Montauk State Park, Missouri

Saffire’s latest adventure began last Sunday, September 13th. The WAC group from all over the country is meeting at Montauk State Park in Missouri. Most are arriving beginning Friday, and we are expecting people from Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Colorado.

Montauk is one of Missouri’s premier trout parks. The Current River, one of American’s National Scenic Riverways, has it’s headwaters in Montauk. The river is fed by four natural springs which put billions of gallons of fresh water into the river daily. The flow through the Park is ideal for rainbow trout, and just out of the park is beautiful kayaking water.

I decided to come down early to get some serious flyfishing in before the crazy fun begins. Luanne decided to come too for more lessons.

On the way down I saw a man coming down I-44 going east, he was riding a bicycle on the shoulder of the interstate. That would have been interesting enough, but he was towing three trailers behind the bicycle! Two of them were the kind you pull kids in and the other looked like a homemade something. I wish I could have gotten a picture of him.

Luanne decided to come early too for more flyfishing lessons and either I’m a good teacher or she’s a great pupil because her first fish here was a 17” rainbow! This was the first fish she landed on a fly rod and did a great job. We are “catch and realeasing”, so she put the big boy back in the stream to be caught another day.

We went exploring Monday and found out where to go to get shuttles for kyaking and wandered around the hills. The country is beautiful and pretty remote, great to visit but not for me to live! As usual, AT&T has no service, so I have no phone, but Luanne’s Verizon is intermittent and she can at least send texts. The only wifi is at the park store.

Today we left the park to fish at Baptist Camp, a beautiful site with flowing river and towering bluffs. This is a put in point for kayaking, and over a weekend is probably pretty busy, but today, we had the river to ourselves. The fishing was slow, but so beautiful it didn’t matter if we were caught anything. (I did catch one so we weren’t skunked!)

The weather has been glorious, a little shower at night and very pleasant during the day.

It looks like rain this afternoon, but we’re hoping to get back on the stream a while before dinner. We could go kayaking but we’re having so much fun fishing that will probably wait until the group arrives. I think we’ll have 9 kayaks for floats, and if the weather holds will probably go at least three times next week.

Will try and get this posted today, but won’t put any pictures up until I get home. Back soon!