Haris122

How long did that thing fight for? I take it that took quite a while if it was on a Light action rod.

A week or so outdated it seems but I ran across this information just a few minutes ago. Looks like the worst parts of the sewage effluent have been fixed since mid February now. I didn't know that. Still hope they finish the rest of the fixes up soon though so we can finally hit that section of the river again. http://openspacestl.org/meramec-river-wwtp/

By upstream, do you mean at the hwy 8 access, or which way? How big was the nice trout. I noticed the milky water too. At first I thought it was just some off color thing having to do with depth as it seemed more prevalent in the deeper water. Then I started thinking it was just from the oxygen from the riffle at the end of the spring. Finally I noticed it probably wasn't that either. But couldn't figure out what it was and left it at that.

My most diverse day I think I got 6 different species to date. Red Ribbon area at Suicide Hill, I caught Largemouth, Striped Shiner, Sunfish of some sort (think Longear), Brown Trout, Smallmouth, and White Crappie. That was just ahead of my first Meramec Springs trip this year, when I got 5, including Rainbow Trout, Largemouth, Smallmouth, Brown Trout and Rock Bass (John's Ozark Slam without even knowing it).

Yeah, they were really beautiful fish. I just wish they were a little bigger.

Made it out yesterday to Meramec Springs again. Plan was to fish the stretch of Red Ribbon Area just below the end of the spring, to the Dry Fork confluence as last few times I've been mainly working my way upstream from Suicide Hill and Cardiac up to Dry Fork Creek. In case nothing happened doing that, I was going to go back and fish the spring, and see if I can at least get a pair of trout to take home. The park was a little bit more crowded than I expected considering it was a Monday, especially near the parking lot, so I decided to not toy around any on the way through the spring, and just start right away below it, to get more of the river to myself. It wound up being less productive than the last few times, but nonetheless, did better than I suspected. I figured I'd probably run out of luck with the red ribbon area this time. Anyways, all fish today were caught on roostertails again. A variety of different ones but the action was sporadic. It was mainly a small fish day. I caught 6 fish,4 Smallmouth, and 2 Rainbows, lost another Smallie close to the net, and got a bite from something that got off right away (that was on a minnow like crankbait). Out of those 6, only 1 fish was over 12", a Rainbow, while most of the Smallies were well below that. It was still a fun day though. Started out with an 8" or so Smallie a bit downstream of the spring. Not a huge fighter but it did good for its size, and it was fun to know I wasn't getting skunked at least. That was within the first 25 minutes. I continued upstream towards the park, as that was where the deeper water was. There I lost the smallie near the net, but proceeded to catch my 2nd fish, a 12" Rainbow, that also put up a pretty good fight. After a little while of not getting any more bites, I headed downstream again. A drought hit me for a few hours, even though i saw and fished for several solid trout and smallies that outright launched out of the water. Finally I got another tiny smallie, followed by a 10" near a log that dissected the river into 2 channels because of how shallow it was in the middle of the stream. Further downstream I was just getting ready to change out the current roostertail when a real nice rainbow came out of nowhere, hammered that roostertail while completely launching it's head out of the water and then proceeded to give me the fight of the day. For what felt like an agonizingly long time I watched it shake it's head as it also oddly fought the current, instead of trying to run with it againt me, not more than 10 feet downstream from me. After a few adrenaline pumped minutes, and several last moment runs resulting in failed netting attempts, I finally got it to the net. You could tell it was exhausted as it stayed calm in my hands for a good minute or so, as I was letting it "catch it's breath", before it swam off. That was a fun fish. It was right around 14", and I hope it did good afterwards. I know I kept it in the water for almost the entire time it was netted so hopefully it lives to grow even bigger and stronger. Then I continued a little further down to the confluence without further bites, went back up, and then hooked another beautiful Smallie near the previously mentioned laydown bisecting the river. It also put up one hell of a fight for its size. I was surprised once I got it in, that it didn't break the 12" mark. It was only 11" or so, but it gave me a go on the light action, that's for sure. After that I made a few casts here and there on the way back up to the Spring with no bites. Passed through the spring relatively quick, only making a few passing casts near the parking lot, as I needed to rush back towards St. Louis, for a later event, and that was that. Was a bit disappointed there wasn't more activity or really big fish, with the first 3 miles downstream of the park supposedly being the most heavily populated by trout, but it was still a fun, scenic trip.

This year has started out pretty diverse for me so far. It took me a few days to connect with anything in 2016, but when I went to Meramec Springs, the diversity jackpot hit. Not only was it 11 Fish I got, but they were a variety pack too. After that they've been piling on slower but still at a good pace. So far as of March 8th, I got Rainbow Trout, Brown Trout, Rock Bass, Largemouth Bass, Smallmouth Bass, Spotted Bass (latest new species of this year), White Crappie, Black Crappie, Common or Striped Shiner (thanks on ID Johnsfolly), some kind of Sunfish (best guess is Longear Sunfish). I think that would be it so far. But hope to add many more.

Cool. Thanks JD.

Me and a buddy of mine are thinking of going fishing Duck Creek CA main pool possibly next weekend. It's over a 2 hour drive from St. Louis so I'd rather not go there unprepared, so I wanted to ask about a few additional things. For one, is the lake accessible for fishing, seeing how there's still one type of waterfowl season still open until the end of April (snow geese, blue geese, ross's geese, light goose conservation order)? If it is open, are the boats they have for rent already out or is it like with Busch, where they stow them away until it gets nicer? And if they're out how much is it to rent them, and do they come with oars, or do they actually have motors of some sort? If they have motors, do they need some type of completion of boater safety to operate the boat? Appreciate any info on this, and thanks in advance for help figuring it out.

Very helpful. Both posts. It's still not easy for me to tell them apart, but keep the posts coming cause the more examples, the better.

Man, looks like I won't make it there as early as I'd like if I do go tomorrow. Came out to the parking lot after work, only to find one of my tires flat as a pancake.

How early is it open. I've been there plenty but never early on. Been hearing that around opening bell is the time to be there so I might try to do that tomorrow.

Was it congested all over the place or did it thin out the further you walked? Maybe next year it will hit on a day I don't work. I've been meaning to see what it's all about for years now. Any huge fish caught?

It doesn't seem fair to me, but I don't know if I ever read anything on them threatening to do that. I imagine there's still some maintenance costs associated with those accesses though. Fixing boat ramps, and parking lots, and the occasional habitat improvement (or intended improvement) at some places. If I saw right they did have a few more spots they now help manage that they didn't before this year, and thus that became accessible or more known to the public, as well as a few legitimate new conservation areas they bought over the last few years.

Oh yeah, that's right. There's something MDC does that helps fish in rivers. Was just wondering what they do to really help sustain the fish in rivers. What is it, end of May that, that ends?

Good question. I'm probably missing a few things but I'd say year long, the main thing the MDC does for me is provide free access, like Al said. Fishing wise the main advantage to a lot of other options, is that MDC land is open longer, and frequently in more remote and scenic areas. Out of most true MDC owned land I know, I won't get chased off past a certain time like in the county, city, DNR, and municipal parks/accesses. Hunting wise, it's nice to at least get a chance to go out somewhere with a rifle, without having to either know someone, or own your own land. And in going with the hunting, they have shooting ranges that are either much more reasonably priced than private ones, or free, provided you're willing to drive out to them. Hunting wise I can't think of much more. Certain CA's have extra food plots and watering holes and such, but in my experience the availability of game there, squirrels aside, is on the low end (just too many people I guess). As far as fishing goes, for a lot of the river accesses, it's similar to hunting. They don't seem to stock any fish in the rivers aside from the trout in the red ribbon section. A good portion of the lakes I fish, also seem to be only naturally stocked. That's kind of one thing, along with better enforcement that I'd kind of like more of, from them. They make it more accessible which I like a lot, but that also causes more pressure on resources that have to solely replenish naturally. On the other hand they have constructed plenty of little lakes and offer other fishing opportunities I otherwise wouldn't have, that I definitely make use of. Busch CA, and the winter trout program come to mind.

Yeah I didn't really have the best picture format for identification purposes and it didn't occur to me to check how far the upper jaw reaches back, if there's any rough patches on tongue, or how the top fins connect. I compared it to the Largemouth pictures of the ones I had caught recently and the one thing that kind of stood out to me was how quickly the body turns pale below the center stripe. That and the faint stripe near the top of the back, since I'm not sure Largemouth have that. Probably the least sure characteristics to use for identification. But it looks like Largemouth tend to have a more similar color scheme both above and below the stripe, that then more slowly turns white right around the belly. Most of the spotted pictures I referenced on the forum and other places online seemed to have them turn white below the center stripe at a more drastic rate when compared to their coloration above the center stripe. If it is a Spotted Bass, it would be my first one of 2016. Mjk86, I'd say the river was still pretty muddy looking to me. I was actually expecting it to be clearer until I got to the actual ramp. And not only did I only catch this one, but the fish finder hardly marked any fish again for me, so either this stretch of the river is still a little cold and the fish haven't come out from wherever they hide, or it's more devoid of them than I thought in general. Or they're just hiding good where I don't bother to look. The fish finder is the most basic model I could find, so it does only downscan, so it doesn't cover much water, but I know further downstream I seem to come across many more fish on the sonar than I have the past few times I've been out around that section.

Fished the Meramec with the kayak again, this time near Valley Park. The current was stronger than I liked, so I stuck close to the banks hoping to find slower water behind something obstructing flow. I didn't bother to take the anchor so even the slower water frequently altered the position of the kayak, throwing off my retrieve. I mainly fished a small white crankbait and that's what I got my bites on. Eventually I lucked into a spot near a pile of concrete chunks with slow water where I ran into several bites before I could lose hope in it too. Whatever bit kept getting off after a brief fight. After the 3rd time the bite subsided, and eventually I was forced to try out other spots. Between the constant re-positioning to deal with current, and the fish that kept getting off, I started cursing up a storm. Anyways after several other spots that yielded nothing, I decided to hit that spot back up and finally got a bite that stuck. Once I got it to boat, this was my reward. I'm assuming a Spotted Bass. It was about 12". Turned out to be my only fish the 3.5 hours I was at it. But it put up a good fight. I know some of you won't like to hear it but, I let it go to bite another day.

I heard that gizzard shad eventually die off pretty heavily, below a certain water temperature. But the past few days before that, the temperatures had been getting better I figured. Leading up to and including Monday it had been kind of nice. I know like 2 or 3 winters ago when it was real cold for a while, they died by the masses. Much more even than this time. But I don't know, it could be oxygen too. I just thought oxygen is less of a problem in the winter than later on, so it kind of seems odd that, that would do it.

We tried Perry county CL again yesterday. I figured we were bound to catch some fish but I didn't think it would get into the double digits considering the time of year. When we got there, there were a bunch of shad that had died or seemed to be in the process of dying, swimming weirdly, sometimes upside down, all over the place. We even saw a couple bald eagles, so I'm guessing they were feasting on the shad. Anyways to get to the bottom of things, we started out fishing some brush and started catching little crappie and mainly just kind of stuck with that, seeing how we weren't expecting much else to be going on. A few times we'd try to troll or fish around the bank for the hell of it but nothing came of that so we didn't give it too much time. My buddy was fishing mainly with minnows under a slip bobber, I was mainly fishing tubes (blue, orange, and "kryptonite" green) on 1/64 and 1/32 jigheads also under a slip bobber. At first I was doing better on numbers while he was doing better on size but eventually he overtook me in numbers too. He got 13, I got 10 by the end. Out of his 13 there was 1 10" bass and several 8" crappie. Out of my 10, all were Crappie and only 1 was around 8". The rest of the crappie were pretty small for both of us. We both had a good mix of black and white ones, with the black ones seeming more solid for their size. At first we were catching them pretty shallow, but later on as he shot past me, he had a run of 6 fish to my 1 in deeper water.

Can you bring a kayak to Duck creek ca?

Well, aside from getting skunked out of the kayak (not even seeing any fish much less catching them) in super clear water around route 66 state park (could see the bottom in 6 feet of water), the next Meramec report might have to wait a bit. Going to be at least until next week since I'm working the weekend. But I'll report back when it does happen. Anyways, thanks on giving me a lead. I'll search around to see if there's any cheaper, but it helps a lot just to know what those things are called.

Where do you guys get those weird measurement rulers?

I took out my kayak at route 66 state park yesterday, went maybe half a mile or slightly more upstream and just a touch downstream before reaching the riffle by the I-44 bridge and I didn't catch a thing. That wasn't too surprising, but the water was pretty clear, I could see the bottom in detail in up to 6 feet of water sometime, and I still didn't manage to even see a single fish. Not bass, not sunfish, not sucker, not nothing. And the fish finder barely marked 4-5 fish in the 3 or so hours I spent there, and even then I'm not sure I can trust it cause some of them I should've been able to see in as clear water as it was, so I'm almost thinking they were ghost marks. I know they're supposed to be deeper, slower water cause it's supposed to be warmer these days, but there were several sections that were slow and around 9 feet deep. I figured the fish finder would show some marks at least in those, and that was still not the case. It was as if I was in a beautiful fish desert. Where did they all go?

I don't know what the experiments all entailed, but some of the scientific articles I skimmed through while trying to find more out about proper catch and release have some pretty high mortality within a day or two post release. Mainly related to lactic acid buildup and prolonged (30 seconds or more) exposure to air that collapses gill components and such. But it seems to depend also a lot by species and experiment, so I'm curious just how they stressed the fish in the higher mortality studies compared to the lower mortality ones, cause I feel like most of the fish I release survive. Which species do you guys think are some of the most difficult to release in good condition? I saw a mention that Black Crappie seem to do pretty poorly post release, along with some species of trout and Striped Bass. Smallmouth seemed to do worse than Largemouth, and Lake Trout (which we don't have) seem to do pretty good. Any more insights.