Haris122

How many more days we got before they close to get ready for the march opener?

I'm not familiar with a whole lot of them but I always liked Bill Dance's blooper reels when he got pissed. It would remind me of my own temperament under similar circumstances.

I finally made it down there yesterday. Almost didn't happen again as I was taking too long getting ready and basically left the house at 1:30 pm. By the time I got down there, I was going to have less than an hour left if I were to fish Meramec Springs, so instead I just tried my luck out at the Highway 8 Access to the Red Ribbon section. I can't tell you much in regards to what would've worked best, as I just kind of stuck with one of the really small shad colored crankbaits I already had on, seeing how I only had a few hours, and most of that was spent trying to wade my way between former "hotspots" without falling in, but I did catch a nice colored up, fat 15" Rainbow. I think I actually caught the same one twice, once going downstream and then again on my way back upstream around the same spot. Both times it gave me a good fight, 2nd time even with a few jumps thrown into the mix. I had another Rainbow on, that got off close to net, and then had another 2 or so bites where I didn't get to see what it was. It wasn't a few hours packed with action, but I was pleasantly surprised to have even gotten that much of it, much less, with a nice strong fish on top of that. On the down side, I found out my aquaseal patch job of my waders didn't really work out, so in some sense I'm glad I didn't stay there much longer or it would've been a rough cold day. One more cool thing to mention, I spooked some turkeys and had 10 or so of them just fly over me to the other side of the river, after they took off.

I've been meaning to, for the past month now, but somehow I always fail at going. Next week I'm really going to try, however, it won't be much help to you as I don't fly fish.

A little hatchery pond or ponds would be a cool attraction up at Busch, no doubt. How they'd find a solution to people sneaking into there to fish those ponds, seems like the challenging part, cause they don't seem to have a lot of people working there to monitor it. Guess if they made the first lake or lakes by the entrance, also fish stocking ponds, as opposed to just a waterfowl refuge, that could work, as they're already off limits.

I've had real poor luck there this year and last for some reason.

Anyone tried their luck at 21 recently?

Any big fish works for me. I don't catch them good enough to get discouraged by species. Just needs to give a good fight, other than that, I'm fine with whatever as long as it's a fish.

How long did that big brown take you guys to bring in?

I can't see it too good, but here we go. So what's up with that necklace you're wearing.

darn Smallieseeker, that's a hell of a lot better than my public land hunting experience this year (or any other year so far for that matter).

Thanks on the info guys. I'm surprised of those incidents, all 4 were firearm related. I've tripped and fell pretty good a few times in the woods, usually stepping into a hole or real soft ground deceptively masked by leaves to look like it's a safe step. Thankfully I was able to keep the muzzle pointed away from me as I fell, and either didn't have a round in the chamber, or the safety did it's job.

I got hunter certified something like 9 or 10 years ago, and I remember at least from a little before that, to up until the last 6-7 years, MDC used to have a brief explanation of all the serious accidents that happened during rifle season, either as part of a general write-up of opening weekend/all of rifle season, or as a completely separate little article. I think they had the same during spring turkey season too. It basically explained the situation as far as they knew it, something hypothetical like, "real cold day so guys put propane heater on max in shooting house, guys dozed off, propane heater malfunctioned, eventually exploded, killing one and injuring the other hunter in process". For some reason they stopped it, or at least only give a very brief mention of it nowadays, that's very lacking in detail. Anybody else remember something like that or am I going crazy? I feel like that would still be helpful to read up about to keep you vigilant on what kind of things end up going wrong. On that note, anybody got any more info on what happened in those cases? As far as opening weekend went for me, well, I was at work. 4th year in a row that opening weekend hit on my weekend shift. I wasn't too upset about it since I hunt public land, and figure I'd rather have the following week completely off to go instead like usual, mainly because of the safety standpoint with there being less people outside of opening weekend. This year however I wasn't able to make things happen during the 7 days I went out. I actually only saw 1 doe with a little one in tow, in those 7 days, and I didn't shoot cause of the younger one. Hopefully going once during antlerless will work out instead.

I went yesterday afternoon down to the Big River at Brown's Ford. I had checked it out once several years back when I tried fishing from shore, but that went nowhere, so this time, with the wind being forecast to be low, and the water probably low cause of the dry weather, I decided to give it a go with the kayak. I got there and first surprise was how muddy the water looked. It was a little bit discouraging but I decided to try it out anyway. The entire time I was fishing with two rods, on one I had a slip bobber set up with a little crappie tube on jighead. That was supposed to be my backup, cause I figured at least I'd have a lot of bites from sunfish on it. On the other rod, I had a shallow diving crankbait, figuring if there were bass or anything else predatory, and bigger around, that's what they'd go for. I decided to start by paddling upstream as far as I could and then make my way down, but fishing along the way. At first signs were promising, I saw little minnows jumping like they were being chased by bigger fish, I kept having bites on my slip bobber setup, yet somehow I could not hook them. It went that way for a while, until finally I caught my first fish, a little longear sunfish, then eventually I lucked into a little spotted bass not much bigger than the sunfish, once again on the tube. Pretty soon even the sunfish bite started dying down. I couldn't get bites in even some of what seemed like the best water for them, slow little backwaters with vegetation weren't even producing. I got to some steep mud banks figuring a good cast along might illicit a decent fish into biting on the 3-4 foot diving crankbait, but nothing happened. I got close to a riffle with some rocks that were on the bank and tried there again, nothing, shortly followed by me getting snagged and losing the crankbait. By that point I was too unmotivated to get out and portage past the fast water of the riffle, so after trying briefly to paddle up it, I just kind of gave up and started my float back down. More of the same followed. I got back to the ramp, then decided to try a little further down from it, until I got near another riffle not far away, and then turned around fishing up towards the ramp again. I caught another 2 little sunfish and that was all. A little after 8 I called it a day, and loaded back up and left.

Which main 2, 35 and 33? I've fished a good chunk of the smaller ones too over the years. For some reason though I just tend to gravitate to 33. Guess it's that hope of a big monster seems more likely in a bigger lake like it, but who knows. I like 28, 34, 37, and 38 too. Heard a lot of good stuff about 36 but rarely have I had much luck on it for whatever reason. Do ok on 35 from time to time, but it and 36 have a lot of vegetation in it in the warmer months, and I just don't know how to fish them effectively when they get all that milfoil or whatever it's called, in them.