fishinwrench

Dude, I freakin' live here, I work on those guys boats, I know how they roll. And most importantly I see and smell all the dead spoonbill. So regardless of what causes them to get killed the fact is they do. Tons of them are wasted, mostly due to the regulations and the methods used to catch them. I could personally care less because Spoonbill aren't a fish that I care anything about, but to spend millions keeping them here and assigning outrageous punishments for infractions regarding them..... then set regulations that invariably result in a shitload of them being killed is freakin' ignorant. Then we just slap the palms of guys that unlawfully harm smallmouth populations (that aren't receiving millions of dollars of protection) and send them back to their happy lives. Go ahead and keep arguing, Chief, you might change somebody's mind but it won't be mine.

Snag a Spoonbill, drag it in the boat, stomp on it with a size 12 work boot, rip the hooks out with a pair of 1.99 pliers, kick it back in the lake. Really odd that it dies, says Chief For every scarred bass we see I'd say there is 5-6 that didn't make it. Pretty safe assumption don't ya think?

Looks prime for a #24 Trico does it not?

I hate the term "Wiper" too, but actually if any should be called BASS from a biologists standpoint Largemouth/Smallmouth/Meanmouth/Spotted shouldn't be among them. They aren't even members of the bass lineage.

I have had to place strips of duck tape on my reel feet before, to get the reel to mount solid to certain rods. The old Berkely Series One Rods didn't like my metal frame 4600C reels. They wouldn't tighten down good unless you "shimmed" it.

Honestly I've never counted them, but yeah sublegal Spoonbill floating dead and along the banks from white branch to Porter Mill bend on LO is typical every year. Turtle food, and we are gonna ruin a guys life over it ? Whatever. Some shock time and a 5k fine would have been appropriate, but treating the dude like he just raped a school bus load full of children and killed the driver? No I can't get behind that.

Yep, ya see, that's what you get when you rattle a biologists cage. They get so smart that they lap themselves... and end up stupid again.

You'll have to tear up the boat to get it.

Well.....I am insured for theft, so yeah have at it.

It wasn't "thousands of them". Thousands of eggs maybe. And yeah that was a jacked up deal. I feel sorry for that dude, they took his freakin' LIFE over that. Meanwhile ACTUAL THOUSANDS line the banks dead after snagging season, legally. I want a poster showing a Spoonbill shoved up an elks azz. I'd display that proudly in my shop. Who can Photoshop that ?

No doubt the flow coming from the Niangua was the greatest. It topped the releases from Truman, Cole camp, Deer and Turkey cr. by a good bit. What we experienced here in the Gravi was probably 70% backwater. The current was moving backwards for quite awhile.

Here ya go. These guys have it right. open menuuser search SPECIAL FEATURES World Record Ice Fishing Perch! World Record Sunfish BASS LARGEMOUTH BASS SMALLMOUTH BASS Hybrid Black Bass by Steve Quinn | August 24th, 2012 ADVERTISEMENT Biologists recognize that hybridization between freshwater fish is more common than for any other type of vertebrate. Sunfish, including bluegills, redear, green sunfish, and pumpkinseed, readily hybridize, particularly in altered habitats, where spawning areas are limited, or when one species is introduced into waters where another species had solely existed. Some crosses have been recommended for stocking private waters. Due to habitat alterations and widespread introduction of black bass species outside their native ranges, hybrid black bass are increasingly common. While anglers may find occasional catches of hybrids a curiosity, the loss of genetic adaptations honed over millions of years, which occurs with such genetic mixing, is not obvious; yet it represents a threat to the quality of bass fishing. Meanmouth Bass: In the mid-1960s, Dr. William Childers and colleagues at the Illinois Natural History Survey began studies of centrarchid (sunfish family) hybrids. In the lab, they produced some oddballs—crosses of largemouth bass with warmouth, green sunfish, and bluegill. Crosses with crappie and rock bass failed. The researchers noted that different black bass species didn’t hybridize when stocked in ponds with members of another species (i.e., all males of one species with all females of another). But fertilizing largemouth eggs with smallmouth sperm produced viable offspring that reproduced among themselves and with both parental species. The term “meanmouth bass” was born when Childers observed a school of largemouth-smallmouths attacking a female swimmer. “The bass leaped from the water and struck her on the head and chest,” he wrote, “and drove her from the pond.” On another occasion, he watched meanmouths attack a dog that ventured into shallow water. Though indications of hybrid vigor were evident in aggressiveness and fast growth, high mortality and low reproductive rates for the hybrids led to a halt of this investigation in the 1980s. Childers cautioned that backcrossing of hybrids with parental species would be harmful, since gene flow between the species would reduce the fitness of populations as maladaptive genes were introduced. Over 30 years ago, he urged caution in mixing bass subspecies and even geographically separated populations of fish of the same species. In nearly all cases of hybridization outside the lab, smallmouth have been involved. Geneticist Dr. Dave Philipp, colleague of the late Dr. Childers, noted that fertilization of largemouth bass eggs with smallmouth sperm resulted in more successful crosses than the reciprocal cross (largemouth male and female smallie). The aggressive male smallmouth bass may be an instigator when introduced into waters outside its natural range where spawning sites are limited, or in altered habitats such as reservoirs. When smallies were added to newly constructed Squaw Creek Reservoir in Texas, they soon hybridized and backcrossed with both northern and Florida subspecies of largemouths that were already in the impoundment. In 1993, Rich Fry caught an 8-pound 3-ounce bass from a Pennsylvania mine pit that was genetically identified as a first-generation hybrid of a largemouth and a smallmouth bass. More Crosses: By the late 1960s, stocking of spotted bass in central Missouri had led to hybridization and genetic swamping of smallmouth populations. Today, backcrossed mixes of spots and smallies are increasingly common in central Missouri streams and in reservoirs such as Table Rock, where several state records have been set, up to 5 pounds 10 ounces. Due to their fighting power, they’re locally known as “meanmouth bass,” but this confuses the original meaning of the term. In 2006, an 8-pound 5.6-ounce spot-smallmouth hybrid was caught in Oklahoma’s Veteran’s Lake, a new state record and the largest black bass hybrid on record. In north Georgia and Alabama, introductions of smallmouths into spotted bass water and of spots into smallie water led to hybridization and mixing of genotypes, compromising the adaptive characteristics of each species in these waters. Beginning in 1974, smallmouths were stocked into central Texas streams where only native Guadalupe bass had existed. Within a decade, extensive hybridization and backcrossing occurred. To preserve the few remaining pure populations of Guadalupes from extermination by genetic swamping, smallmouth stocking has ceased here, sanctuaries have been established, and captive-bred Guadalupes planted in streams to buoy their numbers. Hybridization of smallmouth and redeye bass also has occurred in the Upper Cumberland River watershed of Tennessee, where introduced redeyes hybridized with smallmouths, resulting in more than half the bass being crosses. A research group including Dr. Philipp has recently labeled the Florida bass a separate species—not a subspecies of largemouth as traditionally thought—based on analysis of mitochondrial DNA. Many studies of this cross have been done over the last 30 years. While some short-term hybrid vigor may be noted, long-term loss of fitness is inevitable when black bass hybridize. Recent investigations show that “outbreeding depression,” a measureable descriptor of loss of fitness, occurs when populations are mixed. While it may be hard today to find black bass populations unaffected by stock transfers, it’s imperative to keep them pure by restricting any transfers into those watersheds, and to limit further mixing of stocks of black bass. Read more: http://www.in-fisherman.com/bass/hybrid-black-bass/#ixzz3vqSMNMYQ

You won't get those guys to post anything on here. PM me your number and I'll have one call you. OR....Seriously....just Google it. They aren't going to tell you anything that can't be googled.

Ya know, one of my very best buddies is a fisheries biologist that teaches at a university here in Mo. We used to argue all the time until we began fishing together alot. I've lost count of the times I've been able to smile and say "whaddaya think NOW, Professor?". He keeps his students far far away from me. He won't even take their calls when I'm within earshot.

Speaking of Mean mouths ^^^^

Believe it or not the far upper region of several smaller creek arms are already beginning to clear up. Visability is about 2' and the water is becoming more green than brown. As the creeks clear up they'll push the dirty water down, or towards the main lake. The back half of Linn cr. should be fishable pretty soon. Yesterday the main lake water from the 13mm to the 7mm actually looked pretty good considering, but it may color up more as the water from 4-corners makes its way there. Lots of shad and suspended fish in the 12-18' range.

Oh yeah, they'll have it down below 657 by March.

The only time their "decisions" bother me is in the Spring. The last 2 years they really screwed up the white bass/bass/crappie spawn with a severe mid-spring drawdown that (to me) was totally uncalled for.

I hate it when people say "find the food and you'll find the fish", that is such bulls#it. There is way more food than there is fish so finding forage doesn't help find your target fish one bit....Hell we can ALWAYS find baitfish. You may not find bass where there is no forage, but you can definitely find forage where there are no bass. Happens all the time.

Sharing The Pain’ With two massive floods at the Lake within a six-month period, some are wondering whether Ameren has changed its policies. Are dam operators waiting longer to open the floodgates? Witt’s answer is an emphatic “No.” “It is definitely a fluke,” he said of the frequency of the floods. But he emphasized, the policies and guidelines that set the course for dam operators have not changed. Like it or not, Witt said, “It’s about sharing the pain… we don’t flood the river to save the Lake. We also don’t save the river to flood the Lake.” That principle is not an arbitrary one. Before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) renewed the operating license for the dam in 2007, Witt explained, significant input was garnered from stakeholders all along the Lake of the Ozarks and Osage and Missouri rivers—that means Lake property owners, resort owners, government officials, the Army Corps of Engineers, farmers downstream, and Ameren had input “from a [power] generation perspective.” All of the requests are boiled down into the criteria for the FERC license, Witt said, and those criteria regulate how he and his team operates for the next 30-40 years. Could more have been done before the rain came? Yes, Witt acknowledges, citing the old adage about hindsight. But he stressed, “You never make significant moves based just on a forecast.” “As we know, predictions can often change significantly,” he pointed out, explaining that if the Lake had been dropped by several feet in anticipation of the three-day rainstorm, and the weather had not behaved like forecasters predicted, dam operators would have been in hot water—with people downstream flooded for no reason, and an abnormally low Lake level without rain to refill it. Witt says he feels the pain too: he has a lake home and dock. But his primary residence is on the Osage River, so he is doubly affected by the flooding. Other members of his team also own lakefront property. But, he emphasized, their pain can not govern how they respond to catastrophic rainfall like the area saw last weekend. They are required to follow regulatory standards and legal precedent. The Precedent The worst flood on record at the Lake of the Ozarks was in 1943. “There were some lawsuits that came out of that,” Witt explained, “and a court actually established criteria for how to calculate flows that the river ought to be seeing under these flood conditions.” “Those rules,” he said, “have carried through in our FERC licenses ever since the 1940s.” At the core of the court decision was the question, “what would the flooding on the river naturally be if there wasn’t a dam and a lake?” The answer to that question is largely mathematical, and it is what defines the “natural flow” rules. Those rules do not rely at all on weather forecasts, but only on the present weather. This weekend’s actions were completely in line with the precedent set by that court decision and Ameren’s actions since then, Witt contends. He also points out his team did actually open the floodgates earlier than they were required to, once rain began to fall and it was obvious there would be much more. The gates were opened when the Lake level hit 659.5 feet, which is half a foot below full pool and a foot-and-a-half below the level (661) at which they are required to open them. It has appeared to some that Ameren was caught off-guard by the storm, but Witt points out his team always has access to high-tech weather forecasts and is constantly monitoring predictions. Those forecasts are run through a complex computer algorithm which helps dam operators understand how runoff might behave based on potential rainfall patterns. But the reality is, while the team has some leeway to act on the front end of a storm, they are mainly constrained to responding to conditions on the ground. Other entities also have influence in the decision: Witt pointed out the Army Corps of Engineers may opt to open the Truman Dam floodgates, which would raise the Lake of the Ozarks level if Bagnell Dam did not also increase its flow. The Corps might also request Bagnell Dam close its floodgates and only pass local inflows through the dam, if the Osage or Missouri rivers have swelled too much. Could the floodgates be closed before the Lake drops back down to 660? Witt says it’s a real possibility. The Floodgates While Witt gave this interview on Monday evening at 5 p.m., the Bagnell Dam floodgates were passing more water than at any time during the current flood. The total flow of the dam was 104,617.10 cubic feet per second (cfs) — more than 750,000 gallons per second. The Lake rose for two and a half days straight, but not because the floodgates couldn’t keep up. The dam was still only running at less than half its capacity, Witt said. The maximum possible flow is 225,000 cfs. During the infamous 1943 flood, the dam was allowing 220,000 cfs. The Lake level nearly reached 664 before it crested at 663.83 on Monday evening, but Witt says Ameren’s flooding rights go even higher than that. For much of the lake, Ameren is protected even if waters reach 665; further upstream, the flooding rights reach 674. “If we’re at 660 at the dam in a pretty good flood,” he said, “[upstream properties] may be at 665.” The way the Lake was developed provides a very slim margin of error for flooding, as evidenced by many homes that were filled with water twice in 2015. Truman Lake, by contrast, was built for flood control, and Truman Dam can help lessen flooding at Lake of the Ozarks. During July’s flood, flows through Truman were completely stopped, to mitigate the high waters at Lake of the Ozarks. Witt says he understands property owners’ frustration, and in these situations he hopes to educate people. “It’s not as simple as they think it is… and we can’t just penalize people on the river to protect people on the Lake.” “Some people understand that,” he said. “A lot of people don’t.” This was not the worst flood on record, but Witt says it, along with last summer’s deluge, are definitely in the top ten for Lake of the Ozarks.

It got to the 664.4 mark at the upper Gravois, but the max recorded at the dam (which is what we all go by) was 663.8

I would expect trout to survive a Winter flood just fine. Summer floods are way worse for a trout Hatchery.

Ah, Dammit !

Hey, that water color looks good down by you !

Two that I heard about. The local media has become reluctant to report electrocutions now, so we don't get to hear about all of them anymore. I felt a tingle while unhooking a jig from a cable last Spring and at first I just thought it was me having a muscle spasm (my hands and arms tingle all the time so I didn't think much of it) .... but then it quit as soon as I backed away from the cable. I was like "Oh, that wasn't ME !" I hollered at a neighbor that was out and told him. He didn't seem very concerned. Go figure.