Al Agnew

We've had one in our house for about two years now...supplies all our hot water needs. Works very well, except that it's a bit persnickety about settings, and the remote doesn't work well. Our only problems with it are that it takes a bit of time to get "warmed up"...turn on the shower and it takes about 30-45 seconds for the water to get hot. That's because it isn't set quite right, and we don't particularly trust the guy who installed it to fix the problem, so we live with it. And occasionally, like about once a month, it kicks off and has to be reset. Since the unit is down in the basement crawlspace, and like I said the remote doesn't work about half the time, it means having to go down there and reset it. Other than that, it's very effective. We can run two shower heads at once, take a shower when the washer or dishwasher is running...absolutely NO problems with hot water supply.

Yep, the coyotes have really been hard on red foxes around here. And our gray foxes got a disease a few years ago and disappeared...we used to have a family around the house. But the coyotes haven't run off our resident bobcat, which we see once a year or so. And they sure haven't harmed our rabbit population. On the other hand, the danged things have gotten two of our chickens in the last week. First one, I was busy painting in the middle of the day and heard the chickens (we let them free-range) going nuts outside. Ran outside just in time to see a big coyote trotting off with our only hen that laid blue eggs. But last night was our fault, forgot to shut the chicken house door. This morning there was a big pile of feathers and one less hen, so I suppose it was the coyote, but ain't sure. We've always had one covey of quail on our land, and we've figured out that our carrying capacity is exactly 6 birds. By the end of the summer, we'll have anywhere from 10 to 16 quail in the covey, but by the end of the winter we're almost always back down to 6. I don't hunt them. We had a bunch of rose-breasted grosbeaks come through and stay awhile earlier this spring. We have blue grosbeaks nesting. But we haven't seen an evening grosbeak in a long time, either.

While it's true that redtailed and other hawks kill a lot of rabbits and quail (especially rabbits, I don't think they get many quail, though coopers hawks probably get a few), the hawks wouldn't kill nearly so many if the rabbits had better habitat. My brother-in-law took over the family farm, which had few rabbits (pastured for many years). He planted all kinds of food plots, but the best thing he did was go through the extensive cedars on the hillsides and cut and hinge them, leaving them on the land. The rabbit population exploded...there were so many rabbits we started hunting them with .22s because getting a limit with a shotgun was too easy. But after 10 years or so, the cedars were only skeletons, and suddenly we started noticing that predators, from hawks to bobcats to coyotes, were now decimating the rabbits, even though the rabbits still had plenty to eat. My own 40 acres is another good example. I have hawks all over the place, but I've got great cover for rabbits with brushy fencerows and warm season grasses, and the hawks seldom get a rabbit...I usually count 8-12 each evening, long before dark, as I drive down the quarter mile lane to the house. Point is, if you have good rabbit and quail cover, predators don't really make much of a dent. If the cover is marginal, the predators really do a job on them. As far as songbirds...I've noticed a major decline in them around the house. Our 40 acres is varied habitat, from woods full of big white oaks to cedar thickets to warm season grass to food plots to brushy fencerows to nice aquatic habitat around our pond. We've identified around 150 different species of birds on our land in the 15 years we've lived here. But a lot of those species were seen only in the first few years. Our bird population has gotten less and less diverse. It's been 4 years since we've heard a whippoorwill. It's been several years since we've seen a purple finch...the non-native house finches have totally replaced them. We see fewer warblers every year. Our population of native sparrows is way down. No summer tanagers anymore. Orioles are rare. It's been at least five years since we've seen or heard a dickcissel, or a shrike. The meadowlarks are still here, but fewer than they were. Haven't had kingbirds for a couple of years. All these used to be common. Now, we have huge numbers of goldfinches, house finches, plenty of cardinals, plenty of downy, hairy, and redbellied woodpeckers, still have chickadees and titmice and nuthatches, lots of redwinged blackbirds...everything else is only occasional or rare.

Yep, the biologists (most of them) know what oughta be done, but they have to get it okayed by the enforcement people, who are always reluctant to have to deal with anything but the simplest of regulations. They weren't in favor of the original 12 inch limit on stream bass. They definitely weren't in favor of any of the regulations that put different limits on spotted bass than the other bass species. They weren't real big on setting up special smallmouth management stretches. Why? Having to enforce more complicated regs. And note here that I'm not necessarily talking about the agents who actually do the enforcing, I'm talking more about the higher ups in the enforcement division. Then you have the commissioners. Whether or not they are just political hacks appointed as a favor by whichever governor is in office, or whether they actually have some knowledge of fish and game management and care about it, they still have to answer to "the people". Which means that they are the ones who get the hostile phone calls and hostile constituents at meetings whenever they change a regulation and tick somebody off. So they are also very reluctant to encourage the department to institute more restrictive regs. If the truth be known, I suspect that it wasn't easy for the biologists to get the ball rolling on what special management areas and special smallmouth limits we do have. Things ARE changing, slowly enough, but changing. The anglers who want GOOD stream smallmouth angling are banding together and getting more vocal, and the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

hornyhead... In my last two trips to the middle Current, I caught more than a dozen pickerel back in February, and 8 or 9 in late April or early May, can't remember which. And that's spending only a very small percentage of the day actually trying to catch them, I was mostly fishing for smallmouths in the main channel. If you fish the main channel of the river you won't find too many pickerel, but go up into just about any backwater off the main channel and throw a spinnerbait or any lure that resembles a minnow, and I can almost guarantee you that you'll catch some...or at least have a big one bite you off. I lost a high dollar Lucky Craft Pointer to one of those toothy critters back in February. If the backwater is fed by a small spring (several of these on the Current), it'll be weedy and FULL of pickerel. Last time I was on the Jacks Fork just below Eminence, I caught several pickerel in the first couple of big pools. Key to good pickerel habitat is very little current and cool water. Aquatic vegetation is a big plus as well, but the bigger pickerel really like laydown logs, too. As far as the trout section of the Eleven Point being poor smallie habitat because of the water being too cool...difference between the most heavily springfed sections of Ozark streams and the north country like up in Canada is temperature during spawning season. While the Canadian lakes get a lot colder than Ozark streams in the winter, they do get up into the upper 60s (optimum temperature for smallmouth spawning) in time for the smallmouths to spawn, like about early to mid-June. Problem with the springfed sections of Ozark streams is that they don't get warm enough for smallie spawning in the main channel until way up in the summer...water comes out of the springs at 56 degrees or so and the river stays cold until the time for smallie spawning is about over. So I don't have ironclad data, but I'd suspect that MOST of the smallies in the area between Greer and Turner Mill are NOT fish that were spawned in that stretch, but fish that have moved into it from upstream or downstream, so the population is dependent upon fish moving in instead of being totally self-sustaining. I have to admit that I don't know as much about the Eleven Point as I do the Current. In the Current, there isn't much smallie spawning and not all that many smallmouths (considering the size of the stream) between Montauk and Cedargrove. Between Cedargrove and Welch Spring, the water warms enough that smallies do pretty well in that stretch, even though it has a stocked trout fishery. But Welch gives the river another big shot of cold water, and even though there aren't many trout below Welch (which is just above Akers) and nobody stocks trout down there (even though a lot of anglers want them to), the smallie population is very poor for ten miles or so below Akers. As far as trout competing with smallmouths...adult rainbow trout don't compete all that much with adult smallmouths, but I do suspect that adult rainbows compete with fingerling smallies in eating insects. However, just wade down the Current turning over rocks and watching the water and you'll see a LOT more food (minnows, crayfish, aquatic insects) than the large trout population there is able to eat. Browns are more likely to compete with adult smallmouths, but it's all a matter of habitat preferences. There's a reason why you don't find great smallmouth populations in water that never gets much warmer than 70 degrees and stays well below that temp for most of the year...and not all of those waters already have trout. Oh, and by the way, I don't know Mark Nickless, but I've never caught a chain pickerel in or near Maramec Spring, or anywhere else in the Meramec River system. According to "The Fishes of Missouri", they are not native and not found in the Meramec River system. Grass Pickerel, which are smaller and a different color, are the native pickerel in the Meramec, and I've caught a few of them in the Meramec and tributaries. They are more tolerant of warm water than chain pickerel are. Not saying Nickless is wrong, since I don't know him and haven't spent all that much time fishing in the Maramec Spring branch; I'm just going by the reference material.

Keep in mind too that carp aren't in the sucker family, but in the minnow family. Carp and goldfish and grass carp and those bighead carp that whack people up the side of the head in the Mississippi these days are all big minnows, not suckers.

Yep, and check out the latest MO Conservationist magazine, the little article about the rusty crayfish.

Upper and middle Current is full of chain pickerel, as well. And the Jacks Fork between Alley and Eminence has a lot of them. Trying to make the trout section of the Eleven Point world class smallmouth water probably is counterproductive. The water is just too cold to be good habitat. The smallies can live in it but they don't have the numbers they do in warmer water. I don't think trout are the reason.

Hmm... I'm not sure which species we're talking about here. According to "The Fishes of Missouri", blue suckers (Cycleptus elongatus) are found only in the Missouri and Mississippi, and the lower ends of their largest tribs in MO. However, the black redhorse (Moxostoma duquesnei) is found in Taney, and is sometimes called black sucker or blue sucker (it's also called white sucker, for that matter). The golden redhorse (M. erythrurum) is the one that's commonly called yellow sucker. The white sucker (Catostomus commersoni) is found in the area, but is usually found mostly in small creeks. However, it is common in spring branches, so the cold water of Taney is probably good habitat for it. Just for your info, you can find blue suckers, three species of buffalo (which are in the sucker family), three species of carpsuckers (not carp, but look kinda like a cross between a carp and a redhorse), white suckers, northern hog suckers, five species of redhorse, spotted suckers, and two species of chubsuckers, in Missouri.

Butch, sent you a PM.

Interesting... My take on it is that a native species is one that became indigenous to an area naturally. I kind of alluded to that in the other post. If you look at the "native" ranges of various fish species, for instance, you will see that the various waterways of their native range are either connected, or have been connected in the prehistoric past. For instance, smallmouths were originally native to the streams of the Mississippi river basin, including the upper Mississippi, the Ohio, and nearly all streams of suitable habitat that flowed into those two master rivers. They were also native to all suitable waterways that flowed into the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River. While those two drainage basins were not connected in historic times (until the canal from Lake Michigan into the Illinois River was built), they WERE connected at around the time of the last ice age. Smallmouths were not native to the streams of the east coast that drained directly into the Atlantic, because those rivers had never been connected to the smallies' native range. And they weren't native to the streams draining into the Missouri River, because even though the Missouri was and is connected to the Mississippi, in prehistoric and early historic times the Missouri was simply too muddy for smallmouths to use it to extend their range, so it was a barrier even though connected. As for spotted bass, they were native to the Ohio river basin AND the streams that flowed into the LOWER Mississippi, below the mouth of the Ohio. Those streams included those that drained southward in the Missouri Ozarks, because those streams were either part of the White River system, which entered the Mississippi far down in Arkansas, the Arkansas system, which enters the Miss. in the same area, or the St. Francis and Castor, which also entered below the mouth of the Ohio. They may never have spread farther up the Mississippi and hence into the streams of the northern Ozarks, probably because the Missouri, and the Mississippi between the mouth of the Missouri and the mouth of the Ohio, were too muddy or otherwise not suitable habitat. So, without something altering that habitat, they may never have been able to spread to the northern Ozarks. Humans altered the habitat, by building big dams on the upper Missouri which trapped a lot of the silt and made the Missouri--not clear--but not nearly as muddy as it was before. And humans also gave the spotted bass a shorter shot at the northern Ozark streams, either by stocking directly into them (Osage river system, back around the 1940s), stocking in nearby streams flowing into the Missouri from the north (MDC, 1960s), or by building the Diversion Channel, which gave Castor River spotted bass a short route up the Mississippi to the Meramec. So, any way you cut it, spotted bass probably would never have reached the northern Ozark streams without the inadvertent help of human activity. Thus, they are an invasive species in those streams, and very hard on the native smallmouths. You will find very few, if any, fish species that have spread naturally to waters new to them in historic times. If you look at fish distribution, colonization of new waters has just about always occurred either as the result of direct intervention by man, or by large scale alteration of habitat. On a geologic time scale, the distribution of just about any creature is fluid and subject to change over time, but on a human time scale, it simply doesn't happen that fast unless we hasten it along somehow. But when you get right down to it, the philosophy that, since man is a part of the earth, anything we do is "natural"...that's right, even if we produce a lot of substances and occurrences that have never been and probably never COULD have been made and done without our activity. The REAL question is not, "Is it natural?", but "Is it harmful?" Not every natural herb is harmless to humans. Not every chemical produced by humans is harmful to wildlife. And not every "introduced" species is invasive or harmful to native wildlife. But a lot of them are. Trout in MO are an introduced species. They probably alter the native distribution of species where they are stocked in the Ozarks, but they have apparently not been responsible for pushing out and replacing any species that we know of, and they are "naturally" limited in where they can survive. So they would not be an invasive species, and their net effect is more diversity, not less. Invasive species tend to push out or wipe out native species, so their net effect is less diversity. Less diversity is seldom a good thing.

Dablemont wrote an earlier book, which I have somewhere but wasn't able to find it on short notice...something like "The Authentic American Johnboat", which went into great detail on how to build one. I have another aluminum version of the Ozark johnboat, called a Buddy Boat. It's 14 feet long, not real wide, and has quite a bit of rocker so I think it would be a pretty good paddle craft. When my dad and his best fishing buddy fished Wappapello Lake every weekend back when I was a kid (around 1960) and just getting big enough to go with them, they had their own motors but rented 14 foot johnboats from Holiday Landing. The people who owned Chaonia Landing back then wanted to get their business because they caught more big bass than just about anybody else on the lake, and Chaonia wanted to be able to post their pictures of big stringers. So they asked Dad and Carl what they could do to get their business (kind of an early version of tournament pro endorsements, I guess). At the time, Chaonia only had big clunky V bottoms for rent, so Dad and Carl told them that if they bought really good 14 ft. johnboats they'd start using them. Chaonia said okay, and bought a couple of Buddy Boats, which at the time were reputed to be the best boats going. Dad and Carl used them for several years...they were their own exclusive boats. Then Mom and I started going with Dad, and he needed a bigger boat. He bought a 16 ft. Ouachita. When I got big enough to want my own boat...about the time I graduated from high school...Dad obtained a Buddy Boat for me, and I've owned it ever since. I used it regularly for a long time, with a 9.8 Merc and a hand control trolling motor mounted on the side even with the front seat, on lakes from the local community lakes to Wappapello and Clearwater, but it got to where I liked fishing the rivers from a canoe a lot better, and it sat without being used for a long time. Now Dad is using it for a small lake boat. It's never been on a river, but one of these days I'll take it and see how it handles with a paddle.

Just wanted to let everybody know that my mother passed away last night after a short illness. Mom was 79, suffered from emphysema from over 50 years of smoking (she quit about 15 years ago), and went into the hospital a bit over a week ago with chest pains. While the pains in themselves didn't signify anything life threatening, they were the start of a cascade effect that brought on fluid on her lungs, pneumonia, and finally death. I spent much of the last week in the hospital, and hated watching her suffer, but I was fortunate to be able to tell her how much she meant to me. I'm really going to miss her.

Well, I didn't read this thread for a while, and now see some very interesting discussions... First, about smallmouths being native to the Ozarks. As I said before, from what I've been able to learn and maybe with a little guesswork as well, northern smallmouths were definitely native to streams flowing directly into the Mississippi River above the mouth of the Ohio, which would include the Meramec River system--Meramec flows into the Mississippi just below St. Louis--and the smaller streams that flow into the Mississippi between there and Cape Girardeau--Joachim Creek, Plattin Creek, Establishment Creek, Saline Creek and South Fork Saline, Apple Creek, and Indian Creek. Neosho smallies were native to streams of the Neosho river system and probably to other streams that flow into the Arkansas, including the Illinois, Lee Creek, Big Piney Creek, and Mulberry. Since it doesn't make much sense that there would be a subspecies that was TOTALLY isolated from the main species, and since the White River runs into the Arkansas right near its mouth, it is connected to both the Arkansas system and the Mississippi, so the fish of the central Ozarks, including the White, James, North Fork, Buffalo, Spring, Eleven Point, Current, and Black (all of which eventually get to the White), could have been closely akin to Neoshos, or could have been northern smallies, or could have been some intergrade between the two. Which covers most of the Ozarks, and leaves us with the streams that enter the Mississippi down in the flatlands of AR but have their upper sections in the Ozarks--St. Francis, Castor, and Whitewater. These fish were probably northern smallies. It also leaves us with MO Ozark streams that flow into the Osage and Missouri. What makes it possible that these streams didn't have ANY smallmouths is the fact that the Missouri River was a pretty fair barrier in prehistoric times. It was always extremely muddy due to the lands it drained in the West. So Mississippi river system fish MAY NOT have been able to spread up the Missouri into the Gasconade, Osage, Niangua, Pomme de Terre, and Sac. It's believed that rock bass weren't native to those streams for that reason. So...yes, smallmouths were native to most of the Ozarks, but POSSIBLY not native to the Gasconade and Osage river systems. The records aren't available to tell us this with any certainty. As for Greer Spring...my opinion is that it would both possible and desirable to keep the spring branch off limits to angling. If you allow angling, whether catch and release, flies only, or whatever, you're going to end up with well worn paths up and down the edges of the spring branch, moss worn off the rocks, bottom stirred up and disturbed. The more I think about it, the more adamantly I'm opposed to this. Greer is unique as the only big spring branch that is wild and natural, and anything that can be done to keep it that way should be done. Just keep one good trail and enforce keeping the public on that trail. As for browns in the EP...personally I wouldn't be opposed. Like some others, I feel that this is still a mostly artificial fishery. Only if it can be shown that a significant number of the rainbows are wild, stream spawned fish, would I be for keeping the browns out just to cut down on predation of rainbow fingerlings. But if the wild population is a very small percentage of total population of rainbows, why not stock browns? I do think that in the stocked situation on nearly all Ozark streams, the browns add to the fishing interest and opportunity.

Hey, Mulelipper, did you ever hear of a guy named Carl Dudley, from Doniphan, who was one of the best jack fishermen in the area back in the 1950s-1960s? He once wrote a long, rambling treatise on walleye in the Current and sent it to Bob Todd after Bob had written an article in the River Hills Traveler about fishing for river walleye. Bob never published it because Carl asked him not to share a lot of the info with just anybody, but he gave me a copy of it, which I still have. A lot of biologists could have learned a lot from it, about when and how the walleye spawn on the lower Current and how they spend the rest of the year.

Gavin is right about Bryant and Beaver. And Chuck's book will give you a number of options on small wadeable creeks in the immediate area that I don't feel comfortable mentioning by name over the internet. Suffice it to say that there ARE a couple close by.

The greatest hatch I can remember was back sometime in the 1970s in my part of the Ozarks. It was unbelievable. There were rafts of the things floating down the river. For a while, the fish went crazy. At the time I didn't flyfish much, either, but I found out that a black Tiny Torpedo was a workable imitation, and caught a lot of fish in the first couple weeks of the hatch. But it just kept on, for several weeks, and soon the fish were so glutted with them that they wouldn't take ANYTHING. The sound of the things was almost deafening, bankside bushes were full of them.

Terry, it's fishing for "jack salmon", AKA walleye. I used to do a lot of it on Black River and some on the lower Current...though I always fished from November to mid-February. The walleye of those two rivers seem to spawn earlier than anywhere else, and usually were spawning by late February and scattered. They were easier to find in the winter.

You gotta try to take the silvers on big pink deerhair poppers. Watching a 10-15 pound fish attack a surface popper is impressive! For some reason, on some streams the silvers gather in big pods in quiet backwaters, and will chase down and slaughter those big poppers. I got into really good fishing like that on the Kisaralik River. I'm like jd...after a while, fighting those big silvers gets to be work. So I got to where I would cast out the popper and then try to take it away from those fish just as they opened their mouths to suck it in. And then, one time I was trying to entice a silver to take it and instead this huge pike charged out of some nearby brush, mauled it, and bit me off. I think we're going to one of the topnotch rainbow rivers up there in early September this year. Can't hardly wait! I've done two different week-long river trips in AK so far, and have yet to get into the really big rainbows. On Lake Creek we caught a lot but they "only" averaged about 20 inches. On the Kisaralik we had a big rain just as we got to the prime rainbow water, and it got too muddy to fish. I only caught one 29 incher.

Actually there is some interesting smallmouth bass fishing on Kauai. I was there last year and got to add Hawaii to my list of states where I've caught a stream smallmouth. I caught one within sight of the beach at the mouth of the stream I fished! Weird, tropical setting, but the water was clear, the bottom mostly sandy and rocky, and the smallies were willing.

Friday was one of those days that make spring in the Ozarks such a perfect time and place. The weather couldn't have been better--cool in the morning, warming to perfectly comfortable during the day, just a slight breeze, not a cloud in the sky. I was on the creek by 10 AM, and it was at a perfect level for floating, with enough water in the riffles to preclude scraping bottom in most, even though this is a small, narrow, brushy little creek. It's not easy to get to, not easy to get a shuttle unless you know somebody, and it's not going to be named here because I'm surely selfish enough to want it mostly to myself. Have any of you seen the DVD, "The Secret"? I watched it the other day. Its premise is that you "invite" good things by thinking about them and even being grateful for them before they happen. That was much on my mind as I started down the creek. I was already grateful for being able to be on a fine Ozark stream on a fine day, and I was thinking I should be grateful ahead of time for how good the day was going to be. I was also thinking about NOT allowing negative thoughts to gain a foothold in my mind. There are times in any float trip, especially a solo one, when you mess up a nice spot either by missing the cast or by allowing the canoe to get too close to it. You get strikes from good fish that you miss. You lose good fish. You hang up in a grapevine. An errant puff of wind turns the canoe the wrong way. There are times when I do get annoyed at such things. But on this day I decided that nothing would bother me. My mantra for the day was, "you don't have to catch every fish in the creek. You don't have to fish every spot. All you have to do is enjoy, and invite the good things in." Well, I can tell you that it worked. The creek was air clear. The smallies were mostly done spawning and were hungry. I started out fishing mostly with topwater lures, and the strikes came very regularly. But a lot of the fish just weren't getting hooked. Sometimes, using walk-the-dog type topwaters, that just happens. You'll get the same fish hitting three or four times before either giving up or getting hooked. You'll be getting strikes from three or four fish for every one you hook. But so what? One of the best things about river smallies is the way they hit with such wild abandon. In the clear water, I could watch a lot of them hit. Watch shadows come out from under logs and charge the lure. Watch them zig and zag behind the lure, getting (apparently) madder and madder until they couldn't stand it anymore and whacking the bait. Since most of them were 10-14 inches, if they didn't get hooked or stay buttoned, it just saved me the chore of unhooking them. I was catching enough of the 15-16 inchers to keep me very happy. But, after a while I got the idea of trying a Superfluke (soft jerkbait). Well, on this day, for a while at least, it was magic. All you had to do was toss it reasonably close to a piece of cover, twitch it a couple of times, and fish would materialize and engulf it. While you were playing one fish, the fluke would slide up the line and others would be following the fight around trying to take it off the line. Pretty soon I had added a couple of 17 inchers to my tally for the day. This creek produces fish up to 18 inches fairly regularly...I can usually catch one or two 17-18 inchers in a day's fishing on it. Fish bigger than that are rather rare. The habitat is good in places, but some of the bluff holes are badly filled in with gravel. There is one such pool that almost never fails to produce a good fish for me in the one or two times a year I float this creek, but each of the last few years it has filled in more and more. Last year, the only good water left was a 4 foot deep pocket along the bluff bank that was no more than 15 feet long and 5 feet wide, with a couple of big rocks lying in it. But that spot produced an 18 incher last year. So as I approached the pool this year I was interested to see if the pocket would still be there. It wasn't. The gravel had filled it in to no more than two feet deep. I looked around the pool, and I could see nowhere that was any deeper than that. But, over on the opposite bank, there was a big log lying in the water with what looked like enough space beneath it for a fish to get under it. The water there was no more than two feet deep as well. But I tossed the Superfluke over close to the log, and this big brown shadow glided out and 20 inches of smallmouth leisurely slurped in the fluke. I set the hook and the big fish immediately shot toward a wrist-thick grapevine that was hanging down into the water. There was no way I could stop it, and when the fish got there, it wrapped the line around the vine in a knot that would do a boy scout proud. I had made a long cast, and the canoe was a long way from the grapevine, and there was nothing I could do but set the rod down and paddle as quickly as possible over to it. The whole thing should have been a disaster, but 2/10 Power Pro braided line is STRONG. The fish thrashed around in the 18 inches of water around the vine the whole time I paddled to it, and when I got there, it had pretty well tuckered itself out and was quietly finning on 4 feet of line from the knot in the vine. I hopped out of the canoe, ran my hand down the line to the fish, and lipped it. Not exactly your classic fight with a big Ozark river smallmouth, but surely an interesting experience! There was just enough current that, once I took a photo of the fish and released it, and then extricated the lure and line from the vine, the canoe was 50 yards downriver and I had to run through knee deep water to catch up to it before it got to the downstream riffle. I was thinking how much bigger that fish looked in the water compared to the 17 inchers I had already caught as I approached a pair of worn down trees in 4 feet of water in a nice run, a mile or two downstream. In the clear water, long casts were necessary, and I made a very long cast with the topwater lure to the those logs, from well upstream. As I played the lure alongside the logs, I began to make out a very long shadow easing out toward the lure. "That can't be a bass," I thought to myself. But it seemed to be looking at the lure. And then it turned and went back underneath the log. I reeled in quickly and picked up the Superfluke rod. By this time the canoe had drifted closer, and when the fish came out again to check out the dancing fluke, I could see it clearly. I've seen a lot of big smallies in the water, and I'd already seen and caught the 20 incher on this day. This fish was MUCH bigger. I'm absolutely certain it was at least 23 inches. I really think it was closer to 25 inches! I'd be willing to bet it is the biggest smallmouth in this creek, and it may be the biggest Ozark stream smallmouth I've ever seen. It refused the fluke, but just hung in the water for a bit, in clear view, as I drifted closer and closer to it. I should have backpaddled quietly before I got too close, gave the fish a rest, and tried again with something else. But you know what? I realized I didn't really care if I caught that fish. I just wanted to get a real good look at it, to gaze upon it in amazement and maybe a bit of awe. Finally it eased back beneath its log and disappeared. I'm sure I'll remember that fish for a long time. The image of it, lying there in that clear water, will probably haunt my dreams. Not many years ago, I'd be scheming on how to catch that fish. I'd probably go back after it again and again, maybe at night, maybe with live bait. I've done that with other big fish in the past. But this place is...well...let's just say it's far enough from home and far enough from any access to make it a bit difficult to get to without some expenditure of time and effort. And somehow I'm content to just know that fish is there. I told one good fishing buddy, who I know will keep it quiet and who, if he happens to catch the fish, will certainly release it, where it is. I hope he does catch it, because I really would like to know how big it really is. I also hope that somebody doesn't catch it and kill it, or gig it this coming winter. Sure, I'll probably make one more float trip on this creek this summer, and when I do I'll be trying hard to catch that fish. But if I don't, I'm content with the experience of seeing it on this gorgeous day. The rest of the float was not quite so eventful. The fish eventually turned off a bit, and the last couple of hours the fishing was somewhat slow. For those interested in numbers, I ended up catching 82 bass. I finished the float a hour or so before sunset, and had a long drive to a get-together with a bunch of good friends for a night of barbeque and cards. Life is good.

Well, we had our twice a year get-together on the Meramec this past weekend, and Saturday morning several of us gathered on the trout section to fish. Sam Potter, our buddy Tom, and I parked at Maramec Spring and hiked through the incredible crowds on the spring branch to get to the river (it was kid's fishing day at the park, and crazier than the average opening day). Once we got to the river, there was nobody else on it, and Tom caught a nice rainbow on his first cast. It took me a few drifts with a rubber-legged hare's ear to find a stupid fish, but once I got the right amount of weight to get a good drift, the fish came regularly. I think Sam was after big fish, but I didn't see him catching quite as many as I was, and especially as Tom was. Tom figured he averaged about a dozen fish an hour, and I probably averaged 8-10 an hour on a variety of nymphs. I'd say that some of these were fish that had moved down from the park after the heavy stockings to give the kids better fishing, but there were some rainbows that had obviously been in the river for a while. We waded down to where some of the other members of our group had started fishing at Cardiac. They were also catching fish. Other than our group, we saw only two other anglers all morning, and the first canoes and kayaks and rafts didn't show up until late in the morning, and there weren't many of them. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, and the contrast between the hordes of people at the park and the nearly deserted river was amazing. No really big fish were caught, though Tom got a nice 18-19 inch rainbow on a streamer. And brown trout were very scarce. I'm wondering when the last time was that MDC stocked browns, since usually you'll catch at least a few 10-12 inchers. Tom saw one big one, 24 inches or better. I didn't even see one. We quite early in the afternoon, and I wasn't ready to stop fishing for the day, so Sam graciously agreed to shuttle my vehicle for a short Meramec smallmouth float in the evening. The fish cooperated well, hitting surface lures, and I caught about 35, with two of them around 18 inches (though one of those I probably shouldn't count, since the hooks slipped out just as I lipped it and then it wriggled out of my grasp before I could lift it from the water. At least I touched it!)

Sure, Wayne, and it's also because that's where the money and power is. Think any oil or coal company is going to encourage any kind of alternative energy as long as there is oil and coal to be had? What is the percentage of campaign funds donated by the coal and oil companies, compared to funds donated by, say, the still struggling solar power industry?

Gasoline prices are now at a record high, adjusted for inflation...up until now, in real dollars as a percentage of average income, gas had been higher back in the 1970s. I'm afraid we're running into the perfect storm. Whether or not the oil companies are actively colluding on gasoline prices, this is in no way a free market in the classic sense. The price of a barrel of oil is set internationally. The vast majority of gas stations are owned by a very few companies. So the companies don't have much to do with the price of the raw material, refineries ARE running at near capacity, and there is no real competition regarding the final price of a gallon of gas. And forget about the government putting on some kind of price controls, even if you believe that to be a good thing, since far too many of the politicians are in the pockets of the oil companies. Forget about this country EVER being able to produce enough oil domestically to take care of our consumption. ANWR? Please tell me how 2-4% of our domestic consumption at best (the best estimate of how much oil is in ANWR), which, if development of the oil fields there started now, wouldn't be available for at least 10 years, is going to help in the near future. And even when it WOULD become available, it wouldn't lower the price at the pump, since the oil from the Arctic is some of the most expensive on earth to get out and transport. Heck, the oil companies really aren't even all that interested in getting oil out of ANWR because of the cost...although the oil field development companies are slobbering all over themselves, because THEY'LL make a lot of money developing the necessary infrastructure. Oil shale? Last I heard, it still would cost an incredible amount of money to actually get oil from oil shale, even though we have a whole lot of it in parts of the West. The technology just isn't there. Nope, what we should be doing and doing in a big hurry, with all available support from government, is figuring out the BEST alternatives for not only running our autos, but producing all our energy needs. Continued reliance on oil is only going to get us deeper and deeper in trouble, environmentally, economically, and geopolitically. But it ain't gonna happen until a lot of us do a lot of suffering. When the price of gas gets this high and higher and way too many people can't even afford to get to work, let alone play, eventually they will force some changes. But we've waited far too long for the changes to come quickly and painlessly. I'm fortunate enough to work at home and to still be able to afford to drive to my recreation. But I'm considering all alternatives to owning the pickup truck that I use to carry the canoes and pull the boat...13-14 miles per gallon just ain't gonna cut it anymore.

Come on, guys, global warming is...simply...warming climate. It's the CAUSE of it that is the crux of the matter. Does the earth's climate go through warming and cooling periods? Sure. Can they be the result of natural causes? Of course. BUT...two things. One, the possible difference between present conditions and past warming is in the RATE of warming. Gradual climate change, such as could be caused by changes in the earth's rotation or other prehistoric causes, apparently happened gradually enough that most of the ecosystems could adjust to it. Present warming is apparently happening at a much faster rate, too fast for plants to cope. Trees just can't pick up and move to a climate that suits them. Two, we know that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were high during past episodes of global warming. Obviously, human sources of CO2 couldn't have been the culprit then. But, we can find no significant NATURAL increases in CO2 and other greenhouse gases at present, yet CO2 is 30 some odd percent higher now than it was at the beginning of the industrial revolution, and climbing. Hmm. The planet is warming. There is much more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Human activity is causing more greenhouse gases to be put in the atmosphere. And please stop pointing to any one day, one week, one month, or one year as proof for or against a warming climate. It's the trends that are the key. We had a miserable February. We also had an extremely WARM January. The year could still turn out to be ANOTHER record or near record warm one, as something like 10 out of the last 12 have been. If you cannot trust the VAST majority of scientists in relevant fields, (not ones in fields like physics and economics) who are convinced by the evidence that human induced global warming is real and dangerous, then why have any trust in science at all. Just make all policy decisions purely on politics and economics (which is pretty much what we're doing now).