Goodbye Cruel World...

...Hello favorite fishing hole!

Forgive my recent unbloggyness, which has plagued me heavily lately, but this time I have a good excuse.  Last week Marden and I traded in Little Rock for a few days in the woods at our favorite fishing spot.  While many of Marden's fellow soldiers are hitting the tropics with their significant others for their big pre-deployment vacation, we instead stayed semi-local and low key, heading to Montauk State Park in Missouri - the headwaters of the Current River.  A cold, clear stream, beautiful fall weather, copious amounts of trout fishing, relaxing, campfires, and eating grilled fresh-caught fish and junk food with the hubby were the essential ingredients for beating those old living-in-the-city-house-isn't-finished-don't-know-anyone-pre-deployment blues.

Montauk isn't the fanciest place, nor is it the absolute best or nearest place for trout fishing.  Arkansas has some darn fine trout fishing spots, but unfortunately they're almost all tailwater rivers below hydroelectric dams - which means a fisherman (or woman) is constantly battling fluctuating and unpredictable water flow.  When the generators are running, fishing is impossible for wade-fishermen like us.  Many times I've spent half an hour getting geared up, stepped into the river, only to have the horn blow signaling a rapid water rise.  When you're planning a fishing vacation, the last place you want to find yourself is sitting morosely on the bank, watching high water.

However, Missouri is blessed with many natural cold-water springs, four of which have been developed into state parks with hatcheries that raise and stock trout.  While the result isn't quite up to the wild-trout stream standards of some other semi-local waters, and certainly not anything like the famous streams out west, it's still a guaranteed good time for scenery, nostalgia, and fishing.  All without that maddening drive across Kansas.

Without going on and on like I'm channeling Thoreau, I'll just say it was a week made to order, with perfect weather and fall colors so vibrant they took your breath away and you feel like bursting from beauty overload.  There were times I just quit fishing in order to sit on the bank and take it all in - not just the colors, but the sound of the crystal-clear water, the flash of a trout sucking a bug off the water, wood ducks gliding along the bank, minnows scooting between moss-covered rocks - absorbing it all to remember during the cold and drab winter that's just around the corner. 

Here's a video of one of the many springs at Montauk.  It's not the main spring, which is much bigger, but these little bubbling ones are pretty cool: