Al Agnew

The ONLY advantage to a kayak is price. Any good solo canoe will be just as fast (especially if paddled with a double blade) and just as maneuverable. And it'll hold all the stuff you want to carry, unlike a kayak. The reasons solo canoes tend to be more expensive is mainly due to the materials from which they are made. You don't see kayaks made of Royalex. So why Royalex instead of the plastics the kayaks are made from? WEIGHT. A royalex solo canoe will weigh in at 20 or more pounds lighter than a kayak of comparable size. Even the polylink Old Towns like the Dick's Kaynoe will be 10 pounds lighter...and they were comparable in price. But everybody wants a kayak, because it's fun and easy to paddle and their only experience in a canoe was probably a rental aluminum tandem.

Lots of stuff go into catching bigger stream smallmouth besides just the lures you use, but there is an optimum size of lure that is most likely to catch both numbers and size. It varies with the lure, but as a general rule, if the profile of the lure is less than about 2.5 inches long by the width of your thumb, it's probably too small. It can be longer if it's that width, or wider if it's that short...or bigger both ways. You can also go too big...you'll catch the occasional big one with an oversize lure, but no more and probably fewer than you will with lures within the optimum range. The size of lure also varies with water conditions...as does the type of lure you choose and the color as well. Just to give you an idea, here are my "best" big smallmouth lures: homemade shallow running crankbait with skirt. The body of this lure is about 2.75 inches long, and the skirt on the belly hook adds bulk and lengthens the lure's profile by a half-inch or so. Homemade bucktail twin-spin. This lure has a hair body that's about 2.5 inches including the lead head, and I also add a curly tail grub to the hook that adds another 3-4 inches to the overall length. Walk-the-dog topwater lures. My default size is that of the Sammy 100 (100 millimeters) or the Super Spook Jr. (about the same size, around 4 inches) Zoom Superfluke. It's about 5 inches long. 3 inch and 3.5 inch tube baits. Jig and plastic chunk. I usually go with a smaller silicone jig (which is still about 2 inches long from head to end of skirt) with a Zoom Superchunk Jr. added, which adds another couple inches. Probably the smallest lure I regularly use is a Pop-R type popper, which is about 2.5 inches long. I fish these lures in everything from the air-clear water of streams like Huzzah Creek to the murky water of the lower Meramec and Gasconade. If it's murky, I go to bigger sizes. If it's really clear, I may drop down to the Sammy 85 (85 millimeters) but no smaller.

RSBreth hit the nail on the head...crankbaits are about the most likely lures to get hung up where you can't reach them while wading. For that reason, the only cranks I'll use when wading are shallow runners that will go over the top of most rocky areas. Of course, I'll still be tempted to cast them into the brush and logs and end up hanging them up and having to swim for them, but a shallow crank that runs less than 2 feet deep is a more viable choice when wading than the deeper runners. Actually, wade-fishing from May to October, I limit my selection of lures to a couple of topwaters, a buzzbait or two, a couple of my homemade spinnerbaits, and some tubes with hooks and lead. Fishing during the week when you can avoid the crowds and fishing pressure, most of the time the topwaters work well. I could probably get by with just the topwaters and the tubes...fish the topwaters while wading away from the access, then turn around and fish the tubes while wading back to the car.

Yeah, I kinda thought Bobber was being sarcastic... The thing is, public use of rivers like the Buffalo continues to grow, and at some point it begins to interfere with the goal of keeping the river as clean and unspoiled as possible. A permit system might be the best way to limit damage.

Bobber, are you saying you want them to cut all the overhanging trees??? If so, I'm totally against that. The Buffalo shouldn't be an amusement ride but a wild river, and on a wild river you should be willing to accept some risks. The canoe rental people should be required to give oral and written warning that there are natural hazards such as overhanging trees in the river, and then their responsibility ends. The feds should strictly control canoe and other watercraft rentals when the river is hazardously high. (USGS and other gauges are abundant on the Buffalo, and it would be easy to close the river once the gauges reached a certain point.) But again, if the river comes up while you're on a trip, well, that's a risk you have to take on a natural river. It's always a tragedy when somebody drowns on a river like the Buffalo, but you CANNOT make the river totally safe, and it's the responsibility of any river user to know the hazards and how to avoid them...if they don't, it's their tough luck. I'd be totally against stopping gravel bar camping, but I'd be willing to go with a permit system for backcountry camping and perhaps the permit system could close some of the most abused gravel bars. I have no problem with requiring you to pack your poop out...I've floated wild rivers in other parts of the country where that was required, and also floated some supposedly wild rivers in Alaska where it SHOULD have been required. I'd be willing to put up with the 6 beer limit. Leaving no trace (other than my tracks on the gravel bar) is standard operating procedure for me on any Ozark river, so I have no problem with that. Cost? Hey, I have no problem with that, either, as long as the money goes toward the improvements like toilets and pay phones as well as maintaining other infrastructure in the public use areas. 15 mile an hour speed limit? Heck, just say no motors.

The part of the Meramec on which the Elder vs. Delcour case concerned was pretty far above Maramec Spring...I'm not sure exactly which stretch, but I'm pretty sure it was above Cook Station. That part of the river is floatable in the spring, but gets too low for anything but walk and drag the riffles type floating in the summer. So it would stand to reason that any other stream in the state that was the same size or bigger would be subject to the ruling. I don't know Jenkins Creek, but would suspect it is of similar size. I do know that Indian Creek, a Meramec tributary that is actually smaller than the Meramec around Cook Station, has been established as navigable, even though there are a bunch of jealous landowners and one in particular that continues to try to run people off it. The one guy has supposedly been warned repeatedly about harassing floaters by the county sheriff, and the county prosecutor continues to say that he has no right to do so, but I guess until somebody with pockets deep enough to afford an attorney that can stand up to his deep pockets and attorney sues the pants off him or the sheriff and prosecutor arrest him for harassing sportsmen or something, the problem will continue. It's a perfect example of what FishinCricket noted.

I hate to say this, but you might as well forget all that stuff UNTIL somebody takes a state trespass case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Nearly all states, including Missouri and Arkansas, insist that their navigability laws supercede those particular federal rulings. The ONLY law that matters in the state of Missouri at this time is the Elder vs. Delcour case, which ruled that if a stream can be established as having been used in the past for commercial purposes (floating logs to market was specifically mentioned), the public has the right to use it for recreational purposes, including the gravel bars and anywhere else within its normal banks, to float it, camp on it, and get out to carry a boat around obstructions. Technically, this case ONLY concerns the Meramec River in the area well above Maramec Spring, but other cases have found that other streams do indeed apply using the Elder vs. Delcour qualifications. You can kick and scream all you want, but if the county sheriff and prosecutor wish to prosecute a trespass case on ANY stream in the county, there's a pretty good chance that, unless a prior case ON THAT STREAM has ruled it navigable, you'll lose. Most counties in the Ozarks now pretty well know which streams are definitely navigable, but may still prosecute on smaller and lesser known streams. And if a landowner is prominent enough in the county and has enough pull, there's a good chance he'll be able to get the prosecutor on his side. Those federal rulings really sound nice, but I guarantee you they won't mean a thing if you're in a county court in Missouri being accused of trespass.

The biggest difference between the trout parks, which are spring branches, and the rivers, is that the volume of water flowing is more often strong enough to work WITH natural or manmade structure to form deeper pools and pockets. You need high water to do so. Bennett has a dry creek above the branch that occasionally floods in extreme rain events which might help. Montauk has Pigeon Creek above it and gets flooded fairly regularly. Maramec doesn't have anything. I doubt that adding structure anywhere in Maramec will do much of anything...it tends to get backed up from the river in floods and have MORE sediment deposited instead of being scoured out. Adding structure in Montauk would probably work in many places. It MIGHT work in Bennett. Fact is that most "natural" spring branches tend to be shallow, gravelly runs with few pools that could hold fish. You gotta have the power of high volumes of fast-flowing water to scour out deep places around any kind of obstructions. The spring branches just don't flow enough water normally to move anything other than fairly fine gravel.

I'm truly amazed that there hasn't been a really major tragedy involving jetboats and other river users, especially people on inner tubes but including kayakers and canoers. It depends upon the character of the river, but Coldwaterfisher's limit isn't a bad idea...and I own one of the things. Which is why whenever somebody comes on here asking for advice on buying or using one, I always try to stress avoidance of stream sections that are full of other users, and sections where you're pushing the envelope in trying to run them. The problem is that nobody has the guts to put on limitations. The feds on the Current and Jacks Fork have, and would like to put on more, but the stubborn, reactionary subset of Ozark natives that are knee-jerk opposed to any limits on what they can do on the rivers are going to be opposing them big time, and I'm betting they'll get their way. The people who already have big, fast, expensive jetboats are going to understandably have a cow if any limits are instituted. And the many jetboat dealers in the region are going to throw their weight against any limits as well. Unfortunately, the time to put limits on was back when they were first coming onto the scene, but nobody back then had the foresight to do so. This is one place where MDC was part of the problem. When people first started to complain about jetboats and question whether they were bad for the rivers, MDC decided to do a study to gauge their effect on the streams. Great idea. But the study consisted of running a jetboat and a prop boat over a section of stream bed and measuring the effects on the bottom of the stream. Gee, big surprise, the study showed that prop boats were worse than jetboats! There was no measurement of the effect of wave action on the stream banks and edges. No measurement of the increased turbidity of the water along the banks. No appreciation that this new technology was going to mean high speed boats on sections of streams that had heretofore been unrunnable by motorized craft. No thought that, even if jetboats tore up the bottom less than prop boats, the cumulative effects of 100 jetboats running where a handful of prop boats used to run might just make a huge difference. Nope, they'd done their job, did their study, and everything was fine. And they haven't gone back and re-examined anything since, because they know that it's too late now and no matter how bad the jetboat traffic is, they'd never be able to put significant limits on it. Funny how it's so easy to put no-wake zones on many lakes. A lot of lakes across the country have no-wake zones within a hundred feet of the banks, sometimes much farther, to protect the banks from erosion. On most Ozark streams, you can't get 100 feet away from either bank in most places.

Logperch make great aquarium fish if you feed them frozen brine shrimp...they won't eat normal tropical fish food or dry food. And if you can get some live aquatic insects like scuds or others that you can get plenty of, it's really fun to watch them eat. It's also fun to watch them foraging for food...that conical nose is used to burrow under and flip over small rocks, and then they back off slightly and peer to see if they've dislodged any insects. Northern studfish, the "topwater minners" of the Ozarks, are certainly beautiful, but for some reason I've never gotten them to eat much of anything in the aquarium.

Taxi, that's so wrong it's scary. Gravel mining does NOT make pools upstream or downstream deeper. To believe so is to have no idea of stream dynamics. The effects of gravel mining are nearly all bad, and last for many years AFTER the mining stops. It could very well be that the filling in of the pools that you may have seen since the mining stopped is due to after-effects of the mining. Or it could be due to other factors. But I'd be willing to bet a large amount of money that if mining was resumed, you'd see the stream get worse, not better. It might seem simple...get gravel out of the stream and there will be less gravel available to fill in the pools. But in order to get enough gravel out to make any kind of difference, you'd have to dig up most, if not all, the stream. The effects of gravel mining depends upon what kind of mining is done. If you dig deeply into the channel, it causes head-cutting upstream with the channel being eroded deeper and deeper within the banks...not making deeper holes, just higher and more unstable banks. It also makes gravel downstream move, and making the gravel move is what makes it fill in deep pools. The upstream gravel that is being scoured out continually fills in the hole that's been dug, while the downstream gravel moves on downstream filling in the pools below, as the river tries to eliminate the sudden drop and rise of the dug hole. This continues for many years after the hole is dug, and makes long stretches of stream both upstream and downstream unstable. Shallow pits and bar-skimming (taking just off the gravel bars down to the waterline) is less destructive, but still makes the bars more unstable, making gravel move. It's the movement of gravel that fills in the holes. Some streams have relatively stable gravel bars with plenty of plants holding the gravel down, and the natural "cementing" of the gravel surface also holding it. These streams don't change much in normal flooding. But once the gravel gets unstable and starts to move, it's hard to stop. Gravel mining often STARTS the gravel moving. And...nobody could think that the areas that are actually dug out are better fish habitat, even if they might be deep water, and most are not deep or quickly fill in. Widening of the stream channel during the excavation and removal of stream-side vegetation is the major culprit in your warming water...the more shallow water exposed to the sun, the more it heats up. I've watched gravel mining on many streams for many years. I have yet to see a lasting benefit to smallmouth bass or fish habitat from it, but I've seen PLENTY of detrimental effects.

The message boards on Riversmallies are now back up, but with a new address. The address is: http://riversmallies.invisionzone.com Brian King has been too busy with life issues to be all that enthused about the site for quite a while now, and has been considering either selling it or shutting it down completely. I also think he's been disappointed with the "lack of energy" and the clashes with different personalities on the site. The other staff members have also been much less active, so the site has had some problems. We'll see what happens in the near future...there ARE people who would take over the site if Brian could make a deal with them. Since the site now has a new address, it will take word of mouth to let people know about it.

Guys, it's partly maintainance (actually they are updating the server stuff), but also when it comes back online it will probably only be the message boards and none of the other stuff on the site. It's future is up in the air at this point.

It needs to be challenged, but will take a good lawyer to do so. If you have a friend who is a good lawyer, or deep pockets, go for it. As you are finding out, all these cases are dependent upon the county courts and county prosecutor. The county courts WILL rule according to county precedent, and since the county has already convicted people of trespass on that creek, it will continue to do so until somebody appeals it to a higher court. Many counties that have floatable streams running through them have ruled according to the state supreme court finding in Elder vs. Delcour, but apparently this county is ignoring that case, and will continue to ignore it until somebody takes a case on THIS creek to a higher court and wins. That's what the Conservation Agent apparently meant when he said that Jenkins Creek has not been "classified" as floatable. As far as I know, there is no list of streams or stream sections that are considered "navigable" under Elder vs. Delcour. Thus, ANY stream could possibly be found by lower courts to be non-navigable. That's the scary thing about this whole situation. Get a court that is not "friendly" to the concept of floatable streams and we could LOSE ground in a big court case instead of gaining ground. We also need to be aware of the legal definitions of the word "navigable". The only truly navigable streams in Missouri are the Missouri, Mississippi, and short sections of the lower ends of the Gasconade and Osage. These are navigable under federal navigability law, and the public owns the riverbed to the "mean high water mark" on these streams. All other streams in Missouri are "navigable" only in so much as the state has ruled that the public has a right to use them up to the high water mark for recreational purposes, but the landowner owns the bed of these streams. It would be nice if there was a hard and fast list of stream sections that fall under this ruling, but there isn't, and if such a list was ever compiled, it could very well cover fewer streams than we'd like, depending upon who compiled it and what kinds of "commercial" purposes they used as criteria. The usual one so far has been whether it was ever used to float logs to market, which would be a true test of "commercial navigability". The fact that a stream has canoe rentals on it would also qualify. I rather doubt that a resort on the creek would qualify, however, because a resort does not necessarily use the "navigability" feature of the stream--the resort does not move products or services up or down stream. And the simple fact that it WILL float a canoe does not imply COMMERCIAL navigability, since I'm not using the stream for commercial purposes when I put my canoe on it and float it. It's pretty convoluted, but I think that's the usual reading of the law in MO. So to win a state court case on Jenkins Creek, you'd have to be able to prove that it was used in the past to float logs to market or some other commercial purpose that involved moving something downstream.

Gavin's right...although you can wade the river just about anywhere above Cherokee Landing if you don't mind sinking in the mine tailings, it's often a long way between good spots. If you want to get in some serious fishing around the park, it's best to use a canoe. However, you might also be surprised at the places where you'll find bass in that section. They can be in some pretty shallow water if there is any kind of cover.

Actually, I don't find much difference in paddling a solo canoe upstream compared to a kayak, as long as you're using a double bladed paddle for both. You should be able to paddle upstream through everything but really fast, shallow riffles, and those you can get out and walk. When I'm going upstream I tend to get out and drag the boat where it's shallow, anyway, since while I can paddle it, I think it takes less energy to walk it. There will always be places that are trouble spots, where you have very strong current coming into rootwads or other obstructions where the water is too deep to wade easily, but most of the water on the smaller Ozark streams is either paddle-able or wade-able while dragging the kayak (or canoe). If you're reasonably energetic, you can go upstream 3-4 miles in an hour or two.

I've fished Courtois a lot and have never seen a trout on it. Like Gavin, I've seen and caught trout in the vicinity of Huzzah Valley, and also upstream a few miles. But I wouldn't be expecting to catch a trout on either stream. I suspect that's an old photo, probably from Westover when it was pay by the inch.

Joe's right, details are important... St. Francois State Park is at the lower end of the section of the river that's most badly affected by lead mine tailings. You'll find the river to be shallow with a lot of fine gravel (the remains of the crushed lead mine ore) on the bottom. The park is also pretty crowded on weekends. It's nearly all easily wadeable except for the fact that you often sink 6 inches or more into the fine gravel with each step. Smallmouths, spotted bass, and largemouths are all found in decent numbers in that part of the river. There's a decent population of channel catfish, and the occasional flathead. Lots of suckers, especially carpsuckers, and some big carp here and there. Goggle-eye are present but not in great numbers or great sizes. Lots and lots of longear sunfish and green sunfish. There's a canoe rental at the old 67 highway bridge just south of the entrance to the park. I haven't talked to them in a long time, so I don't know which floats they run canoes on. It's about 1.5 miles from the lowest access in the park to their campground. The next more or less public access above the park is at the old 67 bridge just north of Desloge, and it's 10 miles from there to the park. There are no truly public accesses below 67 bridge where the canoe rental is (it's north of Bonne Terre and not to be confused with the one that's just north of Desloge), until you get all the way down to the Highway 21 bridge near Washington State Park, where that park has a good access. That's about 18 miles or so from the park, way too far to float in a day. The canoe rental may use some private accesses, however...I don't know.

In my experience, you don't need really light line. I use the same lines for all my smallie fishing no matter how clear the water is...8 pound McCoys Mean Green co-poly on my baitcasting rods, and Power Pro braided line on spinning tackle. I've been fishing 2/10 Power Pro, but this year I'm trying 4/15 and 6/20 to see if it makes any difference to the fish.

If you're like me, eventually you'll find yourself on the water without ANY kind of tool to cut the braid. If you're on most Ozark waters at that point, you just have to go primitive...go to the nearest gravelly shoreline or gravel bar, find a chunk of flint rock (which is obviously pretty common all over the Ozarks), find another big chunk of rock, and throw one chunk as hard as you can against the other one, making sure to cover your eyes before they hit. Hopefully the flint will shatter, and then you just find one of the pieces and use any sharp edge on it to cut the line. It's usually as sharp as a good knife. Then put it in your pocket or in the boat so you don't have to do it again! I'm being a little tongue in cheek here, but not much...I've had to do this a bunch of times.

The video has it exactly right...if you don't have access to a line winder like the stores use. If you follow the instructions on the video you WON'T need to check for twist after winding on a few yards of line as Dave Potts suggested, because as long as the line is coming off the line spool in the same direction as it goes onto the reel spool, you ARE minimizing twist as much as possible. But as Grizwilson said, due to the difference in diameter between line spool and reel spool, you'll still be adding some twist. Dutch, you are most definitely wrong, even if whatever twist you are adding that way doesn't bother you (which I could only see if you're using a braided line as RSBreth said). The line coming off the top of the line spool like a baitcaster is coming off with NO twist, but as it goes onto the reel spool, each revolution of the bail adds one twist to the line. Over 50 yards of line that's a lot of twist. Twist is inherent to spinning reels because of the fact that each revolution of the bail adds a twist. It solves itself, ideally, because you lose that twist on the cast as the line comes back off the spool. But lots of stuff adds more twist, most especially reeling while the drag is slipping. Some lures twist the line badly as well. Where twist messes things up is when you close the bail on slack line, which generally happens on most casts. The twist causes a loop when you close the bail that sticks out of the spool, you wind on a bunch of line over it, and on the next cast the line coming off eventually catches that loop and pulls it off the spool prematurely along with a wad of line, causing a tangle that often makes a baitcasting backlash look like something orderly. Closing the bail by hand, in itself, does nothing to solve the problem...closing by hand over a loop is just as bad as closing the bail by reeling. The key is getting that loop out by tightening the line BEFORE you start to reel, and you can often do that by lifting the rod tip as Dave Potts said, no matter how you close the bail. I hate twist in mono, copoly, or fluoro, which is why I use braided line on all my spinning reels. The braid twists just as much, but is limp enough that those nasty loops seldom form no matter how badly it's twisted.

A single puncture in a meaty portion of the back could be a heron. Two punctures across the back an inch or more apart or a hole in the head through the bone (yes, I caught a big smallmouth one time that had that exact wound) is almost certainly from a gig. Old, well-healed scars on big fish could be from herons, new scars on fish over 12 inches or so probably not, since herons pretty much know how big a fish they could swallow.

MO largemouth, 9 pounds even, private but very hard-fished resort development lake, April, old wooden Bomber crankbait MO smallmouth, two of them that were right around 5 pounds, one on the Meramec, July, homemade crankbait, one on Big River, August, homemade crankbait

As far as I know, nobody makes a multi-piece casting rod blank that's light enough in power to do what I want a stream casting rod to do. However, you might be able to find a spinning rod blank and just construct it as a casting rod. Whatever you find, here's my ideas about a casting rod... If you fish from a canoe, you will be happiest with a short rod. All my canoe rods are 5 1/2 feet or less. The one that's "less" is a 5 footer. I use it for topwater fishing. What I've found is that with a rod that short, working walk-the-dog type topwaters from a canoe is a lot easier. I've fished with guys who simply can't make a walk-the-dog topwater work right with a longer rod while sitting in a canoe. The other advantage to short rods is that they are easier to stow in the canoe and keep the tips inside the gunwales where they don't get snagged on passing brush. If you wade fish, you might want a longer rod. But I use short rods even while wade-fishing, because I fish a lot of small, brushy creeks where I'm often in tight quarters. I like medium light rods for most of my river baitcasting. If fishing with soft plastics and jigs where you need backbone to set the hook, I use spinning tackle and braided line.

Yep, it's good water--it's also a special management area with a 1 fish, 18 inch length limit on smallmouth, which is why it's good fishing. Only drawback is that there's plenty of water right now for jetboats, so you may find it crowded.