Montauk State Park 2020 Fishing Trip

Montauk State Park is one of four trout fishing hatcheries managed by the state of Missouri. The park was established near the head waters of the Current River near the town of Salem.

Our family takes 3-4 annual fishing trips to the park, typically one in each of the major seasons. Our fall trip helped set a deadline for some of the repairs we’ve been needing to make on Doris, our 1993 Fleetwood Bounder RV.

We drove down on Sunday September 20th, leaving our hometown of St. Louis at around 2:00pmin the afternoon. The drive takes about 3 hours and we stopped once at a truck stop for propane and gasoline.

Arriving at around 5:00pm, we had a few hours to set up camp before settling in for the evening.

Fishing Licenses, Stamps and Tags

In the state of Missouri, you need an annual Resident or non resident fishing license to legally cast a line into any of our waters. In order to “harvest” or keep fish, take them home with you and eat them you need a “Stamp” for that particular species. If you are fishing at one of the designated trout parks in the state, each day you’ll need to purchase a new “Tag” which sets the number, size and species you are allowed to keep. A resident license is about $12.00, a trout stamp is about $5.00 additional dollars and each daily trout tag costs $4.00 at Montauk.

Monday morning came early with my phone alarm buzzing away at 6:00am. The trout parks sound a tornado siren like horn each morning and each evening to announce the opening and closing of each days’ fishing. September brings a 7:30am bell so we wanted plenty of time to get our bodies moving and our gear together.

As usual, we snacked on small pastries and hot coffee before slinking into the water for the first time on our trip.

An unproductive morning pushed us back to camp around 9:00am and Sara was just waking up with our two dogs Hank and Yose. I made a nice classic American breakfast and got about doing our typical camp chores. The next three days held pockets of fishing, relaxing, working and enjoying the company of my family.

We don’t stick to tight schedules or agendas, we don’t know where we will fish from one session to the next and that’s kind of the entire point of going down to Montauk. It’s how we unplug from the world, even a little bit and just flow with the speed of the river, nice and slow.