Missouri Adventures

Last Thursday I was introduced to the rainbow trout. Our meeting place was a stream off the Niangua River in Missouri. The time was 5:45 a.m. I wore green rubber waders four sizes too big with suspenders. The trout wore nothing. I tried my best to coax a trout onto my hook, but the trout were much too smart for me. Plus I don't know what I would have done if I'd have caught one--most likely run around trying to find someone willing to take it off the hook, by which time it would have been dead. Not that I have a lot of sympathy for trout, though they are smart and speedy. But they are cannibals. After a better fisherperson than me caught a trout, he cleaned it right there by the side of the stream and threw the guts into the water, where they were promptly carried off by other trout and devoured. Gross. I ate some trout too, for breakfast at 10:30. Yep, that's right. Fishing time lasted three and a half hours. I quit a teensy bit early and took pictures of the trout, since I couldn't catch any. Most of the people in the stream didn't seem to tire of trying to catch trout. They are still there now, in the dark, casting their lines over and over, muttering in low voices about how this time the trout will bite.