Al Agnew

I pretty much know what the ratio of smallmouth to spotted bass is on the streams I usually fish, but I haven't been on some of the other streams of the Ozarks for quite a while. So any of you who fish for stream bass, please let me know here or by PM the following: 1. Stream stretches you fish (doesn't have to be exact stretches, just the stream if it's a smaller one, or "upper" "middle" "lower" if it's a larger stream. I'm especially interested in the Niangua both above and below Bennett Spring, the James, and the Gasconade below Jerome, but I'd like to hear from anybody who wishes to participate. 2. What is the ratio of smallmouth to spotted bass in your catch? 3. If you've fished this stream for several years or more, has that ratio changed during that time? 4. Any other info you care to give me concerning the bass population of your stream. Like I said, if you wish to keep it quiet, PM me. I'm not going to divulge secrets, but I'd like to get a better handle on the status of spotted bass vs. smallmouth on the northern Ozark streams especially, but also on streams where spots are native.

Excellent point, Eric!

Chief, I suspect you're right about when the smallmouth moved up the Missouri, always assuming it was somewhere near its present position during the period between the first two ice ages. There would probably have been a period of time when the climate was getting colder and locking up a lot of country to the north in ice, and maybe covering the area where the Missouri is now draining a lot of silt up in Montana and the Dakotas. The Missouri would have been flowing a lot less volume AND silt. The smallmouth can survive just fine in latitudes as far north as central Ontario, so the cooler climate at that point wouldn't have stopped their spread. I'd say it's very likely that's how it happened. Of course, there is an alternative explanation...what if the Ozarks was the ORIGINAL place where smallmouth evolved? The Ozarks has been more or less like it is now for at least 2 to 6 million years, plenty of time for a species to evolve. Instead of being a sanctuary during ice ages, what if the Ozarks was the original stronghold of smallmouth bass, from where they spread up the Ohio, up the Mississippi, and finally into the Great Lakes? In my experience as both an angler who has fished for them in a number of places across the country and an artist who has looked at them closely, the smallies from the Great Lakes and Minnesota lake country are a bit different in appearance from the smallies you catch in the streams and lakes that eventually flow into the Ohio River. Ozark smallies more closely resemble the Ohio/Tennessee River strain, other than what seems to be less capability to attain really large sizes. So maybe that would argue against the Ozarks being the birthplace of smallmouth bass, since if they spread out from the Ozarks, they would have gotten into the Ohio River system much earlier than in the Great Lakes and north country, so the Ohio/Tennessee river strain would have had more time to evolve away from the original. But it's a nice thought anyway. As for spotted bass, you'd think there would be nothing keeping them from being able to survive as far north as Iowa, but if my theory of the silt in the Mississippi being a barrier to their spread, it would just depend upon whether there was a period of time when it was warm enough to allow them to spread northward AND flows on the ancestral Missouri were such that it wasn't dumping too much silt.

In the thread above, I said that I think the smallies were throughout the Ozarks prior to the last ice age, so they probably didn't need the Little Ice Age to move into the region--they were already there. As to your second question, if we're just talking about spotted bass, I think that it would be difficult to get a real good handle on their numbers but pretty simple to at least find enough of them to know they were there or not. I don't think spotted bass ever spend much time in the main channel of the Mississippi. They probably use it only as a travel route in certain water conditions. Where they have been found in the Mississippi is always at the mouths of tributary streams, and I suspect that's probably the only places they spend a lot of time. So if you collect fish at the mouths of tributaries (something that would be a lot easier to do than to collect out in the main channel), you're probably going to find some spotted bass if they are anywhere around. As near as I can tell from the locations of collections on the maps, every tributary mouth of any size has been a collection point at one time or another. Just from my own experience, I think spotted bass get the urge to migrate during the high water of spring on the smaller rivers, but I don't know whether that's true or not on the big rivers. I'd think that spring floods on these rivers might be too cold to give them that urge. Or maybe not. For what it's worth, however, I discovered something about them during the great Mississippi flood of 1993. The creeks near where I live that flow directly into the Mississippi were flowing at normal levels but were backed up for miles from the high water on the big river. Saline Creek was a backwater for over 30 miles. Establishment Creek was backed up for about 15 miles. I paddled and fished a few times in the backwater during the flood on both creeks, and discovered that in just a quarter mile stretch at the extreme end of the backwaters, where current began to appear, the spotted bass were in huge schools just hanging around. Apparently they had moved up with the rising waters until they had found current and reasonably clear water again, and there they congregated. It seems like maybe every spotted bass that lived in the long stretch of creek that was now under backwaters had moved upstream as far as they could go. When the water went back down, some of these spotted bass stayed, though certainly not all of them. I don't know how this relates to movements within the big rivers, or even to movements during normal flooding on the Ozark streams. But it was very interesting.

I love how we get off on tangents that still have something to do with the main subject. The whole ice age thing got me curious so I did a few minutes of research and some thinking... There were four major ice ages in the last 2 or 3 million years in North America. The ice sheets only reached northern Missouri in the first two, the Nebraskan between 1.7 and 2 million years ago, and the Kansan, a quarter million years later. So Missouri was last directly scoured by the ice about 1.4 to 1.5 million years ago. And of course, it was only north Missouri that got covered by the ice; the ice sheets never reached the Ozarks. The last two ice ages were the Illinoian, from 125,000 to 500,000 years ago, and the Wisconsinan, which ended about 11,000 years ago. The Illinoian didn't cover any part of Missouri but covered most of Illinois, including the part of the state that borders the present day Mississippi from St. Louis to the Ohio River. The Wisconsinan only got as far as Wisconsin and Minnesota. So the Ozarks was never altered by the ice or in any major way by the meltwater when the ice ages ended, but the big rivers were definitely formed and altered by meltwater. However, the present courses of the Missouri and Mississippi throughout Missouri were shaped in the first two ice ages, especially in the second, the Kansan, which covered all of north Missouri down to pretty close to the present day channel of the Missouri River. So the present day drainage patterns of the big rivers were formed well over a million years ago. We don't know when smallmouth bass in their present form (or spotted bass, for that matter) first appeared. But we can assume the species existed prior to the last ice age, the Wisconsinan, which was what formed the lake country of Minnesota and Wisconsin, and the present day Great Lakes. So we know that during that last ice age, smallmouth bass could not live in the upper Mississippi drainage or the Great Lakes. However, we can also assume that they existed in that country prior to that last ice age. As the climate cooled and the ice built up during that last ice age, smallmouth bass, like lots of species of animals and plants, were forced to retreat southward. The Ozarks was probably a sanctuary for smallmouth bass during the advance of the ice sheets, a place where they could still live. I suppose it's possible that the springs that have fed Ozark streams since long before that last ice age may have kept the Ozark rivers warm enough in the frigid winters to allow the smallies to do okay in the region. Spotted bass, on the other hand, are a more southern species. They probably never lived north of the Ozarks region. And we also know that they don't thrive even today in the more heavily spring-fed stretches of the Ozark streams. The chances are that if they ever lived within the Ozarks before the last ice age, they were forced to retreat from the part of the region that was closest to the ice sheets and coldest. So we can picture the Ozarks 10,000 years ago as having smallmouth bass throughout, which survived there during the last ice age, while if spotted bass were present at all they were only present in the southern Ozarks, perhaps only in tributaries of the Arkansas River. From there or from farther south and east, they may have spread into and throughout the southern Ozarks once the climate warmed. So the chances are that smallies were in much of the Ozarks LONG before spotted bass either got there or returned. After doing my reading, I still believe that spotted bass couldn't colonize the northern Ozarks because of the silt-laden Missouri River and the almost equally silt-filled Mississippi between St. Louis and the mouth of the Ohio River, which was a barrier to their spread north of the Ohio-Mississippi confluence. However, after my bit of research, I am altering a few ideas I wrote before. The Mississippi and Missouri may not have been a travel corridor for smallmouth at the end of the last ice age, either. They were probably too cold, too big, and too filled with glacial silt to allow either smallies or spots to use them. The smallmouth had to have already been in the Ozarks prior to that last ice age. However, there had to have been conditions suitable for smallies to move into and recolonize the newly formed Great Lakes and their tributaries, as well as the upper Mississippi and the Minnesota lakes, very soon after that last ice age, while there were still plenty of connections to regions farther south where they had ridden out the ice age.

Anybody who goes out on the opening weekend will see a lot of people fishing and keeping what they catch. Chief, maybe it's not right to call it a slaughter, but there are definitely a lot of bass killed on opening weekend. However, like I said before, I really don't think that in the whole scheme of things it's all that important. The fishing doesn't seem to decline much, if at all, after opening weekend...still plenty of fish in the rivers to go around, with maybe a few exceptions on small creeks that have public access.

It's like an old Keist reel (don't know for sure that's the right spelling). I've got one pretty similar on an old steel baitcasting rod as well. Mine has an emblem on the reel seat that is hard to read but is something like Goite or Golte or Coite. But mine mounts on the side of the rod instead of above it as yours does, which is the classic Keist design. It looks like a wagon wheel, and has no gears...the diameter of the reel gives it a reasonably fast retrieve speed instead of a gearing system. I knew old timers that used them up until at least the 1980s. It would cast a big crankbait pretty well, and the slow retrieve and sheer power made crankbait fishing pretty sweet, actually. I've played around with mine and found it to be a little awkward at first, but it got to be pretty comfortable to cast after a bit, and that spinning wheel and whirring sound as the lure flew out was cool.

Eric, I agree with your assessment of what's possible and what isn't. But on the designation of different stretches under different regs, that's exactly what we have now under the SMAs. Put in at Mason Bridge on the Big Piney and you can keep 6 12 inch smallies, but if you're doing a two or three day float down to Ross Bridge, you'll be illegal halfway through the float when you get to the SMA. I wouldn't want a whole bunch of different "ribbon" stretches on any one stream, but dividing the whole stream into a couple (or three on a river the length of the Gasconade) regs areas is not unreasonable, I don't think. The key is to make each regs area a lengthy stretch, and not something like "this 5 mile stretch is red, the next 4 mile stretch is blue, the next 7 mile stretch is statewide", etc.

Guys, I'm in the process of making some maps that I think will show most clearly the three possible ways in which spotted bass got into the northern Ozark streams, hopefully I'll have it done in the next few days and will post it under a separate thread. A few points, however. The similarity in superficial appearance between spotted bass and largemouth make angler records from the early years of floatfishing suspect. They simply divided bass into smallmouth and "line-sides", which most people take to mean largemouth. But certainly spotted bass could have fallen into the line-side description. You have to wonder how many of those early records on the White River were talking of spotted bass and not largemouth. Certainly there were enough spotted bass in the stretches of the White, North Fork, St. Francis, and Black rivers that were dammed to allow the spotted bass to thrive once the reservoirs were there, because I don't think spotted bass were ever stocked in those reservoirs. Nor were they stocked in Stockton and Pomme de Terre reservoirs, but according to our best knowledge, they WERE stocked at some undocumented point in Lake of the Ozarks, from which they spread up into the upper Osage, Sac, and Pomme de Terre rivers to be available when the reservoirs on those rivers were built. It's all about time lines and early records AFTER they were recognized as a separate species. In "Fishes of Missouri", which I keep referring to because it's the best layman's reference I know of, the range maps for each species show all the spots where that species has been collected. Little black dots show the locations where it has been collected after 1945 (up until 1975 when the book was published), small open circles show the spots where it was collected between 1905 and 1945, and large open circles show the locations prior to 1905. These are obviously not just MDC collections but ALL scientific collections, many from university groups or other scientific organizations, and there are over 2500 collections available. In the case of spotted bass, there were no collections prior to 1905, of course, because the species wasn't recognized back then. But there are plenty of collections in that 1905 to 1945 period. They were collected in every south-flowing stream system in the MO Ozarks during that time period except the Eleven Point. AND, they were collected during that time period in the Lake of the Ozarks (which had been in existence by then) and in tributaries upstream of the lake. They were collected in no other streams of the MO Ozarks during that time--not the lower Osage, not the Moreau or Tavern Creek or Maries River, and certainly not in the Gasconade and Meramec river systems nor in the small tributaries of the Mississippi between St. Louis and the mouth of the Ohio River. So, to the best of our knowledge, they simply were not present in any of those streams. And since those streams are between the section of the Osage that was under LOZ and the streams where spotted bass definitely existed back then, if they had gotten to the middle Osage "naturally", it could only have been after they passed those other streams. For that reason, they are believed to have gotten into LOZ and tribs upstream "unnaturally", otherwise they would have also been in those other streams, and in the lower Osage. Can we say for absolute certain they weren't in those other streams in some small numbers, overlooked by the collections? Nope. But I think we can say so with a pretty fair degree of scientific accuracy. In the Mississippi during that time, there is one collection that includes spotted bass, and it was well below the mouth of the Ohio, near the southern edge of the MO bootheel. So what kept them from spreading up into those streams naturally? Obviously something did, because otherwise they would have been there, given that the lower portions of all those streams are perfect spotted bass habitat and have been for a long, long time, no matter what changes have been wrought in recent years on the upper parts of those streams. The clue is that single collection. It's below the mouth of the Ohio. What many people don't realize is that of the two major Mississippi tributaries, both of which enter the river in it's stretch along the state of Missouri, the Missouri River carried one of the highest silt loads of any river in North America, while the Ohio, which often flowed as much or more water than the Mississippi at their confluence during some parts of the year, drained the well-watered and wooded eastern part of North America, so it was often relatively clear. So the Missouri probably wouldn't have been usable as a travel corridor for spotted bass migration, and it would have made the Mississippi between the mouth of the Missouri and the mouth of the Ohio quite silty as well. And then the Ohio would have come in and greatly diluted the silt load. So the theory is that neither the Missouri nor the Mississippi below the Missouri was spotted bass friendly until you got below the Ohio, and that's why there were no native spotted bass in streams entering the two rivers in that stretch. So how did smallmouth, which have much the same range throughout the Ohio river system, get there if the spotted bass didn't? The smallies also are native to the upper Mississippi. And, smallmouth can obviously tolerate cooler water and colder climes than spotted bass. And...there's the fact that there is a native subspecies of smallmouth in the Ozarks, the Neosho. To have a native subspecies, it means that species has to have been there for a long time, but isolated from the main species--it takes a relatively long time to differentiate into a subspecies, and if you still have the original species present, subspecies just don't happen. Given those facts, and one other--while the last few ice ages didn't cover the Ozarks in glacial ice like they did north Missouri, they did have a profound effect on drainage patterns in the big rivers. When that ice started to melt, there was a lot of water, and a lot of opportunity for species that could tolerate colder water to move around. Back then, the Missouri and Mississippi were big enough and diluted enough in silt to allow smallmouth to move through them. But they were probably too cold for spotted bass. So you had smallies moving into Ozarks tributaries (if they weren't already there--we can't know much about what was there before the last ice ages). But the cold water was then a barrier for spotted bass, so if they weren't already in the northern Ozarks, they weren't going to get there back then. And if they HAD been there before those last ice ages, they probably died out in the colder climate of the ice ages. So when the climate settled down into something like the present, you have smallmouth in all the Ozark streams, but spotted bass only in the lower parts of the south-flowing streams, maybe even just down in Arkansas in the lower White and St. Francis, where it had been warm enough for them to survive the ice age. From there the spotted bass moved up into all the south-flowing tributaries of the White and St. Francis, and probably up from the Arkansas River into the SW MO streams. But by the time the climate was warm enough that they could spread up into the north-flowing streams, the Missouri was in its present drainage and producing all that silt that it's been producing since that last ice age, so there's your barrier to their spread up into the north-flowing streams. Now, about stocking of smallies...I think I've mentioned before that some scientists believe that rock bass (any of the three species) may not have been native to the Gasconade and Osage river systems. There are NO pre-1905 collections of rock bass in those streams. Could it be that rock bass just weren't there? Possibly. They could very well have been stocked after 1905 by railroad into streams where they weren't native. But there ARE pre-1905 collections of smallmouth in the Osage and Gasconade systems, and we know that most of the railroad stockings occurred during the time period between about 1880 and 1930, when fishing as a sport became popular--there was little reason for subsistence "fishermen" to want to stock gamefish all over the place. So the timeline doesn't work very well if smallmouth were not native to those streams. However, we know from records that there WAS widespread stocking of smallmouth throughout the Ozarks during that time period, mainly to supposedly supplement existing stocks. Instead of limiting harvest, it was thought that you just hatched more fish and added them. That's probably what happened to the Neosho smallmouth in most streams, too much stocking of northern smallies, swamping their gene pool. There's absolutely no doubt that smallies were stocked by rail in the north-flowing streams, but best knowledge is there were already smallies there, and the stockings were just to make the fishing for them better. What about those Neoshos? Again, it's a matter of connections and barriers. The Neosho strain is believed to be only in tributaries that eventually reach the Arkansas River. Again, you must have isolation for a period of time from the parent species to get a subspecies. Apparently, at some point the Arkansas River became a barrier. If you look at the map, the SW MO streams eventually reach the Arkansas well up in Oklahoma, then you have the Illinois entering it still in OK, then the Mulberry, Big Piney, and other streams entering off the south slope of the Boston Mountains, and finally the White River enters at its mouth at the Mississippi. So, the SW MO streams are the farthest from the White in isolation, and even farther from the north-flowing MO streams (even though those SW MO streams are very close in proximity to the Osage, for instance, those two river systems are actually the farthest of all Ozark drainages in connections). So it stands to reason that the SW MO streams would be the most likely drainages to have an isolated subspecies of smallmouth, with the Boston Mountain streams a little less likely, the White River system less unlikely yet, and the north-flowing streams in Missouri the least likely. So, although the indiscriminate stocking that we know has taken place for more than a century has muddled things up completely, we know the Neoshos were in those SW MO streams originally, we can guess that the Boston Mountain streams had smallies with genes pretty similar, the White river system is a lot more questionable, and the north-flowing Ozark streams were the least likely to have had Neoshos and the most likely to have fish with genetics similar to either the Ohio River system smallmouth or the upper Mississippi smallmouth. Whew! I'm sitting here watching it rain and typing all this with occasional checks of my reference, and it's been fun, but my fingers are getting tired! Sorry if it bored anybody...I've written most of it before and you might be tired of hearing (reading) it.

True most years, Phil, but not every year. If you have a lot of adverse weather during the mid-April to mid-May peak of spawning, some fish will postpone until as late as early June. I've seen smallies on beds in early June. But most years, the spawn is pretty well protected. And to be honest, some biologists are of the opinion that the closed season doesn't really do all that much good, nor is it necessary. The opening weekend bass slaughter simply concentrates the harvest that would take place throughout the spring otherwise. And going by what happens on reservoirs, enough bass escape being killed while on beds to insure the success of the spawn even if they are open season. Not sure I agree with that, but it's a valid viewpoint. However, so much of what MDC does seems to be based as much on tradition as on sound scientific data. The Memorial Day opener is one such thing. There is no scientific basis for opening the season then (and maybe not even for having a closed season in the first place), it's just that's the way it's been done for a long time. Perhaps changing it to the next weekend (first full weekend in June) would make the slaughter a little less intense. But can you imagine how long it would take for the casual, once or twice a year smallie eaters to actually learn that they can't go out on the holiday weekend and catch themselves some bass to eat? But then again, there might not be much scientific basis for changing it, either.

Guys, a volunteer organization is only as good as the volunteers. I don't mean that as a criticism of MSA, just pointing out that when you have a group of people who are donating their time, you're very, very lucky if you get a few who HAVE the time to donate, and enough of a base of such members that the few who have both the time and the passion don't get burned out after a while. It's a circle where more members means more possible volunteers, more volunteers means more work gets done, and the more work that gets done the more likely it is to attract more members. To be honest, the ACTIVE volunteers in the MSA are a very small number of members, maybe a dozen or so, and many of them have been active in the organization--holding office and serving on the board--since its inception. And there are a number of members who started out being active but other things in life got in the way or they simply got tired of doing much of the work. And to be honest, I have been a member since almost the beginning, but have never been as active in the organization as the core group. The website and the annual banquet are good cases in point. It takes somebody who is computer and internet savvy to set up and run the website. Ask Phil how much of his time is spent taking care of this one. So it takes somebody with some free time, knowledge, and interest to run it. ISA's website seems to be going just fine, with forums and all kinds of great features. MSA's website is going to be there one of these days, but there hasn't been the right confluence of members with all the requirements to run it in the last few years. As for banquets, MSA had a very successful banquet, probably nearly as successful as ISA's, for several years, but last year there just wasn't enough members with the time to do all the stuff necessary to set one up, so it didn't happen. Like any good organization, you need that member base to furnish individuals who are able and willing to work for the good of the organization, and you need enough new blood to relieve the burden on those who have put in the time for a while. I would suggest to everybody that instead of asking what good the MSA does that would make joining it worthwhile, join it and get active to MAKE it into the organization we all want. I guarantee you, your participation (not just membership, though that's important too) will be heartily welcomed.

A few thoughts... The ribbon idea has merit because some anglers have been exposed to it through the trout program, but when we're talking about the number of streams that have smallmouth throughout the Ozarks, it's unworkable to put them all on a ribbon system. When you look at all the little creeks in Tryon's book, it would be a little ridiculous to even try to come up with a list of white ribbon streams. And the whole idea behind the trout ribbon designations is a bit different from what we're envisioning for the smallie streams. Like it or not, the trout ribbon system designates streams by VALUE. Blue ribbon=the best streams with the most restrictive regs, red ribbon=less valuable streams deserving of less protection, etc. That's both the perception among anglers and the practical effect of the regs. With the smallmouth streams, yes, you do have more restrictive regs under number 3 than number 2, but that doesn't mean that number 2 streams are less valuable and worse fisheries, and I'm afraid that a ribbon system would foster that outlook. So maybe the ribbon system needs some tinkering with somehow. Eric's idea of designating whole rivers as one ribbon or another somewhat negates the whole concept. While it would certainly keep things simple and would work for many streams, the larger rivers have different characteristics in different sections, and need to be managed differently. For instance, the Gasconade is 250 miles of floatable water with wadeable water above that! The upper end of the Gasconade from Hartville to Competition has vastly different management needs from the lower Gasconade around Rollins Ferry, or even the middle river around Hazelgreen. And even without the complicating factor of spotted bass, the Meramec above Maramec Spring is a totally different stream from the river below the spring, which is rather different from the river below the mouth of the Huzzah, which is different from the river below Meramec State Park, which is different from the river below the mouth of the Bourbeuse...you get my drift. The Niangua is different above Bennett Spring from what it is below. And then you have Black River, which is so totally different above Clearwater Lake compared to what it is below the lake. Those are just some of the streams that simply wouldn't work well under a "whole stream" designation. I obviously don't know all there is to know about every stream in the Ozarks. But in general, here's how I'd designate the major rivers based upon my sometimes limited knowledge of their fisheries... Number four stream sections I already said...Meramec below Meramec State Park or Meramec Caverns (Sand Ford MDC access), all of Big River, all of Bourbeuse River, Gasconade River below Jerome or Bell Chute MDC access. Number three stream sections: Niangua River below Prosperine Gasconade River from Hazelgreen to the beginning of the number four stretch Big Piney River from Slabtown to the Gasconade Meramec River from Scott Ford to the beginning of the number four stretch Current River from Two Rivers or Powdermill downstream James River below Hootentown access Those are the bigger streams that have the most growth potential. There may be smaller streams or sections of other streams that would benefit from this designation, at least on an experimental basis. Number two stream sections--perhaps not the whole length of these sections, but at least some part of them, based upon the numbers of smallmouth and growth rates--I'm only naming streams in my side of the Ozarks that I know firsthand: Osage Fork Gasconade above Hazelgreen Little Piney Creek Huzzah Creek Courtois Creek Mineral Fork Castor River above Hwy. 34 St. Francois River from Silvermines to Sam A. Baker State Park Big Creek Black River from Lesterville to Clearwater Lake Current River from Round Spring to Two Rivers Jacks Fork Eleven Point River below Hwy. 160 Others more familiar with them would have to figure out which streams in the western part of the state would benefit from this designation...remember that it's for streams that are not reaching their potential because they have too many small bass for the forage base. The streams in SW MO that have smallies with Neosho genetics would be in this category as well if they have numerous small fish.

Quoting from "The Fishes of Missouri", by William L. Pflieger... "Spotted bass have been stocked by the Department of Conservation in the Lamine, Grand, Chariton, Perche, Loutre, and Salt stream systems since 1962. Reproduction has occurred in all of these and the spotted bass is well established in the Lamine, Perche, and Loutre stream systems." The book was written in 1975. Somewhere in my poorly filed articles I've saved from all the magazines I get, I have an article from the Conservationist magazine that touts the stocking of spotted bass in those streams. In retrospect, it may have been one of the stupider things MDC ever did, but at the time it seemed like a good idea. If anybody needs a geography lesson, the Loutre River runs into the Missouri from the north side, just a few miles downstream from the mouth of the Gasconade on the south side. And by the way, the Loutre did have some smallmouth in it. Perche Creek enters the Missouri from the north, well upstream of the Osage, and the Lamine enters the Missouri from the south, farther upstream yet.

Good points. Look, I don't entirely buy the whole spawning success is a crap shoot thing. If that was so, there would be a lot of year classes missing from Ozark smallmouth populations, since the likelihood of a flood sometime during the spawning season is pretty high every year. But I've never noticed a major lack of one size of smallies in the streams I fish. Back when I was keeping very careful records and taking scale samples, I noticed a pretty consistent size distribution each year. In other words, by the time the fish got old enough to be big enough for me to catch them--about 7-8 inches--I caught 7-12 inchers at a pretty consistent rate each year with no size in that range missing or scarce. Had there been a really bad year, somewhere in that size range there would have been few fish caught--like few 8-10 inchers (three year old fish). Smallmouth spawning isn't an all or nothing thing. While it seems that the bulk of spawning happens during a period of just a couple of weeks each year, depending upon weather and water conditions, some spawning occurs earlier and later, and so there is almost always an ample number of little fish produced on our streams. Some years it WILL be a lot fewer, but on the good years the numbers of fry produced are far MORE than is necessary to maintain the population. One thing that the White Paper and the Summary of the Special Management Areas does show is that regulations DO have an effect on smallmouth populations. The Special Management Area regs did result in a significant increase in 12-15 inch fish, 15 plus inch fish, and 18 plus inch fish. And also a decrease in growth rates, which shows that apparently there was a general increase in the numbers of adult fish. So while we all decry the lack of enforcement, at least SOME anglers changed their habits in response to the regulations, enough anglers to give the regs some effectiveness. I don't blame MDC, or think they are impeding progress...or at least they haven't to this point. Like I've said before, I've been supportive of their efforts, and I realize that they have other pressures and considerations that might make them slower to make changes than we would like. But I do think the White Paper's conclusions are disappointing, and I don't want to settle for what we have. I do not expect them to change everything overnight, I just want them to be receptive to new ideas and to keep working to improve things. What started this whole ball rolling was the perception from the White Paper that the studies are done, the stream sections evaluated, and what we have now is what we'll have for the foreseeable future.

Wayne, the trouble with your theory is that there is no real evidence that conditions in the Meramec River system had deteriorated at the time that spotted bass started to invade. In fact, riparian conditions on the Meramec had been improving for the most part throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. As for spring flows diminishing and warming the water, the lower Meramec and all of Big River and Bourbeuse River are NOT heavily spring fed. In fact, Big and Bourbeuse are two of the least spring fed streams in the Ozarks...one fair sized spring feeds the Bourbeuse, and no good size springs at all on Big River. Like all Ozark streams, there are some small springs up and down the rivers, but nothing significant. The Meramec is a different story, but even on it the spring influence is pretty much nil in the lower reaches except for the volume. Due to the geology and gradient of these rivers, they have ALWAYS been good spotted bass habitat. The Bourbeuse and Big are low gradient streams, as is the lower Meramec. They are also relatively murky streams during most of the year. In fact, the Bourbeuse and Big are both almost "classic" spotted bass streams, slow, lots of alluvial banks. You could pretty much say the same thing about the lower Gasconade. If spotted bass COULD have reached these streams naturally, they should have done so long ago. So although they are native to many streams that eventually reach the Mississippi, SOMETHING was keeping them out of the north-flowing streams. I doubt that it was simply that they were too far north, since the difference in latitude between Big River and the St. Francis, which is full of native spotted bass, is a matter of a few miles in their upper reaches, and less than 70 miles as the crow flies at most. As I've written before, my theory is that spotted bass couldn't make it to the Meramec because they would have had to travel a long distance up the Mississippi to get there and the Mississippi, fed by the extremely heavy silt load of the Missouri, simply wasn't usable as a travel corridor until man shortened the route and built the upstream dams on the Missouri that lessened the silt load. And the only other way they could have gotten there was from direct stocking of spotted bass on Missouri River tributaries, giving them a short downstream route to the mouth of the Meramec. Either way, I refuse to believe that CHANGES in habitat in the Meramec and tributaries had anything at all to do with it. Once the spots COULD get there, they did, and found it greatly to their liking. The only reason they weren't there before is because for whatever reason, they could NOT get there in the first place. My theory DOES postulate the spots getting there on their own once the route was opened by human actions. The alternative theory requires them to come from stocking in nearby streams and then moving in on their own. So in that sense it was a natural occurrence rather than direct human action. But human action made it possible.

Hey Eric, the yellow grubs are harmless to humans, but like you I find them pretty unappetizing when there are a lot of them. They are actually pretty easy to pick out of the meat with the point of a fillet knife, and given the size of the fillets you usually have from Meramec River system spotted bass, they are all visible even if they are buried in the meat. Only problem comes when there are so many of them that you spend 15 minutes just trying to "de-grub" one fillet. When I bring home spotted bass from Big River, usually I'll end up throwing away about one in six fish because the grubs in that one are just so numerous that it isn't worth it to pick them out.

Okay, here's my wish list of regs, based upon what I think I know about the whole situation... 1. Change the statewide limits to 3 fish, 14 inch minimum. This will serve to better protect the smallie populations on all the small, wading-size, fragile streams where it doesn't take a whole lot of harvest to really affect the population. 2. Then, make a lot of "exceptions" to the statewide regs. On streams that have been shown to have a possible problem with too many fish for the food base (slower growth rates, poor size structure) go with a slot limit of 12-18 inches, with 5 fish under the slot, one over. There ARE such streams, and if they have that problem, some fish do need to be harvested. But rather than trying to add all the small wading streams to the exceptions, an impossible task, you add the relatively few somewhat larger streams to the exceptions. Then, monitor these streams pretty closely to see if the new "old" regs are working as designed to improve size structure and growth rates. The slot may be have to be tinkered with. 3. On the streams that have better potential for growing big fish, especially the larger streams, go with a 14-20 inch slot with 3 fish under the slot, one over. 4. On the lower Gasconade, Meramec below Meramec Caverns, all of Big River and all of the Bourbeuse, complete protection of smallmouth, and no limits on spotted bass. On the rest of the streams within the Meramec and Gasconade river systems, no limits on spotted bass. The biggest problems I see with such a regulatory scheme is in identifying the streams that need more "liberal" limits, and educating anglers on the relative complexity of the regs. In other words, though, I'm advocating scrapping the current limits on SMAs entirely. Although they work to an extent, I think the slot limit idea would work better. And other than the special exceptions to deal with spotted bass in those two river systems, I'd go ahead and make the rules apply to ALL black bass, not just smallmouth, which would solve some of the perceived identity problems. Also, given the slower growth potential of Neosho strain smallies in SW MO streams, I'd consider making the slot limit on most of them 12-16 inches. So basically you'd have three classes of regulations, based upon characteristics of the streams, and forget about making just a few stretches special management areas while ignoring other stretches. I think this would really be more science-based, no political crap about whether or not you have regulatory support, whether or not there are already too many "special" stream stretches in one region, etc. If we're really going to manage the streams for optimum fishing opportunities, then we should make decisions on them based solely on their fisheries and fishery potential. Consider the Current River system. Here's how it would work. All the small, wading size tributaries are under regulation one. The Jacks Fork, which has about as many and perhaps more smallies than it needs to have, and the Current between Round Spring and Two Rivers, are under regulation two. The Current downstream, which has more fishing pressure (big, easily jetboatable) and has potential for growing big fish, gets regulation three. That's my idea, anyway.

It takes specialized knowledge and a specialized set-up to run most of the Gasconade, other than maybe the lowest 30 miles or so in good water, with a prop outboard. It's doable--there were some old-timers who could run the Current, Meramec, and Gasconade in big wooden johnboats with prop motors. But the advent of jet outboards made the knowledge and equipment obsolete. I never got to know any of those who ran the outboards on the rivers, but I watched them sometimes. They had perfect knowledge of the depth of the riffles and when to make turns, slow down, speed up. And they had a mechanism like a foot pedal device that lifted and lowered a plate to which their motors were attached instead of just attaching the motor to the solid transom of the boat. They ran the rivers standing up at the outboard, and lifted the motor without tilting it when they came to very shallow water, so that the prop was barely underwater. They could run in about 12 inches of water, compared to the 4-6 inches that a properly set-up jet can. Maybe somebody else can chime in with a more accurate description of the transom device.

I seem to remember hearing of that, and that the redeye didn't do well. Can't really imagine why AR would do that, though.

There are a heck of a lot of avid flyfishermen who have never caught a 20 incher on the long rod--myself included (though I have the excuse that I don't usually fish for smallies with a fly rod). And don't fool yourself--not many Ozark smallmouth get bigger than 20 inches. Terrific fish. I consider anything over 17 inches a "picture fish". I carry one of the Pentax waterproof Optios. It's been a very reliable camera that takes good pictures.

Well put, Gary. We need to make sure that in our impassioned advocacy of smallmouth fishing, we don't trash the very real and substantial work MDC and some of its employees have done for those fisheries. As unhappy as I am with the apparent direction the White Paper took--that what we have now is what we can look forward to in the foreseeable future--that doesn't negate the SMAs we have now thanks to MDC, and the attention they have paid to stream smallmouth in MO. We need to work with them, and support them just as strongly when they do something we think is right as we complain when they do something we don't like. The IL SA (or ISA) is a great organization. I had the privilege of being their guest speaker last year, and it was a great banquet. I have certainly been impressed by what they've accomplished.

Drew, I'm with you on the "endangered and threatened" thing. Smallmouths (other than pure strain Neosho smallmouth) are far from threatened or endangered over the Ozarks as a whole. They could probably be considered "threatened" as a species on the lower 30 miles of so of Big River and the Bourbeuse, but even that is a questionable proposition since chances are they'd never totally disappear there because they would be continually being replenished by upstream and tributary sources. They won't disappear from Big River as a whole, and probably not from the Bourbeuse. (And, off the topic a bit, not much trips my trigger more than somebody saying a particular interest group of humans is "an endangered species", like loggers in the Northwest, for instance. To say something like that about any subset of Homo sapiens, the most UN-endangered species on earth, is really trivializing the whole concept of endangered species...but enough of that rant.) What we're talking about with smallmouth regulations is ENHANCING, and perhaps protecting where it has the potential of declining, a FISHERY. It has nothing to do with threatened or endangered species, or preserving populations of a species. Heck, I can still catch smallies over most of Big River, for instance. It's just that the fishery has declined from what was once a thriving smallmouth fishery to a mixed bag fishery that includes a lot more and smaller spotted bass. Regs have the possibility of making it better. And even in a good (by Ozark standards) smallmouth fishery, it's possible that the right regulations could serve to make it better by increasing the percentage of larger fish in the population. I believe that regulations have both direct and indirect effects. Directly, they manage harvest of fish so that management goals are reached. Indirectly, they "educate" the fishing public on the value of a fishery and the threats to it. The direct effect only works if the vast majority of anglers follow the regs. The indirect effect works to convince some of those anglers that the fishery needs the protection. The direct effect works best only if there is enforcement of the regs, but the indirect works even without adequate enforcement.

Any theory of how spotted bass got into the Meramec and Gasconade river systems has a huge human-causation component, so it's simply not a natural occurrence. The real question is, as drew has alluded to several times, what can be done about it? Complete fish kill by rotenone is impossible and certainly undesirable...there are simply too many other kinds of fish in these rivers that would also be killed. It would take many years for all these fisheries to return, no matter how the whole spotted bass/smallmouth thing turned out. The spotted bass are here to stay. So the next question is whether anything can be done to keep their numbers under control. Every indication is that spotted bass directly replace smallmouth in these streams. The biomass of bass species remains fairly constant--X number of pounds of bass per acre, no matter what the species. So if you have a whole bunch of little spotted bass, it means a LOT fewer smallmouths (and perhaps largemouths as well--some studies have shown declines in largemouth in these streams). So the only thing that really makes sense (given that the likelihood of MDC shocking and killing every spotted bass they can is nil) is very liberal regulations concerning harvest of spotted bass, and very restrictive regs on smallmouth. Reduce the biomass of spotted bass as much as possible, and give the other bass species a chance to a larger share of the biomass. The 12 fish limit on spotted bass and one fish, 15 inch limit on smallies in Big River is on the right track, but doesn't go far enough. Given two very inconvenient facts--too many anglers never keeping any bass, and the heavy infestation of yellow grubs in the spotted bass which discourages even meat fishermen from keeping them--the only thing that really stands a chance of working regulation-wise is mandatory kill of every spotted bass caught, along with complete protection of smallmouth, and probably largemouth as well. Since as Drew also said, it's highly unlikely that MDC, or at this point even the general angling public, would embrace those regulations, at least remove all limits from spotted bass and give the smallies complete protection...and strongly encourage anglers to kill every spotted bass they catch. I think that MDC could have done better at educating the general angling public on the consequences of spotted bass in these rivers, and still could. So like Eric, I'm not ready to throw in the towel and accept that what we have now on these rivers is all we can look forward to in the future...although I'm afraid it is.

Big floods don't have a whole lot of impact on adult smallmouth. They simply move to sheltered areas and wait it out. I know guys in other parts of the country who fish rivers when they are up in the trees--they catch smallies on the downstream side of big tree trunks. Like Eric, I've caught the same fish out of the same place three years in a row, and there were floods during those years. If smallmouth couldn't handle floods, there wouldn't be any smallies left. They evolved in streams that flooded. Also, in the MDC report, it stated that if there was flooding after the main time of the spawn, that year class actually turned out better, so apparently the fingerlings can handle floods just fine as well. Only if it floods right during the middle of the spawn does the year class suffer. Drew, not much to add to Fishgypsy's response to your spotted bass post, but maybe if the rivers in question were your home waters and you'd SEEN excellent fishing for more big smallmouth than anywhere else in Missouri disappear, replaced by myriads of 10 inch spotted bass, you'd be a little more upset about it.

This stuff probably deserves its own thread... The big logging boom in the Ozarks started around 1900. By the 1930s, the hills were pretty much denuded. That's where a lot of the gravel that is still in the Ozark streams came from. And by the Great Depression, not only were the trees gone but a few years of trying to farm the hillsides, with burning to clear out the weeds, made matters even worse. The Ozarks actually saw a big population decline during the Depression, and the U.S. Forest Service came in at that time and bought most of the land for the National Forests--cheap. So, sorry, Eric, I have to agree with Chief on this one, at least to some extent. At the same time, however, the Ozarks had become a fishing destination. In fact, it was THE smallmouth float fishing destination. Which may say a lot about what kind of shape the rest of the country was in, if the Ozarks was the "best" place to go and fish for smallmouth. There's no doubt that the natives in the Ozarks took all the fish they could, any way they could, until MDC got started and began to institute regulations and actually police the streams. Back then, up until the 1950s and 60s, the Ozark streams were almost the only bass fishing in the state. Lake of the Ozarks and Taneycomo were the only two real bass lakes. So the streams probably got a lot of policing. In a way, that history somewhat supports my contention that smallies can thrive even in poor habitat. The streams suffered first from the logging, and can you imagine the damage to banks and bottom that just one of the big log rafts did? Then they got filled in with the gravel from logging and slash and burn agriculture. Yet they still produced what was evidently decent fishing. You can thank a lot of factors for improvement in the streams starting in the 1950s. The forests, protected by the Forest Service, grew back--nothing like they were before, but good enough to stop a lot of the gravel from continuing to enter the streams. MDC furnished some protection for the fisheries. The environmental movement began and resulted in laws stopping raw sewage entering the streams. The hey-day of float fishing as a business ended, and the big lakes were built, and the streams didn't get as much fishing pressure as they had before. The 12 inch length limit made a big difference. By the 1970s and early 1980s, the bigger rivers like the Meramec and Gasconade were probably better smallmouth fishing than they'd been since the beginning of the century, and most of the smaller streams were just as good. There WERE streams, and areas, where the fishing was still pretty mediocre, and I believe that was because those areas got a lot of legal and illegal fishing pressure. But it's been downhill since then. Jetboats arrived on the scene in the mid-1980s, and had a tremendous impact. I believe the first big impact was on spawning success. The numbers of small bass on the streams that are big enough for lots of jetboats declined precipitously and have never really come back to anything like they were before, although I believe that by now the fish have learned to cope with jetboat wakes during spawning. Then the next big impact was with gigging. Jetboats made gigging real easy compared to what it was before. And finally, fishing pressure. That double whammy, fishing pressure and illegal gigging, are, I believe, the two main factors limiting the production of big smallmouth. (I was out on the Meramec today. It's finally gotten clear enough to gig. I only caught six smallies, and the first two had fresh gig marks. AARRGGHH!) And I still believe that the jetboat wakes have damaged and destabilized the banks in places. Couple that with other bad things going on. Gravel mining. Industrial chicken farms. Development. A ten year drought. And of course, spotted bass in the Meramec and Gasconade river systems. The situation is declining. The fishing is getting worse in many streams. Regulations could help offset the impacts of more fishing pressure. Some serious enforcement could help with the gigging problem. The other problems will have to be addressed by other avenues.