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February 26, 2007

Anonymous The Joplin Globe Mon Feb 26, 2007, 10:26 AM CST

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.”

His memories are almost as trout-laden as the stream itself, which will be stocked with thousands of rainbows and browns in anticipation of Thursday’s opening.

Sixty-one years ago, Overman and his wife, Doris, spent their honeymoon at Roaring River. He remembers when daily tags were a quarter and a primitive cabin cost $1.50 a day. He remembers when there were only five baffles and the lower end of the river had been impounded for a lake. And Overman, a “dyed-in-the-wool” fly fisherman, remembers how the spin-casting reel came along and changed fishing at the park, opening up the sport for a lot more people. But Overman will always be a fly fisherman.

“I caught a 5.5-pound trout on a bamboo rod with a 2-pound leader, and it took 22 minutes,” he said of a fish he caught as a teenager. “That’s still the biggest.”

Overman and his wife have pulled their trailer across a lot of miles in North America, through the great national parks such as Yellowstone and Glacier, and as far north as Denali in Alaska. And he’s fished all over the country, as well as every state park in Missouri. But he keeps coming back to one.

“If you want to just thoroughly enjoy what’s going on, go to Roaring River,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s No. 1.”

Andy Ostmeyer is the metro editor for The Joplin Globe.

Park history

A mill along Roaring River was built as early as 1836. With the arrival of more immigrants, plans for a first-class mill were put into action in 1845. During the Civil War, bands of Bushwhackers roamed the hills, and the mill at Roaring River was destroyed. After the war, the mill was rebuilt on the site of the present-day lodge.

Eventually, the era of the mill ended, and the property consisting of 120 acres was sold to Roland Bruner in 1905 for $9,000. He added to the property, eventually enlarging it to about 3,500 acres. But hard times came, and a large portion of the property went into foreclosure. In 1928, the land was sold on the courthouse steps in Cassville. The buyer was Thomas Sayman, a St. Louis soap manufacturer. He paid $105,000 in cash. On Dec. 6, 1928, he presented the entire holding to the state of Missouri for a park.

Source: Missouri Department of Conservation