MO AFTER DARK
It’s been a few years, but with the hot summer nights we’ve been having and the bumper crop of mice we’ve been battling around here all season, it seemed like the perfect time for WCA guide extraordinaire John Chaffee and me to rig up the mouse rods and see what the Missouri after dark had in store.
Long story short…not much in the way of giant browns blowing up on mice. With bellies full of caddis there’s no need to hunt down a mammalian meal. But that’s okay. It was good to be back, immersed in the surreal experience of floating the Missouri beneath the Milky Way, guided by little more than a sliver of moonlight and the occasional blinding flash of our headlamps to confirm where we were and how far we were from the next likely bank.
If you’ve never done it, it’s an experience that’s hard to describe.
The dark, glassy water mirrors the surrounding hills so perfectly that the landscape seems to melt into the stars above. The silence is almost complete, broken only by the occasional passing car miles away. Enveloped in darkness, there is no clear line between river and sky, and it’s surprisingly difficult to perceive motion until you lock onto a tree or a rock along the bank and realize you’re quietly drifting downstream at river speed.
Fortunately, neither of us is prone to motion sickness, because I could easily see how this could get to someone. It’s an oddly disorienting feeling—equal parts peaceful and eerie.
Fishing the 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift, you truly have the river to yourself. By the time we pulled out at Craig, there wasn’t another soul around. Even Joe’s was dark and quiet.
The fishing? A few suspicious boils, a couple of violent explosions that shattered the silence, but no hookups. That’s mousing. One or two explosive eats in the darkness are enough to leave you wanting more, even when they don’t end with a fish in the net.
There was a time when I did this regularly, but it doesn’t exactly fit into the schedule during the heart of guide season, and let’s be honest—it’s a younger person’s game. Still, when the stars align, the days off cooperate, the grass is tall, and the mouse population reaches plague proportions, you’d be foolish not to give it a shot.
Sure, staying up until two in the morning makes for a long day afterward, but for me, it’s always worth it.
Here’s to mousing the MO. I have a feeling it won’t be another few years before the next midnight float.
