Urban Winter trout fishing

Every winter the Missouri Department of Conservation stocks Rainbow Trout in several ponds in the St. Louis area for the urban winter trout program.  The first stocking is usually around November 1st, and they continue to make supplemental stockings in some lakes until February 1st.  After February 1st all lakes become open to catch-and-keep fishing. From November 1st to January 31st, about half the lakes are catch-and release only with no bait fishing allowed. These are the lakes I focus on, as there are more fish there throughout the season.  ​I always check the fish stocking hotline (636-300-9651) nearly hourly the first few days of November until they update it with the information of the lakes that are stocked.

WALKER LAKE

This year, the first lake I decided to try was Walker Lake in Kirkwood Park. I met my dad there after school, and we began on the shallower side of the lake. I was throwing a 1/16th ounce rooster tail so that I could cover water and find the fish. My dad started off with a light hair jig under a bobber. It didn’t take long for me to get my first bite. I reeled in a nice Rainbow, took a picture, and released it back into the lake.

After that fish I caught 3 more of varying sizes in relative succession. The fish were pretty grouped up, and they had never seen lures before so it was easy picking. After the fourth fish, the wind picked up and it became difficult to keep the rooster tail deep enough, so I switched to a small silver kastmaster spoon and caught two more before I broke it off on a log. After that, I tried a trout magnet jig under a bobber and caught one small one, but the wind made that setup impractical. By this time, it had started raining and it was still windy and I had shorts on, so we decided to call it quits. Very successful first urban winter trout outing of the year.

TILLES PARK

​The next day me and my friends decided to try a different lake, so we went to Tilles Park in Brentwood. I started off with a rooster tail, and surprisingly I wasn’t getting bites. After about an hour of trying a few different lures, I decided to try another spoon so I could cast farther to the aerators and get down deeper. Initially, I had no success on this technique.  However, I finally had a bite when I tried casting to one of the aerators and letting it sink to the bottom then slow rolling it back.

This technique yielded a nice rainbow and then another one on the next cast. I thought I was about to start killing them, but I did not get another fish for a while despite getting a few hits.  It is possible that the hooks were too large for the spoon I was using. Soon it began to rain and almost right away my friend and I caught 3 each on deep spoons in quick succession.  One of these fish was the largest trout I have caught at one of these lakes. I don’t know how long the bite would have lasted, but I ran out of time and had to go somewhere else.

WILD ACRES PARK

Fortunately, the winter urban trout program makes it easy to get out after school and work. A few days after that outing my dad and I went to a lake we hadn’t fished before. We showed up at Wild Acres Lake in Overland around 4:00. I started off with a spoon again, but couldn’t buy a bite. It didn’t look like most of the people fishing were catching anything, even though it had just recently been stocked with several hundred trout. There was only one guy in a back pocket fishing under a bobber that was catching fish consistently. After he left me and my dad went back there, and my dad tried a marabou jig deep 4-6 feet under a bobber. Soon he had a really nice rainbow on, and right after he unhooked that one he immediately caught another one.  After that flurry neither of us could get a bite for the rest of the night.

After the first week of trout fishing, I have developed an idea about how freshly stocked trout act in ponds. I believe they stay in tightly packed schools.  Even though they are willing to bite, it may seem as if there are no fish in the lake because they are schooled up. This explains the brief feeding frenzies, as it was likely that a school came through the spot we were fishing.  I also think it is important to mix it up and try a variety of presentations until you find what works.

The Urban winter trout program is a great way to introduce people to trout fishing who would otherwise struggle to find trout fishing opportunities.  It also allows people like me the opportunity to do more trout fishing because of how close it is to home.

The Missouri Department of Conservation manages winter trout stocking in several urban areas throughout Missouri. For a complete list, check this out:

https://huntfish.mdc.mo.gov/fishing/species/trout/trout-where-fish/winter-trout-fishing-areas