Al Agnew

Not a NANFA member, though I follow their Facebook group. Don't know Robert, contacted MDC when I got wind that the new book was being written to see if they would be interested in having me do the illustrations, but I was too late and they'd already gotten somebody else to do them. I hope whoever it is is better than the artist they had do the illustrations for Pflieger's book.

There is a new book on Missouri fish coming out soon if it isn't out already. Bill Pflieger's book, "Fishes of Missouri", has been out of print for a while. Arkansas also has a fish book similar to Pflieger's, don't know the present status of it. Those are the two I use a lot. I also have a field guide to the fish of North America that is very good, but right now I'm in Montana and it's in Missouri, and I can't remember the exact title of it. I'm still a bit of a Luddite, prefer books to the internet.

SARS and H1N1 never got the level where extraordinary measures had to be taken, partly because of the response to them, partly because they ended up no more deadly than the flu. And that's the same answer to the flu...it simply hasn't been deadly enough (since the 1918 flu). No, we don't completely understand this virus. It continues to mystify the scientific and medical establishment. Is that a reason not to take as many precautions as possible? I don't put all my faith in the government...especially since the government has been giving out mixed messages from the beginning. Fauci would stand up at a podium and say one thing, and then Trump would get up right afterwards and say something completely different. Which one are you to believe? Hint...one has a vested interest in convincing voters that everything is great under his watch. So I read the science, I don't listen to the government. And again, I can take risks as I see fit, but I can't control what risks others take with MY health. I don't care in the least what risks they take with their health, that's their business. But when what they are doing risks the health of myself and my loved ones, that's a whole different story. And please don't say, as Wrench has repeatedly, that all I need to do is stay home. Why should the selfishness of some people force others to either take real risks or not be able to live their lives? Should it be one person's choice to drive 70 mph down residential streets while everybody who thinks that is unsafe shouldn't drive on those streets?

In keeping with Johnsfolly's offering... Three middle-aged married women are sitting around the kitchen table, discussing all the various things married women discuss when their husbands aren't around, and the subject turns to sex, and after a bit, to birth control. The first woman says, "Oh, I've used the pill for the last 20 years, wouldn't use anything else." The second woman says, "As you know, we are Catholics, so we use the rhythm method. It's failed a couple times, which is one reason we have 6 kids, but for the most part it's worked all right." The two of them look to the third woman... She says, "I use the big-eye-bucket method." They look at her quizzically. Finally one of them says, "I'll bite. What in the world is the big-eye-bucket method?" The lady says, "Well, obviously I'm a pretty large, tall woman, and Charlie is quite a bit shorter than me. But for some reason, we both like to do it standing up. So he stands on a bucket to do it. So when I see his eyes get big, I just kick the bucket out from under him!"

I'm sick and tired of this whole mess, too...but reality bites. Whether or not Covid deaths are being misreported by for profit hospitals (fairly likely), reality is that a lot of people are dying from it and the trend is going in the wrong direction. It's not a conspiracy that hospitalizations are rising to the point where the health professionals are getting freaked out about it. Here's the thing that makes the whole mask question so tough...the fact is that a mask protects others from you more than it affects you from others. The analogy I like best of all that I've seen is the cartoon where two people are standing close together, both naked. One guys starts to pee on the other. The other gets wet. Second frame: the guy getting peed upon has on clothing. He still gets wet, but not quite as quickly. Third frame: the guy peeing has clothes on. Now the second guy doesn't get wet. Masks slow the speed and spread of aerosol virus from YOUR mouth. It also give SOME protection for the other guy, but certainly nothing like complete protection. But the two of you both wearing masks, plus staying 6 feet apart, should make the spread of the virus from the first person to the second one highly unlikely. The biggest, scariest problem with this virus is that you can have it and not know it, and still be a spreader. That's where masks help. And that means that this should NOT be a personal choice...because YOUR choice can adversely affect others. It's why it really burns my toast to see other customers in the grocery store not wearing masks. I have zero idea whether they are contagious or not, and they are putting MY mask-wearing self at more risk by not being responsible adults. And sorry, but that's how I feel...if you refuse to wear a mask and go into any enclosed space where you will be close to people you don't know and who don't know you, you are not being a responsible adult. In fact, you are being extremely self-centered. You don't go into a grocery store blindfolded and swinging a big knife around, and that's exactly what you are doing by not wearing a mask when around other people...you are possibly putting them in danger. And the less likely you are to wear a mask, the less likely you are to do other responsible things that will keep you from getting this virus, so the more likely you are to have it. I've been out here in Montana for quite a while, and one reason we've stayed out here later than we usually do is because in our little town, most people and businesses are taking this seriously. But this week, I finally ran afoul of a couple businesses, both automobile businesses, who are NOT taking it seriously, and found out about another business who is explicitly going against taking it seriously. The first was a dealer where I had to take my truck in for an oil change and to get one of the electrical outlets operating again. Everybody in the service department, and the cashier, were wearing masks...under their chins. The second was an auto repair shop where I take my old Montana truck, a 2003 Chevy, to get oil changes and all the minor repairs that old trucks like that need. Walk into the very small office area to hand them the keys, and the wife is behind the desk, no mask, and her kids running around the room, no masks. I stood in the doorway and reached in to lay the keys on the desk, answered her questions, and got out of there. But you see, in both instances, I was doing the right thing by wearing a mask, not to protect myself, but to protect others from me (or actually, because I'm fairly certain I don't have it, to give others a little more peace of mind, not having to worry quite as much that I might have it). I EXPECT others to show me the same courtesy. The third place is a meat market where we've always gone, a great place to pick up sandwiches and bacon and sausage, run by a guy that we really liked...until we heard today that there is a sign on the door that they do NOT wear masks, don't expect their customers to wear masks, and if you don't like it don't come in. So we won't. In fact, there are two levels to this idea that what you do or don't do affects others as much or more than it affects you. If we were all doing the right thing (and yes, I firmly believe that it IS the right thing to wear masks and socially distance), not only would we be spreading it to each other less, but overall, the numbers would be far lower, and when there WAS an outbreak, we could more easily do contact tracing and quarantining. A whole lot of other countries are handling this better than we are. But because it has been completely politicized that doing the right thing makes you a scaredy-cat liberal and doing the wrong thing makes you a macho conservative, there is no way we are ever going to get a handle on this. You do have to make decisions for yourself. From everything I understand about this virus, it is highly unlikely that you will catch it if you are outdoors and more than 6 feet away from other people, or even indoors, unless you are in fairly close proximity to a spreader for a significant period of time. But indoors, "fairly close" doesn't mean 6 feet--studies I've read have shown that in restaurants, for instance, who gets infected depends in large part upon which way the air is circulating. But, I don't wear masks outdoors, partly because I am NOT going anywhere that I'll be forced to be crowded with other people I don't know. I do wear masks 100% of the time when indoors (except for my own house). I don't go to restaurants and dine in, because that is a KNOWN way it spreads...spending an hour or more enclosed with other people (and you can't wear your mask while eating). I hate that, partly because I like going to a good restaurant, and partly because I know that restaurants are struggling, but reality bites.

Connery was perfectly cast as Bond...you'd almost think that Ian Fleming's James Bond books were written from the movies. Connery perfectly matched Fleming's description and characterization of Bond in the books. When Roger Moore took over the movies veered pretty sharply away from the books. I read most of Fleming's books before I ever saw a Bond movie, and when Connery moved on I never liked the movies as well.

If you think Phil is a leftist, you don't know him. And by the way, there has been PLENTY of political sign stealing and vandalism on both sides. It ain't a leftist thang.

I'm going by simple math, Mitch. If death rates continue as they are now until the end of the year, somewhere close to 400,000 people will have died from contracting Covid. Average flu deaths per year is around 35,000. And before anybody says, yeah, but a lot of the Covid deaths are misreported because people are put in the death by Covid category when they die of anything while testing positive for Covid...first of all that is false. Second of all, Covid deaths and flu deaths are reported exactly the same way. Very few people die of the typical symptoms of flu, they die from complications of the flu interacting with their other health problems. So the flu death numbers ARE compatible, for comparison purposes, with Covid numbers. I think where the CDC might be getting that 5 times figure, though, is that flu deaths are seasonal, the flu only lasts for about 6 months each year. Covid deaths are spread over the whole year this year (except that they started in March in the U.S., and have increased greatly since mid-April). So 35,000 deaths over 6 months, compared to, let's say, 350,000 over a year, will get you that 5 times as deadly figure. So it seems that both numbers could be correct...pure deadliness, the flu is 20% as deadly as Covid. But based on number of deaths per year, it's 10% as deadly. Math isn't always simple, but it usually works out! Statistics, on the other hand, are easily manipulated. I find this little exercise interesting. So you are living in 2020. To make it really simple, I'm going to round the current U.S. population of 328.2 million to 330 million, and posit that 33,000 people will die of the flu this year. In simple numbers, your chances of dying of the flu this year are 1 in 10,000. If 330,000 people die of Covid this year, that means in simple numbers that your chances of dying of Covid are 1 in 1000. But...those simple numbers don't tell the whole story. How many people contract the flu each year? CDC estimates 9.3-45 million. That's a wide range, so let's just keep it simple and say 33 million. How many people will have contracted Covid by the end of the year? Right now it's up to a bit over 9 million, so lets keep keeping it simple and say that number is 16.5 million by the end of the year, which seems pretty predictable with the trend the way it is. So if 33,000 die of the flu out of 33 million cases, if you contract the flu, your chances of dying are 1 in 1000. If 16.5 million people contract Covid by the end of the year and 330,000 die of it, then if you contract Covid, your chances of dying are 1 in 200. But the high risk groups for both illnesses are pretty similar, and while there appear to be a much larger percentage of people dying from Covid that AREN'T in a high risk group, compared to the flu, we still know that your risk of dying goes up considerably if you are in a high risk group. So I didn't feel like trying to find the different percentages who die of Covid by age group or co-morbidities, but if you are my age with my level of pre-existing conditions--68, healthy, but with high blood pressure and occasional irregular heartbeat--my chances are probably something on the order of 1 in 50 IF I contract Covid, and 1 in somewhere between 250 and 500 if I contract the flu. And who knows what my chances are of contracting Covid with the level of precautions I'm taking, but my chances of contracting the flu are pretty low since I got a high dose flu vaccine. Point is, you can pick out any one of those figures above as say that's the figure that applies to your argument. And every one of them is correct as far as it goes.

Geez, I don't want to argue about this anymore, but come on. Automobile deaths? Stop and think how many people drive in this country, and how many hours per year you and nearly everybody else spends in an automobile. I would venture to bet that 300 million people regularly spend time in automobiles, and probably average somewhere between 10 and 20 hours a week. If you commute very far to work and millions do, you're probably spending 20 hours a week just in commuting, never mind the trips to the store and the weekend getaways. But let's say 300 million people times 10 hours a week, that's 3 BILLION hours per week spent in an automobile in this country...and ONLY 102 deaths per day, or 714 deaths a week. Riding in an automobile starts to look like a pretty safe thing to do. Alcohol? I'd have to see the figures of what constitutes a death from alcohol. But guess what? Those people dying from alcohol will continue to die from it. The number won't change. The deaths from Covid are over and above all the other things that kill you. Don't know about you, but I'd just as soon not put myself at risk of something else killing me that didn't exist before. I don't have much worry about alcohol, since I barely drink at all. I can control that. Anybody with any sense that isn't already addicted should be able to control it. I can't control what other idiots do that puts me more at risk of Covid. Fact is, a new disease that didn't exist last year is on a pace to become the third leading cause of death this year, trailing only cancer and heart disease (and already surpassed ALL accidents, not just auto accidents). And your math is wrong...Covid is 10 times as deadly as the seasonal flu, if the numbers keep going the way they are until the end of the year. But I know I won't change your mind. I just hope you don't find out the hard way that you were wrong.

Let's see...record numbers of hospitalizations across the country, health professionals basically freaking out about the continually climbing numbers, huge numbers of deaths all over the world, other countries taking this extremely seriously...wow, what a conspiracy to affect the election! Sorry, Wrench, but that's just plain stupid.

Cattle farming and fescue are the worst things that ever happened to quail, rabbits, ground-nesting birds...heck, you name it...in the Ozarks. A fescue field is a sterile field except for cows. Yes, a lot of wildlife did better when there was more row crops. Yes, predators kill some quail and turkeys and rabbits, and there are plenty of predators these days, but if the habitat sucks, you simply won't have a lot of critters. MDC makes mistakes. The good thing is the 1/8th cent sales tax gives them more money than most state fish and game departments. The bad thing is that it's paid by a lot of people other than hunters and fishermen. It puts MDC in a bit of a quandary as to how much to concentrate on huntable animals and catchable fish, and how much to put into non-game species and non-consumptive recreation. Actually I'm a bit surprised that they are still as focused on hunting and fishing as they are.

It does have most of the characteristics of pumpkinseeds...the gill flap looks right, short and with the red spot. But it doesn't look quite like the pumpkinseeds I've caught. Can't put my finger on why, though.

Unfortunately, normal land is now having a whole pile of people infected AND hospitalized. And what do you do if you don't think you yourself are at risk, but have somebody in your house who is?

Well, let's see...I haven't been in a restaurant or a quick shop since March, as well. Haven't fished with anybody but Mary since then. We came out to Montana in mid-July and have been here ever since, because at least people out here in our town are taking it seriously--every business requires masks and everybody goes along with it. Our county has done well, except for the occasional big wedding or funeral that causes a little spike in cases. We drove out here stopping only for gas, and stayed in our tent at a campground instead of a hotel like we usually do. Then we bought a camping trailer, so when we drive back to Missouri we'll stay in it. We go to the grocery store about once every 10 days, always early in the morning. We go to the Costco in Bozeman about once every three weeks. We've done some hiking with friends we trust, and a few outside get togethers with friends in their yard. Have done quite a bit of work around the house, and we got out on the river a couple times a week. Yesterday we both got flu shots AND the first of two of the new shingles shots, and we were both sick as a dog last night. Almost recovered today, but of course we were wondering last night if it was the shingles shot or Covid; let me tell you, those shingles shots are no fun. Had to get out of the house, so we drove up Paradise Valley looking at elk and deer, and decided to stop at a walk-in river access that we'd never checked out for petrified wood before. On the Yellowstone, you can find pieces of river-worn petrified wood on any bar, though the bars next to accesses get picked over. But we had about 20 acres of bar to search today, and found about 40 pounds of petrified wood--I was worn out from carrying it all in a cloth grocery bag for two hours. I'm almost retired...did one painting after I got out here, a commission for a guy. I've been doing some writing and illustrations for my blog...if you want to know something about Missouri's two dangerous spider species, check out my latest articles on the blog. riversandart.blogspot.com

I think you're right.

I think there are a lot of factors in whether a pond can grow big crappie. Two biggest ones are predation (no matter if it's bass and catfish or people) and food availability. All other things being equal, the fewer crappie you have for the forage base, the bigger they get. It's a little tough to get a good forage base for crappie going in the typical small pond stocked with bass and bluegill. But they keep reproducing, and probably eating a ton of the little bass and bluegill. I've known ponds that had crappie that every one of them was so small it was almost transparent. And other ponds that have fine crappie, including one little pond that had huge ones, but not many of them. A nephew got permission to fish it and took out a few dozen 2-3 pounders (and a couple considerably bigger than that) and the fishing dropped to almost nothing. But I guess my main point is, you need to do a couple things to grow big crappie in ponds...diversify the forage base, and make sure plenty of smaller crappie are taken out. Stock it with a ton of fathead minnows, in the spring before they spawn, and hope that they pull off a good spawn and get themselves established, would seem to me to be one idea. As for protecting the big crappie to make the gene pool better, well, big crappie got that way by living for a while AFTER they first started spawning. Seems to me they've already passed along their genes before they get truly big. Maybe they are better, more experienced spawners that lay more eggs, but at the same time once they get too old they start to decline in number of eggs laid, etc. I think you protect big crappie so those big crappie will be fun to catch and MAYBE good spawners. More importantly, you take out a lot of crappie in the middle, because some of them MIGHT have poor genetics. And keep taking them out down to barely big enough to eat. And perhaps most importantly, you should pay attention to what's happening, and if the fishing starts to decline either from not enough fish or too many fish, do something different. I don't have crappie in my pond, though somebody once sneaked in a couple. I caught them several times, always in the same spot, never caught a crappie anywhere else in the pond. I think they were both males, and they got pretty big, maybe two pounds, before they disappeared. But my pond simply doesn't have a good enough forage base for either bass or bluegill. Basically they eat each other. I keep them reasonably good sized by taking out around 70 bluegill and 20 or so bass a year for this pond that's a little under an acre, and I'm pretty much the only one who fishes it. But although my bluegill males are mostly around 10 inches long, well bigger than my hand, they aren't very thick because there just isn't enough to eat. The pond is in sandstone, acidic water, and just doesn't grow the kind of forage base that a pond in limestone will.

I agree...one of the best documentaries I've seen in a while.

I guess it is. To be honest, I tried the HD Craw on a jig a few times, never thought it was as good as using it alone. And not any better than any other jig and trailer combination. But heck, 75% of success on any lure is having confidence in it. If folks have confidence that a certain trailer works better on a jig, it probably will, for them. I gotta wonder, though, how many guys who say that so-and-so is their best lure (or lure combination in this case) are having so much success on it because that's what they use most or all the time.

Yeah, I fish it sometimes. But my thoughts are that, like most jig type lures, it doesn't really match the profile of any particular bass food. I was kinda surprised with people started using the HD Craw as a jig trailer, because my opinion is that it negates a lot of what made the HD Craw a unique lure...it changed it from an uber-realistic craw imitation to a fuzzy butted something or another with craw pinchers added. Which, of course, is what all jig and craw lures are. That being the case, I really don't think it makes much difference if you're using a jig and craw or a jig and chunk, both are very impressionistic imitations of some bottom crawling critter or another, and the bass eat them not because they think they are a crawdad, but because they look like something edible and catchable.

I'd say it's a little above the highest practical put-in. It's three or four miles from there down to Cedar Creek and the river is seldom floatable above Cedar Creek even in the spring. By mid-summer most years, you'll walk every riffle and scrape bottom in some pretty long stretches of it above Cedar Creek, and probably have to figure out how to get through log jams as well. I've never floated from Bootleg--too much trouble. You'll walk the majority of the riffles in the summer even putting in at the mouth of Cedar Creek. It routinely flows less than 15 cfs up there, and you need 75 cfs on the Irondale gauge to float it reasonably cleanly.

Hmm, I have never seen any version but the ones that give Cherokee Landing area as the furthest upstream. That was the highest put-in in Oz Hawksley's original book, "Missouri Ozark Waterways", from which all the info is taken in the Paddler's Guide, and as far as I knew they never changed it. I think Bootleg was the highest access in Chuck Tryon's book, "200 Missouri Smallmouth Adventures".

Thanks for all the kind words. I'm older than dirt, and by now I've learned a whole lot and probably forgotten half of it. As for a book, the problem, I've found, is in actually getting one finished, and then getting it published. I started writing a book on the Meramec river system more than 4 years ago, not long after my wife was diagnosed with cancer and I needed something to take my mind off it all--and I couldn't paint for worrying about it, but I could write. I got the writing of the book about finished within a few months, but since then I've been working in fits and starts on illustrations, maps, and photographs, and STILL haven't gotten it to a point where I could consider taking it to a publisher or publishing it myself. By this time I'm going to have to rewrite some of it because it's out of date. As jdmidwest said, nothing beats exploring yourself, but it sure is helpful to have the information at your fingertips. But also, as he said, a lot of info has a shelf life. I did a mile by mile description of each access and point of interest on all the floatable stream sections of the Meramec Basin as part of the book, going into more depth on some of the points of interest, on the parking situation at access points, etc. than is covered in the Paddler's Guide, but some of that info is already out of date. The book covers everything that interests me about the streams of the Basin, including history both pre-European and European settlement and up to the present day (covers the whole history of the Meramec Dam extensively), environmental problems, recreational opportunities and conflicts, and all the fish and wildlife. Most of that won't go out of date for a long time if at all, but there is still a lot of stuff in it that won't be the same for long. I've always intended to write a book about floating and fishing the Ozark streams, as well, and have gotten parts of it done. It would be more along the lines of John Gierach's books, vignettes of adventures and things that have struck me on Ozark float trips and fishing trips. Who knows if I'll ever get it done...but even if I do, I still need to find a publisher. I also do some writing in my blog...but not nearly regularly enough. I'm kinda semi-retired, but it seems I'm as busy now on all kinds of stuff that has nothing to do with art or writing as I ever was making a living doing art. I can't figure that out. If you you haven't checked out my blog, it's riversandart.blogspot.com.

JesterHK's post about fishing near Cabo in the salt got me to thinking. I've done a certain amount of saltwater fishing, from halibut in Alaska to redfish in south Texas to striped bass near Montauk to bonefish, tarpon, and permit in Florida. And I've caught my share of fish big enough and mean enough to take 15-25 minutes to get to hand...And I can say that for me, it just doesn't do it. For one thing, I don't particularly enjoy being out of sight of land. Not that I'm scared, or get seasick, I just find it boring. For another thing, I get tired of the "battle" long before it's over. It's just not too important to me to be able to subdue a big, powerful fish. After a few minutes, I'm ready to either get the thing in or hope it gets off. It's been said that the evolution of a fisherman is first, to catch a fish, then to catch a lot of fish, and finally to catch big fish. But that's not my evolution. I started out liking to catch bluegill and sunfish when I was just barely old enough to remember it, but I quickly graduated to the big fish stage; by the time I was 8 or 9 years old I was regularly catching 5 pound plus bass from Wappapello fishing with my dad, and at about the same time I also graduated to catching stream smallmouth on my own. I sought big smallies for quite a while before catching one, but I caught a ton of 12-16 inchers before that ever happened. But early on, it was the setting as much or more than the fish for me. Wappapello back in the 1960s was a paradise. It was held a couple feet lower back then than it is now, and the lower half of the lake had a bunch of low islands, covered in willows and buttonbush. It was an absolute zoo for birds. Mom bought a bird identification book and I carried it in the boat, identifying scores of really cool water and shore birds. And the shallow lake produced amazing topwater fishing through much of the summer, and I quickly fell in love with topwater lures, a love affair that has continued ever since. And as for those stream smallmouth, they eventually became my greatest love. But by the time I graduated from high school, I'd realized it wasn't the fish that I loved the most there, either, it was the beauty of Ozark streams. And then there was one more thing...early on, I began to make some of my own lures, and fooling bass regularly on a lure I made myself became one of my greatest satisfactions. I didn't start seriously fly fishing until 1996, when I got to know an avid fly fisherman who invited me to go to Montana with him. It was the beginning of my third great angling love affair, but again, it was not the fish. I've caught as many big trout since in Missouri as I have ever caught in Montana. But it was the rivers, like the Yellowstone, that called to me. I still don't enjoy fly fishing as much as I do baitcasting and using topwater lures, but I would feel sacrilegious to fish for Montana trout with anything else. Thoreau said that "Many men go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after." I don't entirely agree with that. I AM after fish. I still love the thrill of fooling a big smallmouth or trout. But I think it's as much because I have rivers in my blood, rivers that hold bass or trout, as it is the fish themselves. I'd rather catch a big rainbow that jumps twice and comes to my net after a 2 minute struggle, than a tarpon that takes an hour to boat. Why? Because that rainbow will be living in a gorgeous river, and I may be catching it on a streamer I invented myself. I'd rather see the explosion of a nice smallmouth, or even a little one, taking my topwater lure, even if it escapes. I've caught plenty of smallmouth but I never tire of seeing them attack. And then there is the challenge of finding and fooling them in the winter--again, more because of the winter river setting than anything else. If I hook a really big one, then I get all excited and the adrenalin rush begins, and I WANT to get it to hand and measure it, because it's a rather rare thing. There are other attractions, other things I love. I love running rivers. I've paddled and rowed a lot of different kinds of boats, and I never tire of it, of running fast water competently, of just feeling the response of my craft to my strokes. I love fishing with like-minded buddies. I love gravel bar camping, snorkeling, climbing a bluff just to see the view from atop it. I love fishing a tiny mountain creek full of native cutthroat, so small and choked in timber that you never make an actual fly cast, you just figure out some way to get your fly onto the water before you spook the fish...and all the while you're keeping your eye out for ol' griz. So yeah, you can have your saltwater, or your big reservoir, or even your remote Canadian fly-in lakes. They don't do it for me. Give me a river and a casting rod or fly rod and some lures or flies I make myself, and put me in a canoe or a driftboat. Give me some wild trout or smallmouth, or even some nice river largemouth--or NATIVE spotted bass, with maybe a native river walleye possibility. Let me catch a few longear sunfish or one of the rock bass species for variety and just because of their beauty. I'll happily do it all alone, or with my wife, or with a good fishing buddy. And I'll remain just as deeply in love with the whole experience as I was when I was a teenager.

That stretch of the Meramec puts you in at what is called "The Bluffs", which is about 7 miles up from Onondaga and Ozark Outdoors. They have an alternative which puts you in on the lower Courtois, you float about 1.5 miles of the Courtois, a mile of Huzzah and Courtois combined, and then three miles of the Meramec down to Ozark Outdoors. Of the two, the Bluffs float, entirely on the Meramec, is usually a little better, but the other one is interesting in that you are fishing three very different rivers in one float. But the Bluffs float means you're fishing two different rivers in one float, because the Meramec is a different animal above the Huzzah. In low autumn water flows it is little more than half as big above the Huzzah as it is below it. Right now, for instance, the Meramec is flowing 218 cfs at Steelville. The Huzzah is flowing 113 cfs at Highway 8, well above the mouth of the Courtois, and the Courtois is pretty close to the same size as the Huzzah, so combined they are probably dumping around 200 cfs into the Meramec. And there aren't any large creeks or springs coming into the Meramec between Steelville and the Huzzah, so I'd bet that the Meramec at the junction is flowing no more than 250 cfs. It's flowing 491 cfs at the Sullivan gauge, well below the junction. So in effect, right now the Huzzah is nearly doubling the size of the Meramec. The Meramec is also often murkier above the Huzzah than below it. So it's simply a different river. Which means you can have good fishing above the Huzzah and bad fishing below...or occasionally the other way around. But...since basically the river below the mouth of the Huzzah gets twice as much pressure as it does above it, the fishing below the Huzzah usually isn't as good. However, the Meramec also gets a lot of jetboat fishing pressure, and that occurs above the Huzzah as well, so it can be a little tough at times. Big River above Washington State Park...the park puts you in at Blackwell, which is 8 miles down to the lodge in the main part of the park, 5 miles to the access at Highway 21. They also put in shorter floats at 21, so the part of the float from 21 to the main part of the park gets more pressure than the stretch from Blackwell to 21. In comparison to the Meramec, Big River in that stretch is flowing around 75 cfs right now (it's flowing 61 cfs at the Bonne Terre gauge, which is well above Blackwell, and only a few small creeks come in between. 75 cfs is BARELY enough water for easy floating; you'll scrape bottom occasionally and may have to get out once or twice. Compare that to the Meramec above the Huzzah at 250 cfs, easy floating and faster water. So...the Meramec will be easier floating. Big might be easier fishing because the river is smaller, slower, and the fish-holding areas are more limited and more obvious. If you know what you're doing, the fishing is about the same on both, though. One other thing to think about...the Meramec gets a LOT of gigging, especially between Onondaga and the Huzzah. Big is often a little murkier, and not big enough for easy jet boat running during this part of the gigging season, so it gets less gigging. That can make a difference this time of year.

Another choice would be to go farther downstream on Current River this time of year. The smallmouth are on the move toward wintering areas, and a lot of them may be leaving Huzzah and Courtois by now. But Current River below Round Spring should be good. Maybe see if you can get a campsite at Two Rivers and have the choice of the lower Jacks Fork or the Current above Two Rivers.