Al Agnew

I've probably told my cooper's hawk story here before, but a number of years ago, I was busy painting in my studio, which has big windows and a bird feeder right outside, no more than 10 feet from the window right where I painted. I was startled out of concentrating on my painting by a "thump...THUMP" on the window. Looked out, and there was a cooper's hawk that had just crashed into the window, after chasing a goldfinch into the window as well. As Johnsfolly said, when a cooper's hawk or sharp-shinned hawk hunts a bird feeder, which they love to do, the birds often spook, see the reflection of the sky in the window, and forget it's a window and not an opening through which to escape. Well, when I saw the hawk, if a bird could be said to be limping while flying, it was. It barely made it to a limb about 20 feet on the other side of the feeder, where it sat, hunched over, head down, with its back to me and the feeder. After a while, it had been sitting still for so long that the birds forgot about it, and started gathering at the feeder again. Suddenly the hawk raised its head and shook it a bit. Then it cranked its head around and saw the birds at the feeder. It perked up. It very slowly turned itself around on the limb and crouched down like a bird dog on a quail. I thought, geez, it's going to do it again. It's going to launch itself at the birds, and chase another one right into the window, which by this point my face was about a foot away from the glass. Sure enough, the hawk suddenly charged the feeder. Two goldfinches took off just as it got to the feeder, headed straight toward the window, the hawk right behind them. The two finches crashed into the window...and the hawk flared, neatly snatched one of them as it bounced off the window, and missed the window by about 3 inches as it turned in midair and flew off clutching its prize!

Kastking was started by a group of American guys, is still headquartered in the U.S., and makes products in China like just about every other reel company, along with some products in other countries and some products that are still made in America. TJM's link is to a good article on them.

We have a pair of red-shouldered hawks that have nested right behind the house for several years now, and they are still here. I wonder how many red-shouldered hawks migrate. For a number of years, we had a single rough-legged hawk show up every winter. It's favorite perch was in a walnut tree nestled among a group of persimmon trees in the corner of our field of warm season grass, and it hunted the field constantly. Then one year it didn't show up, and we haven't seen one since.

Merry Christmas to everybody! Mary and I always spend Christmas Eve night with Mary's sister and her three kids, now grown, who we consider the closest thing to the kids we never had. Until this year. We had planned to open presents at their house, with everybody careful to keep some distance and wear masks, until Mary came up with a bad sore throat day before yesterday. So we spent yesterday running all over eastern Missouri trying to find someplace to get a rapid Covid test. She finally got one...and it came back negative. But by then we were just too tired to drive another 40 minutes to their house, so we spent the night at home. They all showed up about 9 PM last night at our door to drop off their presents, surprising us and making us a lot happier! They didn't come in and didn't stay long--Covid sucks. I sure hope this is all under control and things are back to some semblance of normal by next year. But we also wish everybody a happy, and healthy, holiday season!

A recent discussion of baitcasting reels got me thinking, and I decided to take every casting reel I own, put it on the same rod, and cast the same lure out on my pond, just to see which reels did best. The lure I use most in the winter, my homemade hair jig made on the jighead that Mitch Fields designed, in 3/16th ounce, on a medium power Majorcraft Nanoace jig and worm rod. Note that this is probably a lighter lure than most people typically use with baitcast tackle. I would also note that I took the time to adjust each reel to best cast this lure on this rod. And one more note...it was a very windy day and I was casting into a quartering wind. I suppose I should have also tried casting a more wind-resistant lure, something like a small buzzbait, in order to get the best evaluation of my rods, but I didn't...maybe some other time; it's too danged cold to do it today. The other problem, as you'll see when I list the reels, is that I don't have a lot of NEW models. In fact, some of these are 20 year old reels, models that have long since been replaced. So don't consider this a really good review of what you can buy these days. So, here are the reels I tried, ranked in order of how well they did, from best to worst: 1. Diawa Tatula SVTW--taking the time to really dial this reel in for the lure and the conditions made it tied for the best. It got the most distance, and without having to ride my thumb on it in those windy conditions. The reel I've ranked number 2 got the same amount of distance, within a foot, but I'll tentatively rank the Tatula number 1 for reasons I'll discuss below. 2. Kastking Stealth--this one will probably surprise you. When I bought this reel a couple years ago, it was on a whim. I couldn't imagine that a reel that you could buy on Amazon for less than $70 would be all that great, but I'd heard SOME good reviews on it. It seemed that people either loved Kastking reels or hated them, and apparently one big problem was quality control; there seemed to be a lot of lemons. So I wasn't expecting all that much when I bought it, and indeed, the first couple times I used it, I was not impressed. But the problem I was having was a spool that was simply TOO free. I couldn't cast it without backlashing, unless I really rode my thumb on it. I was in the middle of trying to fish, not standing in the yard, so I adjusted around on the spool tension knob and magnetic cast control until I could cast the particular lures I was using it for without backlashing, and called that good enough. However, I finally took the time to really fool with it and try to get it dialed in properly. I wasn't using it for the hair jig until I tried it for this report, and it took a little more adjusting, but once I got it, the reel cast beautifully. It certainly was comparable to the Tatula. Of course, I don't know how durable it will be compared with the Tatula, but just from my experience with the reel so far, it seems to be a little better able to handle inconsistent maintenance, something I'm known for. So the only reason I'd rank it slightly below the Tatula is that it is definitely more persnickety about getting it adjusted just right. I have no idea whether this model is still available; I didn't see it in a quick check online. It appears that Kastking decided to produce several more expensive models, prices comparable to other companies, in the $150-170 range, though they do still have some really cheap ones. I'd thought originally that Kastking was a Chinese company, but it is an American company. So I'm going to give one of the high end Kastkings a try--got one ordered and waiting for it to come in. 3. Shimano Citica 200G6--this one was about 3 feet less distance than the first two with the 3/16th ounce hair jig, but I can tell you that it will cast the crankbaits I ordinarily use it for a mile. The other day I was fishing a Spro RK Crawler 55 crankbait, and it was casting the thing about as far as I've ever cast any lure anywhere when I wanted it to...and it wasn't until after I got home that I realized I'd missed a guide when I was stringing up the line, so my outfit was operating at far from peak efficiency! The problem with reviewing Shimano reels, though, is that they seem to change models every year. If what I'm seeing in Tackle Warehouse is correct, the whole Citica line has been discontinued. And while most Shimano reels I've owned over the years have been very good, you can't depend upon that; there was one year that they produced a Curado model that was pure crap. 4. Abu Garcia Revo STX--this one was a cut below the top three, still a very good reel, casted without backlash and without riding my thumb too much in the wind, just didn't get quite the distance. I've had this reel several years and have really mistreated it, but it is still going strong. 5. Lews Mach 1 MH1Sh--this is the cheapest of the Lews reels I own, but handles lighter lures the best of them, surpisingly. A good, tough, workhorse reel. 6. Daiwa Tatula CT100HS--this was on a par with the Mach 1 and the Revo, really. You could probably rank the three of them even. It's a good, smooth reel. 7. Bass Pro Shops Prolite Finesse--you can forget about finding this reel; it's from at least 8 or 9 years ago, the bright gold-colored one that lasted for a year or two in their line-up before being replaced by another gold colored Prolite, which lasted for a year before they changed it completely. The newer ones were pretty bad. That first gold one was the best, the second gold one was as good but not as durable; I wore mine out in a couple years. This one is still going strong, and when it was new it probably ranked even higher in this list of reels. 8. Lews Laser Pro LP1SH--a decent reel, got less distance than the Mach 1, but it's been tough and serviceable. 9. Shimano Curado CU200--this is the REALLY old full size green model, hasn't been available for probably 15 years. It's a heavy reel compared to many I own today, but casts light lures surprisingly well, and has to be the toughest reel I've ever owned, which is obvious since I have owned 2 of them for probably 20 years and used the heck out of them. 10. Shimano Curado CU100B--this is the smaller, lighter model of the old green Curados. It doesn't really get any more distance than the bigger model, and requires a bit more maintenance, but my two of them are also still quite serviceable after all this time. 11. Shimano Scorpion 1000--this one is a Japanese market reel from probably 15 years ago. At the time it was THE reel for casting light lures. It's still pretty good, and comparable to the reels I've listed at 4-6, but it was not a super durable reel, always required a lot of maintenance, and is now pretty rough, which is why I downgraded it in my listing. But it still casts well. 12. Lews BB1 SHZ--well, there had to be a reel coming in last, and this one is it. Funny thing is, this is the reel I've been using this winter so far on the rod, and using the hair jigs, that I used in the test, and it came in dead last. One of the reasons I did the test, though, is that I KNEW it wasn't working all that well with the 3/16th ounce hair jig; I just wasn't getting good distance when I wanted to. I did everything I could to dial it in, but in the end, it got a good 15 feet less distance than the top reels, and 2 or 3 feet less than even the old Curados. So it's now on one of my less used all purpose rods. So I don't know how much this will help anybody in choosing a reel. Every one of these reels will do the typical baitcast job of casting 3/8th to 5/8th ounce lures well. Maybe it's more a matter of evaluating companies and assuming where any reel in the line-up will fall in relation to similar reels with other companies. But since every company probably produces lemons now and then, you have to take even that with a grain of salt. And of course, every one of these reels is under $200, or was when I bought it. Could be the high end reels of various companies are far better than any of these. Or maybe not; I've always asked myself whenever I was contemplating buying a $400 reel, whether it would prove to be more than TWICE as good as a $150 reel. So far, I think the most expensive reel I've ever owned was a Shimano Chronarch from a number of years ago that I paid just over $200 for--and I kicked it overboard in a fast, deep riffle on the Meramec. The second most expensive is the Tatula SV.

Robins don't really migrate. They move around to find food, usually in flocks, in the winter, and may move just far enough south to get out of snow so that finding food is easier. The reason you don't see them much around your house in the winter is more that they flock up and do more foraging in woodlands instead. Bluebirds also don't really migrate that much, either.

Most of you may know that I did a lot of covers for BPS catalogs, so I felt some loyalty to them. I spent quite a bit of money with them over the years, and for many years I got a discount, which made me spend even more money. But BPS is a general outdoors retailer, and while they started as a fishing store, I'd be willing to bet that fishing stuff made up a smaller part of their business over the years. Their selection of tackle was good, but they seldom sold any real specialty tackle, and more and more they went to their own store brands of lures, rods, reels, etc. Some of their rods and reels were okay, a few were excellent--for a while, until they found a cheaper manufacturer. Anymore, I shop local as much as possible. Denny Dennis and Dunn's get quite a bit of my business. But if I want a different and better selection of lures, I shop online at Tackle Warehouse. As for Sportsman's Warehouse, I have bought the vast majority of my flies at the Sportsman's Warehouse in Bozeman, MT. I sometimes feel a little guilty buying flies there instead of the local fly shops, but at less than a dollar a fly compared to $2.75 and up at the fly shops for flies that are of comparable quality, I am just frugal enough to opt for cheaper. I've bought a few other things at SW, including one high dollar set of Swarovski binoculars. It's always been an excellent store. I wonder how it will change.

You guys did better than I did today. Fished three pools that I know have some big fish, caught nothing but 10-14 inchers, a couple maybe 15 inches, didn't bother to measure them.

Two members of our extended family, not close, have died from it. Also several acquaintances that we knew casually. Several younger family members have had it and got over it, though one was sick for several weeks. One of Mary's brothers probably had it, said he coughed until he thought his eyeballs would pop out for 4 days and felt like crap, but is now getting back to some semblance of normal.

I'm not quite as sold on the Daiwa Tatula SV as others are. I've given mine a good workout, and it's been good but no better than several other reels I use. Part of the problem seems to be that it needs a lot more regular maintenance than I usually give my reels. I gotta say that, of all the reels I currently use, including several Lews, Garcia, and Shimanos as well as both the Tatula SV and the cheaper Tatula, my Shimano Citica from several years back may be my favorite, and the cheaper Lews Mach 1 is about as good as the more expensive Lews I own.

I've been finding it difficult to choose baitcasting reels. Basically, anything in the Lews line that is between $100 and $200 is good, but which one is best? I've gone mostly by weight. The way I like to fish, an ounce or so in weight can make a difference in a long day of fishing. As for which ones cast best, handle light lures best, are most durable, etc., I just can't tell you. The ones I own are good, but are they the best? I'll be interested in hearing what others say.

Regarding 100 bass days...I've had quite few of them and a handful of 200 plus bass days. I think it might be partly because of the way I fish, fishing fast with lots of casts. On typical summertime 10 hour float trip, probably about 6 hours of that is actual fishing time and not running riffles, paddling through dead pools, stopping for lunch, etc. If you fish slow and on the bottom, it might take you 30-60 seconds to fish out a cast. So in your six hours of fishing, you might make 60-120 casts an hour. Let's call it 100 casts an hour. Which means to catch 100 bass, you have to catch a bass every 6 casts. But fishing the stuff I fish, I probably make at least twice that many casts, meaning that if I caught 100, I'd be catching a fish about every 12 casts. Now if I get into a good pool with a bunch of fish, I can catch at least a bass every other cast for a bit, which means that when I come to less productive water, I might make 25-30 casts without a fish. I counted a few times on really good topwater days, where you get a lot of strikes but have a rather poor hook-up ratio, that I got a strike or at least a swipe from a bass about every 3 or 4 casts most of the day. When I fished the John Day River in Oregon in 2019, I don't think there was more than 50 casts all day long every day that I didn't get at least a strike (too bad nearly all those smallmouth were under 13 inches). The other thing is that I don't use ultralight tackle, so when I hook a little one, it only takes a few seconds to get it in...usually takes longer to unhook it than to reel it in. Do I get bored on days like that? Nope. Like some of the other guys, my goal is to catch a big one or two, so I keep fishing. But I also just love to SEE a smallmouth (or even a largemouth or spot) strike a lure, especially a topwater lure. That's the biggest reward of summertime fishing for me, and I never get tired of it. I agree with Seth that you seldom if ever have 100 bass days on heavily pressured waters. The last 100 bass day I had on the middle Meramec was probably 15 years ago. As for the size range of those 100 bass...back in the days when I measured every fish to keep a record for an MDC study (yes, on a measuring board) on Big River, and collected scale samples, and even before that when I was a lot more meticulous about keeping records, I found that the usual ratio of dinks to "keepers"--12 inches or better--was that about 50% of the bass I caught were over 12 inches. And for every inch, that percentage was cut in half. So for an average size ratio on a hundred fish day, 50 of them would be over 12 inches, but only a handful of those were over 16 inches.

Geez, I take a lot of photos but don't worry much about how great they are because I use them as reference for paintings. Started looking through my phone, and came upon this one from this past summer at our place in Montana, that just struck me for some reason. Sunset, Yellowstone River.

It's an interesting question at what point do things like electronics change fishing too much and make it too easy. Somebody above said that you still have to get the fish to bite. True, but so what? You ALWAYS had to get them to bite, but first you had to find them. Now the finding is made so much easier. With this kind of sonar, underwater cameras, etc., you can find the fish, and actually see their reaction to your lure. And adjust accordingly. The only mystery left is in what adjustments will work. The big skill left to anglers in that case is how quickly they adjust. Yet, the whole question always has to be, at what point is it so easy and the technology so widely used that it has the likelihood of depressing the population of adult, catchable fish? I think it's something necessitates closer monitoring of fish populations and adjustment of regulations as needed, but not something that needs to be proactively outlawed. Other than that, it's gotta be a personal choice. My personal choice is that I neither need nor want something that technological, the way I like to fish.

I guess from now on I'll just call 'em like my buddy who is originally from Tennessee calls trout...nice'uns, good'uns, and big'uns. Nice'uns would be 14-16 inches, good'uns would be 16-18 inches, and big'uns would be 18-20 inches. Anything over 20 is holy-crap-what-a-fish!

Nah, the magic marker marks wear off and disappear before the hard glass reinforced ends of the paddle wear down, and I gotta remeasure and mark them again. 85 fish days are no big deal if you count all bass you catch, including the occasional 7-9 incher. Most guys who don't count the fish they catch, catch larger numbers than they think they do. The reason I count fish is to compare trips and years. Surprisingly, my average number of bass per all day trip on Ozark streams has remained pretty consistent over the last 30 years at around 50 fish per trip. So the 85 fish day is probably balanced out by a 15 fish day now and then. I didn't know I was the gold standard of stream anglers. These days there are probably a lot of guys that catch more fish and more big fish than I do. I just have the benefit of being older than dirt and having done a whole lot of stream fishing for a whole lot of years in a whole lot of places.

Don't really care whether people believe me or not. Don't really care whether the fish is 19 1/8th or 18 7/8ths. I'll call it a 19. I measure big fish from the canoe with my paddle blade, which has magic marker marks at the base of the blade for 18 and 20 inches from the end of the blade. Try to measure them by putting the closed mouth even with the end of the blade, look at where the closed tail lobes come to compared to my marks. Accurate? Probably within 1/8th inch, certainly within 1/4th inch. What does it matter whether the fish is 17 3/4ths plus or 18? Doesn't to me. I ain't keeping score. Only reason I measure is to satisfy my own curiosity. Half the time I don't report my trips. If I catch one that looks REALLY big, I'm gonna measure it carefully, but 19 inches isn't really big. Heck, I'm really good with Photoshop...I could take pictures of my fish and then make them bigger in Photoshop before posting the pics, complete with measuring board. So let me get this straight...does the plain old Iphone 12 I just got do the scan thing? Or does it have to be the Pro?

Starting to get excited about this team. Depth and experience. They still aren't a good shooting team, but they play great defense, they rebound well, they play a lot smarter than the last couple years, and they appear to be mentally tough; they don't let adversity get them down. They've responded well every game when it gets tight. If you'd told me before the game that Tilmon and Mark Smith would both have bad games and foul out with a total of I think 7 points between them, I'd have expected an Illinois blowout. But the other guys got it done, especially Mitchell Smith and Pickett off the bench. And Dru Smith is one of the best defensive players I've seen in a while. Pinson needs to be more consistent, but can drive against anybody; just needs to look to pass when everybody collapses onto him in the lane.

But did it? It resulted in one point for Mizzou. And yes, Mizzou got the ball as well, and ran the clock down to 10 plus seconds with a three point lead. Illini had ten seconds to get a good shot, but great defense by Dru Smith on Dosumnu and a bit of the yips by the Illini star resulted in a bad shot with a whole 4 seconds left. Ten seconds is an eternity. Ask any Mizzou fan, and they'll just say "Tyus Edney". It was a horribly officiated game, with the quick whistles not only detracting from the flow of the game but giving first one team and then the other an advantage; it seemed the bad calls came in cycles, first several against Mizzou, then several against Illinois. Bad calls and bad no-calls were a lot of what got the Illini back in the game after Mizzou went up by 13. Explanation today was that the flagrant 1 had to be called with any forcible contact above the shoulders. So by the letter of the rule it was the proper call. Cuonzo is apparently still waiting for an explanation of why Kofi's basket wasn't waved off. Post Dispatch writers want to know why it couldn't have just been called an offensive foul. Apparently the rules don't allow for either of those scenarios. Main thing is, you gotta wonder why it wasn't called as it happened, since they'd just fouled Tilmon out on far less contact while jockeying for position.

You'll be happy to know I have a good measuring system on my jetboat...ruler on the flat front end of the boat that butts up against the edge of my trolling motor bracket, just like a measuring board; I can place the nose of the fish against the raised trolling motor bracket. I measured every fish that appeared to be over 16 inches. But of course you can question whether I'm lying about all this, since I forgot my phone so I don't have pictures. Don't really care. I've caught my share of 17-19 inchers over the years. The 19 incher was the only one I would have taken a photo of anyway.

I think they need to go back to the drawing board. Can't imagine how squirrelly that thing would be to try to maneuver with the whole front half of the canoe out of the water. Suspect it would flip like a top if you tried to cut it too sharply. And I also can't imagine how loud it would be. If something like that came up the rivers I float, I think I'd be throwing rocks at it.

Yeah, a good pole makes a difference. I got into poling for a bit...my most memorable poling trip was when I tried floating Apple Creek in low water, using only a pole. Didn't even bring a paddle. In a 15 ft. aluminum canoe. It actually worked pretty well; standing up in the center of the canoe, I could pole very well in all the shallow water, and when I came to a spot where there were two rocks I had to go between and there wasn't enough space between them, I could put more weight on one foot and lean the canoe to where the other side was out of the water, and slip through. Only problem was that it made fishing a lot more difficult, because I had to put the pole down to cast. On the other hand, I got to where I could move upstream reasonably well with the pole. But I never was sure it was an advantage over a kayak paddle for going upstream.

Actually, no. Mary and I started out being that cautious (though not using tongs...we used a grocery bag to get the mail out of the box). As the science of how unlikely it is to spread the virus from mailed items, we followed the science, and now simply wash our hands after handling the mail, and let the mail sit overnight. Yes, that's still being overly cautious, but it costs us nothing and gives Mary a little more peace of mind. Fear? Or prudence? I don't really care.

Get real. If you are living with family members...LIVING with them and not just visiting them, there are so many ways you can spread it to them that wearing a mask is pointless. I live with my wife. We seldom go anywhere around other people without going together. We are equally exposed. So it would be completely pointless to wear masks in the house or around just each other. In addition, one would hope that family members kinda know what each other have done and where they've been, and how likely they are to have been exposed. Fact is, there are a LOT of people who, when finding out they have been exposed, quarantine themselves FROM family members. Which makes sense. Wearing a mask inside the house with family members does not. I wonder why it is that seeing people wearing masks while driving by themselves, or anywhere else where they are not going to be around other people, bends so many people out of shape. Who the heck cares? If they want to look weird, so be it, it doesn't harm you in the least. And as for wearing one while driving, perhaps they have just been to one place where a mask was needed and are heading directly to another where it's needed, and don't bother to take it off and have to put it back on. I find taking masks on and off to be a bit of a pain, since the straps always seem to snag my hearing aids and flip them off my ears. Seems to me that a whole lot of people are just looking for ways to denigrate others who are wearing masks.

But, you don't have to feel bad to have this virus and spread it. Geez, haven't you been paying attention? Of all the people I know who have it or have had it, nearly every one of them got it from somebody who didn't know at the time that they were infected. This has been repeated thousands of times just about everywhere. I think I even said that asymptomatic spread is actually one of the biggest problems and dangers with this virus. Unlike the flu, which as you said you know when you have it and don't go anywhere (or if you do go somewhere, other people probably can tell you have it and try to avoid you), there are PLENTY of people who have this virus and show no symptoms. People were touting that as being good news about this virus, when actually it's the worst news of all, because all those people are potential spreaders to people who WON'T have such good outcomes. So yeah, you have 200 people weddings going on and one person in the crowd is infected and doesn't know it, and bingo, super-spreader event. This is not Facebook science, it's real science. And, not only science but common sense will tell you that wearing ANY kind of mask correctly will limit the spread of the water droplets that carry the virus, simply by slowing them down as they leave your mouth or nose. Stop them...no. But they are far less likely to reach the person who is standing 5 feet away.