By Silas Gray

sports@joplinglobe.com

There’s an excitement about traveling through an area where I shouldn’t be, like I’m getting away with something. Especially when there’s fishing involved.

That’s a feeling I had recently when my friend Carl Daugherty and I spent an afternoon fishing the reclaimed mine pits at the Missouri Department of Conservation’s Shawnee Trail Conservation Area. It’s a short drive, 24 miles north of Joplin, just right for a quick trip.

Carl had borrowed my wife’s kayak for the outing. Carl has been shopping for a kayak for years. He’s come close many times but has yet to actually bring one home.

We felt just a little guilty as we easily slid the two kayaks right from the bed of my pickup and into the calm water of the pit, without carrying them an inch. The pit we’d selected wasn’t far from the road and included a gravel ramp that leads right to the water. We justified our laziness by saying that we simply didn’t have the time to hit one of the distant bodies of water and that next time we’d go much further.

I headed west while Carl paddled east, toward an area where a deep ravine cut through the shallow gravel, leading to open water beyond that was nicely choked with brush — a fishy-looking area.

Before I’d made my second cast, Carl connected with a scrappy bluegill. He was using a cork top-water fly called the “Round Dinny” — a favorite lure for many of us. It wasn’t long before I heard more sounds of excitement coming from his direction as he hooked into another of the strong little fighters.

I was tempted to switch but decided to stick with my first choice, an olive-colored streamer. After all, Carl was catching bluegill while I was after bass.

I’d worked my way across half the length of a normally productive bluff without a strike when I heard another squeal from Carl. I reached for the clippers that hung around my neck and quickly cut away the streamer, replacing it with my own “Round Dinny.”

The bright blue fly landed inches from a partially submerged tree branch, and I let it sit. Just as the rings in the water caused by its landing died, a bluegill burst through the water’s surface and swallowed the lure.

I retrieved just enough line to allow the fish to hook itself, and the fight was on. The little fellow put up quite a tussle, but I brought him and my “Round Dinny” back to the boat, both intact.

At the end of the bluff I came to a fence row. Under normal conditions the fence marked the edge of where the water met a grassy field. However, the rain had brought the level up far enough so that the grassy field was now an inviting shallow lake. There was an opening in the wire that marked where a gate once stood.

I sat just outside and watched as fish feeding below the surface swirled the water. Eagerly I cast my lure toward an area where a fish had just struck. Before the bug had even touched down, a largemouth bass leapt clear of the water and took the lure in midair.

I paddled on through the normally dry opening and caught six more bass from that recently formed little lake. Sometimes the green is greener on the other side of the fence — even when it’s under water.

I returned to the deeper water and paddled on to the far western end where the next pit begins. I was eager to see if the water had breached the high earthen bank that normally separates the two bodies of water.

The barrier was now simply a shallow muddy spot between the two pits. I slid over it with minimal effort, again experiencing the rush of getting away with something and traveling where it wouldn’t normally be possible to go.

Time was growing short, and I had very little time to explore the mysterious second pit. However, I did manage to catch a very nice bluegill from beneath a large log before returning to the other side to find Carl.

Although the high water has, at last, began subsiding and we can begin to get back to fishing the rivers and creeks, I know I’ll feel a little sense of loss the next time I paddle up and see a dry field where a lake once stood.