Al Agnew

September is the best month for wildlife viewing in Yellowstone, and a good month for fishing. I would go to Gardiner at the north entrance to Yellowstone. There are several decent motels there--we've stayed at the Comfort Inn and it's a pretty good motel. For more money, there are a couple of pretty neat resort type hotels near Gardiner that cater a bit more to flyfishing. The reason I recommend Gardiner is that it is close to good fishing and rafting on the Yellowstone just outside the park, is less popular than West Yellowstone where most of the park flyfishermen go, and the northern part of the park is the best for wildlife viewing. Of course, you've got all the geothermal features (a whole lot more than Old Faithful) to see. Driving into the park at Gardiner, you immediately come to Mammoth Hot Springs, pretty impressive. You're also likely to see bighorn sheep as you're driving between Gardiner and Mammoth--they hang out on the big dry mountainside on your left and often come down to the river to drink. You can go right at Mammoth and head toward Norris--lots of opportunity for bison, elk, and grizzlies on that road--then go to Madison Junction and out toward the west entrance along the Madison River. You'll see a lot of big bull elk with harems all down the Madison Valley. Otters are common along the river. Lots of bison. Lots of anglers on the river, but it's a nice place to fish. The stretch of road from Madison Junction to Old Faithful goes along the Firehole--not good fishing in late summer/early autumn because it's too hot. Lots of geothermal stuff. I don't like going to Old Faithful unless I'm going on through the park to the Grand Tetons. I'd rather go back to Norris, take the road over to Canyon Junction, and turn right to go through Hayden Valley. Lots of wildlife opportunity through Hayden Valley and around Fishing Bride, including the best area to chance seeing grizzlies. Then backtrack to Canyon and take the Canyon/Tower road over Dunraven Pass. Magnificent scenery and good wildlife viewing. At Tower, go right and up the Lamar Valley, which is your best bet for seeing wolves. Go farther than Soda Butte Creek to see some of the best mountain scenery in the park. Then back down to Tower and toward Mammoth, still good wildlife viewing all through there. This whole loop with all the side trips takes a full day, but be there heading toward Mammoth nearing sunset, because the sunsets can be magnificent. When I visit Yellowstone to gather reference material for paintings, I pretty much drive this circuit several days in a row, because the viewing opportunities change from day to day. But I'd also plan on spending some time in Grand Teton NP. What I always do is spend a few days in the north part of Yellowstone, then drive through it one day and all the way to Jackson, WY. Lots of hotels in Jackson. From Jackson, you can make day trips through the Teton roads. The Tetons, besides being the most spectacular mountain scenery in the West, is great wildlife viewing as well, with excellent chances to see moose along with all the other stuff you might see in Yellowstone--moose aren't easy to find in Yellowstone. The Gros Ventre road is great bison viewing and great chances for moose. All the Yellowstone streams are fished hard if you can drive to them, but you can still catch fish, especially in those that have mostly native Yellowstone cutthroats. The Lamar, Slough Creek, and Soda Butte Creek are all good. If you're willing to hike a few miles you can go up Slough Creek past where the crowd fishes and get into great Yellowstone cutthroat fishing. A guided float trip is another great way to fish the area. Lots of guided trips available on the Snake around Jackson, and good fishing for Snake River cutthroats--early September is great hopper fishing on the Snake. And/or, lots of guided trips available on the Yellowstone below Gardiner--good Yellowstone cutthroat fishing with chances at rainbows and browns as well. Yankee Jim Canyon, which starts a day's float below Gardiner and ends at the top of Paradise Valley, is whitewater rafting (and fishing). Then you have 50 miles of Paradise Valley, with guided trips from Gardiner, Emigrant, and Livingston at the lower end. Of course, you've also got good wade-fishing on the Boulder east of Livingston and north of Big Timber, and you can wade the Yellowstone from all the accesses in Paradise Valley if it's normal low autumn water levels, although you'll still be limited in the water you can cover. So many choices, so little time.

In 1994, I was a novice at flyfishing, and when my friend and now best flyfishing buddy Tom called me one day and asked me to go with him to the Yellowstone Valley Ranch to flyfish for a week, I was a bit intimidated. Tom was an expert flyfisher, and I wasn't sure I was ready for western flyfishing. But I said okay, and off we went with another friend, Smith, in early July. Unfortunately that was the first of two years of record floods on the Yellowstone, and it was blown out the whole trip. But we fished other places, including private reaches of the West Boulder (first ranch upstream from Tom Brokaw's ranch) and Sixteenmile Creek. I loved it. And we've been going back to Livingston every year since. That first year, we told the people at YVR that we weren't all that interested in the fine cuisine and other amenities of the ranch--we were there for the fishing, so give us guides that were willing to get an early start and stay out late if the fishing was hot. That was how we met Tom Coleman and Dennis Alverson, whom we've fished with ever since and who have become very good friends. The first day that first year was on Sixteenmile Creek, and we were catching fish with wild abandon on it when Tom said, "You know, it's getting close to two o'clock...you want to eat some lunch?" "Not quite yet." We ate lunch finally about 4 PM. At 5 PM Tom said, "We have to leave now if we're going to make it back to the ranch in time for supper." "We don't need no stinking supper; the fishing is still good." And that was how Tom learned that he didn't have the typical Yellowstone Valley clients. We dragged into YVR about dark thirty after stopping at a roadside cafe and grabbing a bite to eat. The next year we decided to forego the luxury of YVR and stay at the historic Murray Hotel in Livingston. Tom agreed to guide the two of us, and although it was another year of record floods, we were there a week later and at least got to fish the still high Yellowstone a couple of days. From then on we stayed at the Murray. A varying cast of characters started accompanying us, but it was always Tom and I for sure. One year we had six guys and three guides, and we were fishing the Bighorn one day and were lined up all the way down a long riffle corner, catching fish like crazy. We said it reminded us of fishing a Missouri trout park. On Tom Coleman's advice, we started going out in late April to hopefully catch the famous Mother's Day caddis hatch. It's a tricky hatch to hit. It takes water temps over 50 degrees on the river around Livingston to get the hatch going, but if the weather gets warm enough down there to raise the river to that temp, it is often also warm enough up in Yellowstone Park to start the snowmelt and blow the river out. Sometimes that's what happened. One year we were too late, and even though the river was fishable the hatch was mostly over. But a couple of years we hit it perfectly, and had amazing fishing. I remember one day where we caught big brown trout all morning on big streamers, and then the caddis hatch came off for the first afternoon of the season with flies so thick that they were soon floating down the river in rafts that we started calling caddis pizzas. The fish absolutely went nuts, and it was the best single day of flyfishing I ever saw. You'd think that with that many bugs on the water the fish wouldn't even be able to find our flies, but the trick was to use a fly that was a couple sizes bigger than the actual bugs, and the fish would seek out that bigger fly amongst hundreds of the real thing. Anyway, throughout the years we fished the Yellowstone from Gardiner to Big Timber. We fished the Boulder, the Madison, the Gallatin, the Bighorn, the Shields, the Stillwater. We fished small creeks and private lakes. We fished the famous spring creeks of Paradise Valley, Depuy's, Armstrong's, and Nelson's. Tom Coleman got married, had a wonderful little girl, and started a business rehabilitating trout streams, while Dennis Alverson also got married and had a little girl and now has another on the way, while becoming a well-known hunting as well as fishing guide in the area. I became a reasonably proficient flyfisherman, thanks to Montana and the two Toms. I took my wife Mary out there to show her the area, and we started going out in the early autumn to get wildlife reference in Yellowstone Park for my paintings and also spend a few days in and around Livingston. She fell in love with the place. Last year was the first year she came out for the kamikaze trout trip with Tom, because it was a departure from our usual itinerary--we did a five day horseback trip into the back country of Yellowstone Park to fish for native Yellowstone cutthroats with Tom Coleman and his wife Theresa and daughter Emilee. And this year Mary told me that she would be interested in looking for a "vacation" place out around Livingston. Theresa is a real estate agent, and we called her and told her to keep an eye out for something good, and to make a long story a bit shorter, she found us a run-down cabin on 20 acres in Paradise Valley with some of the best views in Montana, minutes from the Yellowstone. So we bought it and came out a month or so ago to fix it up with Mary's brother. The kamikaze trout trip was already scheduled for last week, so we got the cabin livable, came back home, and then drove back out two weeks ago for an art show in Jackson, Wyoming, and then to meet Tom and Smith, the guys that were on that original trip, for five days of fishing while Mary worked on fixing up the cabin some more (she's a saint). Monday was a float trip on the Yellowstone below town. It's another serious drought year out here, the rivers are very low and warm, and restrictions are on most of the rivers--you can't fish the Yellowstone from 2 PM to midnight. So we got an early start. It's hopper time, and about 10 AM the sun warmed the grasshoppers up enough to start them moving and falling into the river, and the fish turned on. Several big trout were hooked and lost, and enough 14-18 inchers were caught to keep us happy and make us wish we could fish later than 2 PM. Tuesday was a float trip on the Stillwater, a smaller and lesser known stream. It didn't have the restrictions yet (they went on it the next day, in fact) so we fished all day, and the fish were on hoppers with a nymph on a dropper the whole day. LOTS of 12-18 inchers were caught. The Stillwater is NOT aptly named--it is a very fast-moving stream, flowing about 400 cfs, full of boulder gardens and rapids, and the guides worked hard to keep us in position to fish. It was frantic fishing trying to hit all the spots as the rafts moved downriver, the kind of fishing that really tires you out. Wednesday was another Yellowstone trip in the morning, and pretty much a replay of Monday. I hooked a very big trout right at the start and lost it. Tom hooked a huge brown later on in the day that went upstream while the drift boat went downstream, took him well into his backing, and broke off. We caught fish up to 18 inches again on the hoppers. Thursday was supposed to be another Yellowstone trip, but hard rains up in the park the day before and on the Shields River watershed sent a slug of mud down the river and it was unfishable, so we waded the Boulder River instead. There was a smaller slug of mud coming down the Boulder, so we first went well above it, but the fishing there wasn't happening, so we went down and hit the river at a point where the mud was clearing out. The water was still colored, and to me it just shouted "woolybugger water". I was right--I caught some fine trout on the wooly while Tom was struggling with dries and nymphs. But the river continued to clear, and soon Tom was pounding them on dry flies and I was drawing a blank on the streamers, so I switched over and caught a bunch. Friday was a day on Armstrong's Spring Creek. the spring creeks are famous for lots of big trout and difficult, technical fishing. These trout see a lot of flies, and the usual program is to fish with small flies and long, fine leaders, 6X and 7X. I usually cheat a bit and use 5X fluorocarbon, and do okay. In midmorning the trout started rising to pale morning duns coming off in a sporadic hatch, mostly feeding on emergin nymphs just under the surface. I was parked in the middle of a smooth run, with trout rising on all sides. A lot of fish move up into the riffles when a hatch starts, and get easier to catch in the broken current, but I was determined to figure out these "difficult" trout or spend the whole hatch trying. I caught the first one on a blue winged olive imitation. I caught the second one on another dry fly that looked something like the real things. But that seemed to be the way it went...I'd catch one fish on a fly and then it was like that fish told the rest of them to avoid it after I released it. I finally tried fishing a small emerger in the surface film with a bit of floatant and caught THREE trout on it before they all got wise to it. Finally I put on a somewhat bigger dry and drifted a small emerger six inches beneath it on a dropper, and started hooking fish regularly. Tom, meanwhile, was doing much the same thing and catching fish after fish. After lunch (yes, we now eat lunch sometime close to when we should), the hatch tapered off. One thing I've discovered is that these fish see so many tiny flies that they aren't accustomed to seeing something bigger, and if the conditions are right--wind and clouds--the brown trout can be suckers for big streamers. I was hoping for that this afternoon, but the skies stayed clear and wind light. Still, I couldn't resist trying a woolybugger when the fish stopped rising. I caught a couple of small browns on it, and then hooked the biggest fish of the day and the trip, a 20 inch brown, late in the afternoon. It was a fitting end to another great Montana kamikaze trout trip. We said goodbye to Tom and Smith, and Mary and I are still out here, working on the cabin, hiking in the Absarokas, and planning a few more days of fishing on a couple of the nearby creeks and the Yellowstone when the mud settles. We're not nearly ready to come home yet!

Kyle, the river is wadeable from around Bootleg Access (Hwy. 21 south of Potosi) on down. It's marginally floatable from Irondale down, doesn't get big enough for easy summertime floating until you get below St. Francois State Park. Smallmouth fishing is fair to good above St. Francois Park, but spotted bass are in the process of taking over the river up to the Leadwood MDC access. It's a shallow stream for the most part, so surface and shallow running lures and flies are always a good choice in the summer. Jet boats normally run the river from about Mammoth Access on down, and during low summer water levels, it isn't easy to run jets even that far down. Big River is a mere shadow of what it once was for smallmouth fishing. The spotted bass and fishing pressure have pretty well messed up much of the river. It once was the second or third best stream in the state for Master Angler Award size smallies, but the best big fish sections were between St. Francois Park and Browns Ford, and now the spotted bass outnumber smallmouths in those stretches. Less than half the number of smallmouths there used to be means less than half (or less) the number of bigger fish, as well. It's still possible to catch those 19-21 inch smallies on Big River, but it ain't near as likely as it used to be.

It's wadeable in spots, but has lots of water between that isn't easily wadeable. While Big River is never an exceptionally deep stream, it has enough volume and enough narrow, high banked sections in the lower river to make wading problematical. I haven't been below Browns in several years, but I seem to remember that it's fairly wadeable just below Browns for a ways.

Years ago, when people first started complaining about the negative aspects of jetboats on Ozark streams, MDC did a study on their impact. Unfortunately, it wasn't much of a study (see, I can be VERY critical of MDC when they screw up in my opinion). What they did was compare the impacts of jetboats on the bottom compared to prop boats. They did it by repeatedly running both jets and props across a small, marked spot on Current River and observing how much bottom disturbance there was a various depths. What they found (naturally) was that prop boats had more of an impact in shallow water than jets. If it was shallow enough that the prop boat could barely run in it, the prop boat did more damage than a jetboat. Of course, they didn't bother to note that the jet could run in much shallower water, and thus impact spots the prop boat never would. Nor did they note that there were already 100 jet boats running river sections that might have seen only one or two prop boats during a similar period in the past. Nor did they measure the disturbance that jetboat wakes caused. They concluded that there was less of a problem with jet boats than with props. And since then, there has not to my knowledge been ANY kind of study of the impact of jetboats on Ozark streams. The problem is that there were no studies of the stream inhabitants nor the stream banks and bottoms PRIOR to the advent of jetboats, with which to compare the state of the rivers today. It's the same problem we have, in my opinion, with studies of smallmouth populations on the streams prior to jetboats and river tournaments. You can't scientifically compare smallmouth populations then to now, which would be a key component of any study. As to my opinion of jet boat effects... Yes, they do have an impact on the bottom and bottom organisms in shallow water. Can't help but be so. Question is, HOW MUCH of an impact? Could that be the reason for the apparent decline hellgramites? Maybe. It would be interesting to see if there has been a similar decline on streams that are too small for powerboat use. After having operated a jetboat for a while, I will note that on streams the size of the Current and middle Meramec, the riffles can get shallow enough that the boat running lanes are pretty narrow, especially on the Meramec, so any impact to the bottom is only going to cover a relatively small section of the shallows of the riffle. Not sure how much that would affect the total population of aquatic insects and other critters. If the water is more than about a foot to 18 inches deep, the impact would seem to be pretty minimal, anyway. Like Gavin, I'm more concerned with the damage done by the wakes of these boats to the banks of the streams. As I think I've noted before, a lot of people believe that the riffles on the Current and Meramec have gotten a lot wider, shallower, and less defined since jetboat use became common. I've also noted that floods seem to be doing more damage to what was once fairly healthy, tree-lined banks on the Meramec than they did before jetboats came onto the scene, and I think that it's possible that the repetitive pounding of narrow zones along the banks by boat wakes weaken those zones, and provide the flood water forces a weakened zone to attack. I'm also still concerned about the affects of the mud stirred up along the banks by the wakes on spawning activity of smallmouths, since the smallies tend to spawn near the banks in fairly shallow water. I'm very much ambivalent about using a jetboat. I KNOW I'm causing some damage that I wouldn't be causing with a canoe. That's why I don't push the envelope by running river sections that are barely big enough--I only run the larger rivers; and I run the river as little as possible...run it one way and drift and fish the other way. I'm trying to minimize what impact I have. And really, if it wasn't for it allowing me to fish with Dad, I probably wouldn't use one at all except in the winter when I can't get a shuttle to allow me to fish from the canoe.

A well-placed and considered curse word can be very useful in getting your point across.... But it's not necessary! I have yet to see the need to use them, or the symbols, although I have occasionally slipped one in on other forums. Of course, they are part of the punch line on some of my favorite jokes!

Brownieman, their mindset is that they don't want to change regulations unless it's absolutely shown to be necessary. Hence the studies, until it seems like things are being studied to death. The enforcement people don't want regs to change because they don't want to be bad guys and ticket people who complain that they didn't know or understand the regs. It took many years to convince them that the average angler could actually tell the difference between spotted bass, smallmouths, and largemouths--they were highly resistant to regs putting different limits on one species of bass. And when it came to the decline of smallmouths in the streams where spotted bass were taking over, they had an ally in one biologist, who was convinced that the spotted bass were no problem...he finally retired. Otters--I doubt that you could have found a half-dozen people in the whole state who were against otter reintroduction before it happened. NOBODY expected the otters to take off. Their reproductive rates were 4 times as fast as all the literature said otters could reproduce. This is one case where hindsight is 20/20...we all know now that the Ozark stream habitat is such that it's too easy for otters to prey on game fish, especially in the winter. But nobody knew it beforehand. MDC has, in my opinion, done about as much as possible to control the otters through liberalized trapping regs. Unfortunately, any further methods of thinning the otters would probably run up against the animal rights idiots and be a major hassle. Best we can hope for, and I think it's possible that it's happening, is for the otters to reach an equilibrium with smallies and other native gamefish, and the gamefish survivors evolve a bit back to where they can better avoid being prey. When it comes to agents enforcing the laws, I've had several sessions with MDC enforcement people, where I told them the same thing you're saying. In all the years I've spent on Ozark streams, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've been checked by agents. Their stock answer is that I don't know and don't realize how many times I've been observed by hidden agents, who didn't let themselves be seen because I was obviously not breaking any laws. My answer to that is--is the goal to arrest as many bad guys as possible, or to keep the regs from being broken and thus protect the resource. Some agent hidden in the brush in one spot isn't going to stop all the bad guys on other parts of the stream from breaking the law. On the other hand, if agents made themselves highly visible part of the time, where they were OFTEN seen on the streams, there would be less temptation to break the law for most of the bad guys. Shocking...I don't know how harmful it is. I do know it's not necessarily a really effective method of sampling fish populations. Sometimes you don't get a lot of the fish that are there. Creel censuses? The problem I see with them is that they miss a lot of the guys who are meat hogs. Most meat hogs are locals, who don't necessarily use the MDC accesses and who don't use them at convenient hours. There has been a lot of resistance to more restrictive smallmouth regs because the censuses show that the vast majority of bass anglers release all the fish they catch, anyway, so the regs would have little effect. But I KNOW that there are a bunch of guys on my home river who keep a legal limit of nice fish every time they go out, and they go out at least once a week.

Brownieman...I too would like to see more done for river smallmouth fishing. This is one place where I'm somewhat disappointed in MDC. The biologists is charge care deeply about the smallmouth fishing, but have been limited by the higher-ups in this area. For instance, if the biologists had their way, there would be no limit on spotted bass in the Meramec river system, but the more conservative higher-ups barely agreed to the 12 fish limit. As for special management areas, the biologists would like some more, but have to study what they have to see if the restrictive regs are working the way they should. I agree that there needs to be more enforcement, which is another thing I have against MDC in general...not enough agents, and not a visible enough presence on the Ozark streams. As you can see, I don't think MDC is infallible. While I'm mostly okay with how they seem to be spending their money, I'm far from completely happy with everything they do. Only part of it is in their expenditures, more of it is in the mindset of the powers that be.

Want to know how much land they have that the public can use, right now? Get the newest edition of the "Missouri's Conservation Atlas". Tells the exact acreage of every parcel in every county. Might take you a while to add it all up. Just a few random samples-- Andrew County in the Northwest Region (which is where the least amount of public land is found...no national forests, etc.)--9316 acres. Caldwell County (Northwest region)--1856 acres (only two parcels) Clinton County (Northwest region)--two parcels, only 136 acres...one of the parcels is a river access. Grundy County (Northwest)--two river accesses only...83 acres. Holt County (Northwest)--14,023 acres Linn County (Northwest)--only 4 parcels, but a total of 9774 acres. Livingston County (Northwest)--only 4 parcels here, too, but 12,925 acres Clark (Northeast)--6554 acres Monroe County (Northeast)--1354 acres (4 river accesses, 2 Conservation Areas) Pike County (Northeast)--23,611 acres, includes 6 river accesses, the 4,026 acre Ted Shanks CA, and the 14,907 acre Upper Mississippi CA. Sullivan County (Northeast)--11,968 acres Benton County (lower Truman, upper Lake Ozark)--14,469 acres Henry County (upper Truman area)--29,993 acres Jackson County (Kansas City area)--6294 acres (in 20 parcels) Boone County (Columbia area)--13,055 acres Gasconade County (lower Gasconade area)--1523 acres Miller County (Bagnell Dam and downstream on the Osage)--5321 acres Crawford County (upper Meramec area)--13,315 acres St. Charles County (adjoins St. Louis)--35,214 acres St. Louis County--23,129 acres (36 parcels) Barry County--4568 acres Christian County--2566 acres (3 river accesses and a CA) Greene County (Springfield)--5530 acres Jasper County (Southwest)--198 acres McDonald County (Southwest)--6878 acres Stone County--3419 acres Carter County (Current River)--52,924 acres (includes the Peck Ranch CA, 23,049 acres, most of which MDC had prior to the sales tax, and the Current River CA,29,331 acres, bought with the sales tax). Oregon County (Eleven Point River)--235 acres Ozark County (Bull Shoals and Norfork)--8175 acres (does not include the 34,736 acres around Bull Shoals and 4861 acres around Norfork that MDC manages). I didn't cherry pick these counties, just listed them at random. According to an older and easier to count version of the atlas, there were 343 river accesses at that time. I could give you more stuff, but I'm tired of calculating!

Geez, guys, I'm not affiliated with MDC. What I have been is alive and fishing and hunting in MO since BEFORE the sales tax. Those figures I quoted? The figures for river accesses on the Meramec, Big River, and Bourbeuse are strictly from my own experience, since I've been fishing those three rivers since before the sales tax, and I can tell you where all the accesses are and which ones were there before the sales tax, from memory. Ditto with the Conservation Areas in St. Francois and Ste. Genevieve counties, where I grew up and live. I went through the Conservation Atlas to count up the number of accesses I've used, and also went back to one of my vintage Ozark Waterways books, from 1975 or so, to see which ones were there back then. The handicapped facilities came directly from the Conservation Atlas. It seems that a lot of you either weren't around before 1976, and so don't remember how many Conservation areas and accesses there were before then. The VAST majority of lands owned by MDC today were acquired since the advent of the sales tax. And like I said before, the whole plan was to spend the first ten years or so of the sales tax to acquire as much land as possible, then to scale back on acquisition in order to develop and maintain the lands they had. So yes, the majority of lands were probably acquired 20 years or more ago, and you may not be aware that they were bought with the sales tax. I too would like to know just how much of the sales tax is going toward maintaining and developing the lands they own. It seems that there are places that are languishing, owned by MDC but undeveloped. As far as buying more land now...let's take a look at river accesses. It probably takes at least 5 acres to make a usable access. Know what Ozark riverfront land is going for? Land that is easy access to all-weather roads? I've been shopping for land myself, and I can tell you that a 5 acre access probably is going to cost at least $75,000 and depending upon the area, up to $200,000. And that's not including building a road into it and a parking lot, not to mention a concrete boat ramp. Hunting areas? You probably need at least a couple hundred acres to make a decent hunting area. Land prices in the Ozarks are such that a hunting area is going to cost you at least $150,000 to $200,000. Close to town it's going to cost a lot more than that. Doesn't take much land buying to cut a big chunk out of that sales tax these days, which is one reason why the emphasis was on buying land in the early days.

There are smallmouths throughout the Meramec, including within the trout section, although there are more of them above and below it. Differences between smallies and trout: Smallmouths relate a lot more to cover. In the Meramec, cover consists of rocks and logs, along with water willow weedbeds. They will be in gentle to moderate current, not in the faster parts of the riffles like trout. Don't spend a lot of time in the middle of the big, deep pools, either. Smallies are much more likely to chase things...dead-drifting is not usually as effective as stripping nymphs and streamers. They also look for bigger bites...you're usually wasting time fishing anything smaller than a 2 inch long Woolybugger. You might catch some small smallmouths on smaller flies, but usually the dink sunfish beat the smallies to them. I find smallmouths to be more wary than trout. I can stand in a riffle and catch trout dead-drifting nymphs less than ten feet away. If you're within 15-20 feet of a good smallmouth, chances are the fish knows you're there and doesn't like it. As for flies/lures...you can't beat big Woolybuggers weighted and fished near the bottom, big Muddlers fished the same way, big marabou Muddlers fished weightless and stripped just under the surface, and various cork and deer hair poppers. Most of the time that's about all you really need.

MDC river accesses on the Meramec River--17. Accesses before the sales tax--2. Accesses on the Bourbeuse River--9. Accesses before the sales tax--0. Accesses on Big River--6. Accesses before the sales tax--0. Number of MDC areas with disabled-accessible facilities--68. Areas with Disabled-accessible docks and jetties--42. D-A trails--19. D-A deer/turkey blinds--3. D-A waterfowl blinds--10. D-A wildlife viewing blinds--8. D-A restrooms--54. Number of MDC areas in my home county--4. Before the sales tax--0. Number in the county I grew up in--11. Number before the sales tax--1. Number of MDC river accesses I've used personally--71. Number of these that existed prior to the sales tax--4.

To answer the question about the landowner owning the land under the stream...ALL landowners on streams other than the "navigable in fact" rivers (mainly Missouri and Mississippi River, as I said before) own the land under the stream. It isn't just the landowner on the Osage Fork, and I'm quite sure that it isn't true that his deed says so and nobody else's does. If you own the land on one side of a stream, you own it to the middle of the stream bed. If you own on both sides, you own the entire stream bed. Which, in the past, gave landowners the rights to mine gravel out of the river bottoms with impunity, until there were some controls put on it. I know this to be true not only because I've spent a bit of time studying the law, but also because I own a couple of acres on the St. Francis, and own it to the middle of the stream. It's only through the courts that the public has gotten the right to touch your land on larger creeks and rivers in order to use the water that the public, and not you, owns. There is no doubt that a large part of the problem with stream access is in people trashing the traditional accesses and otherwise mistreating the private property adjoining them. It seems that law enforcement is not willing or able to deal with this stuff, and it's getting worse if for no other reason than that there are more people using the accesses and thus more bad apples. I don't know what, realistically, is the solution to that problem. I do know that it will only recede when enough people care deeply enough about the resource. The problem is as bad or worse in many other states, but not as bad in some. Montana, where I spend a lot of time, has less trouble with the accesses along its trout streams, perhaps because there is a thriving business based on trout fishing on them, with plenty of people using them that care about their condition. California, on the other hand, has got to be the worst place I've seen for people simply trashing long sections of streams.

I just skimmed through a lot of the stuff that has been posted since I left town on July 2. I hope, jcoberley, that somebody has clued you in by this time to the fact that the Nature Conservancy, which bought the land in Brazil you had your shorts twisted about, is a private organization, not a state agency, and has absolutely NOTHING to do with MDC. I also hope that, by this time, you have gotten hold of a Missouri Conservation Atlas and seen the amount of land and accesses MDC owns, the vast majority of which was bought with the sales tax. Yep, some of it was donated. Most, including most of the parcels that are big enough to furnish good hunting, was purchased. The problem that some have seen with the sales tax, is that it gives MDC a whole different constituency from hunters and anglers and forestry workers, their traditional constituency. Now, everybody in the state has more of a stake in how MDC spends money, including bird watchers and bicyclers and hikers and...well, anybody who spends any time outdoors. MDC has had to juggle their traditional role as provider of better hunting, fishing, and forestry opportunities, with the role of "conserving" all of nature in Missouri for everybody. Hence the urban conservation centers in Springfield, KC, St. Louis, Cape Girardeau, Jeff City, Columbia, and wherever else they are now. Hence buying a lot of land in and near the big cities. Hence managing land for more than just game species. Like it or not, we as hunters and anglers are only a percentage of MDC's constituency these days, and not even a majority percentage. That's why I kinda like the fact that we still pay for hunting and fishing licenses. That, at least, gives us a bit more clout with MDC than, say, the big city animal rights idiots. I wonder...those who are complaining about not being able to find out exactly where the money is going--do you know of ANY governmental agency that gives any BETTER report of where and how they spend the money? When you're talking about a state agency as big as MDC, the full report is there somewhere, but would take a long time to slog through (though I agree with Gavin that it shouldn't take several years to audit). I also wonder how the administrative costs of MDC compare with the administrative expenditures of any other state agency. I would suspect that it isn't a higher percentage. I know how MDC has spent the money (and emphasis) in the areas I really care about, like Ozark streams and smallmouth bass, for instance. While I'm not happy about everything they've done in those areas, I can see the river accesses they've bought, the improvements they've made to them, the problems they've had maintaining those improvements on some of them. I've seen the effort they've spent in studying how to improve smallmouth fishing, and the resulting regs and how they've worked out. Do they spend more on trout than other fish? Sure. Trout are the ONLY species in Missouri that MUST be raised in hatcheries and stocked. It only stands to reason that the bulk of the money will be spent on them. Am I completely happy with that? Nope, but I understand it. MDC has spent a lot of money and effort on Ozark river walleye, including raising and stocking them (which is much more expensive per fish than trout). They've spent a lot recently on trying to reestablish alligator gar in the bootheel. They've spent a lot on musky. Bass and crappie and bluegill and catfish don't NEED to be stocked. And to suggest that the sales tax has given us bear and cougars is ridiculous. MDC has NOT stocked those species. The bears have come back on their own, coming from Arkansas. The only thing the sales tax may have done is give the bears (and cougars, if there IS a breeding population, which is very doubtful) a few more places to live. I don't question or begrudge anybody asking questions about MDC and how they spend the money. That's our right and duty as citizens. But, before you go off half-cocked about something, at least educate yourself as much about it as possible.

I think somebody already said this, but geez, I know of a LOT of land MDC has bought since the advent of the sales tax. In the Current River country, they bought something like 14,000 acres from one seller. (Kerr-McGee Corp.) There are about 50 river accesses now to every ONE they had before the sales tax...in fact, I'm not sure they had ANY accesses before. The plan, which they stated very clearly for anybody who wanted to read in the years just before and after the start of the sales tax (Design for Conservation) was to have a big push the first 10 years to buy as much land as possible. After that, land purchases were to be scaled back and the money would go toward developing and maintaining what they had. For the most part, they have done that, while still occasionally buying land from willing sellers. If you want to see what they own, get a Conservation Atlas. There are a few counties that might only have 6 or 8 MDC owned parcels, but most counties have a lot more. By the way...I have some acquaintances in the department, mainly the biologists. I am not in any way affiliated with them. I have furnished them artwork in the past--almost entirely for free. The MO DNR is who runs the state parks. They also are charged with environmental protection in the state, including such things as monitoring water pollution and regulating gravel mining, to mention a couple of things dear to anglers. The MO Geological Survey, which produces topo maps and researches mining issues and exploration, is also a part of the DNR. They get half of a tenth of a percent sales tax, earmarked for the state parks. Other than that, they are entirely dependent upon user fees and mainly upon legislative appropriations. The last I heard, they could only afford 5 inspectors for the whole state who have the responsibility for checking gravel mining sites and responding to complaints about water pollution. And they are entirely under the thumb of a legislature that is, for the most part, pretty hostile to most forms of environmental protection (including regulating gravel mining). If MO DNR and MDC merged, I can almost guarantee you the legislature would cease most appropriations for DNR, figuring that with TWO bits of sales taxes they didn't need it. Both agencies would suffer, while the legislature happily spent the money on stuff most people like us would not think much of. The legislature has tried more than once to raid the MDC money, and would do so again.

And you know what? That REALLY ticks me off. Just what exactly is the county sheriff's department good for if they can't be bothered to just make an appearance at such places once every weekend for a while? It wouldn't take much to run the idiots off. And if you want to catch a few drug-heads and other lawbreakers, what better place to do it? After all, most of these accesses are public right of ways, and the public danged sure ought to have the right to use them as long as they aren't breaking the law. Which brings me to a little observation concerning another thread...where would we be at this point if it wasn't for all the MDC accesses bought with the sales tax?

Yep, and this is semi-serious...I've always thought a clean lawn of grass was pretty boring. I LIKE a patchy lawn with crabgrass and dandelions and clover and johnson grass. Besides, it's a lot better for the birds...attracts more varieties of bugs for them to eat. And the day I water my lawn will be the day that I've finally gone senile. Of course, it helps to live on your own 40 acres and not have to put up with the neighbors talking about your ratty lawn. And my landscaping is mostly native wildflowers, so if it's a little weedy, who would know? The only thing that bothers me a bit is that I planted some gama grass years ago in a couple of my flower beds. That stuff spreads like crazy, and really isn't all that pretty, so I have been trying to eradicate it ever since. And although I've gotten most of it out of the flower beds, the stuff is sprouting all over the lawn. That would be okay, except it grows about 5 times faster than anything else growing in the lawn, so two days after mowing you got these foot high blades of grass sticking up out of the lawn.

Yeah...yesterday I too waded and fished a creek that I had spent a lot of time on as a teenager--I fished it a couple of times a month from the time I got a car for the next five years until I moved away. I hadn't been this particular stretch of it since those days (and that was 30 years ago); although I had put in my solo canoe at the access I started from several times in the last few years and floated downstream, I hadn't been upstream from the access. I was afraid of what I would find. This stretch of creek had been nice habitat and held good fish back in those days, but the stretch below had been (illegally without a permit) dredged for gravel about 15 years ago, and was still pretty much of a mess. The only reason I had floated it was because nobody else ever did and there actually are some nice largemouths and the occasional smallmouth in the shallow, weedy pools. I didn't think the gravel dredging had gone on above the bridge, but I didn't know what to expect...gravel dredging can really affect upstream stretches as well as downstream ones. The creek was nothing like I remembered it. Murky water where it had once been clear. Choked with aquatic vegetation where it had once been pretty clean gravel. It had eaten away at several banks that the landowner had stupidly cleared right down to the water, and moved its channel long distances. The riffles were totally choked with water willow weeds, to where often you couldn't even see the water. It was brushy and log-jammed, and man, was it tough wading. I caught a couple of really nice largemouths, but the smallies weren't nearly as common as they had been, and there just wasn't a lot of good smallie habitat. Gravel dredging. Overfertilization from bad farming practices. Tearing up the riparian corridor. Simply a textbook on how to mess up a nice creek.

It never ceases to amaze me how people can run down MDC..."they've gone downhill since the sales tax"????? Come on, people, do you think that there would be a tenth of the public land (outside the national forests) that there is in this state were it not for the sales tax? Geez, go to ANY other state and see how THEIR fish and game department operates. I guarantee you, you won't be nearly as happy with it as you are with MDC. Why? Because MDC actually has money to do things with, and relatively little political interference compared to other states. And bitching about the price of licenses and unwillingness to pay for stamps? C'mon, a few dollars for a trout stamp, and a fishing license that is what, less than 20 bucks? For being able to fish a whole year? If you can't afford that, you oughta be on welfare. Yep, MDC has made some mistakes. I happen to know about some of them that didn't get a lot of publicity. And I'm the first to complain when I think they are doing something wrong. I'd like to see them spend more money to hire more agents, especially to police the Ozark streams. I'd like to see them change some things in the fishing regs. I'd like to see a FEW less chiefs and a few more Indians. I'd like to see them spend a little more on infrastructure. But like I said, compare them to other state fish and game agencies. I know quite a few people in other states that have given me stories about their agencies. MDC is the envy of most of them. Not that they can't improve, and not that they should be sitting on their laurels. But we have it pretty good in this state compared to most.

I've researched this topic pretty extensively at times. The law doesn't always make sense, but that's the way it is. I'm not arguing, Gone...just telling the facts. Touching the bottom of a floatable stream isn't trespassing--even though you're touching private "land"--because courts have SAID it isn't, plain and simple. And I agree with you completely on the king of England land grants--but unfortunately the Virginia Supreme Court DOESN'T, and at this point theirs is the opinion that matters.

The upper part of that stretch has been very weedy for many years. And I am beginning to think that the gravel operation at Mounts must be doing some kind of sneaky early morning gravel washing or otherwise discharging mud into the river, because it seems to often be pretty murky in the morning but clears up during the day. I noticed that it was very murky when I crossed it early in the morning the other day. Either that or somebody is digging gravel out of the channel above there, and it takes that long for the mud from the day before to reach that area. I haven't floated above there yet this year, so don't know whether that might be true or not. So far, I haven't caught any spotted bass in that stretch, either, but they are now well established below the Leadwood access, which really bums me out. There isn't much of Big River left that is still smallmouth water. My brother and I did a short float below Leadwood the other morning and caught 6 or 7 spotted bass, including a big one of over 18 inches.

Nope, Gone...like I said, court cases have established the public's right to float and fish and swim, etc. in the float streams, even though they aren't navigable. Technically, you'd be trespassing if you touched the bottom of any of these streams, if it wasn't for the court cases giving you the right to do so. The big lakes and the land under them are owned by the Corps of Engineers (except for Lake of the Ozarks and a few others), and technically again, such owners COULD keep you off the bottoms of them, except that it's obvious that such action wouldn't stand up in a court of law because of Congressional action or agreements between the owners and the state. Thing is, when it comes to the float streams, there is no state statute saying the public can use them, nor is there any list of floatable/recreationally navigable streams. So there is no specific law that says you can be on them. It's all a matter of court cases deciding, in the absence of such laws, that you can. It isn't like that in all states. You don't have the same rights in Illinois as you do in MO. And in Virginia, some sections of streams have been closed to fishing even though you can float them as long as you don't touch the bottom or banks. You see, land grants given by the king of England before the United States came into being gave the landowners along these rivers the exclusive fishing rights, and unbelievably, recent court cases have upheld those grants. On one stream, there was a well-established guiding business which had been operating for many years, floating clients through that stretch and trout fishing. Then a landowner actually read the old land grant, and sued to stop all public fishing on a large stretch where he owned both banks and the bottom...and won.

Just to clarify navigability a little more... Navigable rivers, under Missouri (and I think Arkansas) law, are clearly designated, and actually include ONLY the Missouri, Mississippi, and short stretches of a couple of other big rivers that are or have been in the past commonly used by commercial river craft like barges. NONE of the floatable Ozark streams are navigable as that term is defined by law. The difference between navigable and non-navigable streams is not so much in how much of a right the public has to use them (although the public has that right on navigable streams), but in the ownership of the land around and under them. The public owns the land below the normal bank line of navigable streams. The public does NOT own that land on non-navigable streams...the landowner owns that land, including the actual stream bottom. That's why I termed it "floatable" rather than navigable. As the result of a number of court cases, the right of the public to use the floatable streams has been established in AR and MO. The usual standards for determining public rights to these streams have to do with whether they were ever commonly used for commerce (floating logs to market is the example of commerce usually given) and also whether the public has traditionally used them for floating and fishing. So as you can see, once you get past the better known float streams and into smaller, marginally floatable creeks, the law gets real gray. Gavin's example of the wealthy landowner on the Osage Fork is right on. That stretch of the Osage Fork IS big enough to float and has been floated a lot in the past (before that landowner acquired the land), and it has also almost certainly been used in the past for floating logs to market. But because of the power and influence of that landowner, it is all but closed to the public, and it will take a court case going farther than the county court to settle the matter. What makes this whole thing so sticky is that nobody knows for sure how such court cases will go in the future, and everybody is a little afraid to bring a case, because if it goes against them it sets more precedent. If it goes against the public right, the public is liable to lose the right to float and fish not only the particular stretch of stream decided by that case, but also any other similar stream stretches. Likewise for the landowners if it goes the other way. I have mixed feelings about this whole thing. On the one hand, it's good to have stream stretches that are protected from overfishing. On the other hand, I don't want to be run off a stream I've legally accessed in my canoe. I float a lot of small streams that are not usually floated and not generally considered floatable.

Slow, deep sections of Ozark streams: I usually spend a bit of time fishing the heads and tails of big pools, and fish down from the heads until the current gets very slow. If I catch a fish where the current is slowing down, I will go ahead and fish a little farther down the pool. But usually I simply paddle through the middle of the big, deep pools. Fact is, active smallmouths are very seldom in that water. It simply isn't where the food is. So, rather than spending time trying to find the occasional fish that is willing to bite in that water, I simply skip it and concentrate my efforts where I KNOW the active fish are.

Bottom line is, if it's floatable, you have a right to float it, as well as wade it, to fish. If it's definitely too small to float, you DON'T have a right to wade and fish it, although there are still a lot of wadeable streams where you won't get run off. Problem comes with streams that are marginally floatable and not often floated, such as parts of floatable streams that are upstream of the usual highest floatable point. Then, you just don't know, and it would take a court case to settle the matter. As a practical matter...check out where you are accessing wadeable creeks. If there is an obvious and well-used place to park and a lack of purple paint and NO TRESPASSING signs, you're probably okay to wade upstream or down and fish. Just keep a low profile and stay in the stream bed. But if there is that obnoxious purple paint everywhere or there isn't a good place to park, you're taking a huge chance in trying to fish it.