Al Agnew

Welcome! You don't have to travel all the way to Springfield to find good stream smallmouth fishing. There are a number of good wading and floating streams within an hour or less of St. Louis. Do some exploring--just about every stream in the Meramec river system has smallies.

There's obviously a lot less debate in the scientific community (though SOME debate) about global warming than in the general public. But assuming it's real and the scientists are basically right about the extent of it, what would it mean for the Ozarks? Trout--Ozark springs are right around the temperature of the region averaged over years. So a 4 degree rise in air temps would eventually raise the temps of the springs 4 degrees as well (Florida springs are in the high 70s, for instance). Springs coming out at 60 degrees instead of 56 would NOT be good for trout in the spring branches, and probably not real good for the hatcheries, either. Probably the same thing would happen with the tailwaters, although I'm not familiar with how tailwater temps work. The smaller trout streams like Capps and Blue Springs Creek would really suffer with 4 more degrees in the summer, especially since they would warm up even quicker as you go downstream due to hotter summer temps. And that's not considering that the climate change might make drought more and more common and/or more severe. Stream bass--drought would probably be the greates threat to bass and other warm water gamefish, although hot temps could become a problem on the less springfed streams. The Buffalo River already gets up in the very high 80s in the summer in some sections...if it gets over 90 degrees that could become a real problem for gamefish. And we don't even know how warmer temps would affect the food base. Low water, warm water, could mean a lot greater algae growth and aquatic plant growth, which is already worse now than it was 30 years ago on some streams. Reservoirs--low water and little flow-through due to drought would be a big problem, with algae growth and probably lower levels of dissolved oxygen at depths the fish need in the summer. Who knows what other effects hotter water would have. Learn to love carp!

I pretty much agree with Wayne. In the Ozarks, there isn't much row crop farming along the streams, and the chemical problems are fewer than they are in other parts of the Midwest, especially these days when more and more farmers are growing more and more corn for ethanol. Corn is herbicide and pesticide intensive, and farming it almost inevitably causes erosion. Here in the Ozarks our greater problems, besides the one Wayne mentioned about development, are the wastes from concentrated animal operations like hog and cattle feedlots and chicken farms. Of course, with the hormones and antibiotics that go into what these critters are being fed, that waste ends up carrying some pretty dangerous substances into the rivers. And even on pasture operations, far too often the cows are allowed direct access to the streams and cause eroding banks and loss of riparian vegetation.

Well geez, riverman, glad you didn't stick any smallies, but I hope none of the lowlifes who WOULD gig them are reading this!

Good ID points...but I'm not sure about your assertion that young of the year copperheads are difficult to distinguish from young northern water snakes. I have only seen one apparently young of the year copperhead, but I've seen a number of photos of them, including photos soon after they were born. They all have had typical copperhead hourglass markings. Many young copperheads have rather bright yellow tails, but otherwise all the photos I've seen they were unmistakable as copperheads. Very good point about both species being very fat snakes. The only non-poisonous snake I've seen in MO that was as fat or fatter than copperheads and cottonmouths is the hognose snake. Now THERE'S a really cool snake. I guess I shouldn't be too critical of people who misidentify snakes. I think that maybe some people are not as good at discerning visual patterns as others. I know of a lot of anglers who have always had trouble telling the difference between largemouth and spotted bass, even after catching quite a few of both species. Yet other anglers, myself included, can tell them apart at a quick glance, often even while they are still in the water.

Yep, the swimming position high in the water is very distinctive, and a very good sign that it's a cottonmouth or copperhead. I've actually only seen one copperhead swimming, but it did swim with body floating on top the water. Cottonmouths don't ALWAYS swim this way...being semi-aquatic snakes, they can swim underwater. But when you see one swimming with its whole body seemingly on top the water and head raised at an angle, it's pretty obvious. The hourglass markings on copperheads are also very distinctive. Some of the copperheads I've seen were a little duller in color than others, but they all have big dark hourglass bands. If you keep in mind that the DARK bands on copperheads are thinnest in the middle of the back and thicken considerably as they go down the sides, you will know a copperhead when you see one. However, once you actually see one, I don't see how anybody can ever mistake any other banded snake for it. They are very distinctive. Harmless northern watersnakes sometimes appear to have a somewhat triangular head, so that's not a real good ID feature. It won't be as triangular as the pit vipers, but enough to confuse some observers.

I agree, creek wader. On another message board, somebody wrote in that they were always seeing copperheads along one particular stretch of river. I have my doubts, since copperheads only come to water incidentally...they aren't attracted to water. You might encounter several around the time they go to hibernate, since rocky areas along bluffs are good hibernation spots for them (but high enough that they won't be in danger of winter floods). In almost 50 years spent on Ozark streams, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of copperheads I've seen while on the rivers. As for cottonmouths, I've seen a few on the St. Francis, a few in a couple of sections of the Gasconade, and a couple on the Jacks Fork...that's it. They aren't common, though in a few small areas there may be a bunch of them. There was one place on Wappapello Lake where you could almost always see two or three cottonmouths. It was where a spring came up into a back channel of the lake, and they were always right around the spring water. The MDC herpetologist says that they do tend to congregate around certain spring branches in the Ozarks. But most people misidentify snakes as venomous. Water snakes are always cottonmouths unless they are copperheads, according to some people. And any snake with some sort of brownish bands on their bodies is a copperhead. I haven't noticed any particular scarcity of water snakes on the Ozark streams the last few years. And I have two that have lived in my front yard water garden the last couple of years.

Nope, not saying anything like that. OU was the better team both games. In order for Missouri to have beaten them, they had to play a near perfect game and they had to have all their offensive weapons. Mizzou was obviously the weaker team both in the trenches and on defense, but they won games on their offense. This time they didn't have enough offense. Injuries are a part of football, but when you need all the offense you can get, losing a part or two hurts. Personally, I think that OU is probably as good or better than either team that will be playing in the national championship.

Mizzou was the better team in the first half, but just couldn't punch it into the end zone on short yardage (twice!) That killed them, and I think it was poor play calling more than anything else. Had they scored TDs those two times (which they almost always did during the regular season), it could have been a much different game in the second half. But in the second half, OU simply outplayed them in just about every facet of the game. They were too big and strong on both sides of the ball. The tipped pass interception was the nail in the coffin. It might also have been a somewhat different game had Coffman and Alexander been available for Missouri. In every other Mizzou game, Daniel was always able to find people open on busted plays when he had to scramble. Missouri always had too many weapons. Not having Coffman from the beginning, and losing Alexander early, meant that there just weren't enough of the usual options and OU could concentrate on Maclin, Franklin, and Rucker without having to worry about anybody else but Saunders.

Mizzou 38, Arkansas 28...Tigers will have all their weapons back by then. They missed Chase Coffman and D. Alexander in the OU game.

We had a pretty significant outbreak of blue tongue in Ste. Genevieve County, MO this summer. Killed a bunch of deer, including some big bucks...I found one dead in a local creek that had a fine rack (in velvet).

Creek wader, I'm sure you're right in that logperch aren't gamefish. They would be covered under baitfish regs. I don't think there's anything in those regs that says HOW LONG you can keep baitfish. So while the reason for keeping them would be different if you were keeping them in an aquarium as opposed to in a live box or something to use as bait, I don't know whether the law would differentiate based upon intentions. If it's legal to keep them for an unspecified period for use as bait, it would probably be just as legal to keep them in an aquarium. In addition, I KNOW that MDC, in their magazine, has at least once published an article about keeping Missouri baitfish in aquariums, including rainbow darters. The logperch is a darter, and not on any threatened or endangered list, so I'm pretty sure there would be no problem with keeping them, as well as other baitfish.

Good question. I think that if it's obtained legally and you don't have over your possession limit (if it's a game fish), I don't see why it wouldn't be legal. I suspect that keeping a fingerling game fish that you seined would technically NOT be legal, since you didn't obtain it legally and it probably doesn't make the minimum length limit. I've thought about that a bit when I've had fingerling game fish in the aquarium in the past, and so I don't keep the gamefish anymore (too danged difficult to care for, as well). Of course, you can buy game fish fingerlings from various hatcheries, and I've even seen baby channel catfish sold in pet shops, and those should be perfectly legal to keep (if you can "keep" them in your private pond, why shouldn't you be able to keep them in your private aquarium?). Probably wouldn't be a good idea to keep a Niangua darter...(endangered species).

The U.S. Geological Survey real time river gages are a wonderful resource for the stream angler. You will find links to them at the top of each river forum here. But I've found that many anglers don't get full use of them. Most seem to not look at anything but the gage height. If you know your river well and watch the gage height closely whenever you go on a fishing trip, it can be very useful. But that information, by itself and without experience with which to relate it, is useless. For instance, you can see that the gage height is 4.5 feet, but unless you know you've fished that river at that gage height before and remember what the conditions were like, that number is useless. However, you CAN learn a whole lot from the real time gages by looking at the other information on the same pages. From your computer desk at home, you can find out almost exactly the level of any stream that has gages, whether that level is higher or lower than normal, what the river has been doing not only in the last seven days, but any time period you wish to look up, and make very good educated guesses on whether any river, even one you are totally unfamiliar with, is high, low, floatable, runnable by jet boat, and possibly even whether it is clear or muddy. So let's take a tour through the gages on one river, the Meramec, in order to show what you can find out and how. First, when you click on link to river gages at the top of the Meramec River page here on OA, you'll see four gages, Steelville, Sullivan, Eureka, and Valley Park. The first gage is the farthest upstream, with the others in downstream order. The first thing you need to know is the exact location of each gage. So, click on the Steelville gage. Up near the top of the page, you'll see a drop down menu for "Available data for this site". Click on "site map" on the menu. The site map will show the gage to be just north of Steelville, downstream from the Highway 19 bridge (it's actually at the Birds Nest bridge, but the road is not actually shown on the site map). So now you know where the gage is located. Go back to the previous page. As you scroll down the page, you'll see graphs for "gage height in feet" and "discharge in cubic feet per second", plus a table labeled "daily discharge statistics, in cfs, for (today's date) based on 83 years of record". As I'm typing this, it is late in the evening of Nov. 25. The graphs, both the gage height and discharge ones, will show what the river has done in the last seven days up to within a couple of hours or less of the present time. As I said, the gage height graph has very little use unless you know what the river looks like at different height readings. But the discharge graph is much more useful. So let's examine it. You'll see the blue line that shows the river discharge throughout the seven day period, which as of Nov. 25, has been dropping very slowly from about 175 cfs to a bit over 150 cfs. Again, that doesn't tell you too much in itself, but you'll also see a little triangle on each day. Those little triangles represent the median flow for that day, and you can consider them to be pretty much the "normal" flow for that day. So, normal flow throughout the seven day period before today runs around 225 cfs, and you can tell that the river at Steelville is well below normal and has been throughout the seven day period. But even that graph doesn't have nearly all the info you can use. Drop on down to the daily discharge statistics table. The "based on 83 years of record" is important because it shows how many years the gage has been in operation. The more years the gage has been in operation, the more accurate the figures in the table will be. A gage that has only been in existence a few years will not have enough data to be really useful, but after 10-15 years of record, it will begin to be very useful. The first figure on the table is "Min (1981)" and is 115. This means that the minimum flow ever recorded for Nov. 25 in 83 years is 115 cubic feet per second. If the present flow was anywhere close to the minimum ever recorded, you KNOW the river is very low! The second figure, however, is more useful. It is "20th percentile" and is 152. That means that, on 20% of those 83 years, the river was at 152 cfs or lower on Nov 25. The 20th percentile figure is, therefore, 152 cfs is a very low flow for the river at that point on Nov. 25. The next figure is "most recent instantaneous value". So, right at the time I write this, the river is flowing at 154 cfs. That's right around the 20th percentile, so the river right now IS very low. The next figure is "median", 225 cfs. The median flow is the flow at which, on Nov. 25 throughout those 83 years of record, half the time the river was higher, and half the time it was lower. So, "median", which corresponds to those little triangles on the discharge graph, is pretty much the "normal" flow of the river for that date. The next figure is "Mean", 501 cfs. Mean is the average flow for Nov. 25. It is almost always considerably higher than median, because if there happens to be a big flood on that date sometime during the years of record, it will skew the average way upwards. "Mean" is of very little use to the angler wishing to understand the present river level. The next figure is "80th percentile", 558 cfs. 80th percentile means that on 80 percent of the years of record, the river was at 558 cfs or lower. You can figure that the 80th percentile figure is a pretty good indication of the highest river level that would not be too high for the river to be good fishing. Anything much higher than that and the river would likely be muddy. This isn't a sure thing, because a lot depends upon what the river has been doing in the previous days. But generally if the river is higher than the 80th percentile figure, there's a chance it will be high and muddy. The last figure is "Max (1974), 10200", which means that in 1974, the river was the highest ever recorded for Nov. 25 at 10,200 cfs. Max is interesting but of no use to the angler. So now you see how you can look at the present river discharge in cfs and relate it to whether the river is high, low, very high, very low, or normal. Now, there are other things you can learn about the river starting at this page. Go back up to the drop down menu for "available data for this site" at the top of the page, and click on "time series, daily data". This will bring you to a page with graphs showing what the river has done in the last year. You can also call up any time period during the 83 years of record by typing in the dates you wish at the "begin date" and "end date" spots near the top of the page. So let's pick a period of time to look at more closely. You will note on the graph that the river had a rise around September 10, so let's type in "2007-09-07" for the begin date, and "2007-09-14" for the end date. This will give you graphs for discharge and height for the seven day period around the rise. On the graph for gage height, you'll see that the river was at about 1.8 feet on Sept. 7, and rose to 3.5 feet on the 8th. Then it steadily dropped to about 2.1 feet on the 11th, had a slight rise to 2.3 the next day, and then dropped steadily again to 1.8 feet on the 14th. Now go down to the discharge graph, and you can start relating river height to discharge. On the 7th, the discharge was about 180 cfs, and rose to about 1050 cfs the next day. So, remember the levels the river is as I type this, 154 cfs? The river was a bit higher than that on Sep. 7, but still below the "normal" flow for today of 225 cfs. At the level it was on Sep. 7, a rise in discharge of 900 cfs was a rise in feet of about 1.7 feet. And in the morning of Sep. 10, the river dropped through 550 cfs, which was a river level of about 2.6 feet. If you'll remember, 558 cfs was the 89th percentile figure for Nov. 25, today's date, so now you know what the river level is at that flow. In the following days, the river dropped 1.4 feet in height, and 700 cfs from the high, down to about 350 cfs. Then it had that slight rise of 0.2 feet, which corresponded to about 25-30 cfs, and then dropped to a bit over 200 cfs by the 14th. That 200 plus cfs corresponded to a level of 1.8 feet. So...the normal flow for TODAY'S date, Nov. 25, of 225 cfs, is about the same as 1.8 feet on the height in feet graph. NOW, you know several things. You know what the "normal" river level in feet is on Nov. 25th. You know that, when the river is low in the autumn, a rise of about a foot will put it up at the 80th percentile and maybe be enough to get it murky or muddy. NOW, you can relate those pesky river levels to discharge in cfs, to whether the river is high or low, even to whether it might be murky or muddy. Keep in mind several things. First, "normal" varies with the time of the year. Spring normals are much higher than summer and autumn normals. And a rise of a couple of feet might not have as much of an effect in the fall as it does in the spring, because the river is starting from a much lower level. Finally, how can you tell from these figures whether a river is navigable by canoe or jetboat? Well, you have to have some experience here...you have to get an idea of what the lowest floatable or runnable level is on a river you know well, and extrapolate it to other streams. I happen to know, because I was just on the Meramec a few days ago farther downstream, that a discharge at the Sullivan gage of about 250 cfs was at about the lowest flow I would consider running it. There were several riffles that day which gave me a significant "pucker factor" when running them, and I wouldn't want the river to be ANY lower than it was that day. So...you can figure that for a river the size of the middle Meramec, which would include such streams as the lower Niangua, middle Gasconade, and upper Current, somewhere around 250 cfs is about the lower limit of navigability for jetboats, unless you know the river VERY well or don't care if you bang rocks and suck gravel. And I know that, on most of the smaller Ozark streams, at a flow of about 75 cfs the river starts to become a little skinny and you'll start to scrape bottom on some riffles. At about 50 cfs, you'll scrape a lot of riffles and have to walk a few of them (this is in a lightly loaded canoe on a day trip). At 30 cfs you'll scrape most riffles and walk a lot of them. Anything under that and you'll walk nearly everything, although I've "floated" streams at flows of less than 20 cfs. As the "normal" size of the river goes up, those numbers also go up. For instance, on the lower Buffalo, you'll scrape quite a few riffles at 75 cfs. And you'll scrape MORE of them at that flow on the lower end than you will on the middle river, because the riffles are wider on the lower end and will be shallower with the same volume of water flowing through them. There are other considerations, such as where gages are located. The Meramec is well covered, with the Steelville gage being downstream of Maramec Spring but upstream of the mouth of the Huzzah, the Sullivan gage being between the Huzzah and the mouth of the Bourbeuse, the Eureka gage being between the mouth of the Bourbeuse and the mouth of Big River, and the Valley Park gage being downstream of all major tributaries. So, for each gage you have a good idea of a fairly long section of stream--the Steelville gage covering from Maramec Spring to the Huzzah, the Sullivan gage from Huzzah to Bourbeuse, etc. But, some rivers aren't well covered. The Eleven Point only has one gage in MO, at the Hwy. 160 bridge. This is well below Greer Spring, so it doesn't give you much of an idea of the river levels above Greer. The highest gage on the Gasconade is at Hazelgreen, and there's a lot of river above there. The Osage Fork doesn't have ANY gages on it. My home river, Big River, has a gage on the upper end at Irondale, and the next gage is 70 miles downstream near De Soto. There are three significant tributary creeks and one large tributary that enter in that stretch, so the farther downstream you go the more water there is. I know by experience what a reading at Irondale and a reading at the next gage downstream means for the river at most points in between, but you have to do some educated guessing on a river you're not familiar with. This is where looking at what the river has been doing at any gage available in the last few days comes in handy. If you have a significant rise on an upstream gage one day, and a rise the next day at a gage X number of miles downstream, you can get a good idea of how long it takes a rise to get to any point in between. If both gages show high water, you'll know the river is high in between. If there's a rise upstream on the day before you plan to fish, it'll probably either already be there or will hit you during the day. And if it's a stream that doesn't have a gage, you have to find a stream of similar size somewhere nearby and assume the levels are similar. For instance, a reading on the upper gage of the Niangua would give you a pretty good idea for the Osage Fork, which is a similar sized, nearby stream. But the upper Niangua gage doesn't show discharge in cfs at this time. So, an alternative would be to look at the discharge on the Gasconade at Hazelgreen, which is just a short distance downstream from where the Osage Fork enters the Gasconade. Since the Osage Fork normally flows just a little less water than the Gasconade above it, you can divide the flow at Hazelgreen in two, knock a bit off that, and guesstimate the flow of the Osage Fork. For example, the flow at Hazelgreen right now is 80 cfs, so the flow of the Osage Fork is probably about 35 cfs and the Gasconade 45 cfs above where the two come together. So as you can see, it's not an exact science, but with a bit of knowledge and effort, you can plan your river trips very well with the USGS gages.

Interesting and thoughtful responses! Flyfishing is more effective than any other method for catching trout that are feeding on insects. I do NOT think it is more effective for catching bass under most conditions, or BIG trout, or most other game fish. When I go fishing for trout, I wouldn't think of using anything other than a fly rod. Same thing with farm pond bluegill, or salmon. When I fish for stream smallmouths, my greatest fishing love, or reservoir bass, or walleye, I seldom flyfish. Can't really explain why, exactly. It's just that I find one method more fun than the other, given different situations. Variety is the spice of life. I tie some of my own flies. I make many of my own lures...so not much difference in satisfaction there. I agree that the greatest, and most abundant fishing literature is on flyfishing for trout...in fact, I WISH that there was the same quality and quantity of writing for bass, especially stream smallmouth...I've often thought of trying that kind of writing for smallies myself. For me, I fish with what just seems to me to fit...the fly rod for trout, casting and spinning tackle for bass.

I agree with Gavin, fall fishing is about the toughest of the year. And this fall is especially tough because my rivers are low and very clear. You need some fall rains to raise the rivers and put a bit of color in them before the fishing gets good. I don't flyfish for smallies in the fall and winter, but if I did, one thing I would try would be a minnow-imitating streamer with some size, say 3-4 inches long, unweighted, but using a sinking or sink-tip line. What I'd want the fly to do is get down fairly deep, but sink VERY slowly on its own, so that it more or less suspended 4-6 feet deep. I'd fish it very slowly, with twitches and short slow strips with plenty of long pauses in between. What I'd want to do would be to imitate the presentation of a suspending jerkbait like a Rogue, Rapala Husky Jerk, or Lucky Craft Pointer. Suspending jerkbaits are a great choice when the water temps get down into the low 50s and high to mid 40s. Another good fly choice would be a heavily weighted Woolybugger, or just a simple marabou streamer, fished slowly on the bottom...tying a heavy monofilament weed guard on the streamer would be a must.

Yep, creek wader, I'm fortunate enough to be able to fish at least one day a week during the middle of the week. Actually this summer I did a lot less Missouri river smallie fishing than usual, due to circumstances beyond my control. As for using crankbaits and spinnerbaits, they are a lot more effective than many anglers think, BUT it's a situational thing. If you are only able to wade or otherwise fish small areas, concentrating on those areas with soft plastics is probably the best way to go. And if you fish the most heavily-pressured rivers (those that are fishable by jetboat) on weekends, soft plastics will probably be most effective. Crankbaits and spinnerbaits and topwaters are good for combing lots of water seeking reaction strikes from active fish, and thus are best suited for float-fishing from canoe or johnboat, or otherwise covering a lot of water. It's simply two different philosophies of angling...one way you cover a relatively small amount of water very thoroughly and attempt to catch a good percentage of the fish in that small area, the other way you cover a large amount of water, put your bait in front of a whole lot more fish, and cherry pick the "easy" ones. On an average day of fishing I'll cover 7 to 14 miles of river and make a couple thousand casts.

Lures for winter fishing... Depends upon water temperature and trend. By that, I mean that 40 degree water that's dropping from 45 degrees is different from 40 degree water that's rising from 35 degrees. But, all other things being equal, here's what I'd suggest for a basic winter fishing arsenal: small deep-diving crankbaits--I use a modified Wiggle Wart jerkbaits--Lucky Craft Pointer 78 is my first choice smallish willow leaf spinnerbaits 3 inch and 4 inch tubes 1/8 ounce marabou jigs hair jigs finesse worms on a jig head The colder the water is the less likely the hard baits are to work well, but if the water temp is 45 degrees or above they can be very good. And as was said above, the colder the water, the slower you have to fish.

Go to a good pet store and buy some frozen brine shrimp. They usually come frozen in little cubes. Thaw out a cube and dump the shrimp in. They are the perfect size for a logperch, and whenever I had a logperch in my aquarium they always really went for them. If you have a place and the time and energy, obtain some live scuds. I'm sure the logperch will really love them. You can find them in springfed creeks around aquatic vegetation and you can scoop them with a small fish net. I always liked logperch...it's fun watching them use their conical noses to flip over small rocks hunting aquatic bugs.

Well, the year isn't over and there is still smallmouth fishing to be done, but I kinda consider cold water river fishing to be so different from fishing during the warm season that I decided to see how this year's warm season fishing went. While there is no exact date, nor even an exact water temperature, that separates warm season from cold season fishing, the lures and presentations used is certainly different, and there is usually a trip in the spring where I first start catching fish on the stuff I'll use all summer, and a trip in the fall where that stuff no longer works well enough to keep using it. This has traditionally happened sometime around the second week of April and the third or fourth week of October, but with the warmer weather we've had the last few years, it's getting earlier and later. This year, the first "warm weather" trip I had was actually on March 14. My dad and I fished the middle Meramec. The week before water temps were 45-51 degrees, and the fish were still in their usual winter holes. On that day, I caught some very nice smallies on winter presentations. But by March 14 the water temps were in the mid-50s and the fish were gone from the winter spots. We caught about 15 fish, none over 16 inches, mostly on spinnerbaits in typical summertime spots...good current, fairly shallow, near cover. The only difference from typical summer fishing was that the fish were positioned in the eddies behind obstructions where they would be out of the current but close enough to dart out and take food in the current...in the summer, they are more likely to be on the upstream side of obstructions. Two weeks later, on another Meramec trip, the river was much higher and murkier, the water temps were up around 60 degrees, and the fishing was tough. Spinnerbaits still produced a few fish, but my total catch was 5 fish, biggest only 14 inches. On April 2, I waded my favorite small creek for the first time of the year, catching 16 fish, biggest 16 inches, mostly on tubes. Later in April, I floated Big River with my brother--30 fish, nothing over 15 inches, fished Current River with Dad--great trip, 31 fish, Dad caught a 17 incher and I caught a 17 and a 19. Water temps that day were barely over 60 degrees. And I floated Courtois Creek and caught 39 smallmouths, biggest two were 17.5 and 17. May was the beginning of the bad part of the year. My mother was sick the last part of the month and died on May 29. I was also in Montana for nearly a week. So needless to say, I didn't get in a lot of fishing. I floated Huzzah Creek one day in mid-month, one of the best trips of the year with 82 bass caught, including two 17 inch smallies and a beautiful 20 incher. The next afternoon I did a short float on the upper Meramec, catching 35 bass and an 18 inch smallmouth. In June the bad stuff continued with my dad breaking a hip, and I was injured myself (a sports hernia). I did a float with my wife on the Meramec, terrible fishing, only 6 fish caught and none over 12 inches. Did a short float on Big River with my brother, catching 25 fish and a 17 inch smallie. I did two half-day wades on small creeks, catching 25 fish on one with a 17 and 18 inch largemouth, and 45 fish on the other, including an 18 inch smallmouth and a 19 inch largemouth. In July I was in Montana for much of the month and only got in one float trip in Missouri, with my brother on Big River, catching over 50 fish but nothing over 15 inches. I was also in Montana in August. In late August I floated Big River and caught 85 bass, with two 18 inch smallies and a 20 inch largemouth. I also waded my favorite small creek for the second time this year, catching 30 fish with nothing over 16 inches--it just didn't produce fish this year like it has the last few years. In early September I was in Alaska. Later in the month I fished the lower Meramec one day, only catching 16 bass with nothing over 13 inches. Two days later I floated the lower Bourbeuse River and caught 39 bass, mostly spotted bass, but I did catch an 19 inch smallmouth. And five days after that I fished the middle Meramec with my friend Cory, catching 46 fish, including a 19 inch smallie and several more between 16 and 17 inches. In October I fished the middle Meramec one day, catching 26 fish, with a 20 inch smallie, a 17.5 inch smallie, 3 more over 16 inches, and an 18 inch largemouth. My wife and I floated the middle Current River one beautiful misty afternoon, catching only 11 fish with nothing of any size. The next day we floated the upper North Fork, catching 30 smallies, the biggest about 16 inches. That would be my last warm season outing. So...statistics for warm season Ozark smallmouth fishing, 2007: 18 total days fishing (several trips were only half days) 19 different stretches of 9 different streams 688 bass caught from my boats (I include both mine and my partner's catch) average approx. 38 fish per day 10 17-17.5 inch smallmouths 5 18-18.5 inch smallmouths 3 19-19.5 inch smallmouths 2 20 inch smallmouths 5 largemouths, 17-20 inches The following lures caught those notable fish above: spinnerbait 2 modified Wiggle Wart 6 Sammy topwater lure 7 soft plastic jerkbait 4 homemade crankbait 5 buzzbait 1 It was a worse than usual year for numbers of fish, average year for bigger fish. It was the first year I can remember when my homemade spinnerbait failed to produce a single notable fish. On the other hand, it was the best year ever for my modified Wiggle Wart deep-diving crankbaits. And you have to go fishing with me to learn how I modify them! Hope you enjoy reading these ramblings.

I just got a new pair from the local eye doctor and tried them out the other day. One thing that they have that none of my former glasses had is a coating on the inside of the lens that reduces glare bouncing off your face and reflecting on the inside of the lens. It's GREAT. I think I'm really going to like these. They aren't amber, but personally I don't like amber because, as an artist, I don't like the rather drastic change in color that I see, compared to gray. Although I'm interested in seeing fish, I'm also interested in seeing something close to the true colors of the landscape in case something about it triggers an idea for a painting.

Yeah, the exotics have never interested me at all. Native fish are really cool. Ham, you're right, the frozen brine shrimp and bloodworms are very good for the fish that want live food. Whenever I get some darters, that's what I feed them. But if you just dump in the frozen cubes, the minnows that stay in the upper water column eat them as fast as they thaw and come off the cube, and as soon as the cube gets small enough one of the creek chubs or other minnows with larger mouths gulps the whole thing. So I thaw the cubes out in a cup of aquarium water first, then dump the whole thing in at once. Enough of the thawed, separated critters make it past the minnows to the bottom so the darters get their share. I had a supplier from which I bought big containers of "soft" brine shrimp...looked like it was dead but not dried. That was great, but they went out of business. Wish I could find another source. I know the scuds are great when you can get them easily. I have a creek right behind the house that is mostly dry but has some permanent pools where tiny springs enter it. At certain times, a couple of kinds of aquatic insects get thick in those tiny pools and you can scoop them up with a minnow hand net. Dump a bunch of those in the aquarium and watch the fun begin. Also, when I have sunfish and little bass, in the spring as soon as the first hatch of bluegill occurs in my pond, I'll go out with a big net and scoop up a bunch of tiny bluegill fry, about a half inch long. They don't last long in the aquarium, either...the sunfish, bass, and even the creek chubs and hornyhead chubs scarf them up.

Re: native fish for aquariums... I have a 100 gallon aquarium in the front entryway to the house, that always has native Missouri creek fish in it. I've had it for many years and by now I pretty much know all the ins and outs, and the fish that work or don't work in it. Most beautiful fish: adult longear sunfish rainbow darter redbelly dace bleeding shiner Some of the most interesting fish: young rock bass or shadow bass logperch madtoms fingerlings bass (largemouth or smallmouth) old standbys that are interesting in appearance and easy to maintain: stonerollers common or striped shiners steelcolor shiners blackstriped or blackspotted topminnows bluntnose minnows bluegill creek chubs hornyhead or redspot chubs cool fish, but hard to keep alive in an aquarium--wish they weren't: sculpins young hogsuckers northern studfish (beautiful, but just don't eat well) brook silversides (others seem to keep them okay, but I have bad luck with them) various darters young redhorse suckers In addition, crayfish are a lot of fun to watch in an aquarium but if you keep them you usually can't keep real aquatic plants...they eat the plants amazingly quickly. Hellgramites ought to be cool, but they disappear in the gravel and are never seen again until this big ugly dobson fly shows up buzzing through the house. Redeared slider turtles are great, but little softshell turtles are often too stupid to figure out what to eat and don't do well. Young snapping turtles are really cool until they eat all your fish. Small bass will always eat anything they can swallow, including minnows almost as big as they are, as will baby rock bass, so if you keep those fish, don't expect to keep minnows or other small fish. I've kept a lot of bass until they were about two inches long, then released them. They are fairly easy to get acclimated to eating dried brine shrimp or other dead but real critters, but won't eat flake food. Ditto with some species of darters, but other species won't ever figure out to eat anything that doesn't move. I still haven't figured out why sculpins, hogsuckers, redhorse, or studfish won't eat well. Right now I have bluegill, longears, a hybrid bluegill/green sunfish, steelcolor shiners, common shiners, bleeding shiners, bluntnose minnows, redbelly dace, stonerollers, and crayfish.

Fished it above Tan Vat last weekend...fishing was tough. Water extremely clear and low, only saw one redd, and it had a couple of medium size browns hanging around it. I caught about a half dozen fish, none of them big. Met up with Sam Potter on the river...I think he caught more fish, but he said it was pretty tough, too. Sure wish we would get some serious rain.

Yep, the spots are taking over much of the Bourbeuse...however, there are still a few big smallies, even down around Union. Caught this one during the Smallmouth Alliance Spotted Bass Roundup back in September. It was about 19 inches.