Al Agnew

Sure wish it would work out for me to take part in one of these tournaments. I started playing again about a year ago out here in Montana. Joined an athletic club with a great gym, they play pickup basketball 2 hours a day every day of the week, plus 2 hours for "distinguished gentlemen" on Tuesdays and Fridays before the two hours of adult all ages. I hadn't played in two years. I started playing with the older guys, in terrible basketball shape even though they only played half court 4 on 4. Took several months and a bunch of minor injuries to get myself in shape. Now I play the two hours with the old guys, plus one other day a week with the younger guys full court, plus on most Fridays I play an hour with the young guys AFTER playing two hours with the old guys. Other than annoying plantar fasciatus, I'm feeling pretty good for a 72 year old! (I'm not the oldest of the old guys playing...there are two that are in their 80s!) When I come back to MO, I play two hours a night two nights a week at the nearest YMCA, full court, all ages. I need another place to play, because I've found that I need three days a week of playing to keep myself in good shape. It took a while, but I got my 3 point shot back (I'm the streakiest shooter alive; I'll hit five in a row and then miss the next 6; works out to 40 plus percent, which isn't bad), and I'm getting a little better at driving to the hoop and pulling up for 10 footers. The biggest thing you lose with old age is the balance you need to move quickly and effectively; I'm still reasonably quick, but don't have enough control of my body.

I'm actually a little jealous. I'm out here in Montana, and was waiting with great anticipation for the Mother's Day caddis hatch on the Yellowstone. A week ago, the caddis started to appear. The river was in pretty good shape, and warm weather was forecast but not too warm. And then it rained about as hard as it ever rains in Montana, and it was a rain just warm enough to melt some high snow. And it was followed by two days of 75-80 degree temps. The caddis got thicker, but the river blew out. Now today it's 37 degrees and snowing, the caddis have obviously disappeared, and the river is high enough that even this bit of cold weather won't bring it down enough to be fishable. The Mother's Day caddis hatch happens with all conditions right about once every four years. This ain't gonna be one of those years!

Oh, that brings back memories. Back when tournaments first came onto the scene, we started a local bass club. I was fresh out of high school but I knew how to catch bass back then (ain't worth a crap at it on reservoirs now). We didn't fish for money, we just got together for the competition and bragging rights. Got a 10 dollar trophy if you won. None of us had what passed for bass boats back then (and the "new" bass boats would be laughed off the lake these days). Heck, some of us fished from canoes with a trolling motor, and I had a 12 ft. aluminum johnboat for fishing the lakes. There were only about 15 of us in the club, so usually no more than 6 or 7 boats, and we mostly fished the local public or semi-public lakes like Bismarck Lake and Sunnen Lake; we fished Wappapello and Clearwater once a year. Well, Terre du Lac hadn't been a thing for very long at that point and they were still trying to sell lots, so they contacted us to help organize a tournament to publicize their lakes. So of course we fished it. You could fish any of the three biggest lakes. One lake had the reputation of being terrible fishing. One was muddy. So I fished the third one, along with about 10 other boats. We just all kinda lined up and went around the lake fishing the banks...over and over and over. I just used my favorite crankbait and kept casting, and at the end of the day, I had the biggest bag...on that lake. A couple guys fished the muddy lake and blew us out of the water.

Last fall I wrote here about trying my smallmouth baitcasting tackle out here on the Yellowstone River for trout, and hooking (and losing at the bitter end) the largest trout by far I'd ever hooked anywhere but Alaska. I called it sacrilege because I was almost embarrassed to be fishing casting tackle on an iconic fly fishing river. We've been out here since early March, and it's been a pretty sucky spring so far. Cold. Snow. And WIND. So far I've actually had one nice day a couple weeks ago that I got on the river by myself in my little Water Master raft, and one day floating in the little drift boat with Mary. Both days, the fishing was pretty decent. Both days, I took nothing but fly tackle. I hadn't fished the casting rod since one more day last fall. We got up this morning, and I checked the forecast. I had two options I was thinking about for today. One was fishing. The other was maybe fishing maybe not...I belong to an athletic club in Bozeman, and there's open pickup basketball there every day of the week from noon to 2:00. There's also pickup basketball for older guys (like me) from 10:00 to noon on Tuesdays and Fridays. I almost never miss the old guys game, and had played yesterday. Sometimes I stay afterwards to play with the young guys for an hour or so...the old guys play half court and it's not as much of a workout as playing with a bunch of 20 somethings full court. But yesterday, not enough young guys showed up after I'd played with the old guys (by the way, I'm 72, and there are three or four men playing that are older than I am...one is in his 80s!). So I thought maybe I'd load up my waders and fly tackle along with my gym shoes and clothes, and head over to the athletic club. If there weren't enough guys again, I'd drive on out to the lower Madison and wade fish. I checked the river at the house...it's been very murky for the last couple days from a somewhat warm heavy rain over the weekend. It was still murky but fishable, and had come up a few inches during that time but seeemed to be dropping a bit. What to do...Mary said, "Just get on the river. I'll pick you up at 3:30 wherever you want to fish." Well, it seems the older I get, the more piddling around I do before I actually get on the river. I checked to see if the Water Master would fit into the back of the 4-Runner, so that Mary could use it to shuttle me. Had to rummage around to find a carabiner that I could use to click into the latch on the hatchback of the 4-Runner...last summer I'd tried hauling a couple kayaks in the back, and found out that the darned open hatchback gives you that loud warning ding-ding-ding without over stopping, which is exceedingly annoying on a 30 minute drive, but if you push a carabiner into the open latch on it, the latch clicks closed and the car is fooled into thinking the door is shut. Stored the carabiner and a length of rope in the 4-Runner, unloaded the raft from it and into my old Chevy truck, gathered all my gear, and at the last minute, grabbed the only jerkbait I still had and my baitcasting rod and threw them in. As I drove through town, I stopped at the butcher shop to get a good sandwich made for lunch. Stopped again at the only sporting goods store in town that might have actual lures instead of flies, and bought a couple countdown Rapalas. Stopped again at the quick shop for gas and grabbed a sweet tea and a couple donuts to eat on the way to the put-in. And finally made it to the river about 10:15. There were a couple guides and their clients getting their boats and tackle ready, so I threw on my waders and asked them if they minded if I went ahead and put in, and they said to go ahead, they weren't quite ready. So soon I was finally on the river. I didn't rig up the baitcasting rod in their presence! I stopped at the first riffle eddy to drift nymphs along the seam. Nothing. Stopped at the next one, hooked a whitefish and then a heavy fish that turned out to be a mountain sucker, one of the more annoying fish to hook, because they are covered with a snotty slime that hardens and sticks to your hands, your net, your line...yuck. No trout, but I did briefly hook a 10 inch rainbow that leaped 4 feet out of the water twice like a fishy maniac. Okay...might as well try the jerkbait. I put on one of the new Rapalas. Fished it for a half mile before hooking and losing a decent brown. Shortly afterward I caught a 12 inch rainbow, and then a 17 inch rainbow. Stopped at another riffle corner to nymph. Nothing. Back to the Rapala. Nothing. The day was gorgeous. Sunny, 60 degrees, no wind. The fishing wasn't. I stopped for lunch and savored my excellent sandwich, watching a stretch of bank just below where if trout are rising anywhere, they will be there. Saw one small rise. Midges were sparsely flitting across the surface. An occasional mayfly fluttered by. Not much happening. Might as well keep fishing the Rapala...nope. Why not put on that Pointer 75 that I'd hooked that giant trout on? So I did. I started down that bank I'd been watching, and immediately caught a 15 inch rainbow and then a 19 inch brown. Hooked a slightly bigger brown and lost it on the next stretch of similar bank. Caught another nice rainbow. Fishing wasn't fast by any means, but the quality of the fish was making me happy. And then the sky began to cloud over. And then the wind made its presence known. I was drifting down a fairly fast rip-rapped bank and getting no action, until a huge brown struck right at the boat, nearly jerking the rod out of my hands. I saw its side turn as it struck, had it on briefly, and lost it. And then nothing. And then the wind really cut loose. Blowing out of the northeast, which means blowing straight upstream, 30 miles an hour. The temperature dropped into the upper 40s. I was done. I rowed hard against the wind the last mile to the take-out, getting there in plenty of time to wait for Mary to show up at 3:30. Tonight as I write this...it's snowing.

All you have to do is go to some of the fishing groups on Facebook to see how little so many people know about identifying fish. And even more appalling is how many of them are sure they know and are completely wrong, but will argue with you about it even after you carefully explain to them why the fish isn't what they think it is and instead is a different species. I wrote an article for my blog several years ago on how to tell spots from largemouth at a glance. I can tell them 100% as soon as I lift them from the water, and can't remember the last time I wasn't sure about a bass in MO. It isn't those things that so many anglers go by like tooth patches and maxillary in relation to the eye or shallow or deep notch between the dorsal fins. It's two simple things about the general appearance; the rows of small dark spots, one on each scale, below the dark blotchy horizontal band, that form thin dark lines. And it's the area of scales between the dark horizontal band and the lateral line, which are always rather prominently dark-edged (well, technically the base of each scale is dark, but the effect is to make those scales look like they have dark edges.) In largemouth, there may be small darker spots on the scales below the horizontal band, but they don't connect with each other to form those thin dark lines. And the scales just below the lateral line in largemouth are not dark-edged. I once took a lady from the Nature Conservancy on a float trip on upper Big River. She had never fished in her life, and knew nothing about fish. It was one of those days when you couldn't keep the spots off, and the largemouth were also active, as well as smallmouth. I probably caught 70 or so altogether. So when I caught the first few, I told her what they were. She asked how I could tell and I explained, but said, "I'll bet, if we catch enough today, by the end of the day you'll be identifying them as soon as I pull them from the water. You can guess each time I catch one, and I will only tell you if you are wrong or right; I won't tell you why anymore." And by the end of the day she was identifying all three species flawlessly. Her only failure was when I caught a couple hybrids near the end of the day. https://riversandart.blogspot.com/2019/08/how-to-tell-spotted-bass-from.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawJkG2ZleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHtEmEZFMFarpAFFkJv_FlG-94BVqI7VprLwJwIu_5qnt1nk_TREP3Se4BPyT_aem_bL2zNGSrXqm4FfqpDpcUdw

A whole lot of anglers don't know the difference. But I think that the agents would be using something simple to identify them, even if it's not exactly correct...the tooth patch on the tongue. 10-15% of largemouth have a tooth patch, but it's an easy ID feature and some largemouth mortality from using it is probably considered acceptable. And there's one simple way to avoid getting ticketed if you can't tell the difference...don't keep them.

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.

I can't blame Grill for continuing to shoot. They needed the baskets, and he has shown he can hit guarded threes and deep threes. Sometimes the shots don't fall, and when they don't and you're depended upon to provide offense, your team is probably going to lose. It was a couple of shots late that were open ones that he missed that spelled their doom. I'd still want him shooting those shots.

Mizzou lost because they didn't have Gray to be a rim protector and rebounder, Grill went ice cold, they couldn't hit enough free throws, they didn't get to the line enough, and they couldn't stop Arkansas guards driving to the rim without fouling. I also think AR got some home cooking...37 fouls for Mizzou, 17 for AR, and it sure seemed like Mizzou couldn't buy a foul when they took it to the rim while AR got the call just about every time. Road games in the SEC are tough. This loss didn't drop Mizzou much, one spot in the KenPom ranking. But they now have to beat Vandy, Oklahoma, and South Carolina on the road or their resume will put them down in the 6th or 7th seed area in the tournament.

It's driving me nuts. One big reason we still have a place in the Ozarks is so that I can spend much of the winter here and do a lot of winter fishing. But I don't like to fish if the temps are below freezing and water temps in the mid-30s. With Mary getting a knee replacement in mid-January and all this cold weather, I've only fished 3 or 4 times all winter. Long range forecast is for temps in the 50s after this coming week, so maybe I'll finally get in some fishing.

The definitive book to find if you're interested in all the strains of trout in North America is "Trout and Salmon of North America", by Robert J. Behnke. It has range maps and excellent illustrations by Joe Tomelleri, who is almost as good as I am at depicting fish accurately😁. If interested in an entertaining book about one man's quest to catch all the native cutthroat strains by seeking out tiny creeks above major waterfalls where non-native rainbows presumably couldn't reach, find "Native Trout of North America" by Robert H. Smith. He caught just about all of them and took photos, but alas, a lot of his photos are pretty poor.