerger pattern as the second fly, finally arming myself for the actual hatch. For the next two and a half hours, it was a blur of hatch feeding action. I landed a few, but I missed countless more. The fish were utterly indiscriminate, taking turns hammering the dry fly and the deeper emerger. When the emerger bite slowed, I went back to the trusty zebra midge and landed my two biggest fish of the day. The majority of my failures were frustratingly tactical: missed hooksets on the emerger were a constant reminder of poor line management in the uneven current. 

My truck and the weather may have cut the trip short, but the lessons weren't. Each season is a clinic, and every trip teaches me more about fly selection, how to read water, and the subtle nuances of a trout's feeding pattern. I know the habits of a stocked fish are a world apart from the wild Missouri trout, but the process remains the same: I go into every outing aiming to learn and build unshakeable confidence. Next spring, the real adventure begins—I'll be chasing the ultimate teacher: the Missouri Blue-Ribbon Trout Slam. 

Follow the link below for the video!