Chuck H

No Donahue's is closed.The man that owned it died. I was told that Carol House Furniture bought the property. I use to go in and have a few beers and talk fishing with him. Another guy to talk fishing with was with Ottie that owned Otties Resturaunt right down the road.That dood loved his stripers.But he has passed away also.

I think the lower river has alot going for it.You may think I'm crazy but I don't think it gets hammered like the upper river.Sure you have alot more boat traffic most of them being jet ski's but the fisherman you do see are mostly tight liners.Nothing wrong with tight line fishing. I don't want to make anyone mad,but they are not specifically targeting bass and walleye. It also has longer stretches of fishable water between pools. Heck for example between kirkwood water works and Winter brothers you probably have a 1.5 miles of Shale bank that has fish on it most of the time. Not very many smallies but Walleye Kentucks and largemouths.But one of my best days ever on smallies was were Simpson Parks creek dumps in to the river only about a half mile above kirkwood boat ramp. And the diversity of water is another thing. Go down river you have Winter Brothers lakes and 3 or 4 miles down from there is another. Which has some fantastic crappie and bass. And if you go up river just nice long stretches of quality fish holding water.But only one lake and you can only get into it durring high water. Anyway I could go on all day about it. But check it out for yourself and let me know how you did.

I started fishing the Meramec river with my Dad as long ago as I can remember.And I'm 45 years old. Mostly fish for bass and walleye. I fish between Arnold and St Clair most of the time. But my favorite stretch is Kirkwood to Times Beach. Anyway looking forward to reading some of the posts and pics on this forum.