Al Agnew

You are correct. That's the gauge for Greer Spring, and is pretty much useless in itself for gauging the river either above or below Greer. In times of low water like now, about the only thing you can possibly glean from it is to figure that the river above the spring is probably flowing less than 100 cfs, so if you take the flow of the spring (right now 411 cfs) and add 50-75 cfs to it, you'll get the flow of the river directly downstream from Hwy. 19.

The low water bridge at the Leadwood Access is still, thankfully, pretty much the cut-off point for spotted bass. I've only caught a couple upstream from it, while downstream they make up 30-40% of the bass population. I'd never caught any above it until three or four years ago.

If you examine the gauges a little more closely, you'll notice that the river has been significantly higher than the median for the whole summer. The gauge at Bardley is at 832 cfs right now after having slowly dropped from 850 to 810 cfs throughout the week. The median, which is a good approximation of normal for this time of year, is around 400 cfs. Why is that, you ask? Check out the gauge for Greer Spring. It's been hanging around 410-420 cfs, while the median is around 270 cfs! Apparently the groundwater that supplies Greer and other springs within the Eleven Point watershed is very well recharged from all the rain earlier, and the springs are still pumping out a lot more water than they normally would be at the end of summer. So yeah, the river is higher than it normally is (though unless it's more than three times the median, I don't worry much about the fishing; it will still be clearish and fishable). That does not mean it will be floatable above Greer. I floated Cane Bluff to Greer a few weeks ago. The Bardley gauge then was showing around 970 cfs, and the river up there was barely floatable, maybe flowing about 90-120 cfs if I had to guess (you need a minimum of 100 cfs for relatively easy floating). By now, barring a rise from rain, it will be well below 75 cfs.

Hey, I'm old. The first time I used it was, as near as I can remember, about 43 years ago, on my wife (who wasn't yet my wife at the time). And I've used it about as much on other people as on myself. So 10 or 12 times on myself in more than 40 years doesn't seem that excessive to me.

It will still come out easily unless, like the one in me, it's in the very tip where you can't push against the eye in the proper direction. And I'll bet the emergency room doctor didn't use the string trick. It's amazing to me the number of doctors that don't know it. I once argued up and down with the doctor brother of my fly fishing buddy about it. He was sure it would never work, even after I told him I'd used it more than a dozen times with no problems. (Now, I think I'm up to 22 times that I've used it.)

Not really. The thin dark lines of connected spots on the lower sides are never seen in pure smallmouth, but are found in spotted bass, Guadalupe bass, and all the new species that were once considered redeye bass. The dark blotches actually look more like shoal bass.

I make my own. Body is about 3.5 inches.

So every summer we spend July and early August in Montana to escape the Missouri heat and humidity, and then sometime in August we come back to Missouri so I can get some late summer floatfishing in, and make a trip up north to probably the best smallmouth river in the country. But this year was different. Mary is struggling with a stress fracture in her hip, and on crutches, but she's doing a lot better than she was a week before, so she told me I should go back to Missouri by myself. My buddy couldn't go up north when I could. So I flew back to Missouri, intending to stay about 2 1/2 weeks and get in as much fishing as possible. Usually, I would do at least one multi-day float on my favorite small, not hardly floatable stream. But maybe I'm getting old. I just wasn't too enthused about camping on the river. So my plan was to head down to Arkansas, rent a hotel room, and spend three days fishing different sections of the Buffalo. Driving down that Monday evening, I crossed Crooked Creek, and thought that maybe I should try it. When I got to the hotel room (Buffalo Point Inn near Dillard's Ferry on Hwy. 14), I looked up a shuttle guy and arranged a float on Crooked the next morning. I had never floated this particular section of Crooked Creek, but I think I'll float it again sometime. I had four fish in the canoe before I was out of sight of the truck, including a 17.5 incher. The fishing then slowed for a while, but gradually picked up until it became one of those days where you could predict when you'd catch a fish, and there were a LOT of places where I predicted catching a fish. The fish were simply exploding on topwater lures, especially plopper types. And I mean just blowing up on them AND getting hooked. I doubt that I had more than a dozen strikes from good fish all day that I failed to boat them. Plenty of 14-16 inchers, 7 or 8 between 17 and 17.5, and a couple 18s....and 90 smallmouth altogether. And for some reason, those fish were HOT. Some of the hardest fighting smallmouth I've caught in a long time. I had one bend the split ring on the belly hook until it sprung open. I broke a rod on another one, an 18 incher that kept trying to take me under a log. I put pressure on it repeatedly, and finally the thing broke my rod in half. But I ended up getting it anyway. And I didn't see a single person all day until I was a half mile above the take-out, where I came upon a young guy fighting a nice smallmouth and talking to himself. He landed it and was shouting, "YES, YES". Then he saw me and was probably embarrassed, but was also proud of that fish, which looked to be about 17 inches. Got off the river about 6 PM, ate supper in Yellville, and headed for the hotel, stopping at one of the outfitters in that area to arrange a shuttle on the Buffalo the next day. I wanted to go from Maumee to Dillard's Ferry. He said they hadn't put many people in a Maumee this summer because the road was so bad. So I thought I'd better drive down it before dark to check it out. It wasn't that bad, didn't need 4WD. So I was set for the next morning; I was going to get on the river shortly after daylight, and leave my truck for the outfitter to move later in the day. I got up before dawn and headed for the river. Got all the way down into the canyon, only a quarter mile from the access...and there was a huge tree down across the road! So I headed back, parked at the outfitter and waited for them to open at 7:30 AM. Arranged to float Dillard's Ferry to Rush instead, and finally got on the river about 8 AM. The Buffalo was considerably slower fishing. It was low, barely floatable (Crooked Creek had also been low and barely floatable), and the fish were scattered. But I did end up catching about 45 fish, with the biggest being a couple 17.5 inchers, mostly on the plopper again. No other anglers, one family group of splash and gigglers was all I encountered. So instead of another day on the Buffalo, I called up the Crooked Creek shuttle guy and arranged another float on a different section for the third day. I wanted to head the 4 plus hours to home after the trip, so I picked a shorter section. The shuttle guy said he had put in a couple anglers that day, and they reported catching only one fish between them, so he asked if I wanted to do the section I'd done before since it had been so good. "Nah, I probably know more about what I'm doing than those guys." Well, at first I was beginning to wonder. I fished a couple pools of the kind where I'd caught fish like crazy before, and nothing. But I guess I just needed to get a bit farther from the access, because soon I was catching fish regularly. It was almost as fast as the first day, but because it was a shorter float I "only" caught about 50, though 7 of them were between 17 and 18 inches. The plopper was doing well, but I started catching a bunch of fish on a bladed jig, and it seemed the bigger ones were on it. I gotta wonder what the heck those guys the day before were doing; it seems like they'd just accidentally catch more than one fish. I was about halfway through the float and it was about time for lunch when I heard a boat coming from behind me. It was a solo guy, and when he saw me he stopped, apparently to eat lunch himself. So I floated for another hour before stopping. Then about an hour later he caught up to me again. He was in a craft that could maybe charitably be called a solo canoe, but I'd never seen anything like it; it was kind of a cross between a canoe and a bathtub, made out of cheap fiberglass and apparently heavy. I was able to float most of the riffles without dragging, but this guy was having to get out and walk every riffle. He went on out of sight and I stopped to give him plenty of time to get far ahead of me. The fishing didn't get any worse after he passed me, though he said he was doing well. I finally caught up to him right before the take-out, and he was really pleased with what he'd caught. I had one mishap; I stuck a hook in the end of my little finger when a fish flopped at the wrong time. I always get hooks out with the string trick, but this was just not conducive to using it; the hook was right on the tip of the finger where there was no way to put pressure on the eye of the hook, and it was almost all the way through; the tip of the point was visible on the other side of the finger. So I pushed it on through (remembering once more how difficult that can be and how much it hurts), clipped it off, and got it out. Fishing with two and three treble hook lures, I'm always as careful as possible when handling hooked fish, and I started carrying a net a few years ago to net anything that didn't have a clear shot at lipping it. But it's going to happen once in a while. I finished the float in early afternoon of a really hot day; I'd jumped in the river several times to cool off. My truck was where it was supposed to be, sitting in the sun, and the inside like an oven. Loading up was the hottest I'd been all week, but the air conditioner cooled things down quickly once I was loaded. I took a different route home, not in any huge hurry. Friday and Saturday were restful days at home by myself. On Sunday, a buddy and I decided to float a short section of the Bourbeuse near home. It was a section that we'd really done well on last year about this time. This year wasn't last year. Between the two of us, we caught maybe a dozen fish, nothing of any size. I've only been on the Bourbeuse twice this summer, and both times it sucked. I was trying to decide what to do the next week when my friend Clyde called me Sunday evening. He was headed down to stay in a motel in Eminence, and float the Jacks Fork and/or Current all week. He said, "Why don't you come down. There are plenty of rooms available at the motel. We can do our own shuttles and not have to pay an outfitter." I told him I might be down Monday evening, but not before. He floated the poorest section of the Jacks Fork on Monday and caught very little. I drove down Monday evening, and we planned to float a different section of the Jacks Fork on Tuesday. The fishing rivaled Crooked Creek the week before. The fish were tearing up the plopper for both of us, and we caught 7 or 8 between 17 and 18.5 inches, and a total of over 110 fish between us. It was a great day. Not only that, but a good rain Monday night raised the river 6 inches, making it easily floatable. And we didn't see a single person until we got to the take-out, where there was a guy fishing for something with a couple rods propped up on sticks. The next day, Wednesday, we decided to float the upper Eleven Point. After the day before, a 65 fish day was a disappointment, and it started out really bad. We floated the first three hours without catching more than 6 or 7 fish, but then we passed a tributary and the fishing picked up considerably. I ended up catching a 19 incher, my biggest of the whole trip, and we had several others around 18 inches. Clyde was catching them on the plopper, but I was doing damage with the bladed jig. Again, it was a day with zero people. We planned on driving home Thursday evening, so we did a shorter Jacks Fork float Thursday. It wasn't as good as Tuesday had been, but we caught around 50 fish, again on ploppers and the bladed jig. One more day with nobody else on the river. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I did some yard work and chores around the house. I was slated to fly back to Montana on Thursday (tomorrow), and I thought I'd get in a couple more days of fishing Monday and Tuesday. Liking the idea of staying in a motel, I reserved a room in Lesterville, called my Black River shuttle guy, and took off for the Black before dawn Monday morning. I floated an upper section Monday, and the fishing was spectacular, again on the plopper and bladed jig. I had my highest total of the whole 2.5 weeks, over 90 fish, with several over 17 inches and a couple 18 inchers. The second 18 incher came in the pool at the take-out. So I was really looking forward to Tuesday, when I'd float downstream from the first stretch, in a section where I've always caught bigger fish. What a difference a day makes. I caught a grand total of 10 fish, none of any size, though I did hook and lose one that was pushing 20 inches. This year's floods have really messed up that section of river; the banks were scoured, the river was wider and shallower than I remembered it, and the habitat just wasn't there like it had been. I also stuck another hook in myself, this time when I set the hook in a fish on the surface and missed, and the lure came flying back and stuck me in the arm just below the elbow. Using the string trick to get a hook out of an arm or hand isn't easy when you're by yourself, since you kinda need two hands to get the job done. But I was able to go to the bank, push the eye of the hook against a snag, and pop it out. I finished the float before the shuttle guy got my truck down to the take-out, and had to wait a half hour before he got there. So I wasn't going to fish today, but I changed my mind. I did a float on Big River, not on one of my favorite sections, but on a pretty decent stretch. It was another slow day, with 35 fish caught and one 18 inch smallmouth and a 17 inch largemouth. Nothing was working consistently, but I caught a fish now and then on everything I tried. So, in 2.5 weeks, 10 days of floatfishing, something like 560 fish caught, somewhere between 40 and 45 over 17 inches. Only two other bass anglers seen. My thumbs are sore.

Funny thing is, I just got back from a trip to Arkansas, and fished the Buffalo and Crooked Creek. In three days I caught around 170 bass, nearly all on topwaters. Only disappointment was that I didn't break 18 inches, but I caught 14 between 17 and 18 inches.

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.

I've only had one snake adventure so far this year. I had set up a portable basketball goal on the concrete slab in front of the house. There's a retaining wall along the edge of the slab, and I wanted to get that goal off the slab, where it was a bit in the way when we back cars out of the garage, so I studied it a bit and decided it could go on top of the retaining wall, lowered to it's lowest setting, and would be about the right height from the slab. The goal's pole was set on a black plastic tank that you fill with sand and water to make it heavy enough to stabilize the goal. I grabbed the pole and tilted it so that it went up on wheels set in the back of the tank. My toes were right up against the front of the tank when I did this. I rolled it a few feet, then happened to look back at where it had come from, and there was a small copperhead coiled up, looking at me like, "what the heck did you move my hiding place for?" My feet had to have been within six inches of the snake when I tilted the goal. Since we moved to this place, I've had copperhead encounters every summer around the house. When we first bought it, the main door leading into it just had a small concrete slab in front of it. A copperhead lived under that slab. We hadn't moved into the house yet, and as we would arrive each day moving stuff into it, the snake would be coiled up in front of the slab. It would retreat under the slab before I could catch it. I finally brought my pellet gun one morning, intending to shoot the danged thing before it could slip under the slab. Of course, it wasn't there, and we didn't see it again until after we'd moved in, built a detached garage adjacent to that door, poured a big slab between the house and the garage, and build a breezeway there. Then one day I walked out into the garage, and there was a freshly shed snake skin the size that copperhead had been, and freshly shed copperhead skins retain their markings, so it was obviously from a copperhead. So I walked around the garage looking in the corners and under things (fortunately we didn't have much lying on the floor that I had to move). I finally found it coiled up under an old desk I was using as a fishing tackle workbench. Not taking any chances, I shot it with the pellet gun. The second year, I found one up against the foundation. It got away. There was a rock pile a few feet away and I knew that's where it lived, so I got the tractor out and dug up that rock pile. Never found that one, but did find two babies, no more than 8 inches long and as big around as a pencil, yellow-green tails and all, when I was finishing up moving the rocks that fall.