Al Agnew

Troutfiend, you don't have to worry much about black bears in Yellowstone. The park has been very diligent about not allowing anyone to feed them for many years now, and it's quite rare to see one around a campground anymore. On the other hand, while there haven't been many grizzly attacks in Yellowstone, the griz in the lands surrounding the park have gotten more common and more aggressive in recent years. Most conflicts with humans, however, occur during the fall during elk hunting season. Some of the bears have decided that rifle shots are like dinner bells, and come to take the elk away from the hunters. Haven't heard about the past fall, but the autumn before there were 4 separate grizzly attacks on hunters in Montana. I've seen one Missouri black bear. Saw it near the Jacks Fork several years ago. But I've had several spooky encounters with black bears out west. Had a huge cinnamon-colored black bear come flying off the brushy bank of the Boulder River and splash into the water about 30 feet upstream from me while I was wading and flyfishing. Half-lunged, half-swam across the river, up the other bank, and disappeared. Had one chew our ATV to bits and pieces when we left it at the end of a road and backpacked up to the top of the plateau in western Colorado bowhunting. The seat, handlebars, and everything else chewable was demolished, and there were holes in a gas can sitting next to the ATV when we got back to it.

Like the others said, if you're limited to weekends and renting canoes, it's not easy to get away from the party idiots. However, there are some options even then. The Gasconade is served by only a few canoe rentals, and most of them can do 2-3 day floats. Gasconade Hills also can put you in on the Osage Fork with prior arrangements. The St. Francis is a possibility...only one canoe rental, at Sam A. Baker State Park, and you might be able to get them to put you in pretty far upstream, again arranging it in plenty of time beforehand. Big Piney is another possibility. There's a canoe rental up at Boiling Springs, the only one I know of that serves the upper river. One idea to avoid the crowds of rental canoeists on a more popular river is to make arrangements to put in out of synch with them. Some canoe liveries are willing to do this, others aren't, just have to call and talk to them. What I mean is, have them put you in about mid-afternoon, float til evening, camp, float the next day. You'll be behind the people who put in the first morning, and ahead of the people they put in the next morning. Of course, if you have your own canoes and shuttle yourselves, your options are unlimited. If it's on a weekend, just look for the rivers that don't have many canoe rentals.

Just to let everybody know...we've been re-doing my website, www.alagnew.com, for a while, and it's now up and running, with lots of merchandise with my artwork on it, prints, originals, etc. We were running a sale on tee shirts with artwork, M-2XL, and hats, and we're extending the sale because the website was not up to speed for a while. Hope this doesn't offend anybody that I'm doing this shameless plug--really hope you visit the website whether or not you're shopping. There's a link to my "new" blog (I call it "new" because I started it a couple years ago, then didn't do anything with it for so long I forgot how to get to it myself! But now I'm keeping it active with progress reports on the paintings I'm doing including a lot about how I do them, and other stuff from art to fishing.) Also, if you're on Facebook, I've got a new Facebook page called Al Agnew Art. Guess I'm finally REALLY immersing myself in this new-fangled computer stuff!My link

Snagged, over the years I've fished with river smallmouth guides, lake largemouth guides, trout guides, salmon guides, redfish and seatrout, halibut, tarpon and permit...and very few of them even thought about fishing. Most brought some equipment, and a few made some casts during the day in order to test lures or techniques or demonstrate how to catch fish under the circumstances. NONE, absolutely none of them, ever made the first casts to a good spot under any circumstances, period, or otherwise hogged the fishing opportunities. One of the best bass guides I have fished with, a smallmouth guide on the Penobscot River in Maine, sat in the middle of the boat with a remote control for his trolling motor, and ran the trolling motor from there while I fished up front and my wife fished in the back. In my opinion, that should be the gold standard for all guides in those types of boats. Of course, all the trout guides in drift boats spent the entire day handling the boat, always keeping it in perfect position for the clients to fish. On the other hand, with good guides that are also nice guys (most but not all of them that I've fished with), I'm quick to tell them to fish, too, if we're on fish and catching plenty. Or if I think I'd benefit from watching them and learn something. But I would not like it if they took it upon themselves to do what your guide did, and I'd have done the same thing you did.

The Current in that area is NOT easy to wade. It's pretty big water, especially in June when it will not have come down to its late summer low water levels. Given that the Current is usually clear to very clear, the fish won't be up shallow except maybe in the early morning, so wading close enough to fish much good water with some depth will be problematical. So, don't want to discourage you, but you will be limited in where you can fish by wading. If you're willing to get up early and drive for a little while before getting to where you can fish, you might drive up to the Jacks Fork, either around Bay Creek or down below Eminence. It will be easier to wade. As for what to use, all the usual stuff should be working then. If wading and limited in the water you can cover, the best thing is usually to fish something fairly slow on the bottom, like a tube, Senko, finesse type worm, or about anything in soft plastic meant to be fished on the bottom.

What cwc doesn't say is that sure, I caught more fish than he did, and maybe bigger smallies, but he pulled a largemouth that was easily six pounds out of a deep rootwad...in fact, it was a rootwad that was just 100 yards or so upstream from the one where I lost my rod.

I think there are quite a few differences in how and where they bed depending upon size and character of the stream. In the bigger rivers, my limited observation is similar to yours, they tend to only bed in certain areas, and often deeper. But it didn't used to be that way. Back in the days before jetboats when I fished the lower Meramec a lot in the spring, you could always find shallow beds scattered around if the water was clear enough. It was my observation that when jetboats first got popular, the wakes were really messing up spawning, as the silt stirred up by the wakes may have been smothering those shallow nests. I have a theory that the fish eventually adapted to the new conditions by spawning deeper in the more limited areas that were conducive to doing so. However, I may be all wet, since you were on the Meramec a lot in those days, too. I'd be curious as to your observations back then. But on smaller streams, those the size of the stretch of Big River where I was floating it, or like Huzzah Creek, the beds are pretty well scattered up and down the stream in lots of suitable areas. The bigger fish will bed in pretty heavy log cover, smaller fish may be almost out in the open, probably against a lone limb or rock. That scattering may also be due to the fact that it isn't as easy to move up and down the smaller streams long distances to "perfect" bedroom communities.

Interesting about the lampreys, Nick. Yesterday I saw a pair of smallies on a bed, got too close before I saw them and they temporarily left the bed...and there was a lamprey wiggling in the bed. Did it just drop off one of them? Did one of them knock it off the other? Or was it sneaking into the bed looking to attach to one? Another interesting thing...there were big redhorse spawning in all the riffles that had inch-minus size gravel, and I actually saw a pair of spawning smallies that appeared to be utilizing a redhorse bed that happened to be slightly sheltered from the current, with other redhorse beds all around it. I'm pretty sure they were in the act of spawning because both were heavily marked like they get when they are actually doing the deed. Since the fishing was a bit slow and I had to cover some territory, I actually spent quite a bit of time just looking for smallmouth beds. Only found a few.

There has been a lot of questioning of whether the opinion reached in Elder v Delcour was bad law. It really does keep things somewhat murky, and its reasoning is a little odd. According to just about everybody, if you can establish that a stream section is substantially similar to the facts agreed upon in Elder v Delcour, you have a legal right to float and fish it. Here are the "facts established", quoting from the published opinion: "...at the point where the river crosses the defendant's property, 'this river is navigable in fact by canoes, rowboats, and other small floating craft of similar size and nature, but that it is not navigable in fact by larger boats and vessels.' ' "It is further admitted that 'through that period of time in the past when logs and timber were customarily transported by floating' (which we understand to mean prior to the construction of hard surfaced roads and the use of automotive transportation): this stream was used for for the purpose of floating logs and timber at the point of its crossing of the Delcour land and for many miles up the stream from this point. It is further agreed that the stream is well stocked with fish; and that, at many points above and below defendant's farm, 'the stream is heavily fished by sportsmen both by wading, floating, and from the bank.' Whether the stream as it passes through defendant's farm has been so fished by sportsmen in the manner stated does not appear from the stipulation, nor does the stipulation fix the duration of time during which the stream has been so 'heavily fished' by sportsmen. We take judicial notice of the fact that the Meramec River has long been known as a very popular fishing stream." An excerpt from "The Riparian Right as Property", which was published a couple years after the case, notes: "In the Elder Case, the issue was whether a public right of fishing existed in a small stream whose bed was privately owned, and which had no other public utility than for fishing. The question had not been previously adjudicated in the state of Missouri, and due to the importance of recreational fishing in the Ozark region's many streams, the case was watched with much interest. The court concluded that a public fishing right existed upon Missouri's small, floatable streams: "'Respondent...was not a trespasser and he was fishing where he had a lawful right to be wading in or floating upon public waters, which were flowing down a public highway. "'Since the ownership of the fish in the streams belonged to the state and since respondent was not a trespasser in passing down the stream by boat or by wading, he had the right to fish and to take fish from the streams in a lawful manner.' "In short, fishing was an incident of the right of navigation. The most interesting facet of the Elder case, however, is the fact that it was only because the stream was usable for fishing that the public had any real concern with it; it might almost be said that because the spot was a good place to fish, the public acquired a right to fish there." So, you can see the murkiness of the ruling. Did it mean that any stream that had fishing possibilities is legal for the public to fish? Is the test one of commerce (floating logs to market)? Is it a test of the navigability in fact of the stream for canoes, rowboats, and other small craft? According to which way you read it, it could mean that you have the right to fish any wadeable stream, or just any stream that you can take a canoe down, or any stream that you can prove was used to float logs to market at some point in the distant past. Various county prosecutors have ruled on various streams in their counties since then, but the rulings are not generally publicized. It's almost as if a lot of county prosecutors are willing to let landowners try to keep floaters off the creeks until such time as a floater complains about it, and then the prosecutor has to make a decision based upon Elder v Delcour. And generally nobody is willing to go the route of saying that the public has an absolute right to fish small, wadeable but not floatable creeks. As for legally navigable streams, those that are navigable by larger commercial craft and on which the banks and bottom are in fact owned by the public, I found where the War Department, in 1929, listed the following Missouri rivers as navigable waters of the United States: Grand River upstream to Brunswick (3 miles) Missouri River Niangua River upstream to Ha Ha Tonka (18 miles) Osage River upstream to 1.5 miles below Warsaw (170 miles) (This, and the Niangua, was before Lake of the Ozarks was completed) Gasconade River upstream to Arlington (which is close to Jerome, this is interesting) Salt River (about 5 miles above its mouth) Meramec River (about 21 miles above its mouth) Lamine River (14 miles above its mouth) Blackwater River (about 9.5 miles above its mouth) Black River (up to Poplar Bluff) Current River (up to Van Buren) (another interesting ruling) White River (up to Branson...of course, this was well before any of the big lakes were built on the White) St. Francis River (up to Wappapello, about where Wappapello Dam is now) Edited to add that I didn't mean that county prosecutors actually "ruled" on the streams in their counties, since that is the province of the courts, not the prosecutors. But prosecutors "decide" whether or not to prosecute people for trespass on a given stream. In effect, if a county prosecutor decides to prosecute a trespass case, they are saying that the public does not have a right to float or fish it, since most trespass cases don't end up in court--the defendant pays the fine rather than spending the money to fight it in court.

I grew up on Big River and have fished it every year for nearly 50 years. During that time, I floated the section from north of Bonne Terre to Blackwell at least once a year, until last year, when I didn't get to it. That stretch has always been one of my favorites, and for many years was my absolute favorite float. I caught my first 4 pound smallmouth on that section. I did my first three day float trip on it. I've had days when I caught well over 100 bass. I usually put in at St. Francois State Park, and take out at the bridge at Blackwell. It's not an easy float. For one thing, it's LONG. A bit over 14 miles. There are intermediate accesses, but other than the road off the old Hwy. 67 bridge, which is only a mile or so below the park and is a shaky place to leave a car unless you pay to park it at Cherokee Landing there, the other accesses are private and require permission. I usually visit the people who own them once a year or so just to touch base and make sure I still have permission to use them, but I hadn't visited them in two years since I didn't float that stretch last year. The take-out at Blackwell is very problematical...no place anymore to park a car. I always cajol Mary into picking me up at the end of the day when I use it. And it's a long uphill climb to the road as well, and after floating 14 miles, it isn't fun. I decided last night to do that float today, and I drove to the park this morning. As I was putting in about 8 AM, turkeys were gobbling and mist was rising off the river. It was very clear for Big River, visibility 5 or 6 feet, and flowing strongly, about spring normal. The fishing was slow to begin with; I caught a couple of small bass in the first couple holes, and then hit a dry spell in the next pool or two. The water temp was a bit under 60 degrees thanks to the cool nights we've been having, and the fish weren't very active. I was trying various things, including my homemade Subwalk, Superflukes, a deep-diving crankbait, willow leaf spinnerbait. Nothing was working well, so what the heck, just tie on my homemade spinnerbait and a Sammy and MAKE 'em bite. That's when the Twilight Zone intruded. I made a cast with the Sammy to a little almost dead water slough at the bottom of a hole, and got a good strike. Smallmouth, and a nice one. But it immediately tangled me on a snag. I paddled over to it and could see it, hooked on the rear hook, the line tangled. I almost reached it when it gave an extra-hard tug and broke the line. Almost. That would be a theme for the day. Because I could see the fish, lure still in its mouth, beneath a little log in about three feet of water. Aha, I thought, I can quietly reach down with my rod tip, and snag the free treble on the lure. Sure enough, it worked...almost. I snagged the treble, got the fish to the surface, reached down to grab it, and the hook came loose from my rod tip. I watched the fish swim off into deep water and a root wad with my high dollar brand new Sammy in its mouth. Things were looking up, though, on the fishing front. I caught a couple, and then got a terrific strike. Big fish...amazingly, a spotted bass. The spots have pretty well taken over much of this stretch, which is why it's no longer my absolute favorite, but they've never gotten very big. This dude (well, probably dudette) was a good 17.5 to 18 inches, and FAT! And then the fishing slowed again. I was doing a lot of casting and picking up a strike once in a while. Until the Twilight Zone struck again, a lot worse. The riffle was a tricky one, but didn't look all that bad. It wouldn't have been if I'd been concentrating on running it instead of trying to stop the canoe in that little eddy to make a cast below. The eddy was just barely upstream from the 4 foot wide gap between the end of the big log and the just starting to grow weedbed, the place I needed to go, so it should have been fine...get into the eddy, then ease out of it and through the gap. Except that the front end of the canoe got over too far into the eddy and caught the shallow weedbed, and of course the back end started to swing around, toward the log. Now things were getting a little more serious. No way I could stop the back end from swinging, so I pushed off the weedbed, planning on shooting the canoe backwards and slightly upstream, and get it lined up to go over the log over toward the root wad end, where it was just enough underwater...except I misjudged my angle and the strength of the current, and somehow got the back end of the canoe against the abruptly dropping bank on the other side, while the front end caught the log. Not good. When you have a canoe sideways to 100 cubic feet per second or so of fast water with both ends anchored, nothing good can come of it. Flipping was just a matter of time, so it was time to bail out before it happened. I was able to exit the canoe into waist deep water that wasn't so strong I couldn't stand, and was able then to stop the canoe from flipping...except it not only took on some water, I somehow, in the confusion, kicked one of my rods overboard, right about that root wad in powerful current 5 feet deep. I dumped the water out, removed my wallet from my soaked pants pocket, and noticed a horrific smell. I looked around, and there hung in that root wad was a very ripe dead deer. No way I was climbing around on that end of the root wad even if it was possible to see the rod from there. I started to look for the rod. Couldn't see it from the bank. Studied the situation. Figured out I could approach the root wad from downstream, slide the front end of the canoe onto the log at a point where it was just a couple inches under the water, and it would probably hold there while I looked for the rod. It worked...almost. I could see the gold-colored Prolite Finesse reel, most of the way under the root wad, 4 feet down. I could reach it with a rod tip with a lure snugged up to it. But I should have thought about it a little more. The rod I picked up to snag it was one of my other casting rods with 8 pound test line. I snagged it alright, but when I began to pull my line broke. Now I'd lost a homemade spinnerbait, unless it was still snagged to the reel and I could recover the reel. I did what I should have done in the first place, picked up a spinning rod filled with 6/20 Power Pro braid. You can't break that stuff. Reached down, snagged something...not the reel, a sunken willow limb, and when I dislodged the limb the reel went on under the log. Now I looked just downstream, and could see the rod tip on the other side of the log, with my homemade Subwalk waving in the current. Aha, hook it! I did, with the Power Pro. Should have thought about that a bit more too. Went to pull the lure and rod tip up, and the 8 pound line on the sunken rod broke...and my Subwalk, which does sink, sunk downstream into the next rootwad. The rod tip was still there. The deer was still stinking. I hooked it (the rod, not the deer, but the current was pushing me closer to the deer) with the Power Pro. It was stuck pretty good. Got it ALMOST up to the surface where I could grab it with my hand. Slipped off. Snagged it again. Slipped off. Canoe came off the log, barely missing the deer. There was a thin limb sticking up that I could grab to hold the canoe for another try. I grabbed, but the current was too strong. Limb slipped out of my fingers, and something on it was sharp and cut two fingers. Now I'm bleeding. Rod tip still visible. Snagged it again, I thought. Nope, a willow limb that it was hung on. Pulled the limb up. Rod comes loose. Rod tip sticks straight up in the air, ALMOST within reach. Starts sinking. I'm draw-stroking frantically to get the canoe within reach. Rod tip is going straight down, ssslllooowwwlllyyyy. I'm stretching out, fingertip touches it...can't grip it. It disappears. Another root wad is just below, in 7 or 8 feet of fast, choppy water. Can't see it anymore. It's gone. So...I've been trying for it for a good 45 minutes, probably. When you're floating 14 miles in a day, you gotta keep to a schedule, and I'm seriously behind schedule now. There are sections of this float that I always paddle through in order to concentrate on the good parts. Now I have to paddle through a good part. The fishing has gotten bad again. I've lost a $100 reel, a rod that isn't being made anymore and will be difficult to replace, three lures...make that four lures, because somehow I lost my favorite homemade crankbait when I bailed out of the canoe. It was lying in the bottom of the canoe, but it's gone now. I'm a little grumpy. But it's a beautiful day, and there are lots of interesting things to see. Phlox and bluebells in profusion along the river. hordes of suckers. Big River has more quillback carpsuckers than any other river I've been on, and they are everywhere, but there are also really big redhorse spawning in every good riffle. I'm talking 18-20 inch redhorse. Probably because Big River in this section is ALMOST too small for jetboats, and so it doesn't get gigged much. There's a big heronry, two huge sycamores full of great blue heron nests. It's been there for many years. There are a bunch of herons on the nest and flying around it. I see a HUGE fish. Paddle over to get a better look at it in the clear water. It's a grass carp, and probably weighs 30 pounds or more. Several big drum. Never used to see drum on Big River. Pretty bluffs, which is one of the reasons I love this stretch--it has some pretty places. I'm back to catching a fish now and then, more spotted bass than smallies, but several are really nice ones, 15 inches or a bit bigger. They are really acting dumb. They'd hit the Sammy, barely get hooked, I'd set the hook and the lure would come flying back toward the canoe, and they'd chase it down and whack it right next to the canoe. I see a very big bass chasing some kind of crippled fish, cast to it, it ignores my lures. Keeps chasing the smaller fish, which is flopping and swimming weakly. I paddle over to investigate. It's a largemouth, probably over five pounds, that's after a 12 inch redhorse. The redhorse looks about half-scaled--the bass must have already had it partway down and it got loose. I leave the bass to keep harassing the redhorse, and catch a 15 inch smallie on my next cast. And so the day gos. The Twilight Zone makes no more appearances for quite a while. Until late in the afternoon, a couple miles above Blackwell, when I hear a motor. A motor? I said this stretch of Big River is ALMOST too small for jetboats, but these people don't think so. The first people I've seen all day, and they have to be in a johnboat with a 30 hp jet motor, buzzing down the river ahead of me. They stop to fish. I pass them. They ask me if I'm fishing. Yep, not catching much. They say they are slaying the sunperch and goggle-eye. I leave them to it. Mary is picking me up at 7 PM. It's getting close to 6:30 when the take-out comes in sight. I'm still fishing, and finally get another great strike on the Sammy. Gotta be another spotted bass. Nope, smallie. pretty close to 18 inches. Great way to end the day...but dragging the canoe and gear up that hill isn't so great. I'm sore all over. My fingers are swollen and hurting. Wrists are sore from paddling one-handed and playing Sammies. Realized I forgot to drink anything after lunch--I think I'm dehydrated. Final total for the day, 25 spotted bass, 15 smallies, 8 largemouth. Mediocre for this stretch. Sure glad Mary showed up on time...ALMOST.

Nick pretty well schooled me on the small jigs in the winter, too. But in the summer, I let water conditions be my guide. If it's reasonably clear, say 4 feet or so visibility, I'll go with a jig that with trailer will be 2.5 inches long or less. If it's murkier, I'll go a little bigger. I'll be the first to admit I'm not the most avid or expert jig fisherman, though. If it's really clear, more than 6 feet of visibility, I usually don't even try to fish a jig, usually going to something like a tube, a small Senko type, or a finesse worm...and that's only if my usual stuff isn't working.

Big Creek really is rather unique. It's the only really clear stream large enough to float fairly easily that flows through the extensive igneous rock outcrops of the St. Francois Mountains. The St. Francis is the "master" stream of the St. Francois (yes, the different spelling is correct) Mountains, but it's usually somewhat murky. The only other floatable stream that is entirely within that geologic region is the Little St. Francis, which is also fairly murky. There are granite or other igneous rock outcrops on several other streams, from the upper end of the Huzzah (Dillard Mill Dam is anchored in granite), the upper end of Big River, upper Castor River (Amidon Conservation Area or Pink Rocks Shut-in), Black River (East Fork of the Black is what flows through Johnson Shut-ins State Park, and there is granite as far downstream as the lower Black in the Williamsville area), and Current River between the Jacks Fork and Powdermill. But these are mostly isolated outcrops. Big Creek has several shut-ins sections, as does the Little St. Francis. The rock garden in the photo is one of the prettiest. Geologically, the St. Francois Mountains are the "center" of the Ozark uplift. The igneous rock of these mountains is the "basement" rock of the Ozarks, and in much of the Ozarks is several thousand feet underground. Here, the land has been uplifted high enough for long enough to have all the overlying rock eroded away. The St. Francois Mountains are also the only TRUE mountains in the Ozarks. They are the oldest landscape, and were volcanic peaks a half billion years ago, then buried under sediments of various oceans that covered the land. The rest of the Ozarks is an eroded plateau (well, actually three eroded plateaus), and here it eroded enough to expose those once buried peaks. But there is a lot of sedimentary plateau remnants within and between the still half-buried igneous peaks. That's why all the streams in the St. Francois Mountains will flow for stretches through "typical" looking Ozark valleys with flattish bottomlands and limestone or sandstone bluffs, and then encounter one of those igneous outcrops. The volcanic rock is much harder and resistant to erosion, so as the stream cuts through it, it carves a narrow, V-shaped valley. The hard rock also acts almost like a dam, so the stream usually flows much more slowly until it runs into it, then drops a lot faster through it. Those V-shaped canyon stretches full of rapids are called shut-ins, and they make the only true whitewater in Missouri, as well as a landscape that is so different (and beautiful). I've spent a lot of time over the years visiting and photographing various shut-ins, from the well-known to the practically unknown. If I get a chance, I'll post some photos of them in a separate thread.

Chief, I have no idea on the gray bass...I'll occasionally catch a smallie that's obviously old or sick that has that grayish, washed out look, but the one in your picture seems healthy other than the color. As to the pointy lower jaw, I've caught some like that, though not as many as you have. So since it's apparently widespread, if not common, it may be a recurring mutation, and there may be a cluster of fish with that mutation in the area you're fishing. One thing that intrigues me is the shape of the soft dorsal and anal fin of smallies. If you look at my photos, some of the fish have a swept back, pointed edge to these fins. The 20 incher from the Mississippi trib is maybe the best example. Others have very rounded fins, such as the Current River fish and the very brown smallmouth. Adult fish on the Meramec river system commonly have swept back fins, fish in some of the southern Ozark streams seldom do, so it may be genetic. Or maybe not.

As a rule, murky water fish have less color than clear water fish, no matter which species of bass it is. They'll look "washed out" in murky water. Clear water fish will have more color but may or may not be a lot darker, depending upon where they were hanging out. You can see from my photos that a lot of fish caught in clear, shallow water in bright sunlight are very light. As a general rule, in clear water they will pretty closely match the color of the bottom, and if the bottom is brightly sunlit they'll be light and bright as well. Smallmouth have more color changing ability than largemouth and spotted bass--the LMB and SPB can easily go darker or lighter, with markings more or less pronounced, but they don't seem to be able to change their basic greenish or grayish green color cast. Smallies can be anything from brownish olive to bronze to brassy to almost orange to almost black. And also unlike spots and largemouth, their bellies change shades. No matter what color the LMB or SPB is, their belly will be that same pearl white, but smallie bellies can be almost anything between pure white and dark gray.

I've taken a lot of photos of smallmouth I've caught to use in my paintings, and so I have a variety of color phases. Smallmouth can and do change color either to match their surroundings or their mood--they can make their dark bars and spots appear or disappear, go darker or lighter, have red eyes or dark eyes, even change the general color of their bodies. Here are a bunch of photos showing different colors: First of all, smaller fish often tend to be more brightly colored than big, old fish. Here's a beautifully colored little one: Note the many small orange spots on the sides. Here's a youngster that is extremely light in color--this fish was caught out in the open in shallow water and bright sunlight: Here's a bit larger fish, but extremely rich brown in color--this fish was caught on the upper Meramec: This is a fish caught last week on Flat Creek near Jenkins--note the red eye and light, bright color. The water was clear and shallow where this one was caught: Here are two fish caught on Huzzah Creek. This first one was under a log in shadow but in clear, shallow water: This one was caught in the same place a year earlier...it could possibly even be the same fish. But it was out in the open, and by the time I got it in the dark markings were very pronounced: Winter fish are often very light in color because the gravel of most streams is a lot cleaner and brighter in the winter and the fish change colors to match it. This is a winter fish from Current River: However, this is an autumn fish from the same stretch of the Current--it's also pretty light. Note the clear, white bellies on these light colored fish: Here's a beautifully marked, dark, late autumn fish from the Meramec: And this one is a winter fish from the same section: A big fish from upper Big River, beautifully but subtly marked: Another fish from the same section of Big River, this one practically unmarked: A very olive-bronze Meramec fish: A fish from murky water on the lower Bourbeuse: Two pretty big fish from my trip this week on the Mississippi trib, this first one is in the 20 inch class. Note the dark red in the eye: This one is lighter, came from murkier water farther down the creek...note the brighter red eye: Here's a very grayish brass fish from the mine waste section of Big River, caught over a bottom covered with the grayish mine tailings. Note the dark eyes, even though the fish is light overall: This one is very unmarked, with red eyes, caught from a small creek: Another, much bigger, smooth unmarked fish from the Gasconade: And finally, an interesting red-eyed fish with a very dark tail portion. This dark tail is more often seen in green sunfish and rock bass, and is believed to be a result of heavy metal contamination in the water:

I once broke a supposedly unbreakable aluminum and plastic paddle in that rock garden in the photo...which was not a good place to break a paddle. It sure is a pretty creek. I gotta get on it again; it's been more than 10 years since I last floated it.

Just a few clarifications on MO law... There are actually two classes of "navigability" in MO. The first is something called federal navigability...the navigability was ruled as such federally. Very few streams in MO are federally navigable--as I remember, the Missouri, Mississippi, Osage below Bagnell Dam, and maybe the lower ends of a couple other rivers. These were designated as such back in the steamboat days, and were basically the only streams where steamboats could run a good part of the year. In these streams, the public owns both the water and the river bed and banks up to the normal high water mark (which is considered the top of the high bank closest to the water). The only controversy surrounding such rivers is whether or not the public has the right to navigate the flooded portions of the rivers during high water...in other words, can you legally go out into a flooded farm field or up a small tributary when the river is high enough to take a boat into such places? The second class of navigability was the one ruled upon by the state supreme court in Elder vs. Delcour, which established that the public has the right to float, fish, and swim in rivers that were once used for some sort of commerce, and to get out onto the banks within the normal high water mark in order to do anything from picnic to portage around obstructions. I believe the test that the court cited was whether or not the stream had ever been used to float logs to market. However, on these streams, the public actually only owns the water and the denizens in it. The stream banks AND THE STREAM BOTTOM is owned by the adjacent landowner, and if one landowner owns one side of the stream and another landowner owns the other side, each owns the stream bottom to the center of the stream bed. That's why a landowner can sell the gravel on his section of stream, even the gravel underwater within the stream bed if other laws don't stop him from doing so. The court not only ruled in Elder vs. Delcour that the public had the right to float the stream with the reasoning of the stream once being used to float logs to market, but they also acknowledged that Missouri streams had traditionally been used for floating and fishing and used that as a further rationale for the ruling. In other words, it had been done for so long in the past that the tradition itself basically set a precedent.

Actually, they all have red eyes. Eye pigmentation is controlled by the same mechanism that controls the color changes on their bodies. We know that smallies can change color from darker to lighter (very quickly) as well as changing the dark bars from prominent to invisible. The way this works is that there are pigmented cells all over their bodies (including their eye iris) that expand or contract to make them darker or lighter. The red color in the eyes is always there, but the dark pigmented cells very often have expanded enough to conceal it. If you think back on the red-eyed smallies you've caught, I'll bet you'll realize that most of them were light in color over their whole bodies--the dark pigmented cells were contracted in them. Catch a smallmouth in bright daylight over clean gravel, and it will most likely be brassy tan in color (which matches the color of the clean gravel bottom) and its eyes will have a lot of red showing. Catch one during the summer on one of the more fertile streams where the bottom is darker and algae-covered and the fish has been lying in a shadowy area, and chances are it will be much darker bronze, with dark eyes. By the way, I still intend to post photos of this trip, but haven't downloaded them off the camera yet!

Six creeks big enough to furnish some fishing for smallmouth bass enter the Mississippi between the Meramec, just south of St. Louis, and Cape Girardeau, where the Mississippi leaves its passage along the edge of the Missouri Ozarks. Two of these six creeks have similar size forks upstream from their mouths, so in reality we're talking about eight creeks altogether. Geologically, these creeks come off the steepest edge of the Missouri Ozark Plateau, so they drop fairly rapidly in their headwaters, but slow down as they approach the big river. In order from the farthest upstream, they are Joachim Creek and Plattin Creek, which enter the Mississippi at Festus, Establishment Creek and it's tributary fork Fourche du Clos Creek, which enter the river near Bloomsdale, River Aux Vases, which comes into the upstream end of Kaskaskia Island, Saline Creek and its tributary the South Fork Saline which enters the river at the lower end of Kaskaskia, and Apple Creek, which forms the northern border of Cape Girardeau County. There is another creek, Indian Creek, which comes in below Apple Creek and in the past had a small population of smallies, but it was always pretty small and fragile and has suffered from development in the Cape area. Starting around 1970, spotted bass invaded first Apple Creek, and then the rest of the creeks in order upstream, reaching the Meramec by the early 1980s. So, whether or not the lower sections of these creeks ever had a lot of smallmouth, they are now spotted bass water. But the faster upper sections have mostly remained smallmouth habitat, at least in the case of Saline, River Aux Vases, and Establishment. Apple Creek has an old mill dam 15 miles or so above its mouth that formed a barrier to spotted bass encroachment for many years, but I haven't been on Apple for a long time so I don't know the present situation there...Apple is the slowest of these creeks and is spotted bass type habitat well above the mill dam. And...of all the creeks within an hour or so of where I live, I had never fished two of these 8 streams. Until today, when I added one of them to my list. Mary had to go somewhere that would bring her pretty close to this creek, so I got the great idea that she could shuttle me as she traveled to her destination. We loaded my solo canoe on our Highlander, put the Prius racks in the back of that vehicle, and drove both vehicles to the take-out, where we left the Prius. Then we went to the put-in, a high bridge with no good place to park, where we unloaded the canoe on the road shoulder and Mary left for her destination. I dragged the canoe and gear down to the creek and started what would be a ten mile float. The creek up there had just enough water to float most riffles, but a lot of it was bedrock bottom and very shallow ledge rock riffles. At first, I was seeing few bass, and my first catch was a 12 inch spotted bass. I was surprised. Spots that far up the creek? The water was clear, slightly brownish stained but with visibility of 5 feet or more. It was in the 60s and with that clear, shallow water, looked like it should be a good topwater day. Sure enough, after that first spot on a spinnerbait, a 13 inch smallie took a Sammy. But, there wasn't really much happening in the first mile or two. Then the creek dropped out of the bedrock bottom section into more typical Ozark habitat with gravel and cobble bottom. There were some pools that were flat and mostly devoid of cover, but other pools had nice logs and rootwads, and the occasional rocky hole. I began to see more fish, but they were still rather uncooperative. I began seeing smallmouth on beds. Aha, that explained the lack of feeding activity. One thing about these direct tribs of the Mississippi--you'll see a lot of fish that aren't typical of normal Ozark streams, coming up out of the big river. There were longnose gar spawning on every riffle. Big drum swam in the bigger pools. I saw some huge carp. Quillback carpsuckers. And...a very scary discovery: There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of silver carp, those horrific invaders of the Mississippi that are famous for jumping from the sound of an outboard and smacking the operator. They were all of two sizes, about 14 inches, and about 18 inches, and they ran in schools of 4 to 20 or so fish in every pool. The creek remained about the same in character for the next few miles, with a nice mix of pools and riffles, log and rock cover, water in the pools from 2 to 4 feet deep with deeper areas around big root wads. I started seeing more and more fish, and getting some action on the Sammy, but a lot of fish were striking and missing. I switched to a popper, which often works to get those short-striking fish, and caught a few on it, but it wasn't getting as much action. I switched to a different popper, and immediately caught a beautiful, fat, 16 inch smallmouth/spot hybrid, then three more smaller ones. But then that popper hit a drought. I switched back to the Sammy. Same thing. I threw my homemade twin spin off and on, and caught a couple really fat 15 inch spotted bass. I threw a tube in some good looking root wads and caught one nice rock bass. The creek slowed a bit more, with deeper pools and more logs. On the Mississippi tribs I usually fish, this would be a signal that the smallmouth were getting scarce. Some of these streams have a very sharp demarcation line between spot habitat and smallie habitat. But not this one. I was seeing more and more smallies. I raised a big one, had it on for a short time, and it got off. I hooked another good one, got it to the canoe, and it escaped. I switched to a third popper, and immediately caught a nice 14 incher and a largemouth. Then I came to a good pool with deep water and big logs. There were overhanging trees and a lot of brush, and the best cover was almost impossible to fish. I got past it, and made a cast to the downstream end of one of the big logs. The big smallie came off the log and charged the lure from five feet away, hitting it violently, one of those truly memorable strikes. And it stayed hooked. I didn't measure it, but I took pictures of it on my paddle blade, and I know how long the paddle blade is. The fish was pushing 20 inches. Right below, I got another one, this one about 17. In the next mile I got more action both from smallies and big spotted bass, 15-16 inchers. And then the stream slowed a bit more yet, and began to dig into its banks as all these creeks do at some point on their travel to the Mississippi. I caught one more nice 16 inch smallie and a couple more good spotted bass. And then I reached high mud banks, a narrowing channel, fewer riffles, and finally in the last two miles I was in almost totally flat water. The final tally was about 30 bass, almost evenly divided between spots, smallies, and largemouth, with 5 hybrids in the mix. And although there were a few more spots in the lower sections, the three species were almost evenly distributed as well. All in all, a very interesting float, and a creek I'll definitely fish again. I'll post pictures tomorrow.

First of all, thanks to everybody who showed up for my talk on Thursday night. To tell the truth, I had a lot more stuff I wanted to talk about, but ran out of time. Maybe next year Phil will have me again to talk about the rest of it! Mary has friends in the Springfield area that get together regularly, and this weekend was one of those times, so it worked out well that I had the talk on Thursday; we stayed in the area from Thursday until Sunday. Mary was meeting with some of her friends on Friday, but volunteered to put me in and take me out for a float trip. I chose to float the James from Hwy. 160 to Delaware Town Access, a stretch I'd never before floated. The river was definitely high, and was pretty murky at the put-in, though it cleared some farther downstream. I had two bass follow my spinnerbait on the first cast, so I thought it was a good omen. However, the fishing was very hit and miss, with a lot more misses than hits. The water temps were in the low 60s, and I would have thought the bass would be pretty active, but I fished a lot of good looking water with little to show for it. All in all I caught 14 spotted bass, two largemouth, and one lonely smallie. Some of the spots were very nice fish, however...including a very fat 17 incher that hammered my homemade crankbait just below the rapid at the fancy golf course. The smallmouth was about 14 inches. Mary asked me if the river was pretty. I said it was, but it was also a float to gaze at trophy houses. Geez, there were an awful lot of big, fancy homes atop the bluffs! A couple more notable things...this stretch of stream has about the biggest sunfish I've ever encountered on an Ozark stream. Huge green sunfish and hybrid sunfish (probably green X bluegill, or maybe green X redear. I wish I'd have been keeping them. I caught a bunch on crankbaits. And...copperheads do occasionally take a swim. I was drifting, canoe sideways to the current, down a pool when I glanced upstream and saw a snake swimming toward me, about 30 feet away. It was swimming with its entire body on the surface, which is a pretty good way to tell cottonmouths from ordinary water snakes, but I could tell it wasn't a cottonmouth. Nope, it was a copperhead, a big one about 30 inches long, coming straight toward the canoe. I picked up the paddle in case I had to fend it off, but it stopped and stared at me from five feet away, and then continued swimming, right under the front end of the canoe and on downstream to some floating debris, where it crawled out into the sun. I took some pictures of it with my cell phone...have to figure out how to get them downloaded. A lot of people would have freaked at seeing a poisonous snake swimming toward their canoe, certain that it was intent on climbing into the canoe and attacking them. But I was pretty certain that the snake was just swimming to get out of the water somewhere, and I happened to be in the way. Still, it was an interesting encounter. It's only the third or fourth time I've seen a copperhead on the water. Saturday, Mary was staying with her friends, and I decided to go exploring, heading toward Flat Creek. I first stopped at the old iron bridge at Jenkins, with the plan of possibly paddling upstream a ways and fishing back down, or possibly finding somebody at the bridge to shuttle me for a float. There was a single pickup truck there with two people inside...couldn't tell what they were doing. I was a little reluctant to approach them. Then I saw two guys in kayaks coming under the bridge and heading downstream. I talked to them for a bit and they considered letting me float with them and they'd haul me back to my vehicle, but decided they couldn't haul my canoe and both kayaks on their truck. Then two trucks with canoes pulled up. Aha, I thought, these guys might be willing to shuttle me as they shuttled themselves. It's always been my experience that most floaters are very willing to help other floaters like that. But as soon as they piled out of their trucks, the one woman was cussing her significant other non-stop about anything she could think of. He was understandably in a bad mood. Looked like he'd just as soon shoot me as look at me, and he looked like the kind of guy who'd do it. So much for that idea. So I decided to go down the gravel bar and check on the guys in the first pick-up...but they were just leaving. They were a couple of teenage boys that I bet would have jumped at the chance to shuttle me for a few dollars, but I was too late. So I put the canoe in and paddled upstream. Flat Creek is fast. I dragged a lot more than I paddled, going about two miles up the creek, coming to one big, deep pool. I figured there would be smallies in the faster water, but that pool would be sure to hold some nice ones. Nope. I never got a strike in the pool. Caught two smallies on my spinnerbait drifting back down in faster water. By this time it was mid-afternoon, but I decided to head over to Crane Creek and try some flyfishing for those McClouds. Crane Creek at the Wire Road CA is not the easiest stream to fish, I found out. I wonder why that stretch has such high banks. However, I did manage to catch a few trout in a couple hours of fishing, including a couple of 11-12 inchers. It was a nice way to end the day. We left for home Sunday morning.

Yeah, find a recipe for blackened redfish. Drum are in the same family and lots of people think they are better blackened than redfish.

First of all, forget about snagging them. There is practically nowhere on their bodies that isn't bone-hard, so you can't sink a hook into them anywhere except the fleshy part on the upper edge of their tail. I know this because I once purposely snagged a 52 inch one there with an ultralight rod and 4 pound test line! For the same reason, conventional lures seldom hook them. Their snouts are just as hard and bony as the rest of them. The nylon rope trick is supposed to work, though I've never done it either. I know guys who have replaced the feathered treble on a big in-line spinner with the length of nylon and caught them regularly. But the most consistent way to catch them is with live minnows. Sight fish for them, casting the minnows with no weight in front of one. When it takes the minnow, give it plenty of time to swallow before setting the hook. That way, they'll be hooked down in the gullet. Of course, this is only if you want to keep them, and actually gar are pretty decent fish to eat. Being a primitive fish, they have no bones. Cleaning them is a problem, though, for that same reason...they are basically armor-plated. A guy I know used a very heavy meat cleaver and a big rubber mallet. Lay the gar out flat, and use the mallet and cleaver to chop it into steaks with the armor scales still on, then use a sharp knife to cut the steak out of the ring of scales. Interestingly, the eggs of gar are mildly poisonous.

OTF, I definitely agree with you there. Colorado is a very frustrating state in which to try to fish and get away from the crowds, since the amount of public access is so limited that the anglers are concentrated. And from what I've heard, you'd think that the private landowners must hire full-time river use police, since I've talked to guys who were floating and the instant their boat touched a mid-stream rock some guy would come out of the brush and accuse them of trespass.

I knew it was going to be windy. I knew from the river gauges that the Meramec was high. I figured it would be pretty murky as well. But geez, when you have 80 degree weather at the first of April, you just gotta go fishing, don't you? The plan was to take the jetboat, pick up my dad, and head for the river to arrive about 9:30. I told Dad when I picked him up that I still didn't know exactly where I wanted to go. In fact, I didn't decide for sure until I had to make a turn or stay straight on the highway. I made the turn. Sure enough, when we got to the river, it was MOVING. And barely green instead of brown, visibility about 18 inches. In fact, at over 2500 cfs on the Sullivan gauge, I couldn't remember ever fishing it when it was this high. But it WAS green, and I HAVE caught lots of fish when it was about this murky. The temp gauge said 57.5 when we put in. I thought wide-wobbling crankbaits and maybe big spinnerbaits would be the ticket at that temperature. I figured that the fish should be in little slack water pockets off the strong current. I didn't expect them to be IN the current; it was just too strong. I planned to fish runs along rocky banks, the bigger, slower pools, and a few larger backwaters for largemouth, and if none of that worked I'd try the slack water behind islands and off gravel bars, which sometimes works under these conditions. I thought that surely Dad and I would eventually find some fish, and expected to catch a couple and let them tell me where to fish. I tried it all. Even tried some other stuff, like tubes in a couple of places that "always" hold fish. We fished parts of about 8 miles of river, the optimum parts. I stayed on the trolling motor, from 40% to 100% power the whole time to keep the boat in position in the current. I fought the wind, which at times was strong enough that even within the confines of the river and 100% power on a 24 volt 80 pound thrust trolling motor wouldn't hold the boat against it. At 2:45 PM, I turned to Dad and said, "You know, I ain't normally a quitter...but I think we're wasting our time." Final tally for the day...Dad caught one 12 inch largemouth and a small goggle-eye. I caught two 10 inch smallies and three goggle-eye. We had to fall back upon the old, "Well, it was a great day to be on the river." mindset. The river's banks were pretty, with the serviceberry in full bloom on the hillsides and the redbuds just starting to show. But the fishing was...BAD.

Big Shrimp, see my post about my trip today in this section...it might tell you what NOT to do!