By Andy Ostmeyer

aostmeyer@joplinglobe.com

PITTSBURG, Kan. — “I’ll tell you a story,” begins Jack Overman.

If you enjoy fishing, particularly trout fishing at Roaring River State Park near Cassville, Mo., you’ll want to stop what you’re doing for a second and listen. It’s doubtful that anyone alive has more experience fishing at Roaring River than Overman.

“I have fished at Roaring River for 76 years; never missed a summer,” said the 89-year-old Pittsburg resident, who joked that he is “so old I don’t even buy green bananas.”

That takes him back to the early 1930s, just a few years after Thomas Sayman donated the land for the park to the state of Missouri.

For Overman, opening day of trout season — this year it is Thursday — is a ritual of spring, a time to reconnect with the fish and his fishing buddies. He estimates that since his first visit to the park when he was 13, he’s hit two dozen, maybe 30, opening days. This year, he’ll get the honorary first trout tag.

Overman really stepped up the fishing after retiring from Pittsburg State University in 1985 as director of the student center and the all-campus food service. He said he has been keeping a record of sorts.

“We have averaged being there (Roaring River) 65 days every summer since 1985,” he said. “A lot of times, in fact last year, we closed the park out.”

Dusk is one of his favorite times to fish.

“I wait. About the last 45 minutes at night, before the whistle blows, I get my rod out,” he said. “I fly-fish about the last hour. That’s all my knees and legs can stand.”

In all the trips to the park, in the thousands — maybe millions — of casts, two things have never gotten old.

The first is the trip into the park. When he drops into Roaring River off Missouri Highway 112, following the steep decline into the spring-fed, trout-stuffed valley, the workaday cares of the rest of the world always melt away.

“It kind of transforms you,” Overman said of the drop into the park.

The second is that moment of grace for every trout angler: “The thrill of seeing that fish come from nowhere, come to the top, make a swirl and hit that fly, and you have to set that hook at the exact second or he spits it out. He’s faster than you are.”