Outside Bend

While kind of true, e.coli can only really persist in streams and lakes that are warm and nutrient-rich, places you won't find pollution sensitive fish species in the first place.

The American Fly Fishing Trade Association today joined Trout Unlimited and a host of other sporting and conservation organizations in opposing the so-called Wilderness and Roadless Area Release Act, which would remove all protections from the last, best fishing and hunting destinations in the United States. AFFTA cites loss of habitat and opportunity that would impact the bottom line of the fly fishing industry The American Fly Fishing Trade Association today joined Trout Unlimited and a host of other sporting and conservation organizations in opposing the so-called Wilderness and Roadless Area Release Act, which would remove all protections from the last, best fishing and hunting destinations in the United States. “This bill takes direct aim at America’s sporting heritage,” said Jim Klug, co-owner of Yellow Dog Flyfishing Adventures and the chairman of the AFFTA board of directors. “Under the guise of improving access to the backcountry for all Americans—something that we all support—Congress is instead allowing the best remaining wild and native fish habitat to be developed by industry and penetrated by new roads and motorized trails. We already have enough roads and trails, and the government can’t afford to maintain even a small percentage of them today. We don’t need more roads. We need to protect what’s left of our backcountry, protect habitat, and protect our existing access.” The bill, dubbed the Attack on our Sporting Heritage Act (ASH) by Trout Unlimited, would impact about 43 million acres of roadless backcountry from coast to coast, all on public lands within the U.S Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management systems. Inventoried roadless lands provide the best remaining fish and game habitat in the United States, and they’re vital for the persistence of wild and native trout. In the Rocky Mountain West, roadless lands shelter the bulk of the country’s remaining cutthroat trout and bull trout populations. Additionally, the best remaining spawning and rearing habitat for ocean-going steelhead and salmon is in streams flowing through or from the roadless backcountry. “We’re grateful that AFFTA understands the intrinsic connection between habitat and opportunity,” said Steve Moyer, TU’s vice president for government affairs. “The fly fishing industry understands the opportunity public lands provide to all anglers, and keeping the backcountry just like it is today ensures the recreational fishing industry a promising future. We hope Congress will get the message and do away with this terrible idea that would tarnish the public lands that belong to every single American by birthright.” Roadless areas throughout the United States are accessible to all Americans—many are bounded by paved highways, and others, despite the misleading status, are accessible by dirt roads and trails. Hunting and fishing are allowed on roadless lands—in fact, the country’s best hunting harvest rates for trophy deer and elk occur in hunting units that are predominantly roadless. “Congress needs to understand that the roadless backcountry that exists today is very limited,” Moyer said. “Keeping it like it is gives sportsmen and women the opportunity to share with their children the places that look today much like they did generations ago. “Rather than try to pass a ‘one-size-fits-all’ bill to determine the future of our roadless backcountry, Congress should instead do what we do all the time, and work with people on the ground who have a vested interest in the future of public lands near the places they call home. Doing otherwise puts our sporting culture at risk, because once the backcountry is gone, it’s gone.”

One of the best points that has been made on this thread. The discussion is as much about value as it is about science. To many, increased opportunity for quality-sized smallmouth is more important than large numbers of fish below 15," and one could argue those streams which could support more quality-sized smallmouth in this state aren't being managed for that goal. If you're wanting to see changes to the state regulations/smallmouth management paradigm, the biology of smallmouth is only one part of it. We need to start articulating the argument that quality smallmouth fishing isn't just good for anglers, it's good for all sorts of people living, working, and playing in the state- canoe liveries, tackle shops, hotels/motels, restaurants, guides and outfitters, NGO's, etc that it increases the chances that fishing and other outdoor activities will be passed to subsequent generations. Take a page outta the elk restoration playbook, and hammer it into people's heads how important it is that this is done IMO some of you guys have put the cart before the horse- you're advocating that MDC change smallie regs when many folks in the Department don't see it as a priority. But if you illustrate the value of quality smallmouth fisheries, demonstrate that quality smallie fisheries are a priority for the public, it's much more likely to be adopted by the agency.

No trout fishing near Columbia, but there are many strip pits north of town with a mix of bass and panfish that can be pretty fun on fly gear. As for on your way towards Branson, Bennett is probably your best bet. There are a few small, wild trout streams around Rolla, but with the recent heat the fishing there may be off. Good luck!

Excellent photos!

I'm not saying it's legit, Tim- or even ethical. I'm saying you'll be about as effective persuading a guy who wants to shoot a water buffalo that it isn't "hunting," as you'll be persuading Pam Anderson that shooting a wild deer in Missouri isn't "murder." It's a matter of perspective, personal values, and culture. There are cultural precedents for it- cattle have been domesticated and bred for sport, chickens have been domesticated and bred for sport, and many animals (pheasants, chukar, quail, pigeons, etc), are raised in captivity and released for sport. Some of those things I feel are unethical, some are ambiguous, but I can't go around legislating what is and isn't hunting just based on my own opinion- things rapidly break down. Here's an example- I have no problem with dove hunting, and shooting 8 or 12 or whatever the limit for mourning doves in Missouri is seems pretty reasonable to me. But going to Argentina and shooting 300 doves a day, to me, constitutes "slaughter"- even though you're not breaking any laws, and both fall under the fair chase principles which I personally use to define "hunting." But I wouldn't consider killing 300 snow geese slaughter, because it's ecologically justified. It's a complex definition, and is often defined more by the individual than by the culture as a whole. It'd be awfully difficult, if not impossible, to create some metric by which everyone agrees on the definition of what is and isn't what we call "hunting."

Are you guys still taking flies, or is it over? I have all but two tied up, and can finish them off and send 'em out today if you're still taking them. Sorry about the tardiness, life has conspired against me yet again...

The only animal I've ever been squeamish about cleaning- you cut the flesh and it begins curling and wriggling in your hands. Pretty tasty, though.

Both trout and water buffalo are domesticated. Both trout and water buffalo are raised in captivity. Both trout and water buffalo are then released, so that paying customers may kill and take pictures with them. It really isn't a hard comparison to draw. I just found it odd that folks (not necessarily you, OTF), are so aghast at someone paying to hunt and kill a domesticated animal in an artificial setting, but don't bat an eye when they go down to Montauk, Meramec, Bennett, Roaring River or Taneycomo and do they exact same thing. Just something to think about. No. But the nice thing about a thousand-pound water buffalo is that it weighs a thousand pounds. It's not like didymo, or zebra mussels, or spiny waterfleas, or other hard-to-detect, hard to eradicate organism. If you have a water buffalo tromping around in your back 40, you're gonna know. And it's going to be fairly easy to find where they hide. I'm no fan of canned game hunts- like most of the folks on here I think it's pretty immoral to take an animal where the odds are stacked so far in the hunter's favor. But from a purely conservation standpoint, I do think they play a role. If trout parks in Missouri concentrate anglers and keep the few wild trout streams from being overfished, I think they're playing some valuable role in the larger conservation picture. If some tycoon shooting an antelope in south Texas reduces hunting pressure on native antelope in Kenya or South Africa, I think that's a benefit. If someone chasing water buffalo in Belize takes the pressure off vulnerable native species in that country, I think there's some merit to that. It brings tourist dollars to economically depressed areas, and in many instances most of the meat is donated back to locals. I know I sound like the guy trying to pitch a casino to the Baptist church, but I do think that folks need to look at these sort of issues from several different angles before the teeth-gnashing begins. That's my point, Tim- shooting a water buffalo is exactly like shooting a Hereford. People shoot Herefords all the time. People shoot Herefords for burgers. People shoot Herefords for steaks. There's nothing (in my mind), morally ambiguous about shooting a Hereford. It's food. The same is true with water buffalo. We agree that, to us, shooting a cow is different than shooting a wild deer or turkey or anything else, but that's just a matter of perception, and it's hard to legislate taste. If I was a farmer, and someone offered me 5K to shoot a cow...I'd be hard-pressed to say no. You can call that Hereford (or water buffalo) "food," or you can call it "game," the end result is the same. I guess to me, it's just semantics. ...only because no one has walked away from a trout-goring and lived to tell the tail....

If killing or exploiting domesticated animals is unethical, how is it you guys keep going to the trout parks?

OTF- You don't need to justify where you fish and why for the rest of the forum. You're having fun, and that's the whole point. Keep at it.

Mine won't be done by the end of this week, but I'll mail them out at the beginning of next. Sorry for the tardiness guys, I've had a hectic June.

In terms of the "total experience," I voted for Wyoming. Colorado's nice, but stream access laws and intense angling pressure can really impinge on your sense of solitude. Idaho and Montana have incredible fishing, but many of their more famous waters (Rock Creek, the Ruby, Snake, Henry's Fork, etc), are absolutely pounded. While I support lenient stream access laws, they're a two-sided coin. It makes it easier for me to find water to fish, but it also makes it easier for everyone else, too. From a purely fisheries management standpoint, refuge areas on private lands do have some benefit to sportfish population sizes and angling quality. Wyoming does have extremely conservative stream access laws, and I would like to see them altered to allow anglers access to the state's resources, which are managed by the state. But it's also true Wyoming has an enormous amount of public land- Forest Service, BLM, leases between landowners and the state game and fish agency, and state-owned sections designed to benefit schools. If you have a map, a full tank of gas, and are willing to take some risks on backroads and two-tracks, you can find a whole lot of water most folks never visit, and the state has no lack of big, dumb, wild trout. But there's still a lot of trouty places I haven't explored enough- the Smokies, British Columbia, the Pacific northwest....

I'm sure it's tough for local fly shop to watch their valued customers spend their money at Bass Pro, Cabela's, Ebay, and any of the online fishing catalogs because they value the price point above the level of expertise and service. The knife cuts both ways. Most shop owners and employees I've met are great people, and are trying their hardest to make their way in an industry that's arguably beyond the saturation point. You can't blame folks for trying to keep the lights on, and if people are willing to pay $2 for a grizzly hackle, you shouldn't expect them to charge you 12 cents. In the meantime, you can tie a lifetime's worth of Comparaduns and CDC and Elk caddisflies for the cost of a grade 1 Whiting saddle even before the hair extension craze, and they both float surprisingly well. And if you're into that sort of thing, it'd be the sweetest sort of revenge- after Stephen Tyler has cast his feathers aside, that Whiting, Metz and the like can't even sell their wares for $50 a cape, as so many people have witnessed the utility of hackle-less flies. That, or they'll license a flask and a $50 pair of nippers.

Not sure about the South Fork specifically, but in Wyoming most hatchery fish are stocked in systems with poor reproduction- mainly tailwaters and lake systems with poor spawning habitat. Most of the state's free-flowing fisheries are naturally self-sustaining, and shouldn't be affected. But there's a lot of tourism dollars invested in those tailwaters, and this coupled with the crazy weather out there this summer certainly won't help that industry.

I'm not typically so cynical of MDC's actions, but to me it just seems the elk reintroduction doesn't add up. $400,000 is an awful lot to devote to any species in a given year, particularly one which isn't even in jeopardy. And while it's true many NGO's are helping pick up that tab, they're only paying for reintroduction- not for the salaries of full time elk biologists or hourly seasonal employees, not for yearly disease testing of the state's elk herd, not for much of the manpower or habitat management that will be required to maintain that herd's health. There are a few other things about it that rub me the wrong way- apparently the elk habitat in southern Missouri is so excellent MDC will be providing food plots to the elk. To me it's disingenuous- if the habitat is so well suited for elk, and if the ecosystem has been managed to mimic a pre-settlement landscape in order to reintroduce elk, MDC shouldn't need to supplementally feed the elk. Similarly, MDC is developing a cost-share program with adjacent landowners, so that they may put out food plots for elk, too. It sorta bothers me, the idea that public funds could be used to concentrate a public resource (elk), on lands where the public has no right to view or pursue them. And if the whole premise of reintroducing elk is to restore some semblance of the Ozarks' pre-settlement ecosystem, the idea of cultivating food plots seems antithetical to their stated objectives- like MDC paving the way to otter reintroduction by giving landowners cash to stock ponds and streams with common carp. What's more, some of the information in the plan seems awfully flimsy- I understand that no one can know with certainty how the elk will fare, but claiming that they won't wander as far as rocky mountain elk just because the PR guy from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation says so seems like bad science to me. In the end I really do believe MDC does a great job, I just take issue with a few of their methods and motives. I'm not upset with the premise of what they're doing, just the methods they're using to do it. I too look forward to the day I can hear elk bugling in the Ozarks, I just don't want that day to come at the expense of the rest of the region's diversity.

I'm not against species reintroductions OTF, be they elk or deer or turkey. To me conservation of a globally secure species like elk shouldn't supersede those organisms which are facing genuine population declines and the potential for extinction. There's plenty of critters out there in the state which are worse off globally than elk- many of which exist here and nowhere else in the world. To me those species are more of an integral part of our state's natural history and diversity than a wide-ranging organism like elk, although that's just my opinion.

I've been sorta conflicted about the whole elk restoration project. While it'll be nice to have elk in the state, we're still coming out of a recession, license sales are still down, and the department's been laying off a fair number of people. To me elk reintroduction just doesn't seem that urgent- the department could do it in a couple years, when they're in a better financial position. There's a lot of species extirpated from the state which could be reintroduced cheaper and with less political disruption than elk (ravens come immediately to mind). MDC has been trying to reintroduce a few other species- walleye in the Ozarks, ruffed grouse along the Missouri River- both without much success, and apparently little or no subsequent research into why those reintroductions aren't paying off. And there are plenty of critters in the state- mussel species, hellbenders and other herps, crayfishes, plants, bats- that are much more vulnerable to global extinction than elk. To me those species should take precedence. I'm not sure how the elk project was funded, but if you're moving funding from species which genuinely need protection to a species which you just get the warm fuzzies seeing, I take issue with that. The recent Conservationist article where the Commissioner's shedding a tear because he's making history the minute he opens the pen gate I think is highly indicative of the Department's motives- whatever ecosystem benefits are created by reintroducing elk are tangential. In the end, it's just a good story, and something some Commissioner or biologist gets a really nice plaque for.

To me it seems like the situation could pretty easily be classed as harassment...

Very cool fish, and are supposed to be delicious Check in your state though, I believe in MO they're considered vulnerable.

I've heard folks call greenies black perch, and I've caught a few warmouth in the Marmaton River, in the upper Osage river drainage. FT- that black spot on the dorsal makes me think yours is a bluegill x green sunfish hybrid. Cool fish.

Zimmer Radio Group has been doing a pretty good job of covering what's going on down there, I'd recommend contacting them by phone or facebook and seeing if something can be done.

More fuel for the fire (PUN INTENDED!) https://www.benthos.org/News/The-greenhouse-gas-footprint-of-hydrofracking.aspx

http://mdc.mo.gov/landwater-care/lake-and-pond-management/pond-management/management-advice-private-pond-owners There you can find the Missouri Fish Dealers pdf- they're organized by county, so you should be able to find one in your area. There's also some bulletins on using grass carp for weed control on the MDC site, and hard copies available at most regional offices.

If you do it, make sure to bring a video camera, a helmet, and a protective cup. When stressed, bigheads and silvers release a chemical in the water which causes all the fish to begin jumping frantically. I want to see what happens when you miss one with a gig