Al Agnew

Well, today was probably my last day of fishing in Missouri for a while; heading out to Montana this week. I have to say that the last 2.5 weeks has been some of the best big smallmouth fishing I've had in a very long time. My pattern was declining last week as the water got lower than normal for this time of year, and too clear. But before that it had been pretty much magic. The river got a nice 2 foot rise yesterday, and today Mary and I went to fish a few hours on a stretch I hadn't fished, one that hasn't been all that good for a number of years. We ran up the river for a few miles, stopped at a nice spot for the pattern, and I immediately caught an 18 incher on a crankbait. The rest of the afternoon was pretty slow, catching a fish here and there. But I was glad to get one more; that brought my total of 18 inch or better smallmouth to 18 (plus a 21 inch largemouth) in 10 trips. And included my personal best, which I talked about in a previous post. It has been a heck of a run, but all good things come to an end (temporarily, at least). I usually love this time of year in Montana. The fish are coming out of winter and hungry and the crowds haven't arrived yet. But since I'm in the boot from the Achilles tendon tear, I'm not going to be doing any wading. If I get in any fishing, it will be from the drift boat with Mary rowing or with my buddy out there. If fishing was always the priority, I'd stay in Missouri!

Well, dang it...I have been cripping around for a month and found out today that I have a partial Achilles tendon tear, and have to be in a boot for 4 to 8 weeks. Can't get it wet, so the only fishing I'll be able to do will be from the boat from nice boat ramps. I was wanting to try some other sections of stream in the canoe while the fishing is good. It's probably going to get worse as the rivers get low and clear, but next week's forecasted rain might make it better if it doesn't completely blow out the rivers.

Yup, I really like it. A smoother ride, and unlike my old boat, it will plane out at half throttle. The old one wouldn't plane until about 85% throttle. Really quick to get on plane, too. Goes as fast as I want to go...the faster you can go, the faster you can get into trouble!

1756 Blazer SS, 60/40 Mercury motor.

Went out again today, back on the first river. It's getting lower and clearer, and I wasn't sure the pattern would be holding. It was. I caught three that were all exactly 19 1/4 inches, and a 19 incher. Another big fish day, only caught 5 smaller ones, including a 16 incher.

Here's the big largemouth.

Here's the only one I've downloaded off my phone so far.

So in my last post I talked about this pattern I've figured out this time of year, and how I was catching some really nice fish the last few days. Today, I went on a different river, too small for the new jet boat. I wasn't sure whether the pattern would work, because this river is far smaller, and somewhat clearer. The type of spot these fish are hanging in might be too small and shallow, I thought. I tried it a couple places starting out, and got nothing. So I just drifted down the river casting to everything that looked good, trying lots of lures. You know the fishing is poor when I keep trying lures! I was skipping a lot of the spots that the pattern would fit, because they were just too small and shallow. And halfway through the float, I hadn't caught a single smallmouth, and only 5 small spotted bass and a 14 inch largemouth. And then I came to a spot that just looked like it should be a good one for the pattern. Using a crankbait, sure enough I hooked a big one. It turned out to be about 19.5 inches. I also caught two more smaller fish there. So, since I'd not been catching much of anything in the pools and around logs and rocks and all the other places that I was fishing, I decided to just paddle through everything else, enjoying the early spring wildflowers and a gorgeous day, and just fish when I came to one of those spots. Not every spot had fish. But enough did that I expected to catch fish in all of them. The next fish was a big surprise, though...a 21 inch largemouth! This is the kind of spot that NOBODY would expect a big largemouth to be. And then, the REAL highlight of the day... It's been 45 years since I caught my personal best, by length anyway, Ozark river smallmouth, a 22.5 inch, summertime, slender fish that weighed 5 pounds even on a set of scales that was within an ounce or two of being accurate. I was really wondering if I would ever beat it...but today I think I did. The massive fish hit exactly where I expected it to be, and cleared the water in a wild leap that made my jaw drop. It took a while to get it in, and when I netted it I thought, "this might be the biggest Ozark river smallmouth I've ever caught." Problem was, I had left my set of scales in the new boat. I had nothing to either weigh or measure the fish with perfect accuracy. The only thing I could do was lay it on my paddle blade...the blade is about 20 inches from where it starts to flare out of the shaft to the tip. I carefully held the fish's mouth closed, lined it up even with the tip of the blade, and squeezed the tail lobes together. The tail went at least two inches past the beginning of the flare! And it was FAR thicker and fatter than that old personal best. It might not have made 22.5 like the old fish, but I'm absolutely certain it was a lot heavier than 5 pounds. I got a couple pictures and released it.

After having my original jet boat for 20 years, and wanting to have a jet boat in Montana so that I can chase some smallmouth on the lower Yellowstone, I bought a new jet boat. Mary actually kinda talked me into it--I love that woman! The new one is a foot longer and 20 more horsepower, and I've had it out a few times and love it. After 20 years, the trailer on the old boat really needed work. The 2 x 4 wood, carpet covered bunks had basically rotted away until in places there wasn't much wood left and the boat was sitting on a layer of empty carpet. I bought new wood and carpet and prepared the bunks for attachment, but then the fishing got good, and I was more interested in fishing than in working on a boat trailer that I didn't intend to use until I got it out to Montana. It took me a lot of years, but I have finally figured out three reliable patterns on river smallmouth this time of year, just before the water temps warm to the point that they start thinking seriously about spawning. On the Meramec where I live, one pattern is almost magic most of the time in March; the fish are going to be in a certain type of location, and they will be eating. I went out last week twice in the new boat, once for just a couple hours with Mary, who is recuperating from a hip replacement and doing very well, the other time a nearly full day trip by myself. On the trip with Mary, I went downstream from the nearby ramp. I first tried fishing along a rocky bank in gentle current just to see if some fish were hanging in that type of spot. I only caught a spotted bass. So I headed down a bit further to the first spot with the right setup for my March pattern. Yup, fish were there. The first one I caught was a 17.5 incher, followed by a couple smaller ones, on a crankbait. Moved to the next pattern spot, caught several smaller ones and hooked a really big fish that came unstuck. Tried one more spot, caught two more smallish smallmouth. By then the sun was getting low, and Mary was ready to head for home. On Friday I went to a different area, planning on spending the day running from one of those pattern spots to the next. I made sure I had a full tank of gas, because I expected to cover more than 10 miles of river. The first stop was not a perfect setup, and I caught nothing. Tried the nearby rock bank, nothing. Tried my alternate type of pattern spot just below, nothing. Skipped down to the next primary pattern spot, a perfect setup, and the fish were there. I quickly caught a half dozen smallies, including two that I estimated at 18 inches each. In my old boat I have a ruler glued to the forward edge of the front deck, so that I can use my trolling motor frame to put a fish's nose on like a bump board, but I haven't gotten around to adding the ruler to the new boat, and had nothing with which to measure my fish. I fished the long run below the pattern spot, again just checking to see if the fish were scattering. I caught only one fish, but it was a 17 incher (I think). A guy in a jet boat ran past me, and I heard him stop in the next pool downstream. I knew there were none of my pattern spots in that pool. I ran past him, and yup, he was fishing in a spot that would be great in January but was unlikely to hold fish now. I felt a little smug, knowing something he didn't. After that, I couldn't find any more bigger fish, but every spot I came to produced a smallmouth or two. I had gotten on the water around 10 AM, and it was now after 3 PM, so I decided to start working my way back up; there were small places, worth only a few casts, best approached from downstream, that I wanted to fish. Again, no big ones but most held a fish or two. I had mostly been using the crankbait, but started trying a swim bait in some of these spots after the crankbait failed to produce, and it caught some fish. So when I got back to where I'd caught those two 18 inchers not long after starting out, I decided to see if the swim bait would pick up a fish or two that had earlier turned down the crankbait. I'm glad I did that. I caught the biggest smallmouth I've caught in a couple years. Although I didn't have a way of measuring it, I did have a scale. 4.51 pounds--I think it was about 21 inches. Next cast, a 3.5 pounder that I guessed at 19 inches. A couple smaller ones. But it was a Friday afternoon with gorgeous weather, and next thing I knew there were jet boats going by one after another, and one with a whole fam damily pulled right in front of where I was fishing, right through the middle of my pattern spot, to park on the adjacent gravel bar. So I cranked the motor and headed for home. Got up early Saturday morning to fish with a couple buddies for a few hours before the motorheads got on the river. All three of us knew the pattern. So we immediately headed for the first spot. Nothing. But the second spot was full of fish. It was tough to fish due to the setup, but we all caught fish; nothing big, but up to 16 inches. It was a bit frustrating to me because I wanted to fish the swim bait, but that morning I'd picked up the wrong rod, and didn't have a rod with me with enough backbone to set the hooks well with the big swim bait I was using. I briefly hooked and lost a half dozen fish in that spot. Next spot Aaron caught a gorgeous 20 incher, and Clay caught a couple. I was still struggling. We fished a few more spots, and caught a few more smaller fish. We fished one spot that was slightly different, but that we knew should hold fish, and caught nothing. Coming back down a little later, we decided to try it again; we just knew there had to be fish there. Sure enough we caught several smaller fish. I'd given up on the swim bait and was fishing the crankbait when I hooked a big one, which turned out to be 19 inches. And then the boat traffic got thick and we gave it up. Yesterday was a chore day. And today was supposed to be so much cooler. In a way I was glad; the hot weather had warmed water temps up into the low 60s, which was going to wreck my pattern. But I hoped that the cool day would slow the transition down. Plus, it gave me a chance to work on the trailer of my old boat. I dropped off the boat in the water at my neighbor's place, and spent a few hours getting the empty trailer back in shape. Then I grabbed my tackle; heck, the old boat was already sitting there in the river, so why not fish a couple hours before loading it back on the trailer, just to see if the pattern was still holding. Water temp was still 59 degrees, which should be perfect. Ever have one of those days when things just went from annoying to worse? Unloading the boat was the start...in pulling it over to where I wanted to park it, I stepped into a sandy mud area that was about bottomless, and sunk halfway to my knees. Which was a bit painful as well, since I'm currently suffering from Achilles tendonitis. Working on the trailer was a series of annoyances when things that should have been easy turned out to be more involved than I expected. And then, as soon as I climbed into the old boat and put down the trolling motor, I dropped it right on a rock and broke off one blade of the prop. Aargh!!! I went ahead and fished for a bit, even though running the trolling motor was making my teeth rattle. First spot, nothing. Second spot, one small fish. Third spot, nothing, fourth spot, nothing... The fifth and final spot was the charm. Caught a 15 incher first cast on the crankbait, and then a 19 incher (I still had the ruler on the old boat!) on the next cast. But that was it. Heck of a week or so of fishing, though. Tomorrow I'm hitting a different river in the canoe instead of the jet boat. We will see if my pattern holds true on it.

I see what you're saying. And yes, this may be an unintended consequence of all the splitting going on. Like I said, it complicates things. I know MDC biologists know about the change of status of Neoshos, but the biologists don't make the regulations, and the enforcement people HATE complicated regulations. At some point they are going to have to come to grips with this.

That's a good question. It would be a technicality...I could imagine some doofus catching and keeping a 10 inch Neosho bass, getting a ticket for undersized bass, and fighting it because the regulations don't say anything about Neosho bass. I suspect that fairly soon, the wording of the regs will change and say something like, "smallmouth bass, including Neosho bass". There probably hasn't been enough DNA testing done to know whether the smallmouth in other streams across the Ozarks have some Neosho genetics, or are also genetically different from smallmouth in other parts of the country. The Ozarks is somewhat isolated from the rest of the native range of smallmouth, so it's quite possible that the original Ozark smallmouth were ALL different genetically from, say, smallmouth in the Tennessee River basin. It's a bit like the situation with redeye bass, which have now been divided into a bunch of new species, most of which are native to only one river system. Of course, the Ozarks situation has been complicated by widespread stocking over the years up until the conservation departments decided stocking was useless. It's also quite possible that the Neosho bass are all hybrids, but still distinct enough from the rest of the smallmouth that they still deserve species status, for this same reason...they were once REALLY genetically different, but the difference has been diluted by stocking of other smallmouth, but the hybrids are still genetically different ENOUGH. Obviously, the whole thing is complicated!

The state still just says rock bass in the regulations, too, even though we now know there are three different Ambloplites species in the Ozarks. It's a matter of keeping the regs as simple as possible for all the anglers who don't have a clue about present species status. If the regs singled out Neosho bass, 90% of the yahoos would be saying, "Neosho bass? What the heck is that?"

Gates is not as bad a coach as many think, but he makes mistakes, and I sometimes question his whole coaching philosophy. And he's not as good a recruiter as many think. His portal additions are not great. He really missed in the portal this year; tried to get a good big man but couldn't, settled for Phillips just like he settled for Gray last year and Vanover the year before. Got Mack, and for whatever reason abandoned him. His only good portal addition was Stone. But tell me, would ANYBODY on this year's team except Mitchell be a starter for any other Power 4 team still in the tournament? Maybe Pierce. Certainly neither Robinson or Barrett the way they played the last month. Stone might be a good 6th man. Fact is, to drag this team of mostly mediocre talent into the tournament, especially after the fiascos in the non-con season, was a real coaching accomplishment. He has a great recruiting class next year, but they are going to be freshmen. Crowe projects as being an immediate impact player (he better be, because I'd bet they paid a lot of money to get him). The others, maybe not, at least immediately. And Gates's track record on developing recruits is spotty. To win next year, with the few guys they have returning, he's going to need to hit it big in the portal. Even if Robinson returns, who will they have? Robinson and Barrett for guards, Pierce, and Burns are the only guys that had any kind of role this year.

It is absolutely a smallmouth/spotted bass hybrid. No question about it. Neosho bass used to be known as Neosho smallmouth, and was considered a subspecies for many years. They are now considered a separate species. But they are not indigenous to the Sac River and tributaries, so it couldn't be one...plus, they don't look like that. I refuse to call the hybrids meanmouths, but this fish is a hybrid, and the hybrids are fertile, so they can back cross with either species, and produce a LOT of variation in appearance. The keys to identifying this one is the visible horizontal band on the midside (you can call it a lateral band, but it isn't the lateral line, which is a row of scales with sensory pores--they sense vibrations in the water), and the hint of the rows of small dark spots on the lower side that connect to form thin horizontal lines...neither of those characteristics are found on pure smallmouth.

It's not nearly that simple when it comes to fish species. Yes, they can interbreed. Same as spotted bass interbreed with smallmouth bass, or Florida bass interbreed with northern largemouth bass (and now the Florida bass is considered a separate species, by the way). However, the two strains or species do have different spawning habits and locations. The walleye stocked in the big lakes are lake spawners, spawning on wind-swept banks and seldom ascending the rivers above the lakes to spawn. The native walleye are river spawners, and apparently never spawn within the lakes. So they end up not interbreeding very much. The problem with the lake strain walleye in the big lakes is that they ended up outcompeting the river strain fish, and contrary to what that study mentioned showed, they simply don't grow as big. When Greers Ferry Lake was built, the first few years people were catching huge river run walleye in the forks of the Little Red above the lake. The state record was broken there. And people were saying the next world record could come from Greers Ferry. But those spawning runs in the forks above the lake petered out, and the huge walleye are no longer caught in Greers Ferry. Same thing happened at Stockton Lake. And the other big reason the river run fish disappeared is that the tendency of both adults and fingerlings to move long distances downstream meant that a lot of them ended up going through the dams...and then they couldn't return to the lakes and the rivers above the lakes. As for the study showing the stocked fish being heavier on average, I'd have to know a lot more about the study and the fish stocked. The abstract was a bit confusing, noting that the stocked fish had the A marker and the native fish had the C marker, but then later stating that nearly half the fish that were hatched naturally before stocking started had the A marker. And it made no mention of where the stocked fish came from originally. Given that the study is 20 years old and DNA analysis has come a very long way since then, I would question the information in the study. But that's not my observation above about growth rates and top end sizes, it's what the biologists told me. We are living in a time where the "splitters" among taxonomists are dominant, with DNA studies showing a whole lot of fish we once thought were the same species are different enough to warrant being considered a different species. The Neosho smallmouth, once considered a subspecies, is now a separate species. And it's looking likely that there will be more smallmouth split off, including the smallies of the Ouachita Mountains region in Arkansas and Oklahoma. The redeye/Coosa bass of the Southeastern Appalachians has been split into something like 9 different species the last I checked; there are now at least 15 different black bass species. And most of them can and do interbreed. The different redeye species are endemic to different watersheds and each one is found only in one or two watersheds. The invasion of both spotted bass and Alabama bass (which are almost indistinguishable from spotted bass by appearance) into these watersheds has caused a major decline in the whichever native redeye species is in that watershed, mostly by the invaders interbreeding with them.