Al Agnew

Eric, I love your rod holder! I might do something similar myself...it would be nice to have the rod handles out in front of the seat thwarts instead of lying on them. As for the seat, it looks comfortable and the mounting job is well done. However, I think I agree with RS in that a seat that deeply molded might limit your movements a bit. And I would have kept more room under the seat in order to place my battery box tackle box under there. Just for everybody's information, Piragis Northwoods is now selling a cane seat that is shaped pretty much like the molded butt seats.

Phil, we constantly run into this on the riversmallies forum, where I'm supposed to be one of the moderators. I seldom axe anything because I like the discussions even if they stray somewhat into the political, but there are other moderators who cut people a lot less slack. The way I look at it, though, is that there is a difference between what I'd call "current affairs", and pure politics. This issue, in my opinion, falls under the "current affairs" banner if people are willing to discuss it without using it as an opportunity to cut down the current administration or any other administration or party. In other words, limit the discussion to whether or not the task force is necessary, desirable, doing the right or the wrong thing...with facts and opinions as to why you think the way you do. And not assigning purposes either nefarious, benign, or good to the politicians responsible unless they expressly state that is their purpose. And definitely not then going off on the politicians for totally unrelated things you see as bad. I try to keep in mind that arguments should be presented, and will only be won, by facts and intelligent, well thought out opinions for YOUR side, not by attacking the other side. Attacking the other side just makes them defensive and less willing to hear anything you have to say.

Interesting knot... I'm not as concerned with getting a 100% knot (and I'd be REALLY surprised if this or any other knot was truly a 100% knot) as I am with getting a strong knot that is quick and easy to tie correctly every time, including when your fingers are cold, the light is low, the trout are rising like crazy and you know it isn't going to last long and you have to get a fly tied on and out there quickly, the solo canoe is drifting downstream and coming up fast on that perfect spot...well, you get the picture. I hate fancy knots that take forever to tie. Looks like the Davy knot might be a quick and easy one with some practice, so I'll give it a try. Right now, for all non-fly fishing, I use a palomar--or a double palomar if using braid of less than 6 pound diameter with worm hooks, where a single palomar will allow the line to slip through the gap in the eye of the hook. Since I use a snap on all hard baits, tying a palomar is always the easiest and most dependable knot I know of--it's not nearly as easy if you're tying direct to a two treble hook crankbait! In flyfishing, it's either a palomar, an improved clinch, or sometimes if it's really cold I just tie a regular clinch knot. Oddly enough, I've had pretty good luck with the regular clinch, which isn't supposed to have much strength at all.

Nope, you're all wrong. I said this one was the hardest because it's really not too typical of this stream. It's Courtois Creek not far below Hwy. 8.

I absolutely always use a curly tail grub trailer on my homemade twin spin. If I'm using a white or chartreuse spinnerbait I use a pearl grub. If brown, a white grub. If black, a black grub. I never even experiment with any other colors. And I use a trailer hook. I always bend the barb down on the trailer hook, but to keep the trailer hook on I leave the barb on the main hook. Fact is, however, that the majority of bass are hooked on the main hook. I make mine on a 1/4 ounce spinnerbait frame and hook. I don't always use the trailer on safety pin type spinnerbaits, but I often do.

Brownieman gets a couple bonus points...1 is the Silvermines dam. JoeD gets two points for the lower wilderness area on the Buffalo, correct, and two points for the middle Meramec. Coldwaterfisher also gets two points for the lower Buffalo, since he recognized the hills are too big for the Jacks Fork. cwc gets three points for naming the exact spot on the Meramec...but that doesn't surprise me because he's on that section about 100 times a year. But he probably shoulda got number 4. Somebody mentioned the stream in a list up above, though. Can't give any more points for streams that I've already said were correctly named. I'll do this again and not give confirmation of any of the answers for a couple days to give everybody a chance to name them all without help. I may have some of those prints left. Won't know for sure until I get home at the end of this week.

Very nice fish! Don't know about the sunken eyes, but your theory about age causing it makes sense to me. In that water color, I'm not surprised crankbaits and spinnerbaits were working. Unless the leaves are too bad or the water too clear, crankbaits are deadly until the water temps get down into the high 40s.

Two points for KC...not bad for somebody that lives that far away from both of them. For anybody who's knocked around on the St. Francis, you should be able to recognize the exact spot due to something on the left side of the photo. For anybody who has floated more than one section of the Buffalo and likes to look at bluffs and gravel bars, it should be easy to narrow it down to either upper or lower half at least.

Ah, Wayne, a kayak is just fine...but like you said, a solo canoe is better! LOL, Ness! In my opinion, the most comfortable thing to fish out of is a johnboat. The easiest to learn to paddle and fish from is a kayak, especially an SOT. The most versatile is a canoe. Rafts and driftboats are specialty craft, most useful in bigger, faster rivers. Toons are great except for packing, unpacking, setting up, and doing anything on windy days. The reason I say the canoe is the most versatile is: 1. It can handle big rivers and little creeks and everything in between, up to high class 2. 2. It's easy to cartop, carry, and use difficult accesses. 3. It will carry everything you'll need for a day or overnighter. 4. Although it takes a bit of a learning curve, once you get the techniques down you can handle it precisely in any kind of current. Kayaks are great at 1, 2, and 4...not good at all at 3. Johnboats only excel at 3. Toons are mediocre at 1 (can't handle really small creeks like a canoe), worse than mediocre at 2, marginal for 3, good for 4. So the canoe is the least limiting of the usual float craft found on Missouri streams.

Okay, seems like the other places were some I hadn't visited before...here's four photos. Each is a different stream. Bonus points for not only naming the stream but naming the exact stretch of stream...and with the easy one, the exact spot on that stream. Here's the easiest one: Here's one that's just a bit harder but still pretty easy: Here's one that's a bit harder, but should be recognizable to those who have floated it a few times: Here's the hardest one: Hint: They aren't all in the same state. And they aren't in SW MO, since I've done little floating over there.

I agree, Eric...and the fact is that there is NO one perfect river craft. All have advantages and disadvantages. My first four or five years of serious float fishing were in a cheap 12 ft. aluminum jonboat, and it worked quite well for teenagers with lots of energy. I bought my first canoe (15 ft. Grumman) my senior year of high school, and the jonboat never saw the river again.It was probably 15 years before I bought another, more "performance" canoe, and the Grumman served me very well all that time and saw most of the rivers of the Ozarks, but although the Grumman still lives (I sold it to my brother-in-law), I never paddled it again. I have floated in aluminum, polylink, Royalex, fiberglass, and whatever that Coleman material is canoes. I've floated in a "rubber" folding canoe. I've floated in SOT and SINK kayaks, and inflatable kayaks. I've floated in 'toons. Driftboats. Rafts. Jetboats. Paddle johns. I even made a "boat" out of two inner tubes and a sheet of plywood and used it for a couple years when I was a kid. And I've caught fish from every one of them!

You're absolutely right, Eric, and don't think I don't realize how fortunate I've been. I actually saw 6 or 7 of them on my honeymoon, which was a three week jaunt throughout the West. Some I first saw before or after art shows...there was a big national show for a number of years in Seattle, and we drove up there several times, taking our time going and coming. The national parks are some of the very best places to see "real" wildlife. We have a cabin that's only a half hour from Yellowstone, so it and Grand Teton are my most visited parks...I visit them multiple times each year. I've watched wolves in Yellowstone, seen my share of bears both grizzly and black, photographed big bull moose in Grand Teton and bighorn sheep rams in Yellowstone, along with elk, mule deer, coyotes, foxes, and the other day I even got a picture of a weasel. We've done hikes up to 12 miles per day off the beaten path in both parks, fished a bunch of the trout streams in Yellowstone and the Snake River in Grand Teton. Glacier has even more spectacular scenery than Yellowstone, but wildlife watching isn't as good, except for mountain goats. Rocky Mountain is probably the very best park to see all kinds of huge bull elk--Yellowstone used to be, but the elk population seems to be down considerably there. We were in Yellowstone today. Snow was falling at times, and the animals were mostly lying low. We saw hundreds of bison, a few pronghorns, a couple herds of elk, some mule deer, and a couple eagles. And that was a disappointing day for wildlife viewing!

Not the Meramec. Not the lower Buffalo. Might be on the Buffalo between Erbie and Pruitt below where the river comes out of the Bostons. I seem to remember stopping at a place like that on the upper Buffalo.

The Penobscot is the best-tracking Royalex canoe that I know of...it has the narrowest, sharpest ends. Royalex, because it is formed on a mold and can't be too thin and too sharp of a curve, makes for blunt-ended canoes. Fiberglass can be formed into VERY sharp entry and exit lines (ends). I had a Sawyer fiberglass canoe for a few years that was MUCH better tracking and faster than the Penobscot...but that thing was a real bear to get to turn. Thing is, for float fishing on Ozark streams, you don't need a REALLY maneuverable canoe, but you sure don't need one that's really fast and that tracks extremely well. I like a compromise that leans very slightly toward tracking at the expense of maneuverability for a tandem canoe, and the Penobscot fits the bill the best for me.

Fiberglass is definitely doable for Ozark streams, but like eric, I don't like the noise. Still, fiberglass can be formed into canoe designs that are faster and track better than any Royalex canoe. If you fish the Bourbeuse or many sections of the Gasconade with long dead pools, you'll love the speed and tracking to get you through the frog water. I'd stay far, far away from the Coleman canoes, unless you can get one used for really, really cheap.

Speaking of bucket lists, I'm sitting here trying to think of how many national parks I've visited, and how many I want to visit in the future... Starting from the west and going east, I've been to these... Denali, Alaska Gates of the Arctic, Alaska Kenai Fjords, Alaska Olympic, Washington Mount Ranier, Washington Crater Lake, Oregon Redwood, California Joshua Tree, California Grand Canyon, Arizona Petrified Forest, Arizona Sonoran Desert, Arizona Saguaro, Arizona Zion, Utah Bryce Canyon, Utah Capital Reef, Utah Canyonlands, Utah Arches, Utah Glacier, Montana Yellowstone, Wyoming Grand Teton, Wyoming Mesa Verde, Colorado Rocky Mountain, Colorado Great Sand Dunes, Colorado Badlands, South Dakota Voyageurs, Minnesota Great Smoky Mountains, Tennessee-North Carolina Shenandoah, Virginia Everglades, Florida Acadia, Maine And several national monuments...and several more national wild and scenic rivers. I gotta see Yosemite yet, and Lassen Volcanic.

I'm not sure line size matters...I use 8 pound McCoys co-poly, murky or clear, and anything from 2/10 to 6/20 Power Pro braid. I'm pretty sure line size (within reason) doesn't matter when fishing fast-moving lures. Slow stuff, maybe a bit, but bass don't seem to be line shy like trout can be. I think line size has more to do with the lures you're using and how they sink and run, than with fooling the fish. Bass have good eyes. If WE can see 4 pound line underwater (and we can, I've snorkeled and looked at it), they can, too. Even if they could think, they wouldn't think, "Hey, that's a really thin string attached to that lure there, so I think I'll go ahead and eat it this time. The last time there was a thicker string and I didn't want any part of it." On the other hand, 6/20 Power Pro looks like well rope in clear water. I tend to stick with the 2/10 mainly because it just looks less obvious to ME.

Those hybrids can also be very pretty fish. Yours are.

Understood, Chief, but since the "native American" people also apparently reached Missouri soon after the last ice age, smallies in the Meramec are at least as native as they are...and spots didn't get there until just 25 or 30 years ago!

Yeah, Dano, I always thought Mill Creek was Starlight Creek ever since I read the book. Lots of things in the book that fit...and I don't know of any other real possibilities in the Arkansas Ozarks. If the book wasn't pure fiction, of course.

For Ozark streams it's seasonally dependent... mid-May to mid-Sept--probably a walk-the-dog topwater, with my home-made twin spin close behind. mid-Sept to about Nov--Translucent colored Superfuke if the leaves are on the water, twin spin if they aren't. Nov to really cold weather--small jerkbait like a Pointer 78 in a translucent color. really cold weather--small brownish or olive hair jig. end of really cold weather until about mid-April--the jerkbait. mid-April to mid-May--the twin spin. Honorable mention from mid-April to November--smallish buzzbait, and popper type topwater such as the G-Splash in translucent colors. Honorable mention year-round--2.5 to 3 inch tube in brown or olive.

The dry was a smallish foam-bodied hopper imitation, the film fly a size 16 or 18 emerger that I've had in the fly box for several years and don't remember the name. Looks like hopper season is over out here...snow and high in the 30s today! I'll be back in hopefully warmer Missouri in a few days.

Just a few corrections to misconceptions... The streams flowing into the Osage River are NOT native spotted bass streams. I'm talking about the Sac, Pomme de Terre, Niangua, Little Niangua, Auglaize, Tavern, and all the creeks flowing into those streams, as well as the main-stream Osage and all the lakes on these streams. However, according to Pflieger, the foremost fisheries biologist in recent history in Missouri, spotted bass were APPARENTLY introduced into the Lake of the Ozarks at some point not long after it was built, certainly before 1940, and they rather quickly populated the Osage and all suitable tributaries, as well as the Moreau, which enters the Missouri just a few miles from the mouth of the Osage. Early records are spotty, but show no spotted bass anywhere in the system prior to about 1940. In doing a lot of research myself into smallmouth native range, I've found only one author, A. J. McClane, who stated that they were not native to the Ozarks. Fact is that they could have reached the Ozarks at the end of the last ice age from either the upper Mississippi, where they are also native, or from the Ohio, where they and spotted bass are both native. But the fact that the only subspecies of smallmouth other than the type species is the Neosho smallmouth, native ONLY to the western Ozarks, certainly argues that they have been in the Ozarks for a long time...you don't get subspecies status in as little as a few hundred years. In fact, it's possible the Neosho smallies were here BEFORE the last ice age, in an enclave of the western Ozarks, and the northern smallies either pushed them out or populated vacant territory in the rest of the Ozarks soon after the last ice age. Certainly every book other than McClane's and every author and biologist I've ever read has considered them a native species to the Ozarks. There is a fundamental difference between birds changing their ranges because of climate change, and fish changing their ranges. Birds are simply much more mobile than fish. They can fly north, or delay their migration. Fish have to have those connections I've talked about. Is it possible that warming water temps have allowed the spots to spread up the Mississippi to the Meramec? Yes, I suppose it is, although water temps would have had to change not on the lower Meramec, which has almost certainly ALWAYS been warm enough for spotted bass, but on the Mississippi, their only possible natural connection. It doesn't really make a whole lot of sense that a rise of a couple of degrees on average, if that, on the Mississippi was enough to change it so that spotted bass could utilize it when they couldn't before. And again, guys, that's the key here. I'll say it again. IF SPOTTED BASS HAD A USABLE CONNECTION TO THE MERAMEC FROM STREAMS WHERE THEY WERE NATIVE, THEY WOULD HAVE ALSO BEEN IN THE MERAMEC LONG AGO. Because the lower Meramec, as well as Big River and the Bourbeuse, have ALWAYS been suitable spotted bass habitat. As for other limitations to smallie growth and populations of larger smallies, that's a whole THIRD thread in itself, and we already have two of them going in this train wreck!

Ozark Outdoors at Onondaga is also open pretty much year-round. Bear Bass there has shuttled me a lot of times during the winter. Nice guy, great service.

Where it's legal, instead of using an indicator, use a two fly system with a high-floating dry fly and your "film" fly attached to the bend of the hook with 12-15 inches of tippet. Your dry fly is your indicator, and serves the double purpose of also possibly catching a few fish. Make it one that's easy to see. If it moves in any way that's not normal, or you see a surface disturbance within a foot or so of it, something has taken your film fly. This is great as well if fish are taking a really tiny dry fly. Use a bigger fly to help you see where your "real" fly is. Or, suspend a small bead head nymph under a dry fly. The other day, I caught a few fish out here on the Yellowstone on an otherwise very tough day by doing the two fly thing with a "film" fly.