FishnDave

Awesome trout (s), fellas! Don's work looks great! I follow this taxidermist on Instagram, he does great work as well: https://www.instagram.com/lawrencetaxidermy/

Nice fish!

Didn't catch many fish last night. A couple decent bluegills and a bass. Bass measured 17".

That is interesting. It would be really fun to fish those, if they don't see many anglers. To avoid getting pelted with golf balls, do you go at night or on rainy days? Or off-season only?

Good I.D. on the Logperch. I knew it was a darter of some kind, but I don't know the specific darters very well. They are very cool fish! Yes, we have Yellow Perch in Iowa...they are in lakes all the way down to practically the Iowa-Missouri line. Here's the purported range of Yellow Perch in the U.S.:

Flyfished yesterday. Visited 2 ponds. Pond #1: I didn't catch anything. Pond #2: Caught at least 15 bass (none over maybe 14"), lots of Bluegills, 1 Hybrid Sunfish, 3 Pumpkinseed Sunfish, and 3 Crappies.

I'm not sure what this means...are you asking if this is caught from a golf course pond? 😎 That would be a good guess, based on the mowed bluegrass in the background. Close! This fish was caught in a public pond at a city park.

Well done! Gorgeous browns!

The markings on that one are crazy! If somebody said it was a "Meanmouth Bass" (smallmouth x largemouth hybrid), I wouldn't argue.

20" bass from last night:

There's a lot of water in Forrest Park. How much of it is public/fishable? I see one area that rents paddleboats and kayaks.

I've got a lot to learn about how Missouri hatcheries raise their fish, compared to what Iowa and Illinois do. Commercial feed for fish can be expensive, and more expensive the bigger the fish get (each fish eats more volume and larger pellet sizes). That's why stocker trout are typically only raised at the hatchery for a year or so (except for the brood fish). I'd be very surprised if the hatchery can afford to put 5 years of feed into their Striped Bass. Stocking fry is much cheaper, but survival is also much lower. I would guess the stocked Striped Bass are 0-1 year old fish, especially at the numbers they listed. It'd be interesting to learn otherwise. As an example, in Iowa, there are plenty of White Bass, but no Striped Bass adults available to use as the important part of the Hybrid Striped Bass genome, so Iowa buys/trades with other states to get their HSB fry. Some fry they simply stock directly into the lakes, some they raise in outdoor rearing ponds until they are 2-3" long before releasing. Some they raise to 6-8" in the hatcheries to use in various research studies they are doing.

I hate to jump in here and risk getting soaked by the ammonia-scented overspray... 😜 It would be interesting to know what size Striped Bass are being stocked. Whether 150K fry, fingerlings, or 6"-12" fish, could have a huge difference in results in terms of survivabilty. If its fry, and if fry had projected survivability of 10%, vs. projected 90% survivability of larger fish...you can see how huge of a difference that could be. (Don't quote those percentages...I made them up.)

Crappies love the cool weather. My experience is in Iowa, so take these observations as potentially having a strong regional bias: Crappies spend the hot summer suspended over open water, at depths that provide the most comfort in terms of light and water temperature. As the weather cools in the Fall, in my experience, crappies move higher in the water column and closer to shore. A warm spell will push them back deeper in open water, cool spells will coax them back to the shallows. They will stay very active all thru the winter, even under the ice.

Did it look like this?