Al Agnew

Forsythian, I think if you look back through my posts, I've said repeatedly that I don't think gigging CAN be outlawed, nor do I wish to have it outlawed. You may be right...it may be that just the presence of agents and their boats at accesses would be enough to discourage a lot of it. Perhaps my assertion that it's impossible to police was mainly my frustration at the present situation talking. I still don't think the agents have much chance of catching the kind of giggers that operate on the Meramec, who apparently are gigging bass (both largemouth and smallmouth, Chief!) and leaving them. It's wanton waste on top of everything else, just gigging them for the heck of it. Like I said, an agent would have to be watching them when they did it, and that's practically impossible, since they are often several miles from the nearest access. However, maybe the agent's visible presence at the accesses would make them think twice. I hope it would, because that's really the only practical way I can see to do much about the situation. By the way, Chief, I live 1.5 hours from the nearest place where I fish in the winter. If I lived closer, I might be willing to get together with one or two other like-minded people and hang out at the accesses at night during the gigging season, and do the things you suggested. It might be a good idea. But as cwc mentioned, some of these guys are NOT people you want to confront, even in a friendly fashion. If they bother to learn where you live and leave dead smallmouth in your mailbox, they might just be capable of something worse. However, I WILL be photographing every dead and scarred smallmouth I see from now on. Sending the pictures to MDC is a good idea. Don't know why I haven't done it before.

Wow, never thought about that ice. My wife and I did a float trip on upper Big River during a cold spell. It had snowed, and we figured the river would be beautiful in the snow. Didn't even take a fishing rod, which is the ONLY time I've been on the river without a rod in decades. Everything was fine until we reached a low water bridge about halfway through the float. The water was backed up behind the bridge for about a half mile, and it was a solid sheet of ice. Fortunately the ice was thin enough to break it up with the paddle, and occasionally even just force the canoe through it. But it took a good hour of hard work to get through that half mile. Water temperature is very important in winter fishing. A difference of just a few degrees can make the difference between catching fish and freezing without catching fish. Anything above 40 degrees and I figure I'll catch a few. Anything below about 37 degrees and I know it's going to be exceedingly tough.

Here's my report for the year-- Total days fished--44 (down from the last few years) Colder weather smallmouth trips (mid-Oct. to April)--12 Number of bass caught--220+ (average of over 18 bass per trip) Big fish--6 smallmouth 17-17.5 inches, 6 smallmouth 18-18.5 inches, one smallmouth 19.5 inches Warm weather smallmouth float trips--7 (WAY down from past years) Number of bass caught--315 (average 45 bass per trip, a little below my usual average) Big fish--4 smallmouth 17-17.5 inches, 1 18 inch smallmouth, 1 19 inch smallmouth, 1 20 inch smallmouth Small creek wading trips--8 Number of bass caught--214 (average slightly under 27 bass per trip (also down from past years, because my usual favorite creek wasn't as good) Big fish--4 smallmouth 17-17.5 inches (also way below average, same reason) Trout trips in Missouri--2 Number of trout caught--60+ (nothing big, but I almost got my hands on a 19 inch brown and a 19-20 inch rainbow) Trout trips in Montana (and Wyoming)--13 Number of trout caught--65+ (nothing big there either, average of 5 trout per trip, but caught LOTS of whitefish) I spent a lot of time in Montana during poor fishing times; June and early July, everything was flooded except for the Madison, and it was being pounded to death. Finally got to float the Yellowstone a few times in mid-July and caught some fish. I was out there again in September and early October, and caught few trout but lots and lots of whitefish. Because I was in Montana so much, I missed much of the warm weather smallmouth fishing here in MO. My favorite small creek seemed to have a lot fewer fish than usual. I had good luck on another small creek, but it didn't produce really big fish. Weather and water conditions conspired against me for float trips. All in all, it wasn't one of my better years of fishing. I expect 2010 to be much better. I'll be fishing Montana in prime time in late April, and again in September. Other than that, I hope to do a lot more Ozark fishing.

Exactly. I have said several times that banning gigging is neither doable nor the most desirable way to go about it. And there's just not any reason to believe that at this point we can go back and say that gigging can only be done by traditional equipment. I've never seen that happen in any other type of fishing or hunting, and far too many people already have a lot of money invested in the equipment. Would we be better off if there were no jetboats? Probably. Would we be better off if 30 years ago when the technology was first appearing, MDC would hae said, wait a minute, you can't use it because it gives you an unfair advantage? Certainly. It would have been doable back then before many people started using it. That's what I mean about MDC not being proactive. But the horse is long out of the barn. Kickinbass does have a point...there are lots of giggers who are also anglers and who care enough about game fish to not gig them. Those are the people we want to be on the same side. There are others who obviously don't care about game fish or about anybody else but themselves. The killing (I started to say "taking" but they don't take, they kill and leave) of game fish by giggers is ultimately an act of incredible selfishness--doing it just because you can, and not caring about either the resource or other outdoorspeople. So I have absolutely no desire to "work with" or include those people within the circle of hunters and anglers who need to all work together. What we need is some way of weeding them out of the ranks. I think that for some, it's going to be a matter of scaring them straight by making a concentrated effort to catch some and punish them. For others, it may be more of an education thing. I'll bet that some of those who gig big game fish simply don't realize that they are cropping off a significant number of the bigger fish. They see these fish in the holes they gig, and maybe they think that the whole river is full of fish like that, not realizing that most of the fish that populate a five mile section of river in the summer are right there in that one pool in the winter. And it might take some compromise within the ranks of giggers. I've heard it from giggers all over the MO Ozarks that the suckers aren't as big or as plentiful as they once were. And you can see the lack of suckers in the bigger rivers in the winter. Maybe the season needs to be shortened. Maybe some sections of the rivers need to be closed to gigging for a few years to see if both the sucker population comes back and the population of big game fish increases significantly. The problem here is that this IS both a user conflict and a resource issue. The user conflict is a perception. We smallmouth bass anglers see the dead trophy fish that illegal gigging leaves behind. Frustrated and angry, we want something done about it, and to us the simplest thing to do is to ban gigging. So we become enemies of all giggers, even though we know that many of them are law-abiding and care about the resource as well. The resource issue is real. Although gigging doesn't threaten the entire fishery, I don't see how anyone could seriously think that illegal gigging of big game fish like smallmouth doesn't depress the population of trophy size fish. While it's all anecdotal evidence at this point, too many of us are seeing it for it not to have a basis in reality. So, giggers, do YOU have ideas? I've addressed your concerns, I think. Are you willing to address mine?

Don't know whether Forsythian is still reading, but with his comment about anglers using Powerbait in the no-bait part of Taneycomo, again he's comparing apples to oranges. It would be easy to police that, since it's one finite area that's easily accessible at all times. All it would take to police it would be will to do so. And of course, the Powerbaiters can't catch all or even most of the big trout in the area. I can't stress enough that gigging has the potential to remove the vast majority of big smallmouth, and it's being done in areas that simply cannot be policed. I too am disappointed, in that it seems that MDC, like most if not all state agencies, cannot seem to do anything proactively. They should have seen early on that the tremendous improvement in gigging technology with jetboats and huge banks of lights would make it a lot easier, and that jetboats and giggers were growing in numbers. While a jetboat isn't necessary to gig, it certainly makes it easier to move up and down the river, and the growing popularity of jetboats meant that the numbers of giggers were going to increase, and that stretches of streams farther from the accesses were going to be gigged more. Another thing that has happened is that a lot more people, myself included, are fishing in late fall and winter, spending more time on the rivers. Fact is, a lot of anglers who fished only during the spring and summer never knew that a lot of fish were being killed in the winter. They just accepted the smallie population as it was when they fished it. But those of us who now frequent the streams in the winter have all seen the dead fish and smallies with gig holes in them. I think that the problem may have been as bad or worse 20 years ago, but now it's a lot more visible.

Like I said, I have no hope whatsoever that gigging will be curtailed, let alone outlawed. And if there was a way to police it, I wouldn't want it to be curtailed. But there simply isn't. I don't think you can compare it to any other type of poaching. Spotlighting? Spotlighting is illegal, period. Anybody who goes out at night to spotlight deer (on public roads where it's easy for anybody to drive, including law enforcement) takes the risk of being caught in the act, and they can't use the excuse that they were just spotlighting rabbits, since that's equally as illegal. Anybody who catches and keeps smallmouth during the closed season, or who catches more than their limit, or who keeps undersized fish, can't specifically target the biggest fish they see. If you were relating it to spotlighting, here's how it would be... Pretend that spotlighting rabbits is legal. Pretend that at night most of the deer in a region always move into the same few fields, way out in the boonies, where there are also a lot of rabbits. Pretend that the people who want to spotlight rabbits have the equipment to go to those fields, which are public land but totally surrounded be private land, or they live on the private land next to those fields. Getting to those fields isn't easy and requires specialized vehicles, which make a lot of noise and light. So the poachers go to those fields, and along with shooting rabbits they also shoot every huge buck they see. Remember that nearly all the deer in the area, including nearly all the big bucks, are in those few fields, so as a result nearly all the big bucks are shot. The conservation agent, needing the same type of equipment as the poachers to get to those fields, can only approach them making noise and using lights, so the poachers know they are coming. If the agent checks them coming out of the area where the fields are, they only have rabbits in their vehicle--they've left the deer to rot. And the agent can only check those who don't live next to the fields. Obviously, that scenario is totally unrealistic. But that's the way gigging is, unlike spotlighting. You have a sport done at night, in places where it takes a boat, usually a jetboat, to get there, surrounded by private land that is difficult at best to access except at a few public spots. In late fall and winter, you have the smallmouth congregated in just a few wintering pools, the same pools that have most of the suckers. You have giggers with good enough equipment that in decent conditions they can probably see most of the smallmouth congregated in those pools, and with the ability to gig every big smallmouth they see. And the only way they get caught is if the conservation agent also has a jetboat, and is somehow able to sneak up on them (in a jetboat, at night) and see them in the act of sticking a smallmouth. Can't prove it if they've already gigged the smallie and shook it off the gig. If they are using a public access, they know that's a spot where they are more likely to be checked, so they aren't going to keep the smallmouth and risk being caught with it in their possession. If using a private access, they know the chances are nil the agent is going to check them there. Can there BE a legal sport that's more impossible to police? So, Forsythian, what do you do IF studies would show illegal gigging to have a major impact on big smallmouth? Keep in mind, the big ones are relatively rare anyway, and concentrated in limited areas in the winter, so common sense would tell you that just one or two bad apples can have a really serious impact on the big fish population, so I have no doubt whatsoever that illegal gigging is a major limiting factor on the production of big fish. But assume that studies show that to be so, not just my opinion and anecdotal evidence. What do you do? How do you police it? Is there any way to allow gigging and protect big game fish?

I think Ham was being facetious. MDC allows and encourages gigging of suckers and other rough fish because they say that's the best way to utilize an otherwise under-utilized resource. It certainly is utilized. On streams big enough for jetboats, I defy you to find many good-sized suckers after a good season of gigging. And you absolutely won't see the big 4-6 pound redhorse that it's possible to grow (depending upon the species) in Ozark streams. I don't think that redhorse and hogsuckers, the usual targets of gigging, would be all that harmful to the other fish if they were more abundant. Forsythian, yep, it's anecdotal...because unless you close a good smallmouth section of stream to gigging for several years and see if there's a significant increase in the population of 18 inch plus bass and other game fish, there's no other way to scientifically prove that gigging has an impact. And I don't see MDC doing that. Sure would be interesting if they did, though. But I know what I've seen. I don't know how it is in other streams large enough for jetboats, but on the middle Meramec it's a problem that all of us who fish in the late fall and winter see all the time. Heck, it wouldn't even hurt so bad if they actually kept the fish, but it seems that they just stick them for fun and shake them off the gig, since otherwise why would they be lying dead, or swimming around with major gig scars?

It's pointless to send pictures to MDC. It's simply a political reality that they aren't going to limit gigging, although I find it a little ironic that they did shut down some of the trout areas to gigging...gee, stocked trout are more important to protect than smallies? However, some in the department aren't willing to even entertain the idea that gigging game fish is a problem. I've heard at least one person in the department suggest that those dead and wounded fish we see have been attacked by herons. Yeah, right, herons routinely attack 20 inch smallmouth, in the winter when they are never up shallow enough for a heron to reach unless it has a 5 foot long neck. But they also know they can't do anything about it short of shutting down gigging, either totally or in management areas at least. And like I said, political reality is they can't do that. So I don't particularly blame them for sticking their heads in the sand on the issue. The difference between gigging and noodling is that there never were many people with the guts and inclination to noodle, so not allowing noodling isn't going to tick off enough people to matter. But gigging has always been a "traditional" sport practiced by many in the Ozarks. Never mind that the equipment and boats are about 100 times more effective than they "traditionally" were. But the time to outlaw gigging was back when MDC was first organized. Try to do it now and you'd have half the people in the Ozarks, even those who never gigged in their lives, screaming bloody murder about it. When you look at it objectively and not through the lens of "tradition", it's pretty ridiculous. There aren't many states in the nation that allow spearing of game fish with lights. And of those who do, mainly some northern states that allow spearing of pike--and often by native American laws with non-Indians not allowed to do so--it invariably causes a lot of hard feelings between anglers and those who spear fish. But it's been going on for so long in this state that it's impossible to look at it from the standpoint of what's best for the resource; the politics will always get in the way.

My winter smallie fishing guru told me that in his best winter smallmouth hole, he just saw a 21 incher dead, gigged. And caught 5 more fish from that hole that had gig marks on them. I want to ignore or downplay the gigging problem, but I'm afraid we're just spitting into the wind with all the talk of better regulations as long as crap like this still happens. This year, the fishing in the fall was excellent when the rivers were fishable--they weren't fishable all the time because of all the rain we had, but that rain also made gigging practically impossible until just the last few weeks. So you see what happens. I catch 6 fish the last time I go, and 2 of them had fresh gig marks. He sees this in his best pool. It happens every winter. I wouldn't mind gigging--I've done it myself and it's fun. But it has the potential of being THE biggest limiting factor on big smallmouth. Unlike anglers, who don't and can't specifically target the largest fish, giggers can and often do find and stick the biggest fish in the river. An angler might put his lure in front of a dozen big fish in a day without even knowing it because they don't take it--it's their choice, so to speak. And even the worst angling poacher won't be good enough to catch many really big fish. But the gigger in good conditions can SEE those fish, and simply select the biggest ones. Having gigged myself, I know that with the right conditions I could have gigged the majority of fish over 18 inches in a given stretch in one night. And it's a sport that's practically impossible to police. My guru's winter pool is a short distance (one riffle) below a stretch of river with several cabins, and the last time I was there two jetboats with gig rails were parked at those cabins. It's a long way to the nearest public access. You gotta believe that whoever gigged that hole probably came from those cabins, and the chances of an agent even getting that far away from the public access after dark are pretty slim, let alone being there on a night when something happens. Sitting and checking giggers at the public access isn't going to ever catch these guys, nor will it ever catch even those who use the public accesses but who gig and discard smallmouth away from the access. I don't know what could be done about this problem. Realistically, I know there's no chance of banning gigging, nor would that be fair to the many giggers who do it legally. But this truly is a sport where it only takes one or two bad apples to make a very significant impact. I could live with the occasional mistake when some gigger accidentally sticks a game fish, even though that's no excuse...if you can't positively identify it, you shouldn't try to gig it. But when that many smallmouth are being gigged out of one wintering hole, when they are all congregated and easy to find, it ain't an accident. I know we've hashed this one out before...just had to vent.

More time on the water and more rivers fished. The last few years I've gotten away from exploring new streams. I used to go on at least one Ozarks road trip a year...spend a week traveling throughout portions of the Ozarks where I hadn't been too many times, fishing a new stream every day. But I haven't done that for quite a while. So, the concrete goal is to do at least one Ozark road trip, and hopefully one road trip outside the Ozarks. I did a Tennessee/Kentucky road trip a few years ago and fished several streams in those two states. But I've always wanted to do an Iowa/southern Minnesota road trip. There are three rivers in eastern Iowa that have good smallie fishing, and a couple in Minnesota south of Minneapolis. If I made it a two week trip, I'd come back down through Wisconsin and fish several western Wisconsin streams as well. Or maybe a Ouachita Mountain road trip, fish the Caddo, Ouachita, Glover, Mountain Fork... My lifetime goal is to fish at least one river in all 50 states. I've got 28 of them out of the way already, including the two that are farthest away...Alaska and Hawaii. Shouldn't be too hard. Only problem is finding a river to fish in places like Kansas and Rhode Island. Another lifetime goal is to float every floatable river in the Ozarks. I don't really have too many left to do. Several in SW MO, some in Arkansas, and the few good ones in Oklahoma. States where I've fished a river... California Oregon Washington Idaho Arizona New Mexico Colorado Wyoming Montana Minnesota Iowa Missouri Arkansas Wisconsin Illinois Kentucky Tennessee Florida South Carolina Virginia West Virginia Pennsylvania New Jersey New York Michigan Maine Alaska Hawaii Major Ozark streams I haven't floated... Spring River (SW MO) Center Creek Elk River Big Sugar Creek Indian Creek Flat Creek Finley River Bull Creek Moreau River (both forks) Osage River Pomme de Terre River War Eagle Creek Mulberry River Big Piney Creek (AR) Forks of the Little Red River South Fork Spring River Strawberry River So I hope to check some of them off the list this year!

Well, it's COLD. I get seasonal affective disorder during the winter if we have too many days that are either cloudy and cold, windy and cold, or just plain below freezing. In other words, I get real cranky. My wife loves winter. It's one of the few incompatible things between us. Some of you will be fishing in this weather (probably not many, but a few). My rule of thumb for fishing is if the water is hard or the line will freeze in the line guides all day long, I just won't do it. I kinda got spoiled in the last decade up until the last couple of years--there weren't many stretches of the winters that got cold enough to keep me off the water. I grew up fishing for Ozark river walleye in the winter. November to late February, if I went fishing it was usually for walleye with big live minnows, and I probably spent as much time trying to obtain the minnows as I did fishing. Then I got interested in fly fishing, and discovered winter trout fishing on the Ozark stream sections that had trout. For a number of years, I did a lot of winter trout fishing. About 6 years ago I started getting serious about winter stream smallmouth fishing. Learned a lot from my winter fishing guru, Nick Hamra. Started figuring things out. Started catching winter smallies regularly. Some big ones. But this winter, it struck me that, like my former wintertime fishing pursuits, it gets to be a lot less fun when it's really cold. And the difference between winter smallies and trout or walleye is that the smallmouth are just not at their best when the water temps are down in the low 40s and below. The last trip I went on, the water temp was 37-39 degrees. The fishing was slow--in more ways than one. When it's that cold, you don't usually catch many fish. You have to fish very slowly. And the fish are also slow and sluggish. There are other rewards. The rivers have an austere beauty in the winter that is so totally different from what they are in the summer. You see almost no people, and a lot more wildlife. I love smallmouth fishing November through March at least as much as I do in warm weather--if it's not TOO cold. And there is that challenge of fishing in the winter, so much different from the ease of summer stream fishing. I like a challenge. So if tomorrow was going to be 40 degrees and light wind, I'd jump at the chance to go, even though I'd know the water temps would still be in the mid-30s most places and I'd be fishing for one or two good bites all day. But I think I'd be more likely to go trout fishing instead. Maybe I'm a wimp...but I need this cold snap to end!

I guess it depends upon your idea of scenery. I find the upper and lower ends of the Buffalo River to be about as breathtaking as anything out West. And the Ozarks is what I call "friendly country". You can't get into life-threatening trouble nearly as easily in the Ozarks. No class 5 rapids. The poisonous snakes aren't bad. No grizzly bears. I don't worry about cougars or wolves when in Montana, but those grizzlies maul people every year, and I never quite get really comfortable when I know I'm in good grizzly country. Very changeable weather that can put you in big trouble if you're not prepared. And the closest I've actually come to really being in serious trouble was while climbing around in the mountains and getting out on a scree slope, following a herd of elk. I found out that elk can go where humans can't. Got out so far, and couldn't go any farther, could BARELY turn around and go back. One slip would have started me and the rocks downhill, and 20 yards downhill was a 100 ft. sheer drop. For pure trout fishing, though, it has to be the rainbow trout streams of Alaska. I can take the salmon fishing or leave it--it's fun for a while but gets a little boring after a few days. There's something about catching fish that you know are going to die in a few weeks at most that somehow turns me off. But those huge, totally wild rainbows...wow. And catching them, while certainly doable, isn't always easy. That's another thing I like about fishing...a challenge. You'll catch several big ones a day in good water under good conditions, but it still isn't a sure thing. Missouri trout are fun, and I love trying to catch big brown trout in both MO and MT, but no trout fishing I've ever done quite comes up to Alaskan rainbows. Although my one real trip for Salmon River, Idaho, steelhead comes pretty close. Don't care for lakes all that much, don't like catching pike all that much, walleye are kinda like crappie up north, good to eat but not enough fun to catch to do it for a week on end. So I'm not too gung ho on the Minnesota/Canada trips for those fish. Don't get me wrong...all fishing is fun. But if we're talking dream trips, I'll always opt for stream smallmouth or stream trout.

There's always more to the fishing than just the fishing to me. Which is another reason the Ozarks is tough to beat. Scenery as good as anywhere, and not as crowded as some other places. Outside the Ozarks, I love Montana for trout fishing, Alaska if you really want spectacular rainbows. For smallies, I agree with Wayne, the John Day in Oregon has perhaps the best combination of gorgeous, interesting scenery and terrific fishing. Maine may have some of the best stream smallmouth fishing anywhere. Minnesota and Wisconsin are a close second. I just don't like the scenery in those places quite as much.

Taxi, I've seen the same thing on a lot of smaller streams similar to Bear Creek. In most cases you can find the reasons for it...too much tree-clearing on the hillsides, too many people doing what I call recreational bulldozing--getting into the creek with a bulldozer and moving gravel around and clearing out obstructions in a mostly vain attempt to make the creek flood less. It does nothing good and a lot of bad. One thing I didn't realize for a long time is how much NEW gravel a really big flood puts into the streams. It really hit home a few years ago when there was an 11 inch rain over a small area in the middle of the Big River watershed. A couple weeks after that rain, which took place right around the river between Mammoth Bridge and Morse Mill, I floated from Mammoth to Browns Ford. You could see from the mud line on the streamside foliage that the river at the beginning of that float only got a couple of feet higher than normal, but as I went downstream, that mud line kept getting higher and higher, until by the time I reached the end of the float it was 8 feet above water level. So it rained enough in that one area to raise the river 8 feet, even though there was very little water coming from upstream. And...EVERY little ravine coming into the river had a big new rock and gravel bar at its mouth. If it was a pretty good sized hollow, that bar would be bigger than my living room. Now ordinarily, when such a rain happens it happens over a wide area, the river gets high and stays high long enough to spread all that new gravel out over the whole stream bed, but since this rain happened in a very small area, and the river above it didn't get enough rain to rise much, the river in that area went back down to near normal almost as fast as it rose. All the water came in at once, and then it was over. So those bars never got spread out because the river dropped too fast, and for once you could see how much gravel had been dumped in. When you add that up with somebody up on the hillside clearing timber, you can get an idea why some of these smaller streams are filling up more and more with gravel. And yet, if they are left alone, some of them at least recover pretty quickly, or never get filled in. Huzzah Creek has about as much gravel in its bed as any stream in the Ozarks, and in some places the land use has been pretty poor. But fortunately it doesn't have a lot of gravel dredging nor a lot of recreational bulldozing. There are a few places along it that have gotten worse in the 30 or so years I've been fishing it, but quite a few areas have also gotten better. That spot I mentioned above is one of the few places where somebody came in and dug around in the gravel bar, and the downstream effect happened after the first good flood. A pool that had been pretty stable and unchanging for a long time immediately filled in. To describe it a bit more... The creek comes out of a series of short, medium depth pools and riffles, swinging to the right to go around this big gravel bar that used to be partially covered in willows. There are willows lining the creek channel itself as it goes along the bar, and in fact once you get into the creek channal adjacent to the bar, you can't even see the main part of the bar because it's screened by those willows. At the bottom of that run along the bar, the creek swings into a bluff hillside on the right, and enters a rather long pool that used to be deep and lined with rock on the right and logs and root wads on the left. Somebody cleared some of the willows on the bar and started digging up the bar. They didn't dig it down below river level, just "bar-skimmed" the gravel. After the next flood, that pool below was filled in to where there was no water in it over about 2or 3 feet deep...rocks were buried, and it was only inches deep on the log side. There wasn't anywhere else on that stretch that changed much after that flood, just that one pool. I'd say it wasn't a coincidence.

Yellowstone National Park gives you an angler survey card when you buy your park license, that you're supposed to fill out at the end of your trip (or the end of the year). Obviously that probably isn't any more effective than having somebody at the access asking people questions, but it's an additional way of getting some results. And it really depends upon the questions on the survey. Opinion questions can be asked at any time. Heck, you could do a phone survey for opinion questions, calling a random sampling of fishing license buyers in given counties. You could farm out something like that. Point is, though, that I'm not saying they should necessarily be looking for better ways of surveying anglers, I'm saying they should maybe not put so much importance as they seem to be doing on the surveys.

Actually, I do try to call, not just pretend, but if I don't have reception I act like I'm talking anyway. And like somebody else said above, you are often surprised at where you have reception on a lot of streams. For instance, the Meramec from Maramec Spring on down is never more than 5 or 10 miles from I-44, and although it's hit and miss, I've gotten reception just about everywhere along it at times. And one time I was on a 3 day solo float on the upper Jacks Fork, out in the REAL middle of nowhere at 7 PM, sitting on a log at my campsite eating cold fried chicken, when I was scared half to death by a sudden buzzing vibration in my pants pocket. I'd thrown my cell phone, set on vibration, in it at the last minute that morning and forgotten about it totally! It was my copyright attorney from Washington DC calling me. So you never know when some quirk of atmosphere and reflections will give you cell reception. There's one agent in my county, and he has several small streams to cover along with lakes and the Mississippi on one side, along with doing all the other stuff that agents do. That includes a lot more public relations and landowner visiting and going to schools and driving halfway across the state to help other agents and paperwork. And anytime from September 1 when dove season starts to at least January 15 when bow season ends, and the spring turkey season, he's probably going to be spending about all his enforcement time on hunting, not fishing. And population doesn't matter much, it's land area that matters. One agent ain't enough. By the way, my agent knows me, but he has shown up twice above the same creek access and waded up the creek and through the brush to check me--and then was bummed that he didn't recognize my vehicle or he wouldn't have bothered. Next time I get a new vehicle I'm going to give him the description and license number so he doesn't have to fight his way up the creek. He's a good guy and works hard, as most of them do. There just aren't enough of them.

Yep, we hashed it out about gravel mining a while back. I don't think you can ever convince some people that it's such a bad thing because it just seems to make sense that removing gravel means less gravel in the stream. But no matter how much gravel you remove, you CANNOT remove enough to make any difference in the total bed load of gravel in the stream. And the ills of gravel mining are so much greater than any temporary and illusory benefits that with just a little bit of study and thought, one ought to be able to see that it's NEVER a good thing, and seldom even harmless. As short and sweet as I can make it, here are the bad stuff. 1. Removal of gravel often means removing streamside vegetation and widening the stream bed. This puts more sun on the water, warming it and making a lot more algae growth--scum on the water and murkier water. And the warmer water is not good for cool water species like smallmouth bass. 2. Removal of gravel from gravel bars destabilizes the gravel that's left. A healthy gravel bar has a lot of small plants growing on it, and a relatively hard crust on top, both of which make the bar fairly stable--it takes a pretty strong flood to blow it out and move it downstream. But if you dig up that gravel, now you've removed everything that holds it together, and the gravel that's left moves whenever there's water high enough to cover it. 3. A river always wants to "level off" its channel from upstream to downstream. If you draw a line down the center of an Ozark stream and then look at it from the side, it's a series of very gentle steps--fairly level in the pools, and gentle drops at the riffles--but overall is a slight slant. Now, if you dig a hole in it that's a lot deeper than the general slant, the river wants to get back to that gentle slant, which means that it begins cutting into the channel upstream with every high water event, trying to dig out upstream enough to get back to that gentle slant instead of that big hole. In other words, it's trying to take gravel and rock from upstream to fill in the hole that's been dug. This means it digs deeper between the banks, which means the banks destabilize, which means the river widens and actually shallows upstream. Meanwhile, it also cuts downward downstream to try to get back to that gentle incline, and the same kind of stuff happens, though a lot less than upstream. 4. And of course, where you dig, you are immediately ruining that area for habitat and screwing up the water downstream if you do so within the channel. You're digging out all the logs and rocks and deep pools and riffles and usually replacing them with flat, featureless bottoms and wider channels. And the thing is, the first three things don't heal quickly, and indeed get worse for quite a few years before they get better. So Taxi, what you're seeing now with gravel filling in pools just might be the result of former gravel mining, not the result of the ending of gravel mining. A lot of times, long sections of the stream get worse before they get better. I can show you a lot of former gravel mining areas. In NONE of them did the river get better habitat either above or below while the gravel mining went on. On nearly all of them, it got worse, and it has taken many years to even start to get better. Lower Black River. Two huge gravel excavations, widening the channel by twice as much or more, deep holes up to 50 feet deep when the excavations ended. Good places to fish for winter walleye for a few years. Now, however, the river upstream of both places has big, high, unstable mud banks. It took about 20 years to fill in those huge holes, but now one of them is almost entirely filled in, and it's nothing but shallow runs and willow trees. It'll probably be another 30 years of so before it gets back to some semblance of a natural river. Upper Big River. Here it was different, a fairly shallow gravel deposit over a bedrock bottom. They couldn't dig it very deep, but they got all the gravel they could by widening the channel and digging into the banks. That was 50 years ago. Now, at first glance the river looks natural, trees along the banks starting to get big. But the river is still very shallow in most places, and as new gravel from upstream moves in, it just puts a layer of gravel over that bedrock without making the river any deeper. A little farther downstream, removing gravel in the same way a few years later, there are still lots of places where the river is open and shallow with lots of aquatic scummy weed growth. Huzzah Creek. A short stretch, no more than a few hundred yards, of digging gravel mainly on a big gravel bar, not in the creek channel itself. It destabilized the bar, and what was a nice deep pool below immediately filled in. I especially hated it because that pool had produced several big smallmouth for me before it filled in. Poor land use practices in the watershed are always the source of more gravel. Big floods are both boon and bane of habitat. Boon sometimes because they really blow out a lot of gravel from the channel and around obstructions, piling it up higher on gravel bars and out into the bottom fields. But they also take a lot of new gravel off the hillsides and out of the small tributaries and dump it into the river channel. Lower floods are often worse, however, especially in a river that already has a lot of gravel, because they simply take gravel off the gravel bars and dump it in the pools. But if you're seeing a lot of pools filled in, don't blame it on somebody stopping gravel mining. Look to the watershed and land clearing along the banks and tributaries. And look to where the gravel mining was before. As for removal of the section of bridge...Ham, think about it. The only water level that will be affected by it is the water that was impounded behind the bridge. It won't make a millimeter of difference in the level once you get above the first riffle upstream. Slab bridges DO form partial barriers to upstream migration. On upper Big River, a slab bridge stopped spotted bass encroachment upstream for several years--I caught increasing numbers of spotted bass below it for about three years before I caught the first few spots above it. And the next (and last) slab upstream is the last unbreached barrier to the spotted bass--it's been about five years since they got past the one below in significant numbers, but I've yet to catch one above that slab. So in that case the slabs were a good thing. But on the other hand, they never seemed to stop or slow sucker migration upstream. Maybe the suckers are able to fight the current going over the slab in high water better. So while I'm not sure that the slab was all that bad, removing it might be a good thing for the fisheries.

Chief and others...see my comments in the enforcement thread about what I think of the surveys. While they may or may not be asking good questions and getting good answers, I don't think they are really asking all the right people.

Some thoughts... MDC does indeed have plenty of money, BUT this state probably has more state-owned land than most, which requires more money for infrastructure and maintenance. It probably has more landowner programs. More nature preserves. Thanks to the sales tax, MDC has a lot of constituents over and above hunters and fishermen, upon which they spend money. Is there waste and unnecessary spending? Sure. Too many bureaucrats? Probably. It would be nice to be able to cut the waste and stupid programs...but one person's waste of money is another person's terrific project. And I have very little sympathy for those who say they are paying enough, or too much, already for licenses. Get real. You probably spend 100 times more on fishing tackle, gas, motel and campground fees, etc. for your fishing trips than you do on your fishing license, even if you don't amortize the cost of your boat and motor or other watercraft, waders, or anything else you've spent money on to go fishing. If you can't afford 20 or 30 bucks a whole year for a fishing license, you've got a lot bigger problems than being able to go fishing. I always hear about not wanting to cost people that are fishing to feed their families, but I bet there aren't 100 families in the whole state that depend upon fishing to survive. That may be pretty cold, but I grew up fairly poor, and I never even thought twice about spending the money for hunting and fishing licenses, because there's always something you can do without for a little while if the fishing is important to you. Take a look at MDC's expenditures. Look at the money spent on enforcement. If that spending was doubled (theoretically twice as many agents), where would you take the money from? You'd have to take a pretty fair amount from just about everywhere else in order to pay for it with existing income. Sell some MDC land? Get rid of some biologists? MAYBE, if it was a high enough priority that the powers that be would be willing to do everything it would take to eliminate waste and questionable programs, you could pay for double the number of agents, but I doubt it, and we all know that probably won't happen. So...want to know what would work? Make the raise in fishing and hunting license fees contingent on doubling the number of agents, period. In other words, have some sort of referendum that REQUIRED doubling the number of agents, with funding to be provided by however much of an increase in fees it would take to do so. Now...some ideas on enforcement. First of all, you have to understand who you are wanting to target with regulations. There is always a certain subset of casual anglers that don't fish enough to know, or bother to learn, the regulations. Those probably have very little impact on the resource even if they sometimes break the law, because most of the time they don't catch much. I was talking with somebody recently (I don't think it was on here but it may have been--but it was somebody who had read the studies and surveys). They said that according to the surveys, most stream anglers seldom catch even one legal smallmouth. But I think that the surveys, which are apparently done on weekends at popular public accesses, are counting a lot of "anglers" that are actually either people who drive down to the access and fish for whatever they can catch with worms or other live bait and seldom catch much because it's right there at the access; or they are people who rent a canoe and happen to toss a Zebco no-brainer fishing rod in the canoe, and make a few ineffective casts during the day as they are drifting willy-nilly down the river in the canoe. Those people probably skew the surveys considerably, and the survey people aren't interviewing the guy who fishes during the week, or uses private accesses, or puts in at a quarter to daylight and/or takes out at dark-thirty. THOSE guys are the ones catching the fish. Those are the ones you target with regulations. Sure, you enforce the laws on everybody when you find them. But I don't think you worry all that much about the casual anglers. You try to enforce the regulations by being out on the river a lot at odd hours or away from the accesses, looking for the serious poachers. And otherwise, you simply make sure you have a VISIBLE presence on the rivers. We've hashed this out before, but while it's a nice technique to hide out in the brush and try to catch the bad guys doing something wrong, that does little to discourage them from doing it in the first place, because there just aren't all that many of them caught that way. Sure, it's a good technique if you're already pretty sure that somebody is doing something wrong in that particular place. But if you are VISIBLE, on the river a lot, showing up at random times both at the accesses and going up or down the river, the bad guys start looking over their shoulder a lot more whenever they are tempted to do something wrong, and the ones who break the rules on the spur of the moment are probably a lot less likely to do so... And that takes boots on the ground. More agents, so that they have more man hours available to be on the river and doing their principal job. As for reporting violations...if I'm pretty sure I don't have cell reception at that spot, what I've taken to doing is backing off to what I feel is a safe distance but still in sight of them, waiting until they are watching me, and then pulling out the cell phone and acting like I'm calling somebody. I figure it will at least make them be nervous, maybe make them leave, or not do whatever they are doing any more that day. I used to just go up and tell the miscreants in a confidential tone that I'd just seen the game warden up the river around the bend coming this way, so they'd better be careful. A lot of times they'd throw back the illegal fish they'd already caught, and I always hoped they'd be nervous enough that they wouldn't have much fun the rest of the day. Point is, a cell phone can be a rather useful tool even if you don't have reception or the agent is on the other side of the county at the time.

If you're really planning on fishing, don't do more than 5 miles per day. In a five mile section there might only be 4 or 5 good wintering pools to fish, but you'll be all day fishing them if you do it right. And when you've only got about 6 hours of so to float if you don't want to be setting up camp in the dark, 5 miles is plenty far enough. I did the lower end from Buffalo Point in three days in late November a few years ago, and didn't have time to do much fishing at all because it was just too long for the amount of daylight. So, Gilbert to Maumee or Maumee to Buffalo Point would be pretty good for a two day trip this time of year.

Absolutely I can, all anybody has to do is ask and I'll be there if it doesn't conflict with something else. One of the things I've been saying at the SMA meetings is that we need to figure out how to do programs on our goals at various venues in Ozark towns...bass clubs, sports shows, etc. Back in the days when the battle for the Buffalo River, dams or a national river, was being fought, one of the types of organizations that was very active in the fight was garden clubs. I don't even know if garden clubs even still exist, but it's an example of thinking outside the box and reaching people we otherwise wouldn't. While the regulations thing is mostly a fishing issue, the other problems facing Ozark streams are about more than just smallmouth fishing, and it would be good to reach people and organizations outside the usual fishing groups. But the fishing groups will always be one of the most important.

Chief, I know exactly what you're saying, and it's a very good point. As difficult as it may be to get MDC to re-examine the regulations on smallmouth harvest, that's a low-hanging fruit compared to tackling some of the very real problems the streams face. Development, horrible land use practices, non-point source pollution, gravel mining, CAFOs, and probably some other things I'm not mentioning all are threatening the streams themselves and the fishing we love. We live in a state where private property rights trump everything else for many. We live in a low tax state where funds for DNR inspections and enforcement are grossly inadequate (Did you know that when I was on the gravel mining board a few years back, I found out that there were exactly five inspectors over the whole state of Missouri who were authorized to do inspections of gravel mining sites, and they had many other duties as well?). Most of the Ozark streams are located in counties that could only be described as politically unfriendly to environmental regulations. And the population keeps growing, and more people keep moving to the rural areas outside the major population centers. More concrete--which requires more gravel that is most easily gotten from creek bottoms. More asphalt, allowing more run-off in heavy rains with a lot of toxic crap in it. So...it is a lot easier to get people behind a proposal to tighten fishing regulations than it is to get them to agree on what needs to be done politically to solve the environmental problems facing the streams. I'll bet that many here will vote for candidates for public office based upon a lot of other factors, rather than how they stand on environmental issues facing Ozark streams (if they even have such stands--because a lot of people don't think it's important enough or real enough to worry about). And some on here don't think that some of the problems are very real or pressing themselves...witness back when we had a discussion of gravel mining and some thought it was okay to take gravel out of stream beds. I can only speak for myself. I was on the gravel mining regulations task force, and tried to get stuff done to protect the streams from unwise gravel dredging. I vote the environment over and above everything else--even though I'm often disappointed even when my candidate gets into office. I write letters. I try to educate people. I belong to environmental organizations that I believe in. I report things I see that I think might be violations of environmental regulations. I know that by living in the country in a house that's probably a little bigger than it needs to be, I'm part of the problem, but I also make sure my 40 acres isn't eroding into the creek, that my septic system is adequate, that I'm not dumping household chemicals where they will get into the water. We all need to join and support organizations that are working to protect the streams, even those that some of us question, like the Sierra Club. The chapters of the Sierra Club in MO do a lot to fight threats to Ozark streams. But I bet a lot of people on here think they are a "tree-hugging" organization that at best doesn't care a bit about hunting and fishing, and at worst are actively against it. Such is the political climate in this state. But like I said before, what we REALLY need to do is get ACTIVE in these kinds of organizations. Work to make them into what WE want them to be. And there are organizations that we can all pretty much agree are doing good, especially the MO Conservation Federation. How many here are members? How many are ACTIVE members? It ain't easy to be active in such organizations. It takes time and passion. Many of us have the passion, few have the time. I'm one of the guilty ones with passion but not time, but I hope to become a lot more active as I get closer to retirement age and my career takes up less of my time. Yet we all cherish our free time, and would much rather spend it fishing than working for better fishing in the future. So, yeah, your question is an important one. Hopefully it will make us all think and at least be a little more aware of what we can do.

I think Chief may be right that we've beaten this subject almost to death, but a few more words just because I'm so passionate about it... Chief said that smallies in Ozark streams are doing just fine. That was true 10 years ago on many streams. It was true 25 years ago on some of the larger ones. It's still true on some. But in my experience, the fishing HAS declined in many of the streams I fish, and will continue to decline unless something is done about it. Now...that doesn't mean the decline is due entirely, or even in many cases significantly, to over-harvest of smallmouth. There are lots of problems from spotted bass to gravel mining to clearing trees along the riverbanks to droughts and floods to lead mine waste to too many poor quality septic systems, and other stuff besides. They all deserve attention. But if the fishing is declining, one thing that can be done to preserve as much as possible of what's left is to give smallies more protection. Will it make a huge difference? I don't know, but one thing the White Paper did was show that restrictive regs do have positive results. Second, as I believe Wayne said, the goal is not necessarily to preserve smallmouth populations but to make fishing better by upping the average size of fish available to be caught, and increase the numbers of trophy fish. I don't expect any regulations to make the Ozarks a region where you can catch five pound smallmouth with regularity, but I do think the streams have the potential of producing twice as many 18 inch plus smallies as they do now...and I think a whole lot of anglers would be really happy if that was the case. The question is, and I think sometime in the past we have discussed it a bit, what really are the limiting factors on the size of smallmouth in Ozark streams? If it's purely genetics, then more restrictive regs will help a bit but not much. If it's illegal gigging, restrictive regs won't help much at all. If it's simply a matter of fishing pressure--the more times a fish is caught, the more likely it is to die from being caught even if it's released--the regs won't do much at all. If nearly all anglers who regularly catch smallies already release them, the regs won't matter. If it's environmental factors--poor habitat and land use and pollution and gravel mining, etc. the regs won't amount to much. When you put it that way, it sounds rather hopeless. We should be happy with what we have, and work on the REAL problems while accepting that we'll never have large numbers of big fish in the Ozarks. But I believe that the management area studies show that it is possible, by regs alone, to improve the fishing. So harvest simply has to be a limiting factor. Not the only one, but a significant one. We've been having a bit of correspondence with Spence Turner, the former biologist in charge of trout in MO and an avid smallmouth angler himself. His advice has always been to hang with the one fish 15 inch minimum and expand the management areas, because they've been proven to work and would be the easiest thing to sell to the powers that be at MDC. I suspect he's probably right. But sometimes I think you have to have some idealism along with the pragmatism. I really think smallies in small wading streams need more protection. I really think that with optimum regulations the larger streams can produce more big fish. And I believe that slot limits, while perhaps not easy to sell to MDC, would allow the meat fishermen to keep fish to eat while producing more big fish. That's where I'm coming from.

Eric, I think I'm right in saying that the temperature of springwater is pretty close to equal to the temperature of a given region averaged out over the whole year. Springs in Florida come out of the ground at 70 some odd degrees, which I think is what the average temp of mid-Florida is. Of course, you have springs in some parts of the country that come out of thermal areas and are warmer than the average temperature, but I don't know of any that are colder than the average temperature, unless they come from very shallow sources and vary with the weather.

Wayne, I too would think that there were surely times when the Missouri wasn't dumping enough silt to make the Mississippi a barrier. But the fact remains that I KNOW there were no spotted bass in the Meramec system within my lifetime until the 1980s. I know, from personal experience, that they first showed up in the creeks flowing into the Mississippi between the Missouri River and Cape Girardeau in the 1970s and 80s...they weren't there before. I fished all those waters enough during those years to know that was the case to my own satisfaction. SOMETHING was keeping them from getting there before then. Maybe there's an alternate explanation. Water chemistry, water temperature during the times when it was less silty, who knows? Global warming certainly has the potential of greatly altering the population dynamics in Ozark streams. Consider this...the temperature of springs always stays very close to the yearly average temperature of the area where the springs are. The average temperature in the Missouri Ozarks, winter to summer, is around 56-57 degrees, and most Ozark springs are that same temperature when they come out of the ground. A rise of a few degrees in average temperature would mean the springs also get a few degrees warmer. Not only smallmouth, but trout could be affected by that alone. But the real danger, I think, is in changing weather patterns associated with global warming. More rain. Less rain. Hotter summers. Maybe even colder winters AND hotter summers. We'll just have to wait and see if it happens and what it will mean, because I don't see us doing much about it until it's too late.