An hour after the opening horn and I have one trout to show for my efforts. I did hook and miss two others.
I’m at Missouri’s Bennett Springs State Park, which is fueled by a 100 million gallon per day spring. It is also one of Missouri’s four trout parks. Trout are stocked nightly. A fresh stocking of fisherman, it seems, arrive each morning.
Some of the anglers are no doubt holdovers from yesterday. You can begin fishing at 6:30 a.m. and when I arrived at 6:15 it wasn’t exactly shoulder to shoulder . . . but it was (and is still) cozy.
The odd thing is no one seems to mind. Politeness abounds. The mix is wide, too; kids and seniors, husbands and wives, spinners and fly rodders (sections of the river are set aside for each user group but there seems to plenty of crossover).
Just down stream from me a guy using an orange strike indicator the size of his thumb is beating the water to froth. He has one trout. His wife, quietly fishing beside him, just landed her fourth.
The Outdoor Notebook 