Al Agnew

Kinda fun to see this old post resurrected. What strikes me is that of all these stories, everybody remembers almost everything about catching that one fish. There are fish that are like that; you remember the exact spot, the strike, what lure you were using, the weather that day. In 60 plus years of fishing for stream bass, I've amassed a lot of memorable fish, fish that I remember almost everything about them. I've actually sat down with my topographic maps that cover all of my home river, Big River, and traced my way down the stream pinpointing the exact spots where I caught most of the 19 inch plus smallies I've caught over all those years. And whenever I get on the river now, I get a special feeling of anticipation as I approach every one of those spots. And maybe not surprisingly, there are plenty of spots where I've caught more than one big one. In my original post, that 4 pounder I caught on the three day float in that slight narrowing of the channel between two long pools...over the years I've caught 6 memorable fish on that exact spot. The most memorable, though, was a 17 incher with a deformed back that, if it had been straight, would have added an inch to its length. Why was it so memorable? Because I caught the same fish from the same spot the next summer, and it had gained an inch. And the third summer, I looked for it the three or four times I floated that stretch, but didn't see it again...until I paddled upstream from the access below one day during deer season. It was an exceptionally warm couple of weeks in November, and that day the fish were out and hitting topwaters like it was August. And at the head of the pool just below the lower of the two pools where that narrow spot separated them, I caught that same fish the third time...and it had gained another inch.

I don't have a dog in this hunt because I live too far from Table Rock and don't particularly care to fish reservoirs with the glitter boat crowd anyway. But the theory is simply that current regulations with a 15 inch limit means there is a lot more harvest of smallmouth and largemouth than of spotted bass, because the spots seldom reach 15 inches. If more fish of one (or two) species are harvested than of the other under the same rules, then the species not being harvested is going to take over more and more of the bass biomass of the lake, simple as that. And the observed significant increase in the percentage of spotted bass in the population of bass in Table Rock bears this out. Babler wants them to stock largemouth, which hasn't been a management tool anywhere in the country for more than 50 years, except for stocking Florida bass in places where they don't live naturally. It won't do a darned thing to increase the largemouth population. It's expensive to grow bass to 10 inches or so when they have a bit more of a chance of surviving to catchable size, and if you stock fingerlings into an existing population of various bass species, they simply get eaten before they grow. Some other things that have been brought up...I'm no biologist, but seems to me the whole key is how much bass biomass combined with other predatory fish biomass can the habitat and forage base support, and is there room for more bass biomass than there is now? It's a dynamic balance, and removing more of one species of the biomass than another means the other increases to fill the gap. And that is exactly what is happening with the population dynamics of the three bass species. So then the question becomes, what would reducing the limit on spots accomplish? Will there be enough catch and keep of spotted bass to put things into a different balance? But it probably isn't that simple. Like it or not, tournament angling with all the weigh-ins and hauling fish all over the lake, even though they are supposedly mostly released "unharmed", is also a big factor in the biomass percentages. Since spots seldom reach 15 inches, they aren't hauled around and weighed in nearly as much, either. So that's also a factor in more of them surviving to old age and breeding like fruit flies for 5 or 7 years. Two final questions... What are the management goals? Is it to bring harvest and hauling around back into some kind of balance that doesn't favor spotted bass? Then lowering the spot limit to 12 inches should theoretically work. Is it to produce more big bass? Same thing, since the smallmouth are largemouth are far more likely to grow bigger than 15 inches. Will the proposed change actually work? Will there be enough increased harvest and mortality of spots to push the balance back toward smallmouth and largemouth and stop the continual increase in spotted bass as a percentage of the bass population? I still think slot limits on smallmouth and largemouth are the best way to go if you want more big bass, probably combined with separate regulations on spotted bass. On spots, a 6 fish limit with no length limit. On largemouth and smallmouth, a 14-20 inch slot, with 3 fish under 14 and 1 fish over. But the tournament crowd would scream bloody murder over that idea, and don't kid yourself...these days the tournament crowd has all the power.

The pundits love Drake, but all they see is the gaudy 30-3 record, the 2nd best (most of them say best, but that's not quite true) scoring defense, and that Drake plays the slowest in Division 1, while Mizzou is supposed to play so fast. But by scoring defense, it simply means Drake has allowed the fewest points per game. And that is entirely because of their slow as molasses offense. Drake averages around 60 possessions a game, which, since only one team can have the ball at a time, means that their opponent only gets somewhere around 60 possessions as well...60 chances to score points. Mizzou averages a bit over 70 possessions a game, for instance...Alabama averages 76 possessions. You score more points the more times you have a chance to score. But you also score more points the more efficient your offense is. Drake is actually NOT a good defensive team as far as stopping the other team from scoring when they have the ball. They rank in the 200s in opponents' effective shooting percentage and in opponents' points per possession. Mizzou ranks slightly better in both. But Drake also ranks 58th in their own effective field goal percentage, and 55th in points per possession. Mizzou ranks 18th and 7th. And...Mizzou played the 25th toughest schedule in Division 1 to amass those statistics, while Drake played the 111th toughest. And as far as Mizzou having to play fast, they are actually the 99th fastest team in D-1. They like to run off turnovers and long defensive rebounds, but they don't just hoist up shots in the first ten seconds in a half court game. They are bigger, faster, stronger, and more athletic at every position, and their bench is also mostly the same compared to Drake's starters. Sure, Drake CAN win. But they'll have to play their A game and hope Mizzou guys miss a lot of shots, turn the ball over a lot, and get in foul trouble.

In nearly 100% of the big parties at bridge accesses I've stumbled upon (and I've stumbled upon quite a few of them in the many years I've been floating), there was obviously at some illegal activities going on. Underage drinking was by far the most common but there were others. At one, I finished a night time float at about 1 AM, to find about 30 people on the gravel bar next to the bridge, cars parked willy nilly everywhere...and my vehicle nowhere in sight. I just happened to look up the gravel road, and could see my light colored Blazer about 100 yards away in the moonlight. Turned out that somebody had broken in the rear side window, found the keys that my dad had left hidden in it when he shuttled me, and given it a joy ride straight into the ditch (after ripping out the tape player that hadn't worked in a couple years and missing the 5 dollar bill that was probably worth more). I approached a not quite completely wasted guy sitting on the tailgate of a big pickup and asked him if he owned the truck. When he said he did, I asked him to pull me out of the ditch. "Sure," he said, "as long as you don't ask me who put it there."

No, I can't blame the landowners that much, either. But at the same time, as a river landowner myself, I bought my land with my eyes wide open, knowing the public had a right to be on my gravel bars, and knowing that there are some obnoxious people that are included in the public. Who I DO blame is the county law enforcement. All it would take to put a stop to a lot of this behavior is spending a bit of time on regular patrols of these party spots for a few weekends. Word would get out, and the bad behavior would decrease dramatically. I can't rag too much on law enforcement in the county where I live in a house with Meramec River frontage. We've had to call the sheriff's department a couple times when our alarm system was set off while we were out of town. Our camera system showed us deputies showing up within a very short time and being thorough in making sure everything was okay...they even drove up our old logging road leading off the driveway to make sure nobody was hiding their vehicle up it out of sight. But if they are that conscientious, surely a call from a landowner at the bridge reporting a crazy party under the bridge should get the same treatment. Probably wouldn't even have to arrest anybody for anything, just show that these spots aren't immune from patrols.

No, that's not at all what we're saying. It's not easy to delineate the characteristics of a stream that makes it fall under Elder v Delcour. Many of these smaller streams don't even have gauging stations on them, so you can't use the median or normal flow as a measurement. Some are floated less than others because of poor access. So basically, there is no really objective way of figuring out a minimum size of flow that would be the cut-off point. Nor is it easy to just say, well, I'm able to float it in normal spring water level, so it should be open to the public. Define "floating". What kind of boat? How heavily loaded? Does it mean floating it without frequently touching the bottom, or float-hiking it? And again...you would be fighting it in a county court, with (since the sheriff's department arrested you for trespass) county prosecutor and other county officials including probably the judge of the mind that you WERE trespassing. You would almost certainly lose if it went that far. Then you'd have to appeal. No guarantee that you'd win there, either. (Note: Elder v Delcour was brought by mutual consent of the parties involved, specifically to test the idea of stream access. Any court case now would probably not be the same.) It isn't a matter of the popular interpretation of Elder being legally correct. As we've seen with recent high profile cases in the U.S Supreme Court, precedent doesn't mean much if the court is ideologically of a different mind. ANY case that made it to the MO Supreme Court, given their recent history of decisions, could actually ignore Elder and come up with a different decision, one that would make us lose stream access. We are fortunate in MO and AR to have rather permissive stream access. In a whole lot of states, the public has far fewer rights (or no rights) to public access to streams. Be careful what you wish for.

Nope. In the present political climate in MO, that's very likely to result in LESS stream access, not more. MOST floatable streams are well known to be floatable, and pretty much accepted by the landowners, even though they may have ideas that they can keep people off their gravel bars when legally they shouldn't be able to. But there are plenty of stream sections that are no bigger or slightly smaller than the section of the Meramec that was featured in Elder. I've floated most of them. They aren't served by outfitters and they don't have great public access. So they don't have a lot of people who would kick up a fuss if they were closed down, unlike the streams serviced by outfitters. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if courts, especially county and appellate courts, decided they should be off limits. I have no idea whether the MO Supreme Court would side with the appellate courts or not, but that's almost certainly where it would have to end up. And that, friends, costs big money. The way that Elder v Delcour happened, the person who was seeking to have the right to float the stream was the plaintiff, the landowner the defendant. In this case, the trial court sided with the plaintiff, which paved the way for the case to be appealed to the appellate court. Had the trial court sided with the defendant, that would have probably been the end of it, and the stream section in question would have been closed to floating. The appellate court reversed the decision, and it then went to the Supreme Court where the final decision sided with the trial court. Now, I suspect the county trial courts would side with the landowner. There was a push by the one legislator a few years ago to get the streams delineated as "navigable" or not by the legislature, not the courts. THAT would have been a disaster for access and floaters' rights, and fortunately didn't get very far. (And by the way, "navigable" is another term that means nothing in MO stream access. The Supreme Court specifically stated that the stretch of stream in question was NOT legally navigable. But then said that did not matter, because essentially, it WAS floatable and fishable.)

Pretty sure you are completely correct. There are a lot of things that county officials are letting landowners get away with when it comes to fencing. The infamous 47 Highway bridge on the Mineral Fork was fenced off by the huge landowner that owned everything for a mile or two in every direction. To their credit, they put up a sign that read that you had to have a valid fishing license to cross the fence and get to the water...they were trying to stop the constant partying, littering, drunkenness, and drug use at that spot, which had great road shoulder parking and nice clear water for swimming, while still allowing some fishing access. None of it was legal, but county officials let it slide. Unfortunately, it did nothing to stop the partying, so I don't know for sure but I suspect that the landowner had enough pull in county politics that they got the county to post no parking signs all over place and put a stop to all access.

His property line DOES probably end in the middle of the river; that's the case with a lot of riverfront property in Missouri. BUT...in the case of floatable streams, the decision was that the public has what amounts to an easement to use the part of his property that includes stream bottom AND GRAVEL BARS. That was where he was wrong. He had no right to keep you off the gravel bar. If you had walked up a bank onto his field or in his trees you'd have been trespassing. But not walking on a gravel bar. This is what annoys me about a lot of river landowners, especially those that bought the land fairly recently. I own riverfront property in two places in Missouri and one place in Montana. I bought it knowing that I would have to put up with the public being on my gravel bars. It's part of the price of owning land on a float stream, and all landowners should realize that. I can understand the frustration with people littering and doing other obnoxious things, but that's the way it is. The big problem comes when the landowner is rich and influential in county politics, and has the sheriff and county prosecutor in his pocket. There have been several places in Missouri where the landowner successfully kept a lot of people of "his" river because the county officials let him.

I suppose it's possible that the canoe rental places in some areas did that, but I really doubt it. I know for sure that it's the landowners around the bridges that have instigated their closing in many cases, and in others, it's been the county sheriff who did it so that they wouldn't have so many headaches constantly getting calls from local people about partying and drug use and other bad behavior at the bridge crossings. And a lot of these bridge closings are on streams that aren't served by canoe liveries. "High water mark" is NOT a part of the law for float streams in Missouri. Elder v Delcour didn't mention it. What it said, and I'm quoting from the actual case transcript, is "the stream bed, gravel bars and clearly recognizable area over which the stream flows during its normal stages". You can generally figure that gravel bars and weedbeds along the river are okay, but when you climb up the bank at the back of the gravel bar and get into the trees or the farmer's field, or climb up the talus slope under a bluff, you're trespassing. People have all kinds of weird and totally wrong ideas about this. I've seen people say that it's so many feet from the river, or so many feet above water level. Nope. You can be 5 feet from the river on a high bank and be trespassing, or a hundred yards from the river at the back of a big gravel bar and be legal. The crux of the decision in Elder was that if you can float the stream in a normal stage (which means in the spring when the normal flow is at its highest), you have the right to float it. It wouldn't matter if the stream went dry in mid-summer as long as it was floatable in the spring when it was at a stable level. I don't know of many streams in Missouri that would fit that situation...most that go completely dry are only floatable in higher than normal spring levels. But it's part of the gray area surrounding stream access in Missouri...how DO you judge whether a stream is actually floatable at a "normal" level in the spring?

I don't think that federal case was a part of Elder v Delcour, but as a purely legal matter, Elder v Delcour applied only to the stretch of the Meramec in question in the case. As a general matter of law, however, Elder set a precedent (actually more than one precedent), which means that it is presumed to apply in any similar situation. Since the stretch of the Meramec in question was on the far upper Meramec, specifically the Delcour Bridge to Cook Station, the precedent would be that the same legal reasoning would apply to any stream of similar size or larger. However, you are correct that one wouldn't know for SURE whether it applied unless a court case decided it did. This has actually happened in a number of streams of similar size and even slightly smaller over the years. One of note is Indian Creek in Franklin County, which is a bit smaller than the portion of the upper Meramec that was in Elder. The real key to whether a stream applies is whether it is big enough to allow float trips in small boats (canoes, kayaks) in normal water levels during at least part of the year. It should be noted that even though Indian Creek WAS adjudicated to fall under Elder, a couple landowners on it will still give floaters a lot of harassment, and have had to be warned by local law enforcement more than once that they can't do that...but they still do. I'm not sure exactly what law they would be breaking by doing so, or what the penalties for doing so should be, which probably ties the hands of law enforcement in trying to stop them from harassing and intimidating floaters. You're right about bridge crossings, but this is a relatively recent change (well, it seems recent to me because I've been floating these rivers for 55 years or more). Back in the 1970s, most bridges on popular streams had lanes leading to the river or widened informal parking areas along the road shoulder, and it was just accepted that they were okay to use for access. But as rivers got more popular and more people were pinheads about trashing access points and other stupid and obnoxious behavior, landowners either took it upon themselves to block access, or complained enough to local law enforcement and county officials that, to get rid of the headaches, counties began posting accesses at bridge crossings. And although I know of no court case that ever decided that the right of way did not include use by the public, that's become the general interpretation now...that the right of way is for the benefit of the road departments, not for public access.

The Meramec is a little outside Tommy's usual area to guide. Don't know whether he will guide you on the Meramec or not, but he's a knowledgeable angler and guide who could put you in a better situation than you could on your own, no matter what his specific knowledge level of the Meramec is. You might contact Corey Cottrell at Huzzah Valley Resort. He does some guiding on the middle Meramec and is a very knowledgeable Meramec angler.

Great looking table! Ever since I mostly retired from painting, I've made furniture now and then for ourselves. I love working with old barn wood, and made a wall of cabinetry/entertainment center for our home in Montana, along with bookshelves and end tables. I also like working with live edge walnut slabs. Last year I made a walnut coffee table for our Missouri house, and right now I'm working on another walnut table that will go between Mary's and my recliners, big enough for lamp, charging station, and drinks for both of us and shaped to fit perfectly between the recliners.

I've paid well over half that much for a day of guided fishing, without any guarantees that I'd catch anything. But I happily paid it because it was the best way to get on some great fishing water that I was unprepared to do it myself. To me, it was the fishing on that gorgeous water that made it worth it, not the catching. So these guys are spending that to fish private water where they presumably have a better chance of catching a double digit bass than in public lakes. It's always cool to fish private water, but only you can decide whether it's worth $1000. Also, only you can determine how important it is to you to catch a ten plus pound bass. If it WAS guaranteed, it wouldn't be worth it to me. It's not the 10 pound plus bass that I care about, it's being able to figure out how to catch enough big bass that one of them is likely to be a double digit fish. To me, fishing is like a lot of things, it's the striving that's most important. I'd love to catch a 6 pound plus Ozark river smallmouth. But if by some chance there was a private stretch of river that I was guaranteed to catch a six pounder, I wouldn't care to do it. I want the fun of trying, and the satisfaction I'd have if I ever caught one on the same water that every other good fisherman can fish.

You're right, but Arkansas shot 37 free throws to Mizzou's 17. Partly because Mizzou missed the front end of a few one and ones, and partly because Arkansas was fouled going to the rim a lot more while Mizzou was fouled when it wasn't in the act of shooting.