Report: Meramec

While visiting the folks over Thanksgiving, I took a day out to fish the Meramec River. I've been on this river before, and in fact you can go back and read that report here. This time around, it was much colder and in fact, a couple of inches of snow had fallen the night before. The ground was still warm enough that the snow all but melted before the end of the day, but it still made for a picture perfect day.

The temps never rose about 33 degrees and this caused not only my guides to ice up, but my line became a little stiff as well. No big deal and all part of the fun. I'm not sure what the water temp was, but you can imagine it was also a little chillier than my last trip.

Icy lines...

On this outing, we parked very near where we were last time. If you recall, I scrambled down “Suicide Hill” to get to the water on that day. With the ice and snow, I thought that would be a bad idea to attempt such a thing this time around. Instead, I opted to park at “Cardiac Hill”, which is not very far away. You end up maybe ¾ of a mile or so upstream of Suicide.

Upon reaching the river, I realized that the water was extremely low and clear. Not what I expected. With the snow and rain a couple of days before, I expected it to be much higher. In fact, the water seemed to be a lot lower than when I was here last time. The fishing near where the path reaches the river did not look inviting. So, I went upstream. I was easily able to cross the river every 100 yards or so to access the sand bars that were on the inside of each bend. This made for easy traveling. I went quite a ways and found a few spots worth fishing, but there were not any lengthy runs/riffles like I had hoped.

I fished at the best looking spots and didn't get so much as a bite. The fish were down today, most likely in deeper pools. Problem was, I couldn't find any deep pools. Where were these guys?

I traveled far enough upstream that I was ready to turn around. I only had a half day to fish, so I needed to keep moving. I went back downstream and passed the Cardiac Hill path. I went far enough downstream that I ended up at Suicide Hill and where I was last year. The water was so low, I barely recognized it. It was a little disappointing. After several hours, I decided to head back upstream towards the base of Cardiac (last year it was almost impossible to go very far upstream of Suicide because of the water depth).

Over the course of the morning/early afternoon, I received a some bites and some good tugs. I hooked and later long distance released a good sized fish. But it never made it very close to my hand. The fish were definitely off their feed.

Trying to access the pool...

After getting back to the bottom of Cardiac, I climbed up on the bank and saw a bunch of trout eating deep down in one of the deeper parts of the river. Unfortunately, it was near impossible to reach them. I was 10 feet above on a steep bank and they were protected by floating debris. The trees surrounding me made it extremely hard to cast to them. These fish knew they were safe and picked probably the best place on the river to hang out.

Trees directly behind required an almost vertical backcast...

Next time I'm in town, I'll be checking out a new section of the river. Hopefully the water will be higher and the temps a little warmer. All in all, it was a beautiful winters day out in the Midwest fishing some usually fantastic waters.