Haris122

How did your deer season go? I might have another day to try during cwd season and maybe a few days during antlerless but so far I’ve spent nearly 4 full days out in the woods and not seen any of them. Got lazy today and just slept in.

Say whatever makes you feel good but if that mountain lion knew where they were and also wanted a piece of them, they would’ve had a hard time ever getting a shot off.

As much as I wouldn’t want to be surprised by a mountain lion, I’d still much rather have them, bears, bobcats, coyotes, foxes, all that other good stuff roaming in the woods here in Missouri than have all these woods around and nothing but the occasional deer and people in them as far as anything of any size is concerned. Same reason I don’t like just fishing manicured concrete park ponds when there’s a good chance of catching stuff in real rivers or at least lakes. Might see something cool you just otherwise wouldn’t. As far as this event, it’s a shame they couldn’t just let it do its own thing when it wasn’t bothering them. Hope they get a fat fine out of it at least, but I won’t hold my breath.

Anyone hear the story? Apparently this deer season someone deer hunting shot one in Iron county.

Me and a fishing buddy floated that stretch of the Big River last week, the first stretch of days that weather got nice. I borrowed one of his kayaks and I was quite a bit more unstable in it than in my normal one. Had some technical difficulties with it including some water pooling right under the seat. Right as we were about to get to Mammoth, in the last choppy stretch less than half a mile from the take out spot, I went for an unplanned swim. Had a few prior spots where I almost fell in but somehow recovered from those but that last one got me. We put in around 1, then took our sweet time in the first half of the float trying to catch something , basically making a giant loop near the access, so then the 2nd half from the main portion of the state park on down, we tried to speed things up. Surprisingly we still made it out before it got all the way dark, even with my swim and subsequently trying to find some of my ancillary stuff that had went for a swim as well. I caught first fish, towards the latter end of the first half of the float. It was a 12-13” smallmouth near a deeper pool by a big boulder that was by shore. Then my buddy got one just a bit downstream of the “beach” at the state park, evening it out. Pretty much the same size and also close to a stretch of bigger boulders. Then I got the winner, right after we went past this tricky section where a big fallen tree was causing the water to swirl quite a bit behind it, just past where mineral fork entered. Once we made it past that tricky spot the fast water kind of dumped into a deeper pool that looked real good. I cast around there a bit, and caught that last fish of the day. Another 12-13” smallie. And then a bit below there was where I went for a swim. Not a very productive day by some of you guys’ standards, but we were just happy to catch something considering it was still February. Think next time I’ll just stick to my own kayak though. And next time we might just hit either the first 3 mile or 2nd 3 mile half so we can really take our time fishing around. Hard to find enough river stretches where you can just do 3 miles and take out, but this stretch seems to hold some promise for that. When I do 6 or so miles I usually end up taking so long fishing the first stretch, that I then have to rush to make it out by dark, especially cause I’m generally not out on the water until late morning or noon.

1. Fish some more with my dad and hopefully get him to catch some decent fish. 2.Get back into wade fishing some of the red ribbon sections on the meramec this year, and do some wade fishing in general. Once I messed up my knee a few years back, that stuff went completely out the door. I’m hoping now I can do it again without re-injuring the knee somehow. 3. Take the kayak out even more, and fish while floating on stretches of rivers around here, more than I did last few years. I did get back into it some the past year and a half, but I want to up the amount I do that. 4. Just in general make it out to fish more often than I have the previous several years.

Yeah I forgot to give an update but someone I contacted regarding the kayak (think it was either someone from the company selling it or perception kayaks) sent me a link to a place selling polyethylene (I believe) rods/sticks and a youtube video on how to “weld” the rods into the hole. I ordered some of those and got a heat gun and basically once I found the spot that was leaking I just melted some of the rods into the hull of the kayak there and it seems to work. Like you guys said, need to check what your kayak is made out of first. My “weld” doesn’t look very professional but it stopped water coming in. Luckily it wasn’t a difficult shape as far as the hole. Had it been it might’ve given me more problems. I might need to see if I recently got another hole though. When we went kayaking the Big River several weeks back, my kayak dragged a lot and at the end when we lifted it up, we were getting water dripping on us from another spot. Didn’t seem as big a leak as the other one but I should plug it too one of these days.

Yeah if I can find it I’m thinking of getting one like my friend has. He’s got a rope to his that allows him to lift it up and back down somehow when he needs either option.

I probably should’ve quoted your question so you see that I replied so here goes.

Sorry didn’t see your post earlier. I think we started around 1-1:30 and got done around 7 I think. Though I noticed I have a hard time being timely when fishing. We definitely spent a lot of time on the first half of the float, trying to fish a lot and then the 2nd half we had to speed things up a bit. It’s about a 6 or so mile float I think, so really should be doable probably in 4-5 hours if you don’t get caught up fishing too many spots. That said I think first half seemed a bit better for fishing overall too. I think the Big River flowing into the Meramec is roughly the halfway point, maybe 2/3 of the way so once you get there, that would be a good indicator on whether you need to really speed things up, or got plenty of time left.

How much do rudders help in casting? My kayak doesn’t have one and my kayak frequently ends up turning in an inconvenient direction as I’m retrieving a cast. Noticed my friend’s kayak didn’t do much of that and he has a rudder so for those that have one does it make a big difference?

Well this particular jointed rapala I was using last time, is meant to dive between 2-4 feet. Realistically it was probably doing closer to 1-3 ft. So let’s say 2 foot and less.

Honestly I’m not too picky what kind of fish it is, Drum, Smallmouth, Gar, or anything in-between as long as I know I caught them fair and square (not snagged by accident). I’m just hoping to get into some bigger fish. I seem to get constantly into smaller stuff but the big ones tend to elude me. I always like throwing shallower crank and minnow lures but haven’t had the best of luck with them for big ones even when the lures are bigger too. You guys get big ones with some regularity with shallow crank and minnow lures?

Wow, nice one. I guess I didn’t explain what I meant though. I was asking if you catch any big ones with shallow diving minnow/crankbaits?

Yeah I need to. For some reason I just really like fishing shallower diving minnow/crankbaits. You catch any big ones with those with any frequency?