Outside Bend

It's true Cairo wouldn't exist without the levees, it's also true the farmland wouldn't exist without the levees, or the ditches and diversions constructed in the southeast Lowlands in the early 1900's. It's a moot point. We have to do the best with the cards we're dealt, and to me it seems flooding cropland in Missouri would be a better bet than flooding homes in Illinois.

I'm interested, but also don't want to take up space for someone who hasn't participated in a swap before. If it hasn't filled up by the end of the week, count me in.

As I was sitting under a tree this morning not hearing turkeys, I suddenly realized I wasn't hearing pileated woodpeckers, either. I did see one around 12:30, but it seems as though when I began hunting turkeys a dozen or so years ago, you'd see several of the birds on an average day. The property I hunt was moderately logged about five years ago, and I initially attributed the absence of pileateds to that. But there's still lots of canopy cover, still lots of mature trees, and still lots of snags- and other woodpecker species seem to be common. Has anyone noticed anything similar?

Otters, mountain lions, illegal immigrants- all in the Axis of Evil.

Can you define "disenstablished?" That was a new one for me

There's no reason to believe the writers of the Constitution meant "citizen," when they used the term "person." These were educated, articulate, pragmatic fellas, and would've understood the difference between the two terms. If they wanted to exclude non-citizens, they could've explicitly done so. Why re-interpret the plain language present in the Constitution?

Good luck to all those dealing with the high water...if there's anything folks on OA can do to help, let us know. Take care.

Just another example of how out of touch our elected representatives are- three wars going on, high unemployment, sluggish economy, deficit spending, downgraded S&P, energy supply issues, global warming...and the major issue they feel like tackling today is whether my coffee is served in a styrofoam cup or a paper one. I do like the idea of giving them the Wal-Mart treatment, Justin...$8.23 an hour, no benefits, occasionally lock them in the office overnight...it'd make a great reality TV show.

It is legal to catch shad and use them as bait. It's even legal to share those shad with other anglers. But it's illegal to sell bait which has been caught in waters of the state, that's all anyone's saying. You don't get to pick and choose what game laws apply to you.

All's I'm sayin' is I'm pretty sure it's illegal to be paying people for bait harvested from waters of the state. You can call it what you want, you're paying someone to provide a product, and at best it's a gray area. You should probably talk to an agent and make sure you're in the clear before you go ahead and do it.

Yeah, this seems a little sketchy to me. I believe harvesting wild fish for payment is a violation of Missouri's Wildlife Code, as well.

Those are some beautiful fish!

It's a survey, and like any other survey ever done, if you make enough observations you can draw some pretty accurate conclusions about what's going on. I've done lots of visual habitat assessments and it's pretty hard to prejudice- either the habitat is present, or it isn't. Either the stream has been channelized, or it hasn't. Either the stream has been impacted by people, or it hasn't. There's plenty of information on methods at the website, too.

It's a shame about those lionfish, but cool photos!

No venom meant by it JD, your premise just seemed a bit out there. Otters could've done it, but there's no reason to believe they did.

The nice thing about warmwater pond fishing is, more often than not, you're just trying to imitate something alive, as opposed to a particular insect or food item as you would in trout fishing. And you can make it as simple or as complicated as you'd like. On Top: Sneaky Pete Foam Spider Gurgler Popper And if you want to get fancy: Dahlberg Diver Bass Bug Frog Dragonfly Underwater you're still trying to imitate a few broad categories- insect larvae (mostly damselflies and dragonflies), minnows, and crayfish. Rubber-legged nymphs (hare's ear, fox squirrel nymph), clouser minnows, and a few generic crayfish imitations should put you in business. And as an aside- if you have any interest in fly tying, warmwater is a great place to start. It's much more free-form than most trout bugs, and the fish are generally more forgiving Good luck!

There's no reason otters would only target crappie, then drag them from whatever local pond they were found at and "stack" them by some other creek, immediately below an easily-accessible bridge. It's about as likely as a rogue penguin from the local zoo being the culprit But some folks want otters to be the source of every major ill which has befallen the Ozarks since they've been introduced, so every possible scenario in which otters may have even remotely played any role is attributed wholly to the otters. It wouldn't surprise me at all if JD had a Glen Beck style blackboard in his garage, and stayed up nights figuring out how otters were connected to smallmouth disappearances, the past few years of poor turkey recruitment, the recent economic downturn and the Nazis

I've always thought conserving grasslands and wetlands, reducing sedimentation of our nation's streams, and things of that nature were pretty meritous. I like quail, I like ducks, I like being able to fish and float in clear streams, and I'd like at some point to hand those experiences off to future generations. I don't mind that federal monies are spent to turn barren, denuded agriculture landscapes back into functioning streams and riparian areas, as the photo below illustrates. To me, that's success. And frankly, I like the idea of giving farmers an incentive not to cultivate fencerow to fencerow, and all the way to the stream bank. I'll admit it sounds odd to pay farmers for not growing commodities, but they're being paid to protect a resource- they being paid, in essence, to conserve topsoil. There's certainly a cost to the Farm Bill and its programs, and there are certainly some giveaways that don't need to be in there. But there are also costs associated with inaction, and that side of the equation is frequently left out. You can defund CRP/WRP and other conservation measures, but that may mean you have to pay a higher water bill so municipal treatment plants can mitigate increased sediment, pesticide, and nutrient loads. You can defund the programs, but it may translate into poorer water quality, reduced hunting and fishing opportunities, increased food prices (more fertilizer needed when topsoil is stripped away), etc. I think we agree in part, we should look at each of the constituent programs of the Farm Bill and figure out what's a valuable, what's a giveaway to one corporate interest and another, and whether the latter group is genuinely necessary. But I couldn't get behind a wholesale elimination of the Farm Bill- the good stuff in it is simply too good.

Lowercase T, please

And sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Makes more sense to me than spending hundreds to go fish for them competitively

The logic behind the MO statute is that, if possessing paddlefish eggs were legal, you have folks out there harvesting the fish just for their eggs (caviar market), and dumping the carcasses elsewhere, or slitting the bellies of captured paddlefish to check for eggs before they're creeled, releasing fish which aren't gravid. Basically, it's six on one hand, a half-dozen the other. Either you waste the paddlefish eggs by making anglers dump them overboard, or you help support a sketchy caviar market allowing anglers to keep the eggs.

It'll be interesting to see what happens. One the one hand bass and bluegill fillets have had an increasing demand in Asian markets, and many university aquaculture programs have been trying to figure out how to exploit that market. They could've been raised in hatcheries. On the other hand, the fish in the video seem quite a bit larger than what you typically see raised in aquaculture settings...

I'd go ahead and notify your local conservation office/agent of what you saw. May be a fish kill, may be someone committing wanton waste.

I'm not entirely sure, but my guess would be it's because wipers are infertile, and MDC doesn't have enough hatchery capacity to produce them for Bull Shoals.