Greasy B

Yep, I agree better regulations would help. It’s too bad there’s no way to prevent browns from migrating into Bennett Spring Branch where they face certain harvest.

Yea, they turn night into day. I have often wondered how well giggers can distinguish game fish from non game fish. If they are experienced and ethical it can probably be done, I doubt the average person with a gig in hand can do it.

Lunker class, I don’t know, but a couple of pretty nice fish from this spring. Brown one has a stoneroller and sculpin sticking out of his mouth. Pretty cool, this fish was so aggressive it had more than it could swallow in its mouth and still attacked my bugger. That fish also had twin vertical scars on each side. Maybe gig marks? My nephew Art is holding Brown two. I guess these fish have held over for a couple of years, probably against great odds. My apologies, I think I may have had one of these pictures in a previous post.

Yea, remember crouching low behind tall grass on the railroad ranch section of the Henrys Fork and slinging a big bugger, I caught one fish that day, more than I seen anyone else catch. I’m much less self conscious these days and would proudly sling buggers just about anywhere I can find enough room to cast between the omnipresent emerger drifters. Throwing hardware for stream smallmouth has an awful lot in common with fly fishing for trout. You’re basically doing the same thing, presenting an imitation in a manner that will stimulate the trout or bass to eat it. When a person tosses a baby brush hog into a likely run or undercut bank they need to read the current to determine the best holding water and how to get the bait into it, they need to figure out whether they’re going to animate the bait or not, then they need to either have visual or physical contact with the bait to detect a strike. If you don’t see or feel the bait you have to look for a tell tale signs like a twitch of the line or a flash, bulge or blink in the water, or you just rely on gut instinct to know when your bait is in the sweet spot and set the hook. That pretty much describes short line nymphing for trout. The same skills come into play, it just a matter of choosing your tool of favor.

Yesterday I spent yet another wonderful day on the middle Meramec with trophy habitat galore catching plenty of fish but nothing over 12”, what a lost opportunity. I know I’m preaching to the choir but something needs to be done, this is sad.

Yep it’s time to abandon the rivers, Armor All the canoe and drag/walk/ paddle down some creek.

Quality Bluegill: • Lake with reputation for good bluegill. • Shallow spawning areas. • Polarized sunglasses. • Fly rod. • Barbless bluegill popper. • The first three days following the full moon each month during spring and summer. • Corn meal & hot oil.

Hi Sam, Welcome, your right we are very fortunate to live in and near an area as beautiful as the Ozarks. I might add that joining this forum was a good move too. There are so many generous people that are so willing to help out with tips and advice. If this forum would have been around thirty years ago my learning curve would have been a whole lot shorter. I’m looking forward to your post.

Great report, thanks. Pulaski County Public Beach Number One is the most heavily used 10’ wide slab of concrete I’ve ever seen.

I clicked on View New Content this morning and only found 17 new entries? Looking at a screen is a pathetic way to spend a weekend. What the hell is the matter with me, I had better log off, finish loading the truck and get out on the river like any sensible person.

Hey Oneshot, it’s cool that your life is so influenced by a river that it bookmarks the beginning and the end. Being a relative new comer to Niangua I was amazed at the contrast between the hideous congloberation of campgrounds and kitsch on 64 hwy and the peaceful river downstream. I had to ask myself is it because of good zoning laws or responsible land stewardship, no, I guess it’s just because no one has gotten around to developing it. I’ll bet that after couple of years of heavy use the gently sloping vegetated bank will be replaced with a muddy cut bank. All the trees on that side are bound to erode and fall into the water. Over the last few years I’ve nicknamed the stretch from the spring confluence to the boat ramp the Miracle Mile because if you can’t catch a fish there you’ll need more than miracle. I hate to see it spoiled. As far as the knuckle dragging morons who open their stupid mouths then pound the daylights out of fellow river travelers, I’ve ran into my share of those types. The only hope is for local law enforcement to step up and thoroughly investigate these instances, then prosecutors/judges stepping up to thrown the book at them. I’m all for carrying but the chance that it would do more good than harm is slim.

It may be due to the geology of Dry Fork Creek which is more akin to Bourbeuse River than to the main stem Meramec, more suspended solids. The underlying bedrock contains huge voids that store water and I would suspect mud also, it could be that some of this mud breaks loose every now and then, dissolving slowly and staining the water. Hey didn’t this thread start out being about stream confluences? Whenever I pass a tributary coming into a larger stream it always seems to me the junction should be more impressive. When I see Piney coming into the Gasconade it’s hard for me to imagine there are eighty something miles of navigable river above.

All that nasty rotten bait is hard to deal with. When I was about 12 years old an old woman at Spanish Lake in north St Louis County taught me how to fish with a hamburger/ Limburger cheese mix. Boy it worked great but if fell from your hook on every cast. When I go cat fishing next month I’ll probably use shrimp and night crawlers just so I don’t stink so much.

Yea, more likely than not the shoal at 28 hwy won’t be passable in a couple of weeks. The larger boats will be limited to the water below Piney. From there up to Hazelgreen (44 bridge) is just about as quite place as you’ll ever find on an Ozark river. Mostly guy’s and wives, the occasional serious fisherman and every now and then an old timer in a river john with a straw hat and a cane pole.

Holy cow, the river around Vienna /Paydown is fantastic bass water. The only problem is recreational boat traffic. It may make any fishing impossible except in the morning hours. Typically smallmouth bass get more active as the water warms up in the afternoon but with constant high speed boat traffic fishing and sanity is often a struggle.

yep, i used to have to deal with the 4 wheel yahoos back in the day on M fork. you never knew what the creek was like, muddy or clear until you got on it.

Good luck fellows, I’m looking forward to the fishing reports. Last weekend the river was in perfect shape. It’s getting pretty bony for jets above Piney; I only saw three big boats above 28 hwy. This might be the beginning of the quite time on the middle river. If you see a long green boat with a couple of beer bellied, sun burnt schmucks aboard stop and say hi.

Last weekend on the middle Gasconade River a ferocious half hour downpour brought the river up just a couple of inches but lowered visibility from three foot or so to two inches. The next morning visibility was about a foot and a half in front of our camp, traveling up stream we ran across two large eddies that held water as muddy as chocolate milk. The water in these eddies was slowly mixing in the main stem which was quite clear. On our long boat ride back up to the ramp the rivers tint changed a couple more times from clear as normal to slightly murky then back clear again. Maybe something like this happened on Meramec. Hydrology is terribly interesting and can be quite complex, especially on our Ozark rivers. On one memorable trip my fishing partner and I put in a river that was up about four feet with zero visibility. In the course of our three day float I fully expected the high water and mud to travel along with us. As it turned out the water level dropped and cleared up over the 24 mile float to the point where it was dead low and crystal clear at the take out. I figured the sediment and volume of water was slowly absorbed by the much greater volume of water held in each pool of the river. I call that trip The Amazing Disappearing Flood Float.

I wanted to vote Wyoming because it’s my favorite place to fish but I can’t because the stream access laws. Like Colorado, Wyoming law states that I cannot touch or walk on the stream bed despite the fact that the stream is deemed public. These laws excludes enormous stretches of rivers from the general public; they create a situation much like Europe and United Kingdom where only the gentry has stream access. As an angler/tourist I don’t feel welcome in these states. After several years avoiding Wyoming as a destination I spent a week on a River that flowed mostly through private ranch land. There was a lot of uncertainty about the trip, is there enough water to float without touching the stream bottom? Can I sit in a boat all day without standing and stretching on dry land? How do I take a pee? Will there be ranch hand/ goons following, filming, and threatening us? After our guide trip the first day it was clear as to how this was going work out, we simple violated the law repeatedly all day every day for a week. Even in areas that had adequate water to float smacking into rocks was impossible to avoid, we had to get out of our boats to pee and back pain problems forced us to get out and stretch now and then. We never did wade fish or loiter on Private land and did no harm other than leaving a few foot prints. There was one stretch where we were eye balled and tailed by someone in a pickup truck but most of the folks seemed to have better things to do than to worry about a couple of schmucks floating down the river banging into rocks and peeing. I voted Montana because it’s a little better cared for, equally beautiful and trout filled. I feel more welcome, that’s where I’ll spend the majority of my angler/tourist money.

Great Fish! Can you imagine the quality of fish if the river was actually managed for put grow and take rather than put and take? The current Arkansas version of put grow and take actually end up being put grow, gut hook and release to die. Or take a limit in the morning for shore lunch, then take a limit in the afternoon for home, then go ahead and take a the guides limit home too. I’m sorry I had to vent a little; I’ve spent half my life fishing this most beautiful river in the world only to be disappointed over and over again at the behavior I have seen, both legal and illegal, so much unmet potential.

Congrats F. Sam on your new found interest in river fishing. Moving water is so much more interesting than still water. Gavin’s correct that finding fish in moving water might be easier than in lakes but I might add that reading the water in streams can be much more complex than reading still water especially when navigating a boat. Current speed, boat speed and lure speed are in constant flux creating situations where you never can make the same cast twice. Another thing to keep in mind is the scaling down of fish size expectations, just the fact that river fish are constantly swimming against the current bring growth rates way down, maybe half that of lake fish. The trade off of fish that are a bit smaller on average that lake fish is by far offset by the beauty of rivers.Good Luck!

I once walked up on a decent rainbow holed up in cool seep pocket about the size of a kitchen sink under the hwy 19 bridge at short bend. That fish strayed about 25 miles from where it was stocked. Over the years I’ve caught bunches of trout above hwy 8, I can only imagine how many stocked trout follow their instincts to disperse during high water events only to find themselves trapped in the warming water of early summer. I’d bet this behavior contributes to the marginal quality of fish in the short section of Meramec that will sustain trout year round. Oh by the way, If your comfortable with your angling masculinity a rooster tail is by far the best bait to throw for these wayward trout.

Yea, nice mix of fish. With the water warming up I would guess any rainbows in the stretch are holed up below what’s its name creek. I’m a little disappointed the river is not more blocked up with trees. Some look at down falls as portages from hell, I tend to look at them as obstacles from heaven. Last year things were pretty clogged up, it keeps the disneylanders out.

Except between me and my buddy’s fishing is not a social activity. I have given up on all streams that do not give me the opportunity to fish in seclusion. Rest assured there is are many streams where you can have quality fishing and not be within a 100 yards of anyone. When it comes to angling “people are the enemy”.

Yep, the trick to having solitude on any river is to go to the sections are not served by an outfitter, require long shuttles or are otherwise a pain in the butt because of log jams, portages and limited public access. I do want to thank the one landowner who did not bother to put up no trespassing signs on one particular gravel bar. This campsite was pretty much the only one that was not posted and had just a bit of elevation. Thank you land owner, rest assured we left nothing but foot prints and took nothing but pictures.