Al Agnew

Gavin, I don't fish the BB as much as the other streams in the Meramec Basin, but the one trip I did in the last couple of years above Tea Access, I caught one spotted bass, so I knew they were up there. If any stream is perfect spotted bass habitat from the upper end to the lower end, it's the Bourbeuse. I'm kinda surprised that they haven't exploded on the upper river yet. The mill dams do form barriers, but spotted bass eventually breach them all. Cold water is a better barrier. The upper Niangua probably wouldn't be bad spotted bass habitat, but the cold stretch of river below Bennett Spring keeps them from getting up above it. Some of the spotted bass that are found in the upper Meramec probably got there from releases after tournaments. For a while, at least one bass club would have tournaments that covered the whole river, but the guys would trailer their boats to Garrisons and weigh their fish in there, then release them there. Some spotted bass were released after the weigh-ins. I'm probably least familiar with the situation on the Gasconade, and would be interested in hearing about anybody catching spotted bass on the streams of the Gasconade system. I haven't fished the Gasconade below Waynesville in a long time. I have caught a couple of spotted bass above Waynesville, but they certainly aren't common there. I have yet to catch one in the Big Piney or Osage Fork, but I caught several on the lower end of the Little Piney a few years ago. Back in the big Mississippi flood of 1993, the river was so high that Saline Creek and Establishment Creek were backed up for many miles. The lower ends of these creeks are all spotted bass water, but the backwater from the Mississippi reached all the way into sections that are almost entirely smallmouth water. The spotted bass moved upstream with the rising water, and congregated where the backwater stopped. You could find huge schools of them right around where you first encountered moving water. When the water went back down, some of those spots remained. But the habitat just didn't favor them, and they eventually disappeared. Like I said before, the two most limiting factors are cold water and high gradient. The South Fork of Saline Creek is one of the best examples of this. The upper South Fork is mostly fast-moving, clear water over a bedrock bottom, with lots of ledges. Then, the creek emerges from whatever the geology is that gave it those characteristics, and changes abruptly to slower water, a bit murkier, with a gravel bottom. Right there, within a quarter of a mile, the spotted bass appear in large numbers and the smallie population drops to where they are very uncommon. I've never caught a spotted bass above that point, and I've seldom caught a smallmouth below it. The thing that nobody can figure out for sure is just HOW the spotted bass wipe out the smallmouths on these streams. They hybridize with smallmouths and the hybrids are fertile, so it pollutes the smallie gene pool. They apparently out-reproduce the smallies. But, the odd thing is that, as spotted bass move into a stream stretch, the smallies IMMEDIATELY seem to disappear. It's almost like, for every spotted bass that appears in a stream stretch, there is immediately one less smallmouth. It isn't like there are the same number of smallmouths that there was the year before. Suddenly you have more spotted bass and fewer smallies. It's weird.

Spotted bass are native to the south-flowing streams of the Missouri Ozarks, including Elk River and tributaries, all the White River tribs, Spring, Eleven Point, Current, Black, St. Francis, and Castor. They were NOT native to any of the north-flowing streams of the Osage, Gasconade, and Meramec river systems. Nor were they native to the little streams that flow directly into the Mississippi in southern Missouri, from Apple Creek just a short way north of Cape Girardeau to Joachim Creek, the first tributary south of the Meramec. In the streams where they are native, they made up a relatively small percentage of the bass population except in the lower ends, where the water was warmer and murkier...CC is right in that spotted bass don't do well in really cool water, nor do they do well if the stream gradient is much steeper than 3.5 feet per mile. They evolved to co-exist with smallmouths in these streams, with the smallmouths dominating in good smallmouth habitat and the spots only common in marginal smallie habitat. In the rivers that are still undammed, like Current River and Eleven Point, it's still this way...you'll see few if any spots on Current River above Doniphan and the Eleven Point in Missouri, though they become common on both streams in Arkansas. However, on streams that were dammed, the spotted bass thrived in the resulting reservoirs, and the continually replenishing population in the reservoirs colonized the streams above if they are not too cold and fast, which is why you see quite a few spotted bass on the James above Table Rock and on Bryant Creek above Norfork. You don't see as many on the North Fork above Norfork because it's colder. In the case of Black River, Clearwater Dam made the lower Black warmer and murkier, and spotted bass pretty well took it over...before the dam, there were few spotted bass until you got pretty close to Poplar Bluff. The St. Francis River is kind of a special case. In it, unlike the other streams, spotted bass and smallmouth share the same stream stretches. Spotted bass were much more common that smallies on the St. Francis 20 years ago, but the smallies have increased considerably since then, reason unknown. Castor River is just the opposite...you'll seldom see a spotted bass much above the Hwy. 34 bridge, but in a stretch of just a few miles around the bridge, the character of the river changes from relatively fast and extremely clear to relatively slow and murky, and by the time you get four or five miles below the bridge, smallies are almost non-existent. According to Pflieger in the book "The Fishes of Missouri", spotted bass showed up in the Osage River system--apparently by an undocumented introduction--prior to 1940, and by the early 1940s they were well established in the upper Osage system, Lake of the Ozarks, and the lower Osage. They appeared in the Moreau River, which enters the Missouri a short distance downstream from the mouth of the Osage, in the late 1950s. Then MDC made what was probably a big mistake by stocking spotted bass in the Lamine, Perche, and Loutre rivers starting in 1962. The Lamine enters the Missouri from the south, upstream of the Osage, while the Perche and Loutre enter the Missouri from the north, and unfortunately the Loutre enters just a short distance downstream from where the Gasconade meets the Missouri on the opposite side. By the early 1970s, the spots had entered the Gasconade, and they probably came from the Loutre stocking. As for the Meramec, it's commonly believed that those fish also came down from the Loutre and Missouri, but I have a much different theory, and I think I can back it up. Remember that they were not native to the little streams flowing into the Mississippi between Cape Girardeau and St. Louis. I fished all these streams from the 1970s on. When I was going to college in Cape in the early 1970s, spotted bass were already in Apple Creek, the farthest DOWNSTREAM of these creeks. They were common below the Appleton mill dam, non-existent above it--the dam apparently formed a barrier to their upward spread, because the habitat above it was certainly suitable for them. At that same time, they were NOT found in Saline Creek, the next significant Mississippi tributary upstream. But by the early 1980s, they were very common in lower Saline Creek, and also in Establishment Creek, the next upstream tributary. I'm not sure when they first appeared in Joachim Creek, farther upstream, but I'd be willing to bet it was sometime soon after they appeared in Saline Creek. I do know that they first appeared in the lower Meramec in the early 1980s, but didn't get common there until the mid-80s. From there they moved up Big River and the Bourbeuse. They were non-existent in lower Big River in the late 1970s, and it took them a long time to get past the sequence of mill dams on lower Big River. It also took them a long time to get past the Guths mill dam on the lower Bourbeuse, because I fished the lower Bourbeuse around 1980 and saw no spots. But by the 1990s, they had made it past all the mill dams except the Noser Mill dam on the Bourbeuse, and they've made it past that one by now. Unfortunately, it isn't habitat change that have allowed them to thrive on Big River and the Bourbeuse...these streams have ALWAYS been slow, warm, and murky compared to the typical Ozark stream, so they've always been excellent spotted bass habitat. But before the spots got there, the smallies, with no competition from them, thrived and probably grew bigger on these fertile streams than on streams farther south. The Meramec itself is a little faster and considerably cooler above the area of Meramec State Park, so while spotted bass are found throughout most of the Meramec, the smallies are competing very well with them on the upper river. Not so on the Bourbeuse and Big. So where did these spotted bass come from, and why did they suddenly show up in the Meramec river system? My theory is this: Remember that they were native to the Castor and St. Francis river systems, along with the Black and White. All these streams did flow far down into Arkansas before finally entering the Mississippi. There was a long stretch of the Mississippi separating those river systems from the Meramec and the other little tribs in Missouri, so those fish were isolated by distance. They were also isolated in that the Mississippi itself was pretty inhospitable, being tremendously silty below the mouth of the Missouri. But, around the turn of the last century, the Diversion Channel was constructed, diverting the Castor River away from the swamps of the Missouri Bootheel, in order to drain the swamps for agriculture. The Diversion Channel takes the Castor River and runs it directly into the Mississippi, just south of Cape Girardeau. So the spotted bass then had a direct route into the Mississippi just 20 miles or so downstream from the lowest tributary in Missouri, Apple Creek. However, ol' Miss was still pretty inhospitable, not only from the tremendous silt load it carried, but probably also from pollution. But, by the 1970s, two things had happened. The Clean Water Act had taken effect, cleaning up much of the pollution on the Mississippi, and the upstream dams on the Missouri river in the Dakotas had been built, trapping a lot of the silt that had always come down that river into the Mississippi. The Missouri was dumping considerably less silt into the Mississippi, and the river was now clean enough to allow the spotted bass to start moving up it. First Apple Creek, then Saline Creek, then Establishment Creek, then Joachim Creek, and finally the Meramec. So, I think there is a good chance that three human activities, seemingly having nothing to do with spotted bass in the Meramec River, had the unforeseen result of allowing them to ruin a once terrific smallmouth fishery on Big River, the Bourbeuse, and the lower Meramec. The Diversion Channel, the Clean Water Act, and dams a thousand miles away.

The RS forums are now back up and running.

Big River, continued... The spotted bass first invaded Big River in the mid-1980s from the downstream end, and the Bone Hole lowwater bridge, at the beginning of the big bend where the Desloge mine tailings are, is about 100 miles upstream. In the last two years, spotted bass have increased from basically zero in the stretch immediately below Bone Hole to about 1/4 the number of smallmouths. In the next stretch downstream, they first showed up in significant numbers three years ago, and now are almost as common as smallies. Just shows how quickly they can take over a stream section. Once you get past the big bend, you're in civilized water, with housing developments encroaching upon the river. When I was a kid, this was still fairly wild, even though it was less than a mile from my boyhood home in Desloge. There was a big, deep pool, the first deep pool below the Desloge Mine, where we used to fish for catfish. It was a narrow pool, deep from bank to bank, with big trees lining the banks and arching over the water. The pool was there until about 20 years ago, when the landowner on one side, for no apparent reason that I could see other than recreational bulldozing, decided to clear all the trees down to the river and shape the bank into a gentle slope. The river immediately ate the bank away, widened itself by 40 feet, and now that pool is so shallow it has exposed gravel in the middle. The river passes the Hwy. 67 bridge just north of Desloge, barely beginning to recover a bit from the big slug of mine waste it received at the Desloge Mine. A bit below the bridge was a big pool, deep enough from bank to bank that it was difficult wading, that was my favorite fishing hole when I was a kid. The upper end was the most perfect place to fish with live bait I ever saw. The river came out of a fast riffle and slanted into a vertical bank lined with the roots of the big trees growing atop it. There was a big slick log lying there, at a 45 degree angle, with a limb coming off it that formed an arch through which much of the river's current flowed. The hole there was about 6-7 feet deep, and all you had to do was let a live crawdad drift through that arch and you'd get bit. It was amazing how many bass I caught (and kept back in those days) at that single spot. But 30 years ago the landowner decided to sell off the topsoil in the bottom field behind that bank, and cleared off the trees. Next flood, the river went off into the dug-out bottom field, widened itself, washed the big log out, and now the water is a foot deep there. The lower end of that big pool is still fairly deep, and it really looks like the river is beginning to heal itself a bit...but at the bottom of the pool, Flat River Creek enters (Don't even ask me whether this small creek was named Flat River first, and the town was named after it, or whether the town got the name some other way and the creek was named that because it flows through the town--which is now Park Hills anyway!) There are THREE major mines and superfund sites on Flat River Creek, and the amount of tailings it has dumped into the river has made the river the same horrible habitat for the next ten miles, down to St. Francois State Park. The strategy on these superfund sites is to stabilize the tailings dams with big rock rip-rap, cover the impounded tailings with topsoil and plant them to grass, lower the chat dumps and make their slopes gentler, and then cover them with larger rocks to stabilize them. St. Joe State Park is on one of the sites, and the impounded mine tailings there form one of the most popular ATV riding sites in the state, so covering them with topsoil doesn't seem to be in the cards. The dam that holds them, while stabilized, is still not anywhere near earthquake proof if the next New Madrid earthquake strikes, so the town of Park Hills below stands to be half covered in tailings if the dam goes...not to mention Big River. In the next ten miles below Flat River Creek, the river not only is extremely shallow, it also has housing developments, topsoil removals, wholesale clearing of the riparian corridor. Terre Bleue Creek enters partway through that stretch, adding its own load of sand...it flows through a heavily farmed area and suffers from a lot of erosion. By the time the river gets to St. Francois State Park, however, it is beginning to recover from the mine tailings...except that the final mine, the Bonne Terre mine, has dumped its load into the river through a couple of tributaries in that area. The other problem with the mine tailings is that they are heavily contaminated, not only with lead but with other heavy metals like cadmium and zinc. It's questionable whether any of the fish in the river below are safe to eat, although at present the health advisories are only out on suckers, if I'm not mistaken. In the past, there have been warnings about eating catfish and sunfish, including bass, from Big River. But the river is finally past the lead mine stuff, and beginning to recover. The next few miles still suffer from a lot of unwise clearing of the riparian corridors, and have at times suffered as well from the accumulated, questionably treated sewage of the old Lead Belt population center. But the river begins to look pretty good. However, it isn't out of the mining woods yet. It has entered the barite (tiff) mining area. In 1975, a buddy and I were headed to the river at Blackwell, planning on floating from Blackwell to Washington State Park. It had rained pretty hard the night before, but the river was in good shape at Desloge. But when we reached the bridge at Blackwell and looked down, we were shocked. The river was a torrent of pure, blood-red mud. A dam holding back the washings from a major tiff dam had burst during the night, dumping so much barite tailings down Mill Creek and into the river just above Blackwell that practically every aquatic organism was killed between Blackwell and Washington Park. It took more than ten years for that stretch of river to recover. There have been minor spills since, and the threat, from a bunch of flimsy tiff dams, hangs over the river perpetually. Once the river gets past Washington Park, it is big enough that you can run a jet boat on it. The stretch from Mammoth Bridge to Browns Ford was one of the first three smallmouth special management areas. It's a pretty piece of river, with some high and interesting bluffs and pretty good habitat. But at times it gets a LOT of jetboat traffic. Still, you have to enjoy it while you can, because about 7 or 8 miles below Browns Ford, the river enters its final ugly phase. From Morse Mill to the mouth of the river, it seems you can't go 100 yards without passing a ramshackle cabin with a garbage dump coming off the bank and an open sewer pipe sticking out. We're getting close to the St. Louis area, and apparently at one time everybody in St. Louis bought up land and built a cabin on Big River. The accumulated siltation from 100 miles of poor farming practices, concentrated development, parking lot run-off, you name it, makes this lower 40 miles or so of the river very unattractive in many places. The spotted bass have won in this section...you'll be hard pressed to find a smallmouth except in one or two secret little spots. It wasn't like this 25 years ago, when I caught a 21 incher just a half-mile upstream from the mouth of the river. So there you have it...perhaps the most abused stream in the Ozarks, but unfortunately, many of its problems are threatening other Ozark streams as well. Sometimes it really surprises me that there are still smallies to be caught in Big River, but therein lies, maybe, just a little bit of hope. If we just give them a fighting chance, the smallmouths will endure and even thrive.

Yep, the spotted/smallmouth hybrids are fairly common on the streams where the spotted bass are not native but are invading. I caught one the other day. Took a couple of photos of it, and will post one whenever I get the chance. My brother was floating Big River with me a couple years ago and caught a 19 inch hybrid.

I think just about everybody is partly right, but the bottom line is that in questionable cases, nobody knows. Here's the legal situation in Missouri: Whether or not you can legally get on a stream in a canoe or other watercraft was decided by a court case on the upper Meramec many years ago. Basically, the court said that, for the purposes of recreational navigability, the stream is usable by the public if it was ever used in the past for commerce, which the court further went on to say that if it had ever been used in the past to float logs to market, among other uses. This pretty well established the public right to use the larger Ozark streams, including wading and getting out on the banks below the normal high water mark. However, what it didn't do was establish how big a stream needed to be before it was permissable for the public to use it. Who knows which of the smaller streams of the Missouri Ozarks were used to float logs? The Meramec in the area considered by the court case is not floatable year-round, being well above Maramec Spring. So a creek doesn't apparently have to be completely navigable at all times to qualify for public use. However, that doesn't mean it's settled as to which creeks are and aren't "floatable" and therefore "navigable". There are only a few federally navigable waterways in MO, including the Mississippi, Missouri, Osage up to Bagnell Dam, and the lower end of the Gasconade. Others, below federal dams, are in a different category. On all streams not federally navigable, the landowner owns the stream bottom--everything but the water. If the stream forms the boundary between two landowners, each owns to the middle of the stream bed. So technically, had there not been the court case deciding otherwise, you'd be trespassing if you were standing in the water, or if your canoe dragged the bottom in a riffle. Now, when it comes to the wading angler, it's pretty much settled that you are technically trespassing if you're on a stream that is too small to take a canoe down, and the landowners along said creek have the right to keep you off. So don't assume that because you got onto the creek at a public right of way that you can fish it without getting arrested. As a practical matter, about all you can do is check out the access you're using. If it has an obviously well-used parking area and a well-worn footpath to the water--and it doesn't have a bunch of purple paint or keep out signs--it probably means the nearest landowner doesn't mind you using it and won't run you off. If the access doesn't look used and/or all the trees in sight are painted purple, you probably should stay off it. In the end, on any stream that is questionable, it all depends upon the landowners, the county sheriff's department, and the county prosecutor. Some counties and some landowners are pretty easy-going when it comes to stream trespass issues, others aren't. I float a lot of little creeks that are seldom floated, and have only once had any trouble. That time, a landowner ran me off before I could get my canoe in the water. I also wade some small creeks, and have never had a problem. But I only use obviously used accesses, I stay in the creek, and otherwise keep a low profile, moving pretty fast past places where I could be seen from a nearby house. No sense tempting fate.

Wayne, about the winter fishing...once you find some spots where the bigger fish are holding in the winter, catching them is not all that difficult. Finding them is the really hard part. Not all pools that look like good wintering pools produce fish. Winter fishing is still somewhat of a mystery to me. I still don't know where a lot of the fish go in the winter. Why is it that you can make a 10 mile float trip in the summer and if the fish are active you'll catch fish everywhere and catch 75-100 fish, but make that same float in the winter, fish all the good winter spots, and you will probably only catch a dozen or so. If all those fish that spread out over the whole stretch in the summer move to a few wintering pools, they should be stacked up in those pools and you should be able to catch them by the dozens at each good spot. But instead, you catch one or two here and there...however, you catch a greater percentage of bigger fish. It's rare to catch smallies much under 12 inches in the winter. Where the heck are they? I do find winter and summer to be more consistent than spring and fall. Autumn is the toughest time for me, especially the month of October.

Nice piece of writing and good analysis, CC. To put it in more concrete terms, consider my home river, Big River, a little closer. You can start at the headwaters, maybe at the dam that forms Council Bluff Lake, a Forest Service reservoir only a couple of miles from the river's farthest source. Below the dam, the little creek that is Big River already has almost permanent flow, and was already choked with gravel from erosion off the maze of hollows the headwaters drains. National Forest protection of some of those hollows was starting to curb the continued erosion of gravel, but not all the headwaters watershed is National Forest, and several landowners in the area have recently clear-cut their woods. The river flows through Belgrade a small, clear creek with a lot of gravel, flows past Hwy. 21 and the Bootleg Access, and then comes to its first significant tributary, Cedar Creek. Cedar Creek used to have several miles of good fishing water, and flowed about as much as the river did at that point. But poor land use practices on the farmland in the wide, flat Cedar Creek valley puts a lot of silt down it and into the river these days, and there was a major gravel operation that paid absolutely NO attention to any sort of protection of the fisheries on Cedar Creek. It started up on Big River right below the mouth of Cedar Creek back in the early 1970s, and they dredged out a huge, lake-like pool on the river. Then they moved up Cedar Creek for a good two miles, totally digging out the channel. Now, Cedar Creek nearly dries up in the summer, the channel is flat and now choked with willows and young trees, the water, what there is of it, coming into the river from Cedar Creek is warm, and it's also full of nutrients from the farming going on in the large Cedar Creek watershed. That big dredged hole below Cedar Creek is now silted in and shallow, weed-choked, open to the sun, and the river below it is murky and warm. It's amazing it still holds smallmouths. It takes several miles of "natural" river channel for it to start to clear and get a little cooler. The river flows past Irondale through three big, beautiful pools, separated by nice riffles and runs...and then encounters the effects of ANOTHER gravel operation. This one, which is older than the one above, close to 50 years old, is still evident in the river channel. The river here had a rather thin layer of gravel sitting on solid bedrock. The gravel operation removed the gravel, right down to the bedrock. In 50 years, there has been enough gravel re-deposited to start to give trees a place to grow, but much of the next few miles are still shallow water running over bedrock, now lined with willows. There is a short section that didn't get dredged, and then you reach the oldest gravel dredging operation, located above the Hwy. 8 bridge. That short section...the landowner decided to open a topsoil digging operation along it. They left a thin line of tree-covered bank along the edge of the river, but dug out the bottom on the other side of the tree line close to the same depth as the river bottom. It's just a matter of time until that really messes up that section. The next gravel operation originally dug out about 4 miles of river. In the upper part the river still flows shallowly over the bedrock that was uncovered. In the lower part, below Hwy. 8, the gravel was deeper, so you don't see as much bedrock. This was dug out more than 50 years ago, and in many places you have to look close to see the remaining effects, but the habitat is still not typical. The river here is also badly weed-choked, partly due to warm water from exposed shallows over the bedrock upstream, and partly due to excess nutrients from farming practices. So then, you have a stretch of several miles where the river does get more or less back to a natural state. The habitat improves and there are some nice, deep pools. The weeds thin out. And then...the little tributary that drains the farthest upstream of the big mine tailings complexes enters the river. There are 6 huge areas of lead mine tailings draining into the river. They have been federal superfund sites for 25 years. This first one, the Leadwood Mine, is still in the process of being stabilized. Basically, the mine tailings consist of crushed limestone and the silt washed away from the ore. The crushed rock was piled up into big, high "chat dumps" up to 300 feet high, huge mounds of fine gravel upon which nothing has ever grown. The washings were impounded behind dams that were made up mostly of the crushed rock, and consist of fine sand grading down to fine silt. The dams were in no way built to last, and periodically one gives way and dumps the silt into the river. And the erosion from the chat piles and the other places where chat was dumped and spread in the past continually enters the river with each flood. The Leadwood mine tailings aren't quite enough to seriously affect the river in themselves. The tailings are evident in the river bottom and gravel bars, but the river is still good habitat below...except for a huge quarry that now sits beside the river where there was once an old, small mine. The quarry lets silt into the river periodically. But the river is still nice for another mile or two, until... It hits the bend at the Desloge mine. This is a huge, horseshoe bend, where the river flows for 4 miles around the bend to reach a point that is less than a half mile from where the bend started. And most of the inside of this bend was filled with the tailings from the Desloge Mine. Not only that, but the mine complex was also used for the St. Francois County landfill. Back in about 1975, the levee holding back the tailings gave way in several places in a big rain, dumping millions of tons of tailings, laced with trash from the landfill, into the river. The result of this was a river that looks almost like it flows through a concrete channel. The tailings have totally smothered the natural gravel, with its crevices where the bottom organisms can grow, and it has filled in all the deep pools. For the next five miles or so, you are hard pressed to find any water over 4 feet deep anywhere in the river. Surprisingly, there are still smallmouths in this stretch, but here is also the point where the non-native spotted bass have reached, and the struggling smallie population is taking another big hit from spotted bass competition. I'll continue later.

You're right that the fishing has improved on at least some of the streams under special management. However, even MDC will admit that the results have been somewhat mixed. Some have improved in overall numbers, some have improved on numbers of fish under the minimum length. On some, growth rates have slowed. Like I said before, if you want to improve numbers of decent fish, the one fish 15 inch limit is fine. Also, I you're wanting to protect smallies in streams with spotted bass invasion, that'll do it combined with liberal limits on spots. But I don't think you'll get significantly more really big fish under those regs. MDC seems to work by putting on a few regs, watching them to see what the results and the reaction by the public are, then putting on a few more. They have always had an aversion, based on the wants of the enforcement division, to getting too complicated with the regs, and also have had an aversion to regs more restrictive than absolutely necessary. If it was left up to the biologists in charge, there would be more restrictive regs on more streams, but they have to work with the enforcement people and have to answer to the commissioners, who tend to get complaints from the public whenever a reg is the least bit unpopular. I think we just need more creative regs, like the slot limit or punch card/trophy ideas. And, instead of having a one size fits all 6 fish 12 inch limit, we should have a MUCH more restrictive basic reg to protect the smaller, more fragile creeks. Maybe then have more liberal regs on some of the larger streams to satisfy the meat fishermen. But it seems to me that we should be managing a lot more stream sections for big fish, and the slot limits could satisfy the meat fishermen while still putting more protection on the big ones.

So...in the other thread I said offhand that 50 fish per day is about average for a good angler. My records show that I've averaged 47 per day, so I guess I was pretty close. Funny how you tend to remember the good days, 75 or more fish, and not so much the bad ones. Has fishing gotten better in the last 10 years? Yes and no. There have been improvements on some streams and some stream sections. I think the whole jet boat issue is interesting...back in the 1980s when jetboats first came onto the scene, the fishing declined abruptly, and I'm convinced it was mainly because of jet boat wakes disturbing spawning and silting up nests, since the numbers of little fish dropped while numbers of adults didn't for several years, and this happened only on the larger streams I fished. Something was screwing up spawning ONLY on larger streams. However, I think the fish eventually adapted, and I don't think spawning is suffering so much now as it was, while fishing and gigging pressure is keeping the numbers of LARGE fish depressed on the bigger rivers. Otters? I've seen some evidence of otter damage, especially on the upper Big Piney and Roubidoux, but I don't think it's the sole reason for declining fishing on these streams. And I know of some streams that have thriving populations of otters and plenty of smallmouths. Habitat destruction? Yep, on some streams it's getting worse all the time, and on others it's improving. I fish some streams that have really poor habitat BUT have very good fishing. Smallies can get by in marginal habitat if they aren't pressured. And even in great habitat, fishing and gigging pressure can depress the fishing. Spotted bass. Big River has REALLY suffered from spotted bass invasion. The spots are now up to the Desloge area and still moving upstream. Much of the river below Desloge is spotted bass water, with smallmouths much in the minority of the bass population. The Bourbeuse is the same. The Meramec below Meramec State Park is also suffering. However, I've seen some evidence in the last couple of years that the spots are reaching an equilibrium with smallmouths in the Meramec river system, and the smallies are actually increasing a bit in the spotted bass sections. I'm not sure for the reason for this. It could be the regulations removing most protection from spotted bass. It could be that something, disease or parasites maybe, have impacted the spots--they tend to be VERY heavily infested with the yellow worms, for instance. Who knows? Back to big fish. In my opinion, we need two main things to happen in order to increase the numbers of big Ozark smallies. One--MUCH better enforcement of gigging laws. It's a real shame that just a few illegal giggers can so severely impact the numbers of big smallmouths. All it takes is one renegade going down the river on a night when the big smallies are out, and not many of them will escape. Opening the gigging season in September is a mistake, in my opinion, because smallmouths at that time (up until mid-October) are active at night, out in relatively shallow water where they can be easy targets. Later in the winter, they tend to be less active at night and in deeper water close to cover. Second--we need regulations that really work toward increasing the numbers of big fish. The one fish/15 inch length limit in effect on most of the special management areas isn't going to do it. It increases the numbers of fish up to 15 inches, without really protecting the 18 inch plus fish that much. Even the one fish/18 inch limit doesn't quite do it, in my opinion, because what you're doing there is increasing the numbers of fish up to 18 inches, and maybe there are really TOO many smaller fish in some of those streams. Maybe they are giving the big ones too much competition for food and slowing their growth rates. I think that, if you want to have lots of BIG smallies, maybe a slot limit, something like 3 fish under 15 inches and one over 20, would work better. Or maybe a reverse limit...you can't keep anything over 16 or 17 inches. For those who really want to keep a true trophy now and then, do something like Alaska does with some of their salmon fisheries...you have a punch card thing on your license. You could keep ONE big smallmouth per year. The minute you caught one you decided was worth keeping, you would punch and date your license. If you were caught with a smallmouth over the maximum length with an unpunched license or a punched license with a date different from that day, you would be in violation. There are still areas of the Ozarks where the catch and keep mentality just doesn't fit the present day fishery. Too many people are still killing too many smallmouths. On the other hand, there are other areas where, probably, too few of the smaller fish are being kept. You can't have one size fits all regs when it comes to Ozark streams. I've often pondered the difference between smallmouth streams and trout streams. I've fished some of the most famous and most heavily fished wild trout streams out West, like the San Juan and Bighorn. They get more pressure than any Ozark smallie stream, yet if you know what you're doing, you can catch PLENTY of big trout in them. It seems like, even on smallie streams where most anglers catch and release, too much fishing pressure really makes the fishing tough. Are more smallies than we think suffering delayed mortality from catch and release? Are smallies better able to learn to avoid being caught after they've been caught several times? Or are there more catch and keep anglers than we think? Or is it mostly illegal gigging? Whatever it is, the larger Ozark streams that get a lot of pressure are a shadow of what they were 20 years ago, in my opinion.

Since I was figuring up all this, I decided to figure up numbers as well as big ones. I don't always keep track of exact numbers of fish I catch, but since I do it quite often, I think I'm a pretty good guesser when I don't keep exact track...maybe within 10% or so of the actual number caught. These numbers include bass only, but include largemouth and spotted bass as well as smallmouths. Also, I consider a trip of less than about 5 hours to be a half-day trip, and I also consider a trip that was more of a social float with non-anglers involved to be a half day trip for statistical purposes. When I fish with others in the same canoe or boat, I count all fish brought to the canoe, no matter who catches them. With all that in mind... In the last 10 years, I've fished a total of 210 days for Ozark river smallmouths. I've caught somewhere around 9790 fish. That averages out to 47 fish per day. That also includes winter trips, which usually skew the average downwards since you seldom catch the numbers in the winter that you do in warm weather. During that time, I had one trip where I was actually skunked, and another trip where I only caught one fish. The most fish caught in a single day during that time was 210 (and yes, I did keep track that day). There were seven more days when I caught over 100 fish, including a 170 fish day and a 160 fish day on the same stream where I caught 210. There were 18 more days when I caught over 75. Like I said before, I fish Big River more than any other stream. I've divided this river into what I consider "upper", which is marginally canoeable, "middle", which is usually canoeable, and "lower", which is big enough for some jetboating. In the "upper" sections, I spent 49 days during the warm seasons (spring through fall), caught 2260 fish more or less, which averages out to 46 fish per day. In "middle" sections, I spent 22 warm weather days, caught 1350 fish--62 fish per trip. In "lower" sections, I only spent 6.5 warm weather days, and caught 188 fish--29 fish per day. This illustrates a number of things. The lower sections get a lot of fishing pressure and also quite a bit of gigging pressure. Part of the the difference could be that I don't spend enough time down there to really know the river as well, but I spent a LOT of time in those sections in earlier years. I think it's a lot more due to fishing pressure and illegal gigging. The "middle" sections have the poorest access and are too small for jet boats. I think that explains the much better fishing. However, in the last few years the smallmouth fishing has really declined on those sections, due mainly to the encroachment of spotted bass. The upper sections are civilized water in the old Lead Belt area, and although that's where I grew up fishing and still like to fish, it gets a lot of pressure and the habitat is really pretty sorry due to the effects of the former lead mining. The Meramec River is also illustrative of the difference in different sections due to fishing and gigging pressure. The "lower" Meramec is jetboatable year-round and gets a LOT of boat traffic. I've averaged 20 fish per day on it. The "middle" Meramec is big enough for jetboats but often gets too low for safe boating in the summer. It sees a tremendous amount of summertime canoe, raft, kayak, and tube traffic, however. Still, there are a couple of pieces of it that seem to hold a lot of fish, and I've had a couple of 100+ fish days on those sections. Overall, my average is 35 fish per day, but my warm weather average is 66 fish per day. The upper river gets less traffic, but also seems to be suffering from some otter depredation. I've averaged 30 fish per day on it. That stream where I've had the 170-210 fish days? Average on it in 6.5 days of fishing is 124 fish per day. My favorite close to home wading creek--72 fish per day. Another favorite wading creek, a little farther away however--88 fish per day average. Another favorite wading creek--94 fish per day. I'm well aware of the fragile nature of these creeks. I will not tell anybody else where they are. I will not take anybody else on them unless I'm absolutely certain I can trust them to keep the location secret. And I don't fish them myself more than a couple of times a year, since even catch and release, when you're talking those kind of numbers, kills some fish. Of the streams I've fished more than one day in that 10 year period, in 13 of them I averaged less than 50 fish per day, and in 11 of them I averaged more than 50. In the 10 year period I fished a total of 31 different Ozark streams.

Kickin...I haven't looked at the MAA stuff in a long time. It used to be that the catch and keep minimum was 3 pounds, but catch and release was 17 inches. Guess they finally wised up and changed it to reflect the length it generally takes to weigh 3 pounds. Since I've been going on the assumption that it was still 17 inches, and 17 inches IS a decent fish, I won't bother to change my statistics from the last 10 years to reflect that. Here's a few more statistics from my records: Number of 17+ inchers caught from streams large enough to see jetboats at least part of the year--21 Number caught from streams that are canoeable more or less year-round, but not big enough for jetboats--47 Number caught from streams I call marginally canoeable; you can get a canoe down them year-round if you don't mind walking a lot of riffles and dragging bottom in most of them--65 Number caught on streams that are wading only; we're talking creeks where you can cross the riffles in two or three steps without getting your feet wet above your tennies--13 Number of different streams in which I caught 17+ inchers--17 Total numbers by river...but I'm not naming the smaller, lesser known rivers. And also it MIGHT be that some of these were caught near the headwaters of some streams that I've named: Big River--60 (keep in mind that I grew up on Big River and still fish it more than any other stream, since it's the closest floatable stream to where I live) Meramec River--18 Unnamed stream, marginally canoeable--14 Huzzah Creek--11 Big Piney River--8 Unnamed stream, strictly wading water--8 Gasconade River--6 Unnamed stream, marginally canoeable--5 Unnamed stream, wading only--3 Buffalo River--3 Bourbeuse River--2 Niangua River--2 Unnamed stream, wading only--2 St. Francis River--1 Courtois Creek--1 And one each from two more streams, one wading, one marginally canoeable. Number caught by lure: My own homemade spinnerbait--48 Other spinnerbaits--1 Walk the dog type topwater lures--40 Popper type topwaters--2 Buzzbaits--3 My homemade crankbait--35 Other crankbaits--2 Jerkbaits--6 Jig and pig--2 Soft plastic jerkbaits--2 Other soft plastics--4 I've been using versions of my own homemade spinnerbait and crankbait for MANY years, and I'm almost never without one of them tied to one of my rods, but they have always been consistent producers, so much so that I don't often use other spinnerbaits or crankbaits. As for the walk-the-dog topwaters, they have been very good in the last 5 years or so. The popper types, like a modified Pop-R, were magic for a couple of years about 12 years ago, but haven't been so good since. However, that may be partly because I got to fishing the walk-the-dog topwaters instead of the poppers. The relatively small number of big ones caught on jigs and slowly fished soft plastics reflect the fact that I don't often fish that way. More statistics and thoughts to follow...

We were talking about big smallmouths on a thread in the Current River forum, and I decided that I'd move it over to here. As I said in the other forum, there ARE big smallmouths in all the Ozark streams. However, due to many factors, including illegal gigging, fishing pressure, and genetics, there just aren't all that many of them. To qualify for a Missouri Master Angler Award, catch and release, it only takes a 17 inch smallie. While that figure is probably too low, it does give a pretty good measure of what constitutes a big Ozark river smallmouth. Lots of people, used to catching the 10-14 inch smallies that are so common on most Ozark streams, far overestimate how big one is when they catch one bigger than 16 inches. I've seen a lot of people call 17 and 18 inchers 4 pounders. A 17 inch river smallmouth, on average, will weigh around 2.5 pounds. An 18 incher will weigh around 3 pounds. It usually takes at least a 20 incher to beat 4 pounds. Thing is, weight really doesn't matter to me. That same 20 incher that weighs well over 4 pounds when caught in early spring might weigh 3.5 in mid-summer. And if you happen to catch it right after it spent the last few days eating well, it might weigh at least a quarter pound more than it might if you caught it after a few days of inaction. Is it a better catch when it weighs more? It's the same fish. Length, to me, is a much better measure of bragging rights. Back in the 1970s I kept careful records of all my river trips, and back then I didn't know nearly as much about catching bigger fish as I do now, but 20 inchers came fairly regularly back then. It wasn't every trip that I caught one, but if I was on good water, like lower Big River or the middle Meramec, I pretty much expected to score a 20 incher sometime during the day. But the fishing went downhill in the mid to late 1980s on those rivers, with the advent of jetboats and the resulting greatly increased gigging and fishing pressure. I didn't keep records during that time period, but I started keeping them again in the 1990s. My statistics probably give a pretty good idea of how easy it is to catch 17 inch plus smallmouths. I'm not on the water as much as some guys I know, so I don't catch as many as they do, but during the last 10 years I've averaged 25 days per year specifically targeting Ozark river smallmouths. Here are my totals of fish over 17 inches during that time: 17-18 inches--73 fish 18-19 inches--47 fish 19-20 inches--18 fish 20-21 inches--4 fish 21 inches plus--4 fish So, 250 days of fishing, 146 fish over 17 inches, averages out to one Master Angler Award fish for every 1.7 or so trips. That average has been trending generally upwards for me, because in 1997 I only caught 3 fish over 17 in 23 trips, and in 1998, it was 7 in 22 trips. My best year was 2001, when I caught 25 in 27 trips. During that time, none of those 21 inch plus fish were much over 21 inches. I doubt if any of them weighed more than about 4.5 pounds. There were a lot of days when I caught more than one big one. In 2001, there was one day in August when I caught two 17s, an 18, and a 20, and another day in November when I caught an 18, two 19s, and a 20. In 2003, I caught two 19s on a July day. Did the same thing in August the next year. In 2005 I caught 3 17s, an 18, and a 19 on the second day of a three day float in August...after catching a 17 the first day, and before catching a 17 and an 18 the third day (and nope, I ain't saying which river!) I didn't start seriously winter fishing until 2004, so my monthly totals were mainly during warm weather months. Keep in mind also that these totals don't include 2007 at all, though I've already had a couple of good trips this year. January--4 trips, 1 MAA fish February--5 trips, 3 fish March--6 trips, 0 fish April--17 trips, 8 fish May--31 trips, 13 fish June--35 trips, 31 fish July--40 trips, 24 fish August--39 trips, 36 fish September--23 trips, 12 fish October--11 trips, 4 fish November--14 trips, 8 fish December--6 trips, 4 fish The March totals may seem a bit surprising, but I just haven't fished all that much in March. It's a transition month when the fish seem to be scattered and difficult to find. Note that the mid-summer months have been the most consistent, although now that I'm learning winter fishing, the winter months are becoming pretty consistent as well. Enough statistics for now...hope to get a discussion going here and add more later.

It's not that there AREN'T big smallmouths in the Current and other Ozark streams, it's just as Steve said, there aren't all that many of them. I do know of at least one that was caught on Current River last winter that was over 5 pounds...guy caught it on a big live minnow while walleye fishing. I've also talked to guys who fish river tournaments on the Current, Meramec, and Gasconade, and none of them have ever seen a 5 pounder weighed in during a tournament. Very few over 4 pounds are ever weighed in. Also, except for some instances in late winter/early spring, river smallies are never as heavy as reservoir smallies. The average 20 incher won't weigh more than 4 pounds, and usually a bit less if it's caught in midsummer. It takes at least an 18 incher to make three pounds. The two 5 pounders I caught (many years ago), one on the Meramec and one on Big River, were 21.5 and just under 22 inches. I've never caught a fish longer than that on an Ozark stream, and have actually only SEEN one that I was sure was significantly larger, a monster that followed a hooked largemouth and struck but missed my spinnerbait, which I got a good look at compared to the largemouth (which was 18 inches). It was a good 6 inches longer. THAT fish would have been a 6 pounder, probably. I heard of a 6 pounder being caught on the Big Piney a couple years ago. Heard exactly where it was caught. Funny thing, I was on a float on that stretch just a few weeks before this fish was allegedly caught, and my fishing buddy caught a big one at that exact spot (and released it). It was about 21 inches long, and probably weighed 4.5 or so. I wonder...same fish? Guesstimated weight? I love talking about big Ozark smallies. Think I'll start a new thread on the subject in the general bass fishing section...

Yeah, I do, actually. I didn't like the ones that got too uncivil, but I kinda miss tweaking Smallieaddict's beak on evolution/creationism

Yep, Riversmallies is still going strong. The owner of the site had decided it was too much for him to handle with job and personal issues, but a couple of the staff members agreed to take over the administrative duties. There was a big flap which resulted in closing the non-fishing board to religious and political posts, and due to both issues the site lost some participants, but it is still pretty active. I'm a staff member but have nothing to do with the administration of the site. For those of you who don't visit it, it is definitely the best site on the net for specifically river smallmouth fishing all over the country. I think that it and this site complement each other very well, with Ozark Anglers being region specific but covering all kinds of fishing, while RS is species specific but covers the whole country.

Watcher, the POTENTIAL for Ozarks streams is certainly there to grow more big fish than they do, and I agree with you about gigging being one reason they don't. I'm not sure our top end potential is as good as some other places...since our native smallies in the big Ozark impoundments just don't get as big as those in, for instance, Dale Hollow and the Tennessee River impoundments. As for numbers, yep, for a good angler under decent conditions, a 40-50 fish day is about average. But for a guy coming in with little prior experience, those numbers are probably unrealistic. Please don't take this wrong...I don't know of ANYBODY who has ever caught 4 legitimate, weighed on a decent scale, 5 pound smallmouths from an Ozark stream in one day, and I know some good river smallmouth anglers. I do know of lots of people who caught that many 18-20 inch smallmouths and thought they were 5 pounders. If you weighed yours, I'm impressed to say the least. I know of a FEW, maybe a half dozen, caught that were supposed to have weighed around 6 pounds...didn't see them. My personal best day for big fish was 4 from 19.5 to 21 inches, and my partner that day also caught 3 of that same size...call them 4 pounds average though I didn't weigh them. And I've caught two legitimate 5 pounders in close to 50 years of fishing Ozark streams.

Watcher, did you write that article? While it isn't bad as a quick, general article on Ozark smallmouth fishing, "...an abundance of 4 to 6 pound smallmouth"? "75 to 95 bass a day"? There probably isn't a dozen true 5 pound plus smallmouths total caught in all the Ozark streams put together in a year. And while it is certainly possible to catch 75 or more a day, it isn't exactly common for the average angler. The Ozark streams just don't produce 4 pound plus smallies very often. While they are great places to fish for smallmouths, you WILL find bigger fish and more 20 inch plus fish in a lot of other areas. Current River tips... Fish it in the off season or during the week. Warm weather weekends are crazy on the Current. Fish those deep, fast runs with tubes or other weighted soft plastics. Fish the margins of the pools and shallower runs with surface lures, spinnerbaits, crankbaits, jerkbaits. Since the Current in many places is fairly heavily fished, it isn't as easy as some streams. Small eddies and cover in fast water are good because they are tough to fish and a lot of people skip them. I've found that Current River smallies seem to more often hang out in the middle in shallow to medium depth runs, rather than in the cover along the banks as they are in most other streams.

Heck, guys, there ain't that many streams within 90 miles of where I live that you can take a jetboat on! By the way, I went back to the same area, though a slightly different stretch, last week with my dad. The fish had totally moved out of the winter holes, which we didn't figure out until late in the day. Ended up catching about 15 fish, a couple around 16 inches but no big ones, and most of them were in fairly fast runs, eating spinnerbaits.

If he's limited to bank fishing and wading, there isn't a whole lot of opportunity in that area except to fish from the bank for catfish and carp. In the summer, you can also wade a few riffles for bass. But...as to what's in it, lots of spotted bass, quite a few largemouths, an occasional smallmouth, lots of sunfish and goggle-eye, crappie in some of the big brushy pools, a surprising number of walleye, white bass in places, lots of catfish, lots of rough fish.

Last I read, shale oil was still far too expensive to extract, something like a hundred thousand bucks a barrel. Whatever they're using the coal for, they're still mining a LOT of Appalachian coal. If you don't know about mountaintop removal mining, it is just what it sounds like. Tear down the whole top of the mountain to get at the coal seam partway down it, dump all the overburden into the valley below and fill it up, remove the coal, then as long as the inspectors keep on their toes, "reclaim" it by smoothing everything out and planting it in grass. Looks like a moonscape while being mined, and at best like a golf course once it's finished and reclaimed. Which, as I said before and discussed with Crippled Caddis...is that what we want? Do we want to tear up huge chunks of the West to get out coal and maybe oil shale, and continue tearing up huge chunks of the most beautiful mountain country of the East to get coal, and trust the big energy companies and the government to make sure we produce energy from it "cleanly"? Do we want to pay ALL the costs of continuing to depend upon fossil fuels?

Unfortunately, I agree with you. I always hope that we as a country will begin to look beyond the next quarter's profit margin and the next election cycle, but I don't expect it to ever happen.

Yep, if they were actually girl humans, I would have questioned their sanity or admired their fortitude for skinny-dipping in the White River...that water is COLD!

"Success"? I don't think that's the right word. I don't go to the river to "succeed" at anything. I go to experience everything. If all I experience is the stream and the day and some casting, that's enough, although I can't remember the last time I didn't catch ANYTHING. But everything else is just more and better experience. If I see an eagle, that adds to my experience. If I see deer, hear tukeys gobbling, watch an osprey catching a fish, more additions. And...if I catch fish, each one is a plus. Of course, you also have some minuses. Too many other people, party idiot canoeists, litter, detract from the experience. But, if I'm heading to the river, I know it's going to be a good experience...there are only varying degrees of "good". Within the experience, however, there are LITTLE successes. If they don't happen, I don't consider the trip or even the attempt a failure. Maybe I just tied some new flies...if I catch a fish on one, it's a success. If I don't, it isn't a failure, maybe just a learning experience. Or maybe I'm trying a new technique. Or maybe it's just getting a good drift through a tricky spot, or a good cast to a rising fish under a bush. The experience is usually studded with such small successes. Maybe it even contains a bigger success, like catching a 20 inch trout. For some, the success would come in "winning" the "battle" with the fish. For me, it's much more in getting that fish to take my fly. In fact, no matter what kind of fishing I'm doing, when it comes to the fishing itself, I get so much more satisfaction from the strike, the take, than I do the "battle". It's one reason why I have absolutely no interest in doing big game saltwater fishing. The angler in that situation has very little to do with getting that marlin to take the bait, and then it's man against fish for an hour until you get it in. I get tired and bored with fighting a fish for more than a few minutes. So I guess you could say that I have no real interest in that kind of "success"...it detracts from my experience!

Yep, the technology to produce energy from coal without undue environmental damage is available, and is even being used in a few places. But that is only part of the coal equation. Getting the coal out of the ground is the other big problem. The history of Appalachia is one of continuous environmental damage from mining coal, complete with dead rivers and dead miners. And now it's being done by mountaintop removal, which has to be about the most horrific thing that's ever been done to forested mountains and tributary streams. Producing energy from coal with the best technology may be necessary in the short term, but cannot be a long term answer, no matter how much coal reserves we have.