Al Agnew

Gorgeous fish! I keep a pretty big aquarium with native Ozark stream fish. Some species are beautiful and do very well in the aquarium environment. Some of my favorites are bleeding shiners, steelcolor shiners, and redbelly dace for beauty. Stonerollers are hardy and although drab, are easy to keep. Rainbow darters are beautiful, but take a lot of training to get them to eat aquarium food that isn't live. I do it by sparsely feeding them live aquatic insects I get out of the tiny creek behind the house, while putting in frozen brine shrimp at the same time. Eventually they switch over to the brine shrimp, and later they will start eating flake food. Logperch are similar in their eating habits and do well, and it's fun to watch them flipping over pebbles with their snouts as they hunt for food. I have kept little smallmouths and rock bass for a while, and always have little bluegill and longear sunfish. Some of them will harass other fish too much, but they seem to be individuals, and some of them are much calmer and more compatible with the other fish. I usually have some creek chubs, which are very hardy but will get too big and start eating the other fish (same problem applies to the bass...the bass in the tank have to be smaller than most of the other fish). The other really neat fish I've had are the madtoms. I had three madtoms that were about 1.5 inches long when I caught them, and grew to "world record" madtom size, nearly 5 inches, in the three years before they died of old age. Some fish unfortunately just don't do well. I've never been able to keep hogsuckers, sculpins, or northern studfish (the Ozark stream topminnows) alive for very long. The black-spotted topminnows (the green ones with a black stripe down their sides) do very well, however. I tried again and again to keep brook silversides, which look like tiny almost transparent barracuda, but they just didn't make it. I also keep some crayfish in the aquarium, and kept a couple of hellgramites one time. You never saw them, and I thought they were dead and gone until they metamorphed into dobson flies and flew around the house! Some of the crayfish are escape artists, and occasionally you'll see one crawling across the floor, or find a dried up one in an obscure corner of the house.

Bedding smallies aren't always easy to catch unless you specifically sight fish to the beds with lures that you can sink right into the bed. However, I have a real problem with the article, and I kinda think MDC biologists might, also. The ONLY reason for a catch and release only, otherwise closed season on stream bass in MO is to give some protection to spawning fish. To specifically give pointers on how to catch those fish, as the article did, seems to me to be directly going against the spirit of the regulation. There is no doubt that catching male bass off the spawning bed WILL result in some mortality of the eggs or fry, even if the bass is immediately released. All you have to do is watch a river smallmouth on a bed for a little bit. The bed is almost always surrounded by sunfish and other bed predators, which dart in at any opportunity and snatch a few eggs or fry. Even if the bass gets back to the bed quickly, it will take a while to recover fully and be able to protect the eggs or fry effectively. As RiverRunner pointed out, the success or failure of an individual bed is not the same as the overall population or year class. The smaller the water (and hence the fewer the fish), the more impact the loss of eggs or fry in a single bed will have. I'm not sure whether or not sight fishing to beds has a significant impact on big reservoirs, but I'd think the chances are much greater that a lot of bed fishing would have an negative affect on a year class on a small stream. I also have a problem (personally) with naming individual stream stretches in an article in a major publication. I've been interviewed a number of times for articles on river smallmouth fishing, and I always refuse to name specific stream stretches, and if the outdoor writer goes fishing with me, I take him on the condition that he NOT name the stretch of stream we fish. It's easy enough, if you are willing to work at it just a little bit, to find your own access points, and for the most part one particular stretch of stream isn't going to be much better than the next one upstream or down, anyway. Why point everybody to one stretch? Of course, there ARE a few stretches of certain streams that I find to be exceptionally good fishing, and it would really tick me off if somebody pointed to THEM in an article!

Terry, that's a significant question...I consider anything less than about 5 hours a half-day trip. Most of my full day float trips last 8-10 hours, so a 100 fish day would be in the neighborhood of 10-12 fish per hour, or a fish about every 5-6 minutes. Given that maybe 1/4 of the time spent floating is spent paddling through riffles and unproductive water, stopping for lunch or other things, etc. , if I'm fishing my usual way with fast-moving lures, it would average to a fish for every 4-5 minutes of actual fishing time, and I'm making 4-5 casts per minute...so maybe a fish for every 15-25 casts. Since I probably average about a mile an hour on float trips, that's easy to figure as well. Of course, since my average is a bit under 50 fish per day, you can basically half those figures, or double them as the case may be, if figuring my average catch rates. And keep in mind that I count all bass (including largemouths and spotted bass), though I don't count any other fish species in those figures. And that I count any size of bass...although I don't catch many under about 7 inches, even the 4-5 inchers are counted in those figures! When the fish are really zoned in on topwater lures, I'll get a lot more strikes than fish caught. I've had days when I probably had a strike per every five or so casts.

I agree with you to a point. I've had quite a few guides, mostly deals where I needed the guide to take me down the river in a drift boat. Some were good, one was super, a few were bad. The super one, we went back year after year and he became a very good friend. Sam knows who I'm talking about. Would I hire a guide for a wading trip on a river like the upper Current? Nope. But that's because I THINK I know enough about what I'm doing that I don't feel I need one. And in actuality, I don't really operate very well with a guide anyway. The perfect guide for me is one who pretty much lets me alone until they see I'm having trouble, then makes a gentle suggestion as to what I need to do, and then lets me alone again. But, there are a lot of anglers who, for whatever reason, feel they need a guide. A lot of them really DO need a guide. Even a little stream like the upper Current can be pretty intimidating to the inexperienced angler. And a good guide like Sam can do a lot to foster good conservation practices and appreciation for the resource. In my opinion, that may be the most important job a guide has. It isn't, and shouldn't, be all about catching lots of fish at any cost.

I was floating Castor River with my wife, fishing with my homemade spinnerbait, catching 10-14 inchers regularly but nothing bigger...until this beast of a smallmouth took the spinnerbait and jumped all over the river. I fought him around for a while and thought I was in good shape, but he took one more lunge and broke off. Castor River being its usual gin clear self, I could see him plainly as he swam calmly over to a big rootwad and disappeared under it. I paddled over to it, and there was my spinnerbait, lying on the bottom next to the rootwad, which made me happy not only to get the lure back, but to not leave it in that fish's face. It was probably a 20 incher. Another especially memorable 20 plus was one I caught on the Meramec while paddling Pete Kaminsky, who was a field editor for Field and Stream and had come to the Ozarks to do an article on Ozark river smallmouths. I really felt the pressure to show him some good fishing, since it was the first time anybody had ever recommended me as a knowledgeable Ozark angler. It happened this way...I'd gotten to know Tom Rodgers, who had started an organization known as Smallmouth, Inc., because he was looking for somebody to do some cover illustrations for his publication. This was just a few years after I'd started doing artwork full-time as a profession. I even went on a trip with Tom on the John Day River in Oregon, so he'd seen that I knew a little about fishing for smallies as well as painting them. When Kaminsky was looking for somebody to show him around the Ozarks, he contacted Tom, and I was the ONLY Ozark angler Tom knew so he recommended me. So Pete shows up, wanting to hopefully catch smallies on a fly rod. Used to going to trout destinations that have plenty of fly shops, he was planning to buy his flies when he got here. Now...Ste. Genevieve County is NOT a trout nor a fly-fishing destination. Pete's choices were limited to the Farmington Walmart. So I was sweating it. I hadn't done much flyfishing for smallies at the time, and had very few usable poppers or streamers. Pete had one small fly box that had been stuck in his vest since his last trip, a saltwater outing. I told him I wasn't sure we could catch much on the fly rod but we'd give it a try. The first day we floated Big Creek, just because I wanted to show him lots of great scenery as well as some fishing...figured that if I "failed" and we didn't catch fish, at least he'd see some pretty country. As it turned out, he caught a bunch of fish on a big white saltwater streamer--he was incredulous when I told him to try it. But nothing big. Second day was on the Meramec. He was fishing a Walmart popper when a huge smallmouth engulfed it, leaped in his face, and contemptuously threw the cheap cork popper. I was afraid that was our one chance, and it turned out to be so with the fly rod. But late in the day, making a few casts from the back of the canoe as I kept him in position, I eked out a 20 incher on my casting rod. Pete later said, and wrote, that he had been to fishing destinations all around the world, but catching 4 pound class native river fish was really something special. Corey...got a 17 and an 18 yesterday, less than 40 fish all day, but most of them were over 12 and half were over 14. I didn't catch a single fish in the first 3 miles! (And nope, it wasn't on Corey's river, but he knows where!)

Well, Gavin, guys have written BOOKS on trout fishing that didn't give any better advice than what you just put down in seven simple sentences!

Interesting discussion... Once upon a time long long ago I was a teacher. I have an education degree with a major in art and minor in English. I taught art, K-12, in a small rural school district for 7 years--long enough to obtain tenure, so I could have kept teaching for 30 years without fear of being fired, and retired this year, in fact. What I saw back then, the problems with public education, I have watched get worse. Poor teachers? You bet! Poorly prepared teachers? Absolutely. NONE of the education courses I was taught in college did ANYTHING to help me actually know how to teach, how to control a classroom, discipline students, work with parents, communicate with kids, etc. In that, most colleges fail. We all know good teachers, but I think they are good because they have the all-important experience and passion for teaching, not because they are educated in teaching. Educated in subject matter--of course. But there are lots of bad teachers that know their subject matter; they just can't put it across to their students. BUT...the public schools really started going downhill with the changes in society. Those changes haven't been all bad. Used to be, the low IQ, learning disabled, psychological problem students were pretty much left by the wayside of education, dropped out, went to work in some kind of manual labor where they didn't need an education. The "average" students got the basics, enough to read and write and figure their checkbook balance, and went to work in blue collar jobs. The better students were the ones going to college. This is, of course, painting with a broad brush, with LOTS of exceptions. But today, EVERYBODY is considered to be entitled to a free public education of 12-13 years, and to be developed to their full potential, whatever it is. Wonderful sentiment and admirable goal. But what it means is, more and more of the public education resource goes to teaching the students that are the toughest to teach. I'm not saying that's wrong. What I'm saying is that the biggest difference between public and private schools is in their students. The private schools, as a rule, don't have to devote so much time and resources to teaching the students that are the most difficult and time consuming to teach. In the public school classroom, what that means is that there is a built-in mechanism that almost insures teaching to the lowest common denominator, since that classroom is likely to have learning disabled and behaviorally disabled students that the teacher must spend the extra time to work with. And oh, those behaviorally disabled students...either they are on drugs to make them more tractable, or they are suffering from disfunctional family life, or both. Which is the other thing--the public schools, because they take all comers, are a pretty good reflection of society today. Far, far too many absent, incompetent, uncaring, drug-addicted, or "entitled to everything and so's my kid" parents. Leads to a whole lot of VERY difficult to teach students. And all those students (except some of the "entitled") go to public schools, practically none to private schools. And then there's funding...gee, using mostly property taxes to fund schools, now THERE'S a great way of insuring that all students get an equal chance at an education. Poor districts (read rural and inner city) have less resources, worse facilities, and of course probably a poorer grade of teacher, because if you're a hotshot teacher, chances are you're gonna go where the money is. My last year of teaching, I made $12,400 in my small, poor rural school district, at the same time a good friend who was teaching in suburban St. Louis was making $35,000. Does anyone seriously expect that the rural and inner city school can do as well in a standardized test as the wealthy suburban one? It ain't one thing wrong with public schools, it's a myriad of things, most of which won't be fixed until society changes, funding sources change, and everybody from parents to politicians REALLY appreciates the value of education.

There's a big pool on the upper part of Big River, long, curving against a bluff, big rocks, 4-6 feet deep. One summer, I hooked and lost a big smallmouth in it on a Tiny Torpedo. I got a good look at the fish, and it was well over 20 inches. So I made plans to catch that fish. The plan consisted of a night float trip. I figured I could catch it on a Jitterbug. So it's about 11 PM on a partly cloudy night, nearly full moon, but when I get to the big pool the clouds are covering the moon and it's pretty dark. I get my aluminum canoe situated to make a cast to the exact spot where I was sure that fish was. Perfect cast (as near as I can tell in the dark). Jitterbug starts across the surface, bobble-bobble-bobble-KAWOOSH! Of course, I set the hooks with all the strength and keyed up reflexes I have, miss the fish, and the lure comes flying back and WHANGS into the side of the canoe with a sound that probably knocked turkeys off the roost a mile away. The lure is lying in the water 5 feet from the canoe, and I'm frantically reeling in all the slack when I hear a SLURP. Finally get the slack out, lift up on the rod, and sure enough, I've got a fish...and it turns out to be 20.5 inches! I thought about going down the river beating the side of the canoe before every cast, after that! I drove up to the middle Meramec one time, planning on getting one of the canoe rentals to shuttle me. Got to the canoe rental place, made the arrangements, the guy got in the truck with me to go put in, planning on driving it back to the take-out. And then, just before we took off for the put-in, I made the horrible realization that I had forgotten my tackle box. I was well over an hour from home, no lures whatsoever. So I dropped the guy off and went into the Walmart in Sullivan to shop for enough lures to get me by. Walmart had just about nothing that I thought would work. I was just sure my homemade crankbait would be what the fish were wanting, and there was nothing like it at Wally World. But they did have another lure that, at one time, somebody had told me would work like my homemade lure if you added a skirt to it. Walmart didn't have any skirts, so I bought one of the lures and then bought a spinnerbait just to take the skirt off it. By the time I got back to the river, it was too late to do the all day float I had planned, so I shortened it to a half-day. The canoe rental guy put me in and I started fishing the jury-rigged lure. Well, it KINDA worked. It would wobble for a foot or two and then flop up to the surface like a dying duck. You know what? The fish didn't care. They were eating that thing up. About a third of the way through the float, I had caught two 18 inchers and a 20 incher, the skirt was in tatters, and the lure had decided it was going to do nothing but flop on the surface. I finally had to give up on it and just throw the extra spinnerbait I'd also bought. Caught a 17 incher and a bunch of little ones on it. One of the best half days of fishing I'd ever had! The first time I ever floated the middle Meramec was a couple years before the Meramec Dam was deauthorized, back in the mid-1970s. I had always been pretty excited about the possibility of a big lake not far from home, back in the days when my dad and I fished Wappapello all the time, but by this time I'd fallen in love with Ozark rivers and was pretty much against the dam. But I had never floated the section to be flooded, and it was looking like it was going to happen, so I decided to do a two day float from Onondaga to Meramec Park. Before I got out of sight of the put-in I'd caught a 21 inch largemouth, and the first day was terrific fishing. I can still remember a huge smallmouth that followed my lure in right under Campbell Bridge. And I caught several 16-17 inchers that first day. The second day the fishing slowed somewhat, and by mid-afternoon I was just casting mechanically, using my homemade crankbait. I remember that I was right against a high, vertical clay bank, casting straight ahead and parallel to the bank. The water there was deep, at least 6 feet. I can still picture the lure dipping under the surface at the start of a retrieve, and seeing this huge boil. I set the hooks and the fish dove for even deeper water off the bank. It stayed down for a long time, and I couldn't see it. Then it came up in a head-shaking leap 10 feet from the canoe, and I about had a heart attack. Well, I got it in, finally. It was the first of the only two legitimate 5 pound Ozark river smallies I've ever caught. Needless to say, after that trip I was REALLY against the Meramec Dam. I wrote letters, I joined every organization that was fighting it. And no one was happier than I was when the referendum went 2 to 1 against the dam and Congress later deauthorized it.

Some creeks have big fish. I was floating the far upper end of a rather famous Ozark stream many years ago. The stream was a foot higher than normal, which was the only thing that made it possible to float, but it was also extremely clear. I wasn't really expecting big fish from it, since it is ordinarily wading water at best...was really just floating it to say I'd done it. I was with a buddy, both of us in solo canoes. He had already gone down this pool, which was gravelly banked, 4 feet deep or so, and had several newly downed trees in it, so much so that it wasn't easy to maneuver through them. I was using an ultralight spinning rig with a 1/16th ounce marabou crappie jig, dropping it around those trees, which this humongous smallmouth suddenly materialized and sucked in the jig. For the next few minutes I bounced from tree to tree, somehow keeping that fish out of all of them, until the current carried the canoe into the riffle below. I figured I had everything under control at that point, since the riffle was short and the pool below wide and shallow. Except, there was this one little snag sticking up out of the gravel at the bottom of the riffle. Yep, the fish, at least 20 inches, wrapped the line around that one little wrist-thick snag and snapped off. It's also surprising where you find them sometimes even on rivers where you would expect them to be. A few years back, I was floating one of my least favorite sections of Big River. At this point, the river comes out of a couple of pools, 3-4 feet deep, solid bedrock bottom, very little cover, I'd never caught a decent fish in either of them. Then it runs through a little run, 1.5 feet deep at the deepest, slick rock bottom, NO cover. Then it goes into a fast riffle which dumps into a little bitty pool about the size of a big living room, 2 feet deep at the deepest, before hitting a long, fast riffle which finally dumps into a pool that does have a nice log in about 3 feet of water, but is otherwise pretty sorry looking. But...on this day that little living room size pool produced a 19.5 incher. Another spot, a little farther down Big River. There was always a fast riffle which swung into a little run, about 3 feet deep, with very thick overhanging willows covering most of it and all the fish-holding water. It was pretty much impossible to fish well. If you were in a canoe, by the time the canoe got through the riffle it was already in the best part of the run, and you were working so hard to keep the canoe out of the willows you didn't have a chance to fish anyway. If you got out and tried to wade down to it, the willows lined BOTH banks, and the only way you could fish it was to stand at the base of the riffle and try to drift the lure under the willows. Hence, I'd never caught a fish out it, but I kinda figured it could hold a decent fish or two. Then one year the river changed. It cut a new channel through the willows, leaving that run as a dead backwater, barely connected to the channel. The new run was open, 1.5 feet deep, gravel bottom, no cover. But the first time I floated it after the channel change, I caught a 19 incher out of the new run. That fish had to have been living in the old run until the river changed. But lots of spots are proven big fish places. Just a half mile or so below the last spot I talked about, there was a fairly deep cut clay bank, nice current sweeping along it, with a huge, ancient log sticking out of the clay at right angles. It was one of those logs that had probably been buried for centuries. The current had hollowed out a nice little pocket underneath the log, and that spot produced several huge smallies in about a ten year period, including one that I caught in early spring that was probably a very old fish. It had a huge head, the biggest head I'd ever seen on a river smallmouth, and was nearly 21 inches long, but it's body was pretty skinny. It was still a very strong fish, but just LOOKED old. Then one year a big flood ate some more bank away, and washed out the log. No more big fish there. Another spot like that was actually right in the middle of St. Francois State Park, right above a spot where practically everybody that visits the park comes down to the river. There was a big rock with a nice log washed up against it that stayed there for many years, just a few yards above a riffle. I caught 3 20 inch plus fish off that spot, always in mid-summer, always with people splashing and fishing and running around within sight of me. Luckily, none of them ever actually saw me catch a fish there, or they would have probably done everything short of dynamite to see if they could duplicate the feat. It's been more than 15 years since I caught a big fish there, the log is gone now, but I still get a bit excited when I come to that spot, usually at the very end of a float trip.

Mulelipper, I was just going by your sentence above, "...slower river more time to work bedding areas...slowly." If I misunderstood what you were saying, I'm sorry.

Corey, that Big Piney fish sticks in MY memory, too! First really big smallmouth I ever caught was when I was about 14, and on my first ever overnight float trip, actually a 3 day trip with my best teen fishing buddy, on Big River from north Bonne Terre to Washington State Park. The first day the river was almost muddy from rain the night before, and we caught very little. The second day was an entirely different story. I remember exactly where I caught the fish, a 20 incher that weighed exactly 4 pounds on my De-liar scales, which were pretty close to accurate. It was an interesting spot, a slight narrowing of the river between two long pools, not really a riffle. There is a little wet weather creek that enters the river there, and over the years it has dumped a pile of cobbles and gravel at its mouth, which is what narrows the river channel just enough to make a bit of current. That weed-covered bar is a feeding spot, with water off it no more than two feet deep. The big fish took a 2 3/4 inch floating Rapala. Over the years, I caught 4 or 5 more big fish off that exact spot, including a deformed smallie that I caught three times. It had a very crooked back, and the first time I caught it, it was a 17 incher that should have been at least in inch longer if its back had been straight. I released it, and the next year I caught it again--18 inches. The third year I looked for it, but didn't catch it off the spot in several summertime trips. But in late November, I caught it for the third time--19 inches--just below the riffle at the bottom of the lower pool. I've got plenty of big smallie stories, if anybody wants to hear any more of them. I'm sure Corey could tell a bunch more, too.

jd, although I occasionally flyfish for smallies, this time, as is usual, I used mostly very light baitcasting tackle. Short, medium-light action rods, small light reels, 8 pound test line. I do use spinning tackle, but probably 80% of my river smallmouth fishing is with the casting tackle. I have to say that even though I've joined the "dark side" with the jetboat, I'm afraid of what will happen in the future. I have no problem with jetboaters like the one I encountered today, who was using the boat entirely to get to where he wanted to be to fish or mushroom hunt (I think he was doing both). He passed me once, I drifted past where he had the boat parked, then he passed me again farther downstream. That was all. And that's the way I operate mine. If I pass you once under power, it'll probably be while going upstream. If I pass you going downstream, I'll probably be drifting and fishing. What always burned my toast was the guys who went back and forth, over and over again, simply joyriding just to see how fast they could go up and down the river. And of course, the weekend warriors who terrorize the canoeists, though I have to say that, since I avoid all the popular rivers on weekends, I almost never encounter that problem. What I'm afraid of is that this is only going to get more popular, and/or that the technology will continue to "improve" to where smaller and smaller streams will be runnable. I can envision the day when we're either forced to limit the number of river users by a quota system, or that we give up almost all our rivers to the go-fast-go-rude crowds.

Bobber, in his recent post, complained about the jetboats on the Current above Two Rivers. I understand what he's saying. I have always disliked jetboats. But, maybe it's a form of selfishness, or maybe not...last year I bought a jetboat. I did it for two main reasons; one was to be able to fish some streams in the winter that were not served by canoe rentals at that time of year and so shuttles for float trips were lacking. The other was so that I could take my 80 some odd year old father with me, since he can't stand to sit in a canoe anymore. Today was one of those days I'm very glad I did. Several weeks ago, I'd mentioned to Dad that I was thinking about going down to Current River in the boat. He immediately said to let him know, that he'd really like to go. I was fully planning on taking him anyway, just didn't know exactly when. This week was the first week in several that I hadn't been so busy meeting deadlines that I had the chance to do an all day fishing trip. The forecast for today looked optimal, and at first I thought about doing a solo float trip. I find that I need those days alone on the river, especially after working non-stop for a while. But I also knew Dad was chomping at the bit to do the Current River trip. And I'll have plenty of days to go by myself...who knows how many more I'll have with Dad? The river was on the high end of normal and a bit off color when we got to the access this morning. The sun was playing hide and seek with big gray and white fluffy clouds, the wind was going to be a factor, and the warmth of the morning after all those days of cold weather a week or two ago was very welcome. When we put in, there was one vehicle with boat trailer in the parking area, and another was just arriving. We hopped in the boat, started the motor and ran down through the first riffle just to make sure it was running (a wise precaution when you plan to fish downstream and motor back up; Dad had just told me about one time when he was a very young man, they put in on the Current and drifted downstream several miles, in the winter. They had two outboards, but when they started back upstream, the first motor conked out after a few minutes, and the second one a few more minutes after they switched them. As the youngest of the group of 5 men in a big johnboat, Dad had the task of dragging the boat up through every shoals). Then we started fishing. Dad was the first to make contact, with a 12 inch smallie on a spinnerbait. Then I matched him. And that's the way the day mostly went...first one of us would catch a fish, and then the other. I haven't spent that much time on Current River, and it never disappoints, with those massive, gorgeous bluffs, forested hills as far as the eye can see, big, clean gravel bars, and that amazing volume of clear, cold water coursing ever downstream. But Dad hadn't been on it since those days as a young man, and seeing it through his eyes was even better. And, though it may have been crowded on the stretch and at the time Bobber was on it, we encountered, the only people we saw all day was one family in a riverside campsite, and the lone guy in the jetboat that passed us going downstream, and whom we later caught up with. In the afternoon, Dad finally hooked into a fish that was obviously bigger than the 12-14 inch smallmouths we'd been catching, and when he got the 17 incher in and held it up, he said, "Man, it's been a long time since I've caught a smallmouth this big." A few minutes later, keeping up with the pattern of the day, I caught one that matched his. Late in the afternoon, we decided we'd gone far enough downstream, and motored back up, past the access, to spend the last hour or so drifting back down to the truck. It hadn't been a great day for numbers of fish, with 22 between us at that point. But with the later, lower light, the fish got a little more active. We caught several more in the 14 inch class, and then, just a pool or two above the truck, I hooked the best fish of the day. It was a 19 incher that was as strong as any fish I've hooked this year. I would have taken a photo of it, but when I got it in, it had engulfed the crankbait, and it took some careful handling to get the hooks out of its gills without causing excess bleeding. By the time I had the lure extricated, I was afraid the fish had been out of water long enough, and didn't want to take the time to get out the camera and snap a picture before releasing it. A healthy fish of that size released is more important than a photo. Dad caught the 30th fish of the day within sight of the truck, a fitting end to a day I'll cherish for a long time...and the best thing is, from the way he talked about it all the way home, Dad will cherish it just as much.

Hank, ask and ye shall receive... I've been taking pictures of hybrids I catch, and it just so happens that I fished Big River this morning and caught a couple. I also have pics of one I caught last summer on a small Mississippi River tributary...I caught the same fish again this spring. Smallmouth x spotted bass hybrids vary in appearance. This may be due to individual differences, or it may be due to the amount of genetic material from each species is in them, since the hybrids tend to be fertile and back-cross both with spots and smallies. Here is the one I caught from the Mississippi River trib. As you can see, it looks very much like a smallmouth. However, it is a bit more greenish yellow in color, and has hints of the rows of small spots below the mid-line of the side that are characteristic of spotted bass. Most people would assume it's a smallmouth, but if you would compare it side by side to a smallie from the same water, you'll see the subtle differences. This one is one of those I caught today. As you can see, it's much more intermediate between smallmouth and spotted bass appearance. The rows of small spots are more pronounced, and there is a hint of the dark band running down the midline of the side. However, the band is barely noticeable, and the fish is still strongly yellowish to bronze in color. Here is another one from this morning. This one is much more strongly spotted bass in appearance, having all the characteristics, including the rows of spots and the prominent dark band down the side. However, it is still more brassy yellow with some bronze, not the more greenish color of a pure spotted bass. I caught several pure spotted bass today, and the color difference between them and this fish was very noticeable.

Mulelipper, there are internet sites where you'd be raked over the coals for suggesting fishing the bedding areas...this may even be one of them! And just for everybody's information...I fish stream smallies during the spawning season, BUT I don't target obvious bedding areas, I don't sight fish to beds, and I use lures that run high and fast, and avoid using slow bottom lures like tubes and lizards at this time. Do I catch the occasional bedding fish? Probably. But I don't think I catch many. Does catch and release fishing affect individual bedding fish? Probably. If you watch a male on the bed protecting eggs or fry, you'll quickly realize that the fish expends a lot of energy running off bed predators like sunfish, and it wouldn't take long for the sunnies to make a big dent in the eggs and fry during the time the fish is being fought and released, and also during the time it takes that fish to recover from the stress of being caught. Does bed fishing harm the overall population? Maybe, maybe not.

Nah...it's a size 20 Pheasant tail with a half-ounce of lead to keep it down. You drag it along the bottom. The lead attracts the trout's attention, then it finds the fly. The kitten reference comes from the fact that underwater it looks like you're dragging a kitty toy, and the trout are acting like cats going after it.

It's a good news/bad news thing. Now there are enough wolves that they are spreading out (normal dispersal of young adults trying to establish new packs and territories) and running afoul of humans. There is plenty of public, vacant (except for livestock) land available to them, but the travel corridors between such places are a real problem, since that's where they'll most likely encounter humans. So the good news is, reintroduction worked. The bad news is, it's working too well in some places. Compound that with all the constituencies that want to have a say in the matter, from ranchers to residents in wolf territory to hunters to conservationists to animal rights idiots, and you have the makings of a train wreck. I still think it was a very worthwhile thing to reintroduce wolves to the West. But I think that now it's time for the feds to say, "Okay, wolves are here to stay, and should be managed accordingly. Keeping that in mind, it's now time for the state wildlife professionals to work with the Fish and Wildlife Service to manage them, with an eye to minimizing impacts on humans." I have no problem, at this point, with getting rid of wolves that are truly causing trouble on private land and too near towns and cities. If there are still large expanses of wild land in the general area that don't have wolves, trapping problem animals and relocating them might be worth a shot, though wolves do tend to move long distances to get back to "home" range. But if all the areas that SHOULD have wolves already have them, then wolves that are causing trouble too close to population centers are surplus animals and don't need special protection.

I know what it i-is, I know what it i-is! Sam, gonna be at the Spring Splash?

Top three places to sit in a lawn chair, drink beer, and be entertained... 1. Maramec Spring, opening day of trout season. (Well, it may be a bit cold for the beer...maybe a thermos full of something hot and alcoholic instead) 2. Any popular boat ramp on any big lake in Missouri on a Saturday afternoon. 3. Any fast riffle with a nice sweeper on the Current or Meramec on a sunny Saturday in June.

Yep, this story was preordained. As romantically nice as it sounds to have wolves in an area like that, it just ain't gonna happen. Somebody was bound to shoot them if they didn't get run over first. I've actually spent quite a bit of time around "domesticated" wolves, a little time around wild wolves, and a lot of time researching wolves in order to paint them effectively. I also did paintings as fund-raising vehicles for organizations that were working to reintroduce wolves into Yellowstone. So I think I know something about them. First, 100-130 pounds is actually on the high side of average for wolf weights. 175 pounds is approaching record weight. The average wild Minnesota female timber wolf will weigh 75-80 pounds, the average male around 100. They get bigger as you go north, but even the big tundra wolves of northern Alaska seldom weigh over 140. Domesticated wolves are far different from dogs. They are even more pack oriented than dogs, and in order to work with them to MUST convince them that you are the alpha male. They react to stimuli differently than dogs, and in order to raise them successfully and live with them, you have to completely understand them. For every wolf that is successfully domesticated and lives well with its owner, there are a bunch that end up totally screwed up and sometimes dangerous. It's criminal, in my opinion, to even try to raise a wolf to be a pet. Most caged wolves are semi-domesticated, and are usually as screwed up as the ones that are supposed to be pets. But wolves are highly individual animals, and some are going to be more aggressive, more intelligent, more able to learn to hunt for themselves, more likely to move around and try to get back to where they came from, than others. You can't predict what they'll do. It's this unpredictability, coupled with their acclimation to humans, that, if anything, would make these paricular wolves dangerous. I wouldn't have been very concerned about them being dangerous to humans, but there is that chance, MUCH more of a chance than if they had been completely wild. Same thing with danger to livestock. Yep, we killed off most of the wolves in America to protect livestock. Even in pioneer times, there was very little predation of wolves on humans. There was a lot of fear of wolves, but it was mostly baseless. Wolves in Europe and Asia did a lot more human killing in the long ago, but that was probably due to either wars or plagues resulting in a lot of unburied bodies for the wolves to scavenge, that gave them the idea that they could eat live humans as well. In North America, humans were never wolf prey, and there are almost zero recorded instances of non-rabid wolves killing humans in North America. I have spent a lot of time in wolf country, and have never had ANY fear of being attacked by a wolf. But like I said, I'd be a little bit wary around supposedly domesticated wolves. you can't believe the strength in their jaws. I have no doubt that they were able to chew the wire enough to bend it open. I was in an enclosure once, photographing wolves. I had on a fleece jacket, and one wolf took an interest in my jacket. He sniffed around, nosed it in various places, and finally figured out there was something in my pocket, which happened to be a couple of rolls of film still in the plastic cannisters. He decided to very gently nibble on them through the fleece. At least it LOOKED very gentle. But when I pulled the cannisters out of my pocket, they had very deep dents in them. I always get a kick out of people in this part of the country who see coyotes and say they saw wolves. Trust me, when you see a wolf, if you've spent much time around coyotes, you'll know the wolf is different. Even though the rare coyote will get up to 50 pounds or so and a lot of wolves aren't all that much bigger, the wolf moves differently, holds itself differently, and has very different mannerisms. They are wonderful animals, and I respect them and love to paint them. They belong in the wild, and I have little sympathy for ranchers in the West that are making their living off public lands and want to re-eradicate wolves...as far as I'm concerned, wolf predation should be part of the cost of doing business if you are using public lands. But they belong in the wild, and unfortunately, the Ozarks just ain't wild enough.

Yep, it's unbelievable. You see it all the time. I try to avoid going into Walmart for many reasons, but last night I needed to pick up some groceries that only Walmart in our small town carries. Twice, I'm pushing a cart down an aisle, and one person has their cart parked, off to the side, room to get around it, no problem...until a lady (different one each time) beetles down the aisle and stops her cart directly beside the one other cart in the aisle, completely blocking the aisle, while she looks for something on the shelves 10 feet away! My wife and I call it "center of the universe syndrome", because these people seem to think that everything in the universe revolves around them. From the people who set up their lawn chairs on the boat ramp and have their bobbers out, and glare at you when you have the temerity to want to disturb their fishing by pulling your boat out of the water, to the party idiots on the river that decide that the very spot you're fishing is the perfect place for them to stop and swim, or the very piece of gravel bar you're eating lunch on is their picnic and beer swilling spot, to the bass boat motorhead who thinks that he deserves to fish that bank more than you do and swings right in front of you to start fishing just past the point you've reached along that bank. Thing is, most of the time, I don't even think they realize they're treating somebody else poorly...all they can think about is their own comfort and convenience. I got a million stories like that, but I need to watch my blood pressure.

Drew, MDC is trying to do something. The biologist in charge of smallmouth management knows how bad the spotted bass can be on streams where they are not native...he calls them "evil little critters". On the entire Meramec River system, there is a 12 fish limit with no length limit on spotted bass to try to stem their take-over. It's coupled with a 1 fish 15 inch limit on smallmouths over much of Big River. I'd like to see something close to complete protection of smallmouths and no protection of spotted bass on the stream sections where they are in the process of taking over, but the present limits seem to be the best MDC can do...there is always a lot of resistance to "radical" changes in regulations. I keep all spotted bass I catch in these streams, up to the legal limit. Problem is, they are very heavily infested with yellow grub parasites in Big River, so much so that some of them are just too full of grubs to be appetizing, so I end up throwing them away when I get home and make the first cut with the fillet knife. I'm not exaggerating, some of them are so heavily infested that you'd be eating a dozen or more grubs with each bite! I don't mind a few grubs, and they are usually easy to pick out with the point of your knife as you are filleting them, but it just ain't worth it when they are that infested. Unfortunately, too many bass anglers have gotten catch and release drummed into them to the point that they can't conceive of killing ANY bass, even when it would improve the fishery. Please, if you're fishing the Meramec or Gasconade river systems, and catching legal spotted bass, KEEP THEM!

I've only been on Tavern once. Put in at an MDC access next to an ancient suspended bridge--a swinging bridge that cars could still cross--don't remember the name of it offhand. Small water, barely big enough to canoe. Nice creek.

Bill, I bet you're right about Tunnel Dam stopping the spots. I don't know why I didn't think of it as being a barrier. Could be also that if spotted bass occasionally make it above the dam in floods, the water above is still too cold for them to thrive. According to Tom Beveridge in the book "Geologic Wonders and Curiousities of Missouri", there is a natural tunnel through the ridge at Tunnel Dam, with a 22 ft. drop from the upper end to the lower end on the other side of the ridge. The original plan was to enlarge this tunnel and use it, raising the water level with the dam so that the flow of the Niangua could be reliably diverting through the tunnel. The site was originally surveyed in 1909 with this in mind. But it was found that the natural tunnel had too many passages branching out from it that could cause water loss, so they ended up building the artificial tunnel 75 feet upstream. I've never floated or fished the Niangua in that area. The MDC float book says that the river is often almost dry around the bend between the dam and other end of the tunnel. Does anybody here know whether that is true, and how often that stretch of the river would be too low to float? Drew...I understand what you're saying, but to watch streams that used to produce big smallmouths with regularity become fisheries for mostly dinky spotted bass, and watch the smallies dwindle down to where catching one is uncommon, and watch it happen on the river you grew up on...well, it hurts.

Thanks, Hank...I'm trying to get a handle on the situation on some of those rivers I don't fish much. I'd like to know from anybody whether they have caught spotted bass and how many on the Big Piney, Gasconade, Osage Fork, and Niangua.