Al Agnew

I've been around beagles enough to know that a good beagle is VERY difficult to scare or call off a hot trail. They'll run a rabbit until the rabbit is shot or it goes into a hole, and even when it goes into the hole, the dog is often difficult for the OWNER to get away. A stranger shouting, throwing rocks, or shooting willy-nilly AIN'T gonna get the dog off the trail. And I'm still waiting to hear whether rabbit season was even open at the time this happened. And like Gavin, I'm wondering if the dog wasn't trained to run deer. Thing is, you guys are looking at it solely from the owner's point of view, or your own point of view that a beagle is a cute little dog. Like somebody said, beagles are HUNTING dogs, bred to run critters either in circles or to exhaustion, and deer probably can recognize when something is hunting them rather than just chasing them for the fun of it or playing with them. You don't know, and neither do I, what the exact situation was when the ranger encountered the dog and deer. Maybe he's just a dog hater and took the excuse to shoot his firearm at something he didn't like. Or maybe there's a lot more to the story than that. But I'm still not sure what else he could have done IF the dog was truly harassing deer. One final question...is it generally known that park rangers can shoot pets that are harassing wildlife? And if so, what the heck was the guy doing running his dogs so close to a place where they could stray into such trouble?

Yeah, what I got by listening somewhat between the lines on the Asian carp deal is that most biologists are not too concerned about them, not only because they are a warm water fish and the Great Lakes are mostly too cold, but also that they are algae and plankton feeders and the Great Lakes are too clear and don't have enough fertility to feed them. In other words, the whole issue is probably more political at this point than biological. They noted that there have been only two carp found within the shipping canal, and I'd guess it's quite possible that the cool water from Lake Michigan coming into the canal is probably mostly keeping them from coming into the canal. I'm usually pretty impressed with Diane Rheem's knowledge of the subjects her guests discuss, but I think she had a lot of misconceptions about invasive fish species, use of rotenone, and angling in general. I got the sense that she was philosophically opposed to angling. And she kept coming back to some old quote in the book being discussed about the "manliness" of angling, as if fisherman are fishing because it's a macho thing. I wasn't in a place where I could call in, but I wanted to call in and say that in a lifetime of angling, until today the thought never crossed my mind that I was doing it because it was "manly". And especially since they were mostly discussing rainbow trout--since we all know that most trout fishermen are fly fishermen, and fly fishermen are thought to be more like effete snobs, not macho men. (Just joking!)

Could the beagle actually kill the deer? No. But just because beagles are slow doesn't mean they can't harass deer. They can stay on a trail a long time, and deer are just as afraid of them as they would be a big dog. I watched a doe today that was trying to feed at a feeder, but there was a small possum already at the feeder. It kept the deer away until it was satisfied. And it was a lot smaller than a beagle. A "good" beagle could have run the deer to exhaustion. Could the agent have handled it differently? Maybe. But I highly doubt that the dog would have stopped running the deer in order for him to catch it. Maybe the owner could have called it off the deer, but probably not a stranger. So exactly how else was he going to get the dog off the deer?

I have zero brand loyalty when it comes to rods. I basically buy whatever I find that feels good and is a good price, and watch for sales. Of the rods I use all the time, I've got two Loomis, a Kistler, two Falcons, a St. Croix, a Castaway, a Browning, and two that I made myself, one from a Loomis blank, the other from a Cabelas blank. In fly rods, I have two Sages, a St. Croix, two Loomis, and a Winston.

Actually, although I've never used the reels you listed, I've been fairly happy with the Bass Pro reels I've owned. They are made for BPS by one or another of the major reel manufacturers (varies from year to year and model to model, depending upon who is willing to make the best deal with BPS). I've had two BPS spinning reels that have been pretty decent, and I also own and use three of their Prolite Finesse casting reels and like them. But the Prolite reels are now discontinued, and that points up one of the possible problems with buying a BPS brand (or Cabelas brand, for that matter) reel--if the deal they have with the manufacturer of that reel expires, the reels disappear, and quite possibly spare parts for repairing them will soon disappear as well. The good thing is that, since it's a BPS reel, they often put them on sale, and when they get discontinued if you're alert you can often pick them up for a discounted price. I got my first Prolite reel for $70 when they were switching to a "new and improved" version, got the "new and improved" model a year later for $80 during a sale, and picked up a third one for $70 when they discontinued it. Those prices were all $30 to $50 off retail.

There are times during the low water of summer when you'll find a few riffles that could be really tricky to run with a prop. Most of the river in that area is slow and reasonably runnable. Your worst obstacles would probably be sunken logs in slow water.

Chief, and anybody else who is questioning the reasons for joining... Consider this. There are going to be other issues (in fact, there already are) affecting stream smallmouth fishing in Missouri. Some are threats to the resource, others are threats to our ability to use the resource. For instance, since my wife had a meeting outside Marshfield on Saturday, we stayed in Marshfield Friday night. After dropping her off at her meeting, I took back roads toward Springfield and the meeting, and visited every bridge crossing on the upper James above Springfield. Did you know that almost every bridge crossing is unusable as an access these days? Even the bridge that is the "head of navigation" in the MDC float stream book is now closed to access, with cables across all approaches to the water and "no parking" signs everywhere. And there is apparently a rich landowner along the river who has succeeded in closing off his section of the river to all users. Guys, this is a problem, and it's a problem that is only going to get worse and scares the heck out of me. Collusion between influential landowners and county officials could very well spell doom for access to many streams in this state. Sooner of later we're going to have to fight this battle. Now consider this...what other organization is there that is an advocate for stream smallmouth fishing in this state--and not as only one small part of a lot of other issues? None. It takes a concerted effort to fight major conservation battles. Individuals alone just don't get it done. It takes organization. The MSA is the only organization right now that can fill the bill. Maybe it hasn't been as strong or as successful as it could be, but it certainly has a good reputation with MDC. You may not agree with everything we are doing. In fact, at least one member of our blue ribbon panel doesn't agree with all our strategy for improving smallmouth fishing. Doesn't mean he isn't a valued member, and he has certainly given us food for thought and caused us to question our beliefs and outlook. But starting a new SWMO chapter is a perfect opportunity for you to make your own thoughts and beliefs known, and maybe even shape the chapter the way you think it should be. Standing on the sidelines and either cheering or booing just ain't gonna get much of anything done, either for what you think the MSA should be or for our fisheries and fishing opportunities. The least you can do to start to make a difference is to join, so that you'll be one of the anglers represented by the organization. Even better would be to actually roll up your sleeves and do some work within the organization. By the way, our proposals seemed to be well-received at the meeting on Monday. I am hopeful that MDC is going to be making some changes in regs and special management areas in the next few years. Whether the changes will reflect our proposals or not, it's far too soon to tell.

More canoe possibilities... Wenonah Fisherman and Kingfisher Two wide "angler" canoes. The Fisherman is somewhat comparable to the OT Osprey, 14 feet and 59 pounds in Royalex. The Kingfisher is 16 feet and 68 pounds. The biggest problem with these canoes is that they are too wide to paddle easily from a center position solo, and they are asymmetrical, so they don't work very well turning them around and paddling from the front seat. Wenonah Heron and Aurora Two "downsized" Spirit IIs. The Heron is 15 feet and 58 pounds, moderate width, flattish bottom, marketed as a canoe for the casual paddler. It would be an okay design for angling. The Aurora is 16 feet and 67 pounds. Of the two, I think I'd prefer the Aurora. Like other Wenonah models, they are asymmetrical. Mad River Explorer 16 foot 72 pounds. It's a nice design that would paddle well and track well. The only thing I have against Mad River canoes is the shallow V bottom. The problem I see with it is that the apex of the V will catch most of the wear you get dragging over shallow riffles. With shallow arch bottom canoes, the wear is spread around a little more. Also, in recent years Mad River's reputation for well-built, durable canoes has suffered a bit. Take that for what it's worth. Some comments on the other canoes that have been mentioned here... Two Brothers Arkoda 16 feet, 72 pounds. Two Brothers has gone for sturdiness, and it shows in the greater weight of their Royalex canoes. Other than the weight, the only question I have with the Arkoda is that it has a lot of rocker. I haven't paddled one, but I would suspect that with four inches of rocker it would maneuver extremely well and track rather poorly. I can see this as a great canoe for some of the smaller Arkansas streams with sharper drops and rock gardens, but not as good a design for the larger Missouri rivers. The Brightwater, at a little over 14 feet, would be a pretty low volume canoe for serious tandem use, it would seem to me. Buffalo 16 foot Like Two Brothers, Buffalo uses a heavier Royalex and goes for sturdiness. The 16 footer has less rocker than the Arkoda, but has very high ends that are real wind catchers. That would be my only real quibble with the design. Coleman Scanoe I was unable to find the weight of this barge, but I've helped lift and load it a number of times and it isn't a one man job. If your style of float fishing is putting in on larger streams at developed accesses and not floating more than 5 or 6 miles a day, taking your sweet time...or if you're planning on using a trolling motor, it's the canoe type craft for you. But I wouldn't want to have to solo one, and I wouldn't want to paddle it very far for very long. It simply isn't a real good all purpose craft. And the plastic that Coleman and Pelican uses is heavy, flimsy (hence the need for internal aluminum braces--otherwise the hull would flex all over the place), and very difficult to repair. But lots of anglers use Scanoes and like them just fine. And the price is right. A mention for aluminum canoes...aluminum is still the most durable material...an aluminum canoe will probably outlive you unless you wrap it around a rock or drop it off the vehicle at 70 mph. Aluminum canoes are very vanilla designs that do nothing really well, and aluminum is noisy and very sticky and will burn you or freeze you. But a whole lot of people have used aluminum canoes all their lives with no real complaints. So on the whole, you have to answer for yourself how much money you want to spend, how important initial stability is to you, whether you will use the canoe more tandem or solo, what kind of streams you'll most often use it on, how much weight you want to lift, how you'll transport it, and probably a bunch of other questions, all of which will have a bearing on which canoe will fit you best.

Choosing the "perfect" canoe for you is never easy because no one design is the best answer for everybody. Everything is a compromise. At the same time, there are many canoes that will serve the purpose fairly well. I've spent a LOT of time paddling and fishing Ozark rivers, and have paddled a lot of different canoes. Here are my thoughts on various widely available canoes: Old Town Royalex Penobscot 16 My personal favorite tandem canoe by far. Royalex is the best material for a fishing canoe because it is durable, quiet, slick (slides over logs and rocks without sticking), comfortable in weather extremes, and reasonably light in weight. The Penobscot is the fastest, best-tracking Royalex canoe on the market. Canoe designs are always compromises between tracking/speed and maneuverability, and the Penobscot leans a bit toward tracking at the expense of maneuvering, but on all but the small, narrow, twisty creeks, I don't think you need extreme maneuverability, and I want to be able to paddle easily through long, dead pools--and sometimes I need to paddle the last couple of miles of a float in a hurry or get there after dark! Plus, the same characteristics that make a canoe track well and slip through the water easily also make it easier to slow or stop the canoe in current in order to fish. The Penobscot, being a narrow canoe for its length with a slightly rounded bottom, will feel tippy to those not used to it. It is not a canoe that you can stand up and fish in. But the straight, relatively high sides make it resistant to actually flipping. And the narrowness makes it easier to paddle solo from a position near the center of the canoe. In most tandems, as long as the seats and thwart placement allow it, you can solo by turning the canoe around and paddling from what was the front seat, but that still requires adding weight to the "front" of the canoe to trim it as level as possible. I much prefer to paddle from a position near the center of the canoe. If a canoe is too wide, you can't paddle efficiently from the center position. There is also a 17 ft. Penobscot. It's heavier, but it paddles just as well and holds more gear (and heavier paddlers). Old Town Camper 16 feet, 59 pounds, Royalex. It's a wider, slower canoe than the Penobscot, and has higher ends, which makes the wind affect it more. Not as good for soloing from the center, but a very good canoe that leans a little more toward maneuverability. There is also a 15 ft. Camper, but I'd recommend the longer version. In a tandem canoe, 16 or 17 feet is usually better for two reasons. One, a shorter canoe makes hooking some portion of your partner's anatomy while casting a little more likely. Two, longer canoes offer more options for stowing extra fishing rods. Wenonah Spirit II 17 feet, 69 pounds in Royalex. It's a big, wide canoe that paddles very well and a great compromise between speed and maneuverability. Not as good for solo use, but certainly doable. Holds plenty of gear and is a nice craft to fish from, having pretty good stability both initial and final. Mohawk Nova 16 16 feet, 65 pounds in Royalex. The Royalite is cheaper and lighter but not nearly as durable. A sweet-paddling canoe that tracks well and is pretty fast, but maneuvers fairly well also. Wide but solos pretty well. Mohawks are a little cheaper than some of the other Royalex canoes. Old Town Discovery 158 and 169 These are the poly plastic Old Towns, 16 and 17 foot versions. The 16 (158) weighs in at 80 pounds, the 169 at 85. They are what I'd call vanilla designs that do everything okay and nothing really well, but are good fishing craft. The poly material has all the advantages of Royalex except that it's heavier. If you use a lot of difficult accesses or you're cartopping and can't handle heavy weights, the greater weight will be a definite drawback. But they are cheaper than Royalex canoes. Old Town Osprey A short 14 foot, very wide, 57 pound Royalex canoe. You may find short canoes to be easier to paddle solo, and if you do a lot of smaller creeks the short canoe can be helpful in getting through narrow, brushy riffles. I've already mentioned the drawbacks to short canoes. But this one is one you can stand in to fish if you have decent balance. Pretty much requires soloing from the front seat turned backwards. More on other models tomorrow...

Guys, I'm one of the MSA members who will be at the meeting. Hope to see lots of you there...I'm looking forward to it!

When you get right down to it, spinning reels have inherent design flaws that make line twist simply a part of the game. It's like taking a garden hose off a hose reel. Pull it off like line comes off a spinning reel, and the hose is badly twisted. Pull it off with the hose reel rotating, like line comes off a baitcaster, and the hose stays untwisted. And if you are trying to reel while fighting a fish and the drag is slipping, that also imparts a great amount of twist. And of course there are some lures that cause twist, but that is no different from using baitcasting. What has always irked me is that you are forced to either put up with the twist, or to take what I consider extraordinary measures to deal with it. It is line twist that causes those loops when you close the bail that result in a horrific tangle on the next cast. Closing the bail by hand doesn't always preclude the loop, the only way to preclude it completely is to lift up on the rod or pull the line tight by hand after closing the bail and before beginning to reel. To me, if you have to do such things, it's one more bit of unwanted complexity. I believe in keeping things simple. I use braid because, although it twists the same as mono, the braid is limp enough and soft enough that the twist that's there doesn't affect the line enough to cause those loops. So I can close the bail however I want to without worrying about it. And in keeping with my simplicity theme, I have never used a leader with braid. I mostly use 2/10 Power Pro, meaning it's the same diameter as 2 pound mono. I am pretty well convinced that anything up to 6/20 Power Pro does not bother the fish. I'm pretty sure bass don't care, no matter how clear the water is--I also never use anything in co-poly less than 8 pound test, even on the clearest streams in the Ozarks, and I certainly don't have a lot of trouble catching fish. I'm not even as convinced as most that trout are put off by thicker line diameters. I have fished a lot of trout water where most anglers insisted you needed to use 7X tippet to do any good...and I caught plenty of fish with 4X fluorocarbon when nymphing, and 3X when fishing streamers. I think trout are put off not by the line itself, but by how it affects the float and drift of the fly. If you're using size 18 and smaller dry flies, you have to use a very light line or the fly will not float "naturally". So I basically match my tippet to the size flies I'm using, not the clarity of the water or the supposed sophistication of the fish.

One or two observations... Unless you've tried every line out there, you can't really say that line X is the best. All the average angler can do is to settle on a decent line and learn all its foibles and characteristics, and then if he's a knowledgeable angler he'll catch fish on it just fine. To my way of thinking, braided line has two advantages. One, it gives you a lot more sensitivity, making it good for bottom fishing applications where you need to feel what your lure is doing. And two, it is much less affected by line twist, so it is fairly trouble free on spinning reels. And so I use it on spinning tackle for fishing bottom bumping soft plastics and jigs. I've never yet seen a need to use it for any other applications.

I'm exceedingly glad I never smoked. The biggest reason was my mom and dad, who smoked from the time they were teenagers. I grew up in a house filled with smoke and dirty ashtrays, sat in the car just about every day choking on smoke, lived close enough to it growing up that I never realized how badly my own clothes smelled at school just because of the smoke at home. In their later years, I watched Mom and Dad try to quit multiple times. They were finally able to do it when my brother had his first child, and told them they were not welcome around the baby unless they stopped smoking. The wish to be with their grandson finally was the catalyst that made them want to quit badly enough to do it. That was over 20 years ago...and mostly too late for them. Mom died a few years ago from smoking related causes, and Dad lives on with COPD bad enough that he really should be on an oxygen tank full time, and with heart disease as well. Both quit cold turkey when they finally succeeded, and while Mom didn't seem to have too much trouble with it, Dad found that the only way he could do it was to be constantly chewing on something. He finally settled on, of all things, plastic cable ties. They are tough enough to last through some serious chewing, and don't have any real taste. Even after all this time, he still carries a couple in his shirt pocket and chews on them frequently.

When you study it a bit, it's amazing and distressing how many species humans have either purposely or accidentally spread that have caused all kinds of trouble. One that really bothers me shows up in huge numbers at our bird feeders--house finches. They were released by some idiot in the St. Louis area many years ago, and for many years they stayed as a small population right in St. Louis. But about 20 years ago they suddenly for no apparent reason started to spread out. They began showing up at our feeders about then (we're about 60 miles from St. Louis. In the period of two years they became extremely abundant, and the native (and to my mind much prettier) purple finches all but disappeared. Go out in the spring and start looking at "wildflowers". Half the species of wildflowers you'll identify are invasives from Europe, brought over by some doofus who thought they'd be nice looking in their garden, or hitchhiking in as seeds. We are gradually undoing natural evolution. Species evolve to fill specific ecological niches, and so most areas were once full of species that evolved to fit those particular areas, and their food and predators evolved right along with them. But some species are "generalists", able to thrive in many varied habitats, and those are the ones that humans have spread all over the world. They outcompete the native species that once had the protection of space and distance--they had their range to themselves. And the result is habitats dominated by a few now extremely common and widespread species, instead of the rich diversity they once had. The whole world is getting more and more all the same, instead of having that diversity. The Asian carp in the Mississippi is a great example...at the rate they have spread and thrived at the expense of native species, it's not inconceivable that the whole river will become full of Asian carp and few other fish. Sometimes I'm glad I don't have kids, and that I probably have no more than another 30-40 years or so to live, tops. Because I am really pessimistic about what the natural world that I love will be like by then.

That time of year, to avoid the crowds you have to be willing to go higher than the crowds do, which means low water and dragging. But if you go during the week, the crowds aren't too bad. In a typical late July scenario, the Woolum to Tyler Bend stretch that Bobber mentioned can be nice, but can also be too low to float if the river is really low. It probably needs to be over 150 cfs on the gauge to make floating from Woolum down practical. To get the very best of the summertime Buffalo experience, you need to take three days and go from Rush to the White. Other than the Ponca to Kyles stretch on the upper river, which will almost certainly be too low to even think about floating in July, the lower end is the most scenic and seemingly remote stretch, and can be pretty decent fishing. The stretch from Buffalo Point to Rush is beautiful but crowded. The stretches from Tyler Bend and Gilbert to Maumee and Maumee to Buffalo Point are almost as pretty and sometimes better fishing, but also can be crowded.

Actually, if it was the stretch of river I think it was, it gets plenty clear enough to gig, and was that clear before the last round of rain. And since they mentioned that they caught several bass with gig marks, if somebody was doing it by accident they were being criminally careless. I'm going to say it again...if you think herons can get smallmouth in the middle of the winter, you're delusional. The bass simply don't move into shallow enough water during the daylight hours in the winter. In all the years I've spent on Ozark streams, and all the others I've talked to including Nick and cwc who have spent even more time on the water in the winter, none of us have ever seen smallies in water shallower than about three feet in cold weather. The weedbeds are gone, and the water is too clear for them to feel secure in shallow water. They seem to know instinctively that they are slow and sluggish and unable to escape predators as easily, which I think is why they gravitate to deeper pools with lots of cover in the winter. About the only natural predator of adult smallmouth in the winter is the otter. Otters don't leave those kinds of marks. And it's funny that during the summer, when I and the others catch a lot MORE stream bass per trip and it would be possible for herons to actually find them in shallow enough water occasionally, we almost never see a bass with a fresh puncture wound. But in the winter when the chances of heron predation are practically nil (and the gigging season is open) we see a lot of puncture wounds. So please don't suggest herons are the culprit on ANY of these wintertime bass.

Dang it, I KNEW the first part of the week was going to be a good time to go, but I had to be in Las Vegas for the SHOT Show this past week. I hate Vegas. Every time I go there for some convention or something I realize all over again how much I hate it. Nick can flat out catch fish...see why I call him a guru? I'm almost glad it's raining like crazy again, since I'm going to be in Montana next week. Maybe I won't miss much Ozark winter smallie fishing.

There are several fly shops in West Yellowstone that will hook you up with a guide for the park. The grizzlies are there, and the farther you get into the back-country in the summer the more likely you are to encounter one, but it isn't all that likely and even if you do run across one it isn't all that likely that it will be aggressive. Most of the places the guides will take you for a day trip, the chances of seeing a grizzly are fairly remote. If you are doing day trips in the park, figure on LOTS of company in the summer. Anyplace you can drive to and get to with less than an hour of hiking is going to have other anglers. If you're willing to walk a little farther than that, the competition drops off significantly. There are a lot of smaller streams in the park that have pretty good fishing and few other anglers, but it takes some exploring to find the better spots. There are several good books on fishing in the park that can be pretty helpful if you are doing it on your own. Otherwise, as my flyfishing buddy and I have said many times, "Let your guide be your guide." You also have other options outside the park. Lots of good fishing, both wading and drift boat floating with a guide, on the Yellowstone on the north side of the park, on the Madison to the west and northwest, and on the Snake to the south in and around Grand Teton Park. The park float on the Snake is the most popular, and only a couple of concessions are able to do those trips so they are booked months in advance, but there are other floats below the park that are easier to set up. In my opinion, unless you do a backcountry trip of more than one day in the park, the better fishing is to be found outside the park. One trip in the park I heartily recommend if you have the time and want to spend the money is a horseback trip up Slough Creek to the third meadow. It will be a multi-day trip (takes about a half day of riding to get there). Lots of big native Yellowstone Cutthroats.

jd, I think we already talked about the herons. Herons simply do not prey upon 18 inch plus smallmouth, nor will you find smallmouth of that size, or bass of any size, shallow enough during the day to be reached by herons, especially in the winter. It simply doesn't happen. Herons prey upon the bass in my pond...I've watched them. But they never go after bass much over 12 inches, and they can only reach the bass that are lying in no more than 18 inches of water. Bass just don't go that shallow in late fall and winter. As for otters, they are certainly efficient bass predators. But they cannot make the kind of holes and scrapes in bass that we are finding. It just doesn't fit the size of their teeth and jaws. Don't know what was causing the scars on the fish you saw, could have been herons, since trout CAN be shallow enough for herons to reach in cold weather, unlike bass.

Yep, "education" is one of those throw-away terms that sounds good in theory, but I don't see it solving this problem. The people who are doing it deliberately KNOW it's against the law...they don't need educating on that fact. They also think that they have the right to do whatever they please once they are out of sight of law enforcement, and the only education that will fix that is as Gary said. When you stop and think about it, this is about as sticky a problem as you can get in managing bass populations on streams. 1. It's a traditional sport with lots of local adherents. The difference between Missouri and most other states is that most other states don't allow taking fish this way, and never have. 2. It has become a lot more efficient than it used to be, and probably with more people doing it regularly. 3. It is done at times and in places where law enforcement is about as difficult as it could be. 4. The number of people doing it ILLEGALLY is probably quite small, and those people are hard to reach. 5. But those few people have a major impact specifically on the numbers of the biggest game fish in the areas where they do it. It's obvious from just reading everybody's thoughts here that there is no good way of fixing the situation. I think our only hope is a combination of MDC action in stronger enforcement attempts and experimental closing of certain stream sections to all gigging, and time for the few people who do it to either see the light or die off. I don't say that entirely as a joke. In my lifetime I've seen a lot of changes in attitude among Ozarkers toward illegal exploitation of wildlife. The percentage of law-breakers has dropped a lot. The only problem is that although fewer people break the game laws, some of those who do are better at it and better equipped than they ever were before. Gigging game fish is no exception.

Intentionally? From what I've seen, absolutely. And it only takes one or two, which is what I've been saying all along. Zipstick's experience on his hole, with multiple gigged bass and a 21 incher, and my experience, most notably several gigged bass including 3 over 18 inches, all out of the same hole and all apparently done at the same time, tells me that in those cases it isn't accidental. And, if you can get any kind of a look at the fish, there is no way you can mistake a bass for a sucker. And, the bass are simply not going to be in the same places as the suckers most of the time. Suckers are open water fish. Bass hang around cover. Nope, you have to be LOOKING for bass to gig them. I can see how trout can be mistaken for suckers occasionally, since the general shape and the location of the dorsal fin are similar. But bass have different fin placement and different body shape. You simply can't mistake them for any kind of fish that's legal to gig, unless you're simply gigging at shadows. Yep, the smaller streams have some built-in protection except right around the accesses or on big holes that somebody can drive into on private property. I do count my blessings there, and that is probably one reason why there are big bass to be caught on smaller streams. But as for needing very clear water, that doesn't help much when it only takes one or two bad guys and just a few nights of good conditions for the damage to be done.

Nope.

I agree totally with jscheetz. Sometimes you really need the radical fringe to continue to call attention to a problem if nothing else is working. The "research" exemption allowing whale hunting is a farce, but it's a farce promulgated by the Japanese government. Since it's obvious we ain't gonna nuke the government over it, and the UN isn't is going to look the other way, the only real thing left to do is for somebody to grandstand and keep calling attention to it. Whale hunting is a throwback to an earlier time when there were lots of whales and relatively few people, and whale oil was actually a viable source of energy. It is entirely unnecessary and, knowing what we do about the intelligence of whales, borderline immoral from a human standpoint these days. And it's only one of many ways in which the Japanese and some other oriental nations are at best ignoring and at worst encouraging exploitation of threatened and endangered species. From rhino horn to bear gall to tiger livers, a lot of rich old Japanese and Chinese men are fixated on their gonads at the cost of rare animals (those are all used as aphrodisiacs), and from shark fins to whales, they are fixated on exotic tastes. I have absolutely zero regard or respect for the whalers or the people in the governments who allow it to happen.

There was a pretty good discussion of them over on Riversmallies a while back. I think the consensus was that they save on weight but make little difference on performance. Personally, I simply don't like the looks of them, but then again I didn't like the looks of baggy basketball shorts when they first appeared, but I've gotten used to them! RPS, I'll be interested as to how you find that rod works for Spooks. I really don't like long-handled rods for spook fishing because the handle slaps my forearm with each twitch, and after a while it gets to be a pain. My canoe spook rod is only 5 feet long (because it's a whole lot easier to work a walk-the-dog type bait with a very short rod when you're sitting down in a canoe or kayak) and has a short, straight handle. My boat WTD rod is about 6'2" because it started out being a 6.5 ft. rod but the handle was too long so I cut part of it off.

Okay, several final points and then I suppose I'm done with this thread (although I reserve the right to respond to further discussion!) Chief, nobody in this thread or the others on regulations is talking about the demise of smallmouth--except to some extent in the streams where spotted bass are in the process of taking over. What we're talking about is improving the fishing, especially for bigger fish. Smallmouth are resilient, and generally it only takes a limited number of adult fish to produce enough young each year to maintain the population. The problem appears to be (and the studies in the SMAs have shown it) that too many of the adult bass are being cropped each year for there to be many growing to larger sizes. This problem seems to be widespread--lots of fish most places, but few big ones compared to other states and regions of the country. Again, the studies from the SMAs show that reducing the limit and increasing the size limit will result in more fish over the new size limit. Gigging is a different story. The ONLY problem with gigging (other than apparent cropping of suckers by LEGAL giggers) is with ILLEGAL activity. And, although it is apparently fairly widespread given the people on here that have seen the evidence on their streams, it IS more of a problem on the larger streams. But...regarding Kickin'bass's point about the dead trout in very popular trout fishing places, the difference between gigging and all other forms of legal fishing AND illegal fishing activities, is that the illegal gigger can and does SPECIFICALLY crop off the biggest fish. In no other fishing method can one purposely pick out the exact fish that they will take. Chances are that EVERY 18 inch plus smallmouth in a three or four mile stretch of a pretty big river end up in Zipstick's favorite winter fishing hole, and he and I could fish it all winter and probably never catch all of those big fish. We might catch a goodly number of them, and might possibly hook one or two badly enough to cause them to die, but it's still a crap shoot, and even if we kept every one of them we caught, we wouldn't come close to catching them all. But one or two unscrupulous giggers in the right conditions very well could kill nearly every one of them. Does that harm the overall smallmouth population in that stretch? Only to the point that big fish are rarer there the next year, and each year after that as long as the illegal activity continues. But that's the whole point, the big fish are being ILLEGALLY cropped off. And while this may seem to be a localized problem, it is definitely a problem on the Meramec, the river I'm most familiar with, from above Steelville to St. Clair, and that's a long stretch of river. Now, I'm going to say it one more time. It is neither realistic, nor fair, to attempt to fix the problem by banning gigging. In my opinion, it MIGHT be a reasonable idea to have a temporary gigging ban in some Special Management Areas, in order to quantify the impact of gigging scientifically instead of anecdotally the way it is now. Would I be happy if gigging WAS banned? Given that personally I enjoy catching big smallmouth more than I enjoy gigging, in a way it would be fine with me. But I KNOW it would not be fair to the many legal giggers, so although I could be selfish and advocate banning it, I won't. Nor is limiting the technology used in gigging a viable option, in my opinion, even though we know that current technology makes it a whole lot easier than it used to be, and thus more efficient at both cropping suckers and killing game fish. It was my frustration talking when I said the sport was impossible to police, but realistically, you aren't going to catch many of the illegal giggers. It just isn't possible. But a more visible and concentrated effort to police the rivers during the gigging season would hopefully discourage the activity. And I WILL, from now on, photograph and document every gig-scarred smallmouth I see, dead or alive, and I hope everybody else will, too. Here a few final thoughts on big fish, both suckers and bass... There are five species of redhorse suckers that are native to the Ozark streams, the black, golden, silver, shorthead, and river redhorse. Of those, the black and golden redhorse are by far the most common. Both these species commonly grow to about 15 inches long. They become adults and begin to spawn at about 9 inches. It takes them three years to grow to adult size of around 9 inches, and five years to grow to the size where they begin to be legitimate gigging targets at about 12 inches. They can live to 10 or 11 years, and the maximum size usually seen in Missouri streams is about 17 inches. BUT...there is at least one record of a 26 inch black redhorse being caught in the Eleven Point River, and in other parts of the country where they are found, they get up to 20 inches commonly and there are many records of fish approaching 30 inches. As for the other three species, they are much less common, but the silver redhorse gets to 20 inches in Missouri and 28 inches elsewhere. The shorthead redhorse are about the same size as the black and golden in Missouri, but gets to 29 inches elsewhere. And the river redhorse gets to 26 inches in Missouri, and 30 inches elsewhere. So...some food for thought. Could it be that the reason these suckers don't get very big in Missouri, and most redhorse that are seen and gigged are 15 inches or less, be because they are being gigged before they can live the five or more years it takes for them to get to their potential size? Would it be possible to perhaps alternate closing certain sections of the larger streams to gigging for a year or two at a time, in order to give the suckers a sanctuary where they could grow bigger? Not a permanent closure, and not the whole stream, but say a 10 mile section for every 40 miles of stream to be closed for two years, then opened and a different section closed? I wonder if you giggers would be willing to accept that kind of restriction IF it gave you more big suckers to gig? Suckers are pretty migratory fish in the spring, so the fish that survived in the closed section might trickle into open sections. Or might not, but I think it might be an interesting experiment. Would you like more big suckers to gig? Remember, I'm not talking about protecting or preserving the redhorse, which is certainly common enough in MO. I'm talking about the same thing here that I'm talking about with bass fishing in Ozark streams--improving the fishery.