Al Agnew

Upper Jacks Fork won't have enough water. Alley to Eminence will have enough water but fishing is poor. Eminence to Two Rivers would be your best bet on the JF. As for Current...either fish for trout from Tan Vat to Akers, with scattered smallmouth, or fish for smallmouth from Round Spring to Two Rivers. Float Akers to Round Spring for the scenery, not the fishing.

Let me explain a bit...the big problem with inline spinners is that they are not easily fished around cover. And smallmouth like to hang around cover. Sure, they catch fish, but you're limited in where you can fish them. They are also annoying in twisting line. They are meant to be fished in the middle of the water column, and there are many other lures that are also meant to be fished there, and catch more fish, bigger fish, and can be fished better in cover. As for Rebel Craws, they are an okay crankbait, but no better than a lot of others. They get bought because of their rather realistic crawdad shape, but bass don't care. I actually occasionally use the bigger, deeper diving model because of one thing...it is one of the few deep diving crankbaits that I can add dressing to the belly hook and it still wobbles well, and sometimes that makes a difference. Look, I fully understand that we all fish for different reasons, and if you enjoy using these lures, great. They are producing enough to keep you happy. But there are lures I enjoy fishing a lot, too...and they are better lures for big fish, which I enjoy catching, and better in common situations that I come to while floating. It's always a mystery to me why more people don't fish topwater lures for stream bass. You can't get any more fun than that, and you can't find many more effective lures than that, either. If I was STRICTLY after big fish, I go to where the most big fish are, and fish for them with stuff on the bottom in heavy cover a lot more than I do. But topwater is so much fun that I use a couple different types of topwater lures at least 75% of the time in warm weather.

Lures are tools. And in my opinion, inline spinners are almost never the best tool for the situation. In keeping with my curmudgeonly ways, I will just say this...if two of your main lure choices are inline spinners and Rebel Craws (especially the little version, the Wee Craw), you aren't using the best tools about 99% of the time, and you won't catch as many fish, and especially as many bigger fish, as you would if you were using better tools. Let the bashing begin😁

I've been in some spectacular hatches, the most spectacular being the Mother's Day caddis hatch on the Yellowstone. The bugs are in the billions, and when they come off the river seems to just erupt with millions at once. The surface gets to where it's covered in caddis, with mats of them. They are easy to imitate with several different flies. But the real trick to getting fish to take your imitation out of the thousands of bugs surrounding it is to use an imitation caddis that is about two sizes larger than the actual bugs. Sometimes you don't WANT to match the bugs perfectly!

As far as caddis pupae, you're right, soft hackles do well as caddis pupae imitations. Here on the Yellowstone, we have a bunch of species of caddis that emerge anytime from late April through September. You'll see some flying around most days within that time period. So there are plenty of the pupae in the water and some beginning to emerge and metamorphose about any time. The most famous "hatch" of caddis on the Yellowstone is the "Mother's Day caddis hatch", which happens within a week or so of the first of May, and it can be absolutely spectacular. But the eggs these caddis deposit are in sacs that are a bright lime green when first deposited, and gradually dull. And the larvae and pupae tend to have hints of that lime green. So in soft hackles, I'm always fishing one with lime green on its thorax, with grizzly soft hackles. That color pattern works better than any other on the Yellowstone, and I fish soft hackles a LOT, because they are great flies for both drifting and swinging. The fish really eat them as they first begin to rise from the bottom and start to swing at the end of a dead drift.

There probably aren't any real shortcuts to learning the different aquatic insects, their life cycles, etc. If you're interested enough in it, you can spend a lot of time researching the whole subject. But the thing is, you don't NEED to learn it all quickly. You don't need to be an expert of the bugs trout eat to catch trout. There are many things about streams and stream denizens and the fish you catch in streams that I'm vitally interested in. But the bugs aren't all that important to me beyond the basics. When you're fishing for trout, most nymphs you could fish with are interchangeable. Dry flies...try to see what they are rising to, and if you can't figure it out, just try something generic like an Adams and see what happens. If they aren't rising and you still want to see if you can catch something on a dry fly, try an attractor pattern like a Royal Wulff, or else try a terrestrial like an ant or grasshopper imitation. The other evening I went down to the river next to the house. There were some smallish trout rising in a smooth current area, and although caddis flies were flitting around, there were none on the water. I had and still have no idea what those trout were rising to. But I tied on a smallish Stimulator, figuring it was a generic pattern that could be a hopper imitation. Promptly caught three of the risers before a thunderstorm got too close and I had to retreat to the house. A couple evenings later, I went back down to the same spot. More fish rising. Nothing that I could see that they were eating. Put on the Stimulator again. Got several half-hearted takes on it, didn't hook any of them. Ya just never know.

True...definitely an Ozark bass from Crooked Creek. Ozark bass are only in tributaries of the upper White, down to the mouth of Black River. This, of course, includes Crooked Creek as well as the Buffalo, Kings, North Fork, and James and all the smaller streams within that part of the watershed. Anglers should realize how unique Ozark bass are; they are only found in this one small area of the world.

Legal scholars HAVE studied Elder v Delcour and thought the reasoning behind the decision was interesting, to say the least. However, there IS a difference between having the right to float floatable rivers, and having the right to walk across someone's lawn because it's a shortcut. The difference is that the WATER doesn't belong to the landowner, nor do the fish in that water. You are probably right that the decision was in part a product of its time. At the time, there had been a long and time-honored tradition of guided multiday floatfishing trips on Ozark streams, ever since the late 1800s. It was source of revenue for some rural areas. This was before the huge boom in canoe rentals and later huge campgrounds with kayaks, rafts, and tubes to offer, but there were still quite a few people making money off tourist anglers. The court most likely was uncomfortable with curtailing this by ruling that it was illegal to picnic and camp on gravel bars, since traditionally gravel bar camping was a huge part of the float trip. So they found a legal way to make it okay. However, you are probably wrong on equating a stream that can float a tube in high water with streams covered by Elder V Delcour. It specifically mentioned small boats, not inner tubes, and included the wording "the stream bed, gravel bars and clearly recognizable area over which the stream flows during its normal stages." It also said that the Meramec River in question had long been a popular fishing stream. What it really boils down to is that the public has what amounts to an easement to use that part of the landowner's property. A better analogy would be sidewalks in suburban areas. The lot owner usually owns the land under the sidewalk, out to the curb (and is responsible for mowing the strip of grass if there is one between the sidewalk and curb, or was where I grew up). But the public has the right to walk on the sidewalk. And rural economics STILL is important in this situation. If suddenly the gravel bars on the popular float streams were ruled to be off limits to floaters, it would probably spell the death of all the canoe and kayak liveries. You don't see such liveries in states where floaters can't touch the bottom or bank; all you see is guided fishing floats on those waters. Because the conflicts between river users and landowners would be a complete mess otherwise. As a river landowner myself, I have no problem with the public being able to use "my" gravel bars; because I bought the land with my eyes wide open, knowing I'd have to put up with public use.

Guys, it doesn't really matter whether logs were floated or other kinds of commerce were done on these streams. The court mentioned those things, but did not make their ruling based upon them. Basically, all it really said was that IF the stream is floatable in small boats, then the public has the right to float it and otherwise use it. Further court cases or rulings by the state attorney general have determined that some other stream sections fall under it, but not all have been ruled upon.

This is a very interesting question, and one that would have to be litigated to get a definitive answer, sorry. Elder v Delcour's ruling includes the right to portage around obstacles over private property. But...does that include going UPSTREAM around a dam? Does it matter whether there are any public accesses upstream? My non-attorney opinion is that it should be legal. After all, there are two ways to gain access to a stretch of stream. One is to use a public access. The other is to get permission from a private landowner to use their land to access it. If I have a friend 6 miles up the Finley from Lindenlure who will let me put in on his land, I should have the right to float downstream and around the dam to reach my takeout at a public access. So why would it be any different going upstream from that access? But the problem is that it is indeed a gray area, as far as I know. And the fact is, this is not the place to ask the question, because none of us know. The people to ask are the county sheriff and/or county prosecutor, because THEY are the ones who would be arresting you--or not. So if they tell you you can't do it, then your only other choice is to do it anyway, and then be prepared to fight it in court. Indeed, although the exact circumstances are lost to time, it's believed that Elder and Delcour knew each other and agreed to get into the conflict and take it to court to get the question of access to smaller but still (somewhat) floatable streams settled. So you could talk to the county prosecutor and see whether he would be up for setting in motion such a test case in this instance. But be careful what you wish for. This is just different enough from the situation in Elder v Delcour that a higher MO court might not use it as a precedent, and decide instead that you DON'T have the right to go upstream around the dam for whatever legal reasons they might invent.

Yup, typical JF cottonmouth. I've never seen a really big one there; most were 24-30 inches long. It was there, on a solo three day float, that I got within striking distance of one. I was camped on the gravel bar and after dark I wanted to walk along the edge of the bar and shine a flashlight into the water to see what kind of fish or crawdads were out roaming around. I just happened to shine the light on the bar in front of my feet and one was coiled and staring at me, about a foot away from my lead foot. My next step would have landed atop it, or just past it. I backed up, it uncoiled and swam off. Here's a very pretty one from several years ago on the Jacks Fork. And the only one I saw on a solo float last summer on the JF...

Impossible to identify for sure from that photo, but I highly doubt it is a cottonmouth. Body is too long and slender. Gotta have better evidence than that to say that there are cottonmouths that far out of their known range.

I'm always wondering why people get into kayaks and then try to turn them into bass boats. The beauty of kayaks and canoes is that they are small, relatively light in weight, and you can pretty much use them anywhere. So then you buy one that weighs 80 pounds stripped and add 50-75 pounds of attached gear, electronics, and batteries, and you need a concrete boat ramp and a trailer to get it into the water. I'd rather do it this way (and by the way, you won't want to try to take out where I did on this trip with one of those decked out fishing kayaks...the parking lot is a quarter mile from the river and you have to drag it up a mucky swamp half that distance and then up a rocky creek bottom the rest of the way):

I believe that 7 mph is about the fastest current you'll find even in the steepest riffles. People routinely overestimate current speed. 6 or 7 mph MIGHT get you up most Ozark rivers, but it would be slow going.

Okay, you guys that say that cottonmouths are north of the range map, you're gonna have to show some evidence. I've had several people over the years swear that they have cottonmouths in their farm pond north of the Missouri River, and actually send me pictures. The pictures invariably showed they misidentified water snakes. So if you have photos, please post them. I've lived all my life near or on Big River and Meramec River, and have many thousands of hours on all thes streams in the Meramec system, and have never once seen a cottonmouth there. Where I HAVE seen cottonmouths...upper Gasconade, Big Piney, James, Current, St. Francis. But the one stream that has the most cottonmouths of anyplace I've been in Missouri is the upper Jacks Fork. I NEVER go there in the summer without seeing at least one per day. My record was 11 in three days. A few other things...Benadryl does nothing for snake bites. It's for allergic reactions. Snake venom is not an allergic reaction. Latest info from the experts is that Benadryl is completely useless, whether given to a human or a pet. Don't bother. Also, forget about snakebite kits. They don't work and often do harm. Forget about tourniquets. Just attempt to keep the victim's heart rate as low as possible and get them to a hospital. And you don't have to kill the snake or take pictures of it for identification purposes; the antivenin is now the same for all the pit vipers (and we don't have coral snakes in MO, so you don't need coral snake antivenin if you're bitten in MO or northern AR--the farthest north coral snakes are is far southern AR). There has been one snakebite death in Missouri in the last decade or more. It was from a copperhead and the victim had serious underlying health issues (I believe a serious heart condition). There have been five reported deaths since 1933. So snakebites are not a death sentence. But you sure as heck don't want to get bitten. I know several people that got bitten by copperheads and it was a VERY unpleasant experience. Cottonmouths routinely swim with their whole bodies on the surface. And they swim in kind of a distinctive way. BUT...a whole lot of terrestrial snakes swim with bodies floating as well, and water snakes also swim that way on occasion. If you've seen a lot of confirmed cottonmouths swimming, you can recognize that distinctive way they swim, but you can't really describe it. So swimming on the surface is NOT a good way to identify them. Cottonmouths WILL swim up to your boat. It's happened to me a bunch of times. They are not looking to attack you. They seem to be curious as to what that big new floating thing is, and I doubt that they even realize you're in it until you do something to discourage them. Splashing them with my paddle does the trick. I've also had a copperhead swim up to my canoe. It decided that it appeared too difficult to get up onto the canoe, and swam around the front end and over to a log coming off the bank, where it crawled up to rest. And by the way, if you see a snake in the water, it's almost certainly not going to be a copperhead, although a whole lot of people misidentify common water snakes as copperheads. In 60 years of hanging out on Ozark streams, I've seen exactly two copperheads in the water; that one I mentioned above and one other that was swimming from one side of the creek to the other. And I've seen thousands of water snakes in that time. I have been within striking distance of at least four copperheads (that I know of), one cottonmouth, and a prairie rattlesnake. None attempted to bite me.