Al Agnew

There are plenty of people, including some biologists, who are very concerned about river tournaments, but the time to do something about it was probably before they got popular. Biggest problems with river tourneys are that not every participant and every tournament organizer is conscientious about livewell equipment and weigh-in procedures, and that the fish are almost always released at the weigh-in location, meaning that few if any of them are anywhere close to their home waters. Since studies have shown that most Missouri Ozark smallies live their whole lives in a half-mile stretch of stream (often in the same pool), relocating them is stressful at best, not to mention keeping them confined in a livewell all day. Fact is, tournament fishing is more harmful to the fish than immediate catch and release, but of course is less harmful than catch and keep. Question is, is it harmful enough to really seriously affect the population? Problem with answering that question is that there really haven't been any good studies done on delayed mortality in Ozark RIVER tournaments. Just because the fish are released alive doesn't automatically mean they remain alive while attempting to recover from the stress of capture and transport and weigh-in at the same time they are trying to get back to their home water or else learning new habitat and competing with the fish that are already there.

Bay Creek to Alley will be work at 47 cfs and dropping with a loaded canoe. If you have an aluminum canoe it will be a LOT of work. Plastic and fiberglass slides over the gravel a little better. That stretch has a whole lot of very shallow, gravelly riffles, and even some slow water areas that are extremely wide and shallow. Upstream the riffles are generally narrower and more rocky...harder on the bottoms of canoes, but probably no more difficult to do. The canoe rentals stop renting canoes for the upper river when the water flow drops to the level it is now. That's what is meant by closing the river...they make it sound like the Park Service closes the river so that people won't be pestering them to rent canoes for the upper river.

Fish location varies somewhat with the time of year and water level. With water temps colder than about 50 degrees, most smallies will be in very gentle current (not dead water, but slow current) most of the time, usually in water deep enough that you can't easily see the bottom. They will, however, move into somewhat faster and shallower water to feed at times. With water between 50 and 60, some will start moving into faster water, but will still hold behind obstructions where the current is much slower, just NEAR fast water. Above 60, they will almost always be in water with noticeable current. The thing about warmer water and weather, they can be in both riffles and in pools, as long as the pools have noticeable current. You'll seldom find many smallies in dead slow water in the middle of long pools in warm weather. BIG smallies are a little different, in that they will seldom be IN the riffles unless there is a major obstruction where they can get out of the fastest current and out of sight from overhead. The smaller fish can be in the shallow margins of fast water, the bigger fish will more likely be in the deeper margins of fast water. On a river like the Buffalo, which gets very low (even on the lower end) and has a lot of nearly dead water in mid to late summer, the fish locations are a little more confined than they are in a river like the Current or Meramec, with enough water volume to keep current throughout many of the pools. The riffles on the Buffalo in very low water are too shallow to hold many fish, and the fish are forced to live in the upper parts of pools and in deeper pockets of short runs between riffles. There will also be a lot of fish at the lower ends of pools, often in the flats right close to the lip of the next riffle. Of course, there are always exceptions, which is why I tend to fish every possible place that could possibly hold a bass!

Beautiful fish! Nice to see one with perfect fins...you can tell it hasn't seen a hatchery in a long time, if ever.

Well, you're always limited by water levels on the upper river, and by the middle of next month, you probably won't be able to float above Pruitt. By July, on average, you won't be able to float above Gilbert--at least, no canoe rental will rent canoes on the upper river if the water is too low in their opinion. Accesses on the upper river are pretty well-spaced. If you get really, really lucky and get a perfect rain just before your trip that puts some water in the upper end of the river without making it too high and muddy, Ponca to Erbie is the most beautiful piece of river in the Ozarks, and can be good fishing. That's about 16 miles and a good two day trip. You can lengthen it by going on down to Pruitt, adding another 8 miles, but that's probably more than you want to do in two days. You can rent canoes for that stretch at Ponca. Pruitt to Carver is about 11.5 miles, a short two day or long one day trip and nice water. Pruitt on down to Mt. Hershey is about 18 miles, a good two day trip. Between Mt. Hershey and Gilbert the accesses are a little less conveniently spaced for a two day trip. Mt. Hershey to Woolum is 10.5 miles. Woolem to Baker Creek Ford is 11 miles. Woolem to Hwy. 65 is probably the best length in this stretch for two days at 16 or 17 miles. It's 4 more miles from Hwy. 65 to Gilbert. Gilbert to Maumee South is 12 miles. You could put in at Hwy. 65 and go to Maumee, 16 miles altogether. Maumee South to Buffalo Point is about 11 miles. Fishing? I don't think there is any one stretch of the upper river that is better than the others. I'd consult with canoe rentals and go on the highest stretch that has enough water. You can Google Buffalo River and get all kinds of canoe rentals. Edit: I just Googled the Buffalo and there aren't hardly any canoe rental listings in the first few pages, at least. However, you can go to the official Buffalo National River NPS site (first listing on Google) and click on concessioners and get a listing of canoe rentals for each section.

Steve is right, this is a VERY bad idea! If the legislature can do this, what's to keep them from just making up ALL the game and fish regs? The handfishers are a vocal minority, but they ARE a MINORITY, and a small one. The legislature doesn't gave a rat's rear end about handfishing, they just want to grab power from MDC. PLEASE, write, phone, or fax the legislature and tell them you don't appreciate legislative meddling on issues that should be determined by good science and wildlife management professionals.

If you float during the middle of the week, the traffic usually isn't too bad. You'll still run into canoes and jetboats, but usually a manageable number of both. And the fish don't mind, they are used to the traffic. Best two day if you want to avoid SOME of the jetboats would be Round Spring to Two Rivers. Lots of fish in that stretch. But there are bigger fish downstream, along with more and bigger boats. I used to really love the Powdermill to Van Buren stretch, but I haven't floated it in several years. It's a long two days. As for one day floats, a nice short one that can produce good fishing is Two Rivers to Powdermill. Jerktail to Two Rivers is nice, too. For a longer one that doesn't get as much canoe traffic (but more boat traffic)...Powdermill to Logyard. And although all the horse traffic has somewhat messed up the lower Jacks Fork, you can still catch smallies from Eminence down, and it's a rather interesting float to go Eminence to Powdermill and fish both the smaller water of the Jacks Fork and the Current...doing that float, after getting accustomed to the Jacks Fork, the Current seems like a HUGE river when you get to it. By the way, about this time of year the upper Jacks Fork gets a LOT of canoe traffic on weekends as well, though you won't see jetboats on it. Fish on the upper Jacks Fork aren't quite as used to the traffic, since it is mainly on spring weekends, so the fishing sometimes isn't all that great there this time of year. As for camping...if you want campgrounds you can drive to, Jerktail is about 3/4 of the way through the Round Spring to Two Rivers stretch, and Logyard is a good place on the Powdermill to Van Buren stretch. But it's a whole lot better to just pick out a gravel bar and set up camp. There is no shortage of gravel bars on the Current.

Yeah, Bob said it was clear, but not "Black River clear". Black River is normally the clearest stream in the Ozarks, with visibility of 15 feet or more (how much more is hard to determine, since there aren't many holes over 15 feet deep). I flew right over Black River last Thursday, on a flight from St. Louis to Florida. In fact, it was really cool...weather was very clear, and I followed our path from St. Louis, right over the Meramec at Times Beach just below the mouth of Big River, then all the way up Big River to the mouth of Cedar Creek on the upper end (with Council Bluff Lake on the headwaters visible). Then right over the Taum Sauk upper reservoir and down the East Fork of Black River (good view of Johnson Shut-ins and the lower reservoir). Down the Black to Clearwater Lake, which even from high in the air the Black was obviously pretty clear). Then on down the Black to Poplar Bluff, where we veered to the east and crossed the Mississippi at about Charleston. Coming back home today, we crossed the Mississippi at the mouth of the Ohio, and went up the Mississippi, recrossing it at Kaskaskia Island, and finally again just south of the downtown St. Louis. My first view of St. Louis without old Busch Stadium and with the new stadium, and I gotta admit the old stadium was a LOT prettier from the air.

Don't hold your breath waiting for something to be done about it. The gravel mining rules are still in flux, since nobody can really agree on how weak to make them, but suffice it to say that they are gonna be pretty weak. And...although at one time you COULD have gotten whoever was doing it in trouble with the Corps of Engineers (who WOULD reluctantly put a stop to it), a lawsuit brought on by the Farm Bureau and others resulted in a court ruling that the Corps wasn't responsible for stream channel alterations anymore, instead the MODNR was. DNR is practically useless, since the legislature (led by Sarah Steelman when she was there, among others) has pretty much gutted whatever funding DNR once had for enforcing ANY regulations. Last I heard, DNR had 5 inspectors for the whole state that had responsibility for stream channel alteration issues (among lots of other duties), so even if you report it, chances are nobody will get around to investigating it until it's much too late, if at all. As you can guess, this is a real sore spot with me. The mid-level and lower people at DNR are serious about taking better care of the streams, but their hands are tied by a legislature that looks upon ANY rules and regulations as Satan's doing...this isn't just a tight budget issue--the legislature as presently composed wouldn't give a dime for enforcement of environmental regulations even if they were flush with cash. It's only the things that are political dynamite or that danged near everybody in the whole state would scream bloody murder about, like state parks and the Taum Sauk disaster, that get any real attention from the legislature and thus DNR. Sure, go ahead and contact DNR about it. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. But it's going to take a lot of squeaking to get anything done about stuff like this.

Anything over about 100 cfs ain't bad for Big Creek. At that flow you'll be able to float all riffles except for possibly the shut-ins. The main shut-ins rapid is a long, wide, rock garden that takes a LOT of maneuvering at 100 cfs, but at that level it's not dangerous, just difficult. It's a beautiful creek, normally very clear, most of it gravel bottom. Been a while since I floated it...it's about time to do it again.

Yeah, it's pretty common. Have had a lot of conflicts about the same thing on Wappapello Lake. Seems to be the knee-jerk reaction...having problems with an access? Close it instead of working to take care of the problems. It DOES take manpower and money to police and maintain accesses and access roads. A lot of the bureaucrats always think the money should be spent someplace else. I was interested to see the Sherriff and prosecutor being on the side of keeping the places open. That is seldom the case, in my experience. It always drove me nuts when the law enforcement people were the ones advocating closing an access because there were too many problems associated with it. THEIR JOB IS TO TAKE CARE OF PROBLEMS LIKE THAT AND ARREST PEOPLE. And it would seem to me that, if they just did their jobs and regularly showed up at a known problem spot and arrested everybody breaking the law, pretty soon the word would be out among the doofuses that the spot was no longer a good place to go nuts. And in the meantime the law enforcement people would have gotten a few drunken drivers and druggies off the roads and out of our hair for a while.

I floated it today from Hwy. 8 down...plenty of water right now. Fishing wasn't very good however. There are already quite a few smallies on beds. Water is very clear.

Shadman, most of us are pretty jealous of our better wading spots...I know I am. Get yourself the Missouri Conservation Atlas from MDC, which has road maps of every county and all the MDC access areas. Chances are an MDC access is going to be well-used, but you can use the maps to find bridges crossing various creeks and rivers. Then it's all a matter of taking the time to drive around for a day or two and check out various bridge crossings...and if it looks interesting, taking a few hours to fish it. The wading angler is limited on the amount of water they can cover, but I've found that if you just walk past the first couple of decent pools, you'll be in water that most of the bank fishermen and partiers never get to, and the fishing will be as good as it will get anywhere on that stream. Heck, I've caught a whole lot of good fish right AT accesses, because it seems like the serious smallie anglers apparently pass up the water right at the access, and the worm dunkers and splash-n-gigglers don't really bother the smallies. I've caught a number of big smallies right out from under rope swings (sometimes not long after they'd been in use), especially if the rope swing is put up at a little deep pocket in otherwise fairly shallow water.

I agree with Wayne...no way MDC released any of them in secret. I suspect there are a few in Missouri. But what kinda surprises me is the sightings in places other than the Ozarks, places where there is a lot more open ground and fewer places for them to hide. They ARE good at staying out of sight, but given all the yahoos in the woods during deer season, it's hard to fathom how they could all stay out of sight and safe at that time. As shy as they usually are, there are exceptions. I think they are naturally curious, and a lot of times somebody will see one "sneaking up behind them". I suspect most of the time these are just following out of curiosity. But in California, where most of the recent attacks of people have occured, it's due to people moving in to good mountain lion habitat, coupled with the ban on hunting that apparently is making them more likely to run afoul of people. I wouldn't shoot one unless it was definitely acting strangely and threateningly, but it's not like there is NO way they'd attack a person. The jogger that got killed a few years ago in CA was attacked from behind as she was running. Cats are cats, and all you have to do to see what might happen to something running away from a cat of any kind is to play with your house cat. Now what REALLY makes me skeptical is the whole "black panther" thing. Since there is no scientific record of black panthers in America, other than the slight possibility that a black jaguar or two might once have lived in the Southwest, or that the one in a million or so mountain lions might be melanistic, where the heck is the black panther stuff coming from? Yet, I've heard stories of black panthers in Missouri all my life. I really wonder what the true story is there.

I fished Wednesday...I had a goal of catching at least one Master Angler size smallmouth each month of the year this year, although I've never actually applied for a Master Angler Award and don't intend to. For smallmouths caught and released, the minimum size to qualify is 17 inches. I caught an 18 incher in January, and a 17 and an 18 in February. But thanks to bad weather, high water, and scheduling, I didn't get a chance to get out in March until yesterday. I missed my goal by a half an inch. Caught a 16.5 incher. Smallmouths weren't very active...I caught 31 bass, but 21 of them were largemouths, 7 were spotted bass, and only 3 were smallies. However, the warm rain we had last night will probably get them a little more active.

Kickinbass, according to the USGS gages, the Buffalo was flowing 45 cfs at Boxley today, so the upper river from Ponca down is too low. You need about 75 cfs at Boxley, minimum, to float the upper river without having to do a whole lot of dragging. However, the river was flowing 605 cfs at St. Joe, which is plenty of water for the middle sections. So I'd guess you have enough water to float about anywhere below Mt. Hershey.

Yep, I always called green sunfish black perch. My brother in law calls them pond perch. Like I said, though, there really is a considerable difference in appearance with the three rock bass species. When you catch one, you just think "goggle-eye", but if you held the three species up next to each other, or you see good photos of them together, the differences are pretty obvious. I did a goggle-eye painting once, long before I knew there were different species. Looking back at that painting, it was obviously of a shadow bass. The photos I used for reference on it was of a goggle-eye caught from the St. Francis. I caught some goggle-eye the other day on jerkbaits while fishing for smallmouths in a small creek that is a direct tributary to the Mississippi, and they were definitely northern rock bass. I wasn't sure which species they would be in that creek until I caught one.

Griffster, that's great...checked out the website thoroughly, impressive! However, looks like he needs me to help him work on his free throws...

So I suppose there's no way you can hold your own with him one on one anymore Yeah, for some reason I just haven't gotten back on the trout section of the Eleven Point...it's on my short list to do.

Gavin is right, there are three different species, and they look considerably different. The northern rock bass is native only to the Meramec River system in MO, but was the species that was introduced into the Osage and Gasconade river systems (these rivers had no native goggle-eye) The Ozark bass is native to the White River system. The shadow bass is native to the rest of the Ozark streams. There has been some mixing in places as fish were stocked outside their native range, but not all that much. So, for instance if you fish Norfork Lake but do your stream fishing in the Spring River (not very far away from each other), the lake fish you catch are Ozark bass but the stream fish are shadow bass. But if you fish Norfork Lake and the North Fork River, fish from both places should be the same species. Warmouth, by the way, were native but very rare over much of the Ozarks before the reservoirs were built, but have done well in the reservoirs. The book "The Fishes of Missouri" shows that they were commonly collected only from the Eleven Point, Current, Black, St. Francis, and Castor river systems, and shows them absent from the upper White River system. "Fishes of Arkansas" shows recent collections from all the big White River reservoirs, but none collected in the streams flowing into them except for the upper end of the White River itself.

Depends, imo. In clear water, bright light conditions: 1. Action 2.color 3.tie for shape and size. In murky water or low light conditions: 1. Action 2. Size 3. color 4. shape And by the way, when I say color, I don't think subtle differences in color really make much difference. Color is important to me only in how visible it is to the fish. So the important color differences are light or dark, bright or dull, not watermelon/red flake vs. watermelon/black flake.

Hank, I usually go by the discharge graph and table. I would think that at the Mountain View gage, a reading of anywhere between about 100 cfs and 300 cfs is floatable. Much above 300 cfs and it's starting to get a little hairy, with water flowing through the willows lining the riffles. A reading of around 150-200 cfs is ideal for just fun, easy floating. Anything under about 75 cfs and you'll be doing a lot of scraping bottom in the riffles and you'll have to walk some of them. Of course, if you're into running what passes for whitewater in much of the Ozarks, you'll probably do okay in levels up to about 400-500 cfs. And if you're into fishing, you'll prefer levels less than 200 cfs. Edit: I just looked up what the book Ozark Canoeing and Kayaking said were recommended gage levels. They list 1.5 ft. as minimum for floating--that translates to somewhere around 75-100 cfs. 2.0-4.0 optimum level--that's about 150-600 cfs. Over 5.0 is listed as dangerous--which would be about 1200 cfs. However, the book is geared toward whitewater kayaking, so I'd be a little wary of the higher levels they recommend unless you're into that sort of thing.

From what I've been able to gather, the genetics of Ozark smallmouths are pretty confused. There was so much milk can stocking in the early 1900s that there are probably no pure strains of Neoshos left. The various river systems may have all had slightly different strains originally. If you look at the connections between river systems, you can see why this might be so. The Neoshos were native to rivers flowing into the Arkansas River, and rivers like the Mulberry and Big Piney in Arkansas may have had Neosho strain fish originally. And since the White River flows into the Arkansas or thereabouts where both come into the Mississippi, chances are the White River fish (including Current, Black, and Eleven Point) may have had fish similar to the Neoshos originally. I remember reading a genetic study somewhere that said that the fish in the streams flowing directly into the Mississippi in MO (the Meramec river system and smaller streams like Saline Creek) were a little different genetically from the fish in the rest of the Ozarks. And it's just possible that smallies were not even native to the rivers in MO that flow into the Missouri River, like the Gasconade and Osage river systems (including the Niangua and Pomme De Terre). It's been pretty well known that rock bass were not native to these streams. As an artist, I've noticed that smallmouths on the Buffalo in AR look a little different than the Meramec River system smallies I'm used to catching. Maybe slightly different genetics? The original native range of smallies was the Ohio and Tennessee river systems, the upper Mississippi river system, and the rivers flowing into the Great Lakes. The Ozarks was somewhat separate from all these areas. And there are differences between Great Lakes type fish and Tennessee/Ohio river system fish in general body shape. The Great Lakes type fish and the upper Mississippi fish are blockier and deeper through the body than Tennessee/Ohio fish, which tend to be pretty slender if they are river fish, and football shaped if they are reservoir fish. The Ozark fish in general look like Tennessee river fish rather than upper Mississippi fish, but they are a different strain with less potential to get really large. That's the reason why the top size of Ozark reservoir smallmouths seems to be about 7 pounds while fish in some of the Tennessee and Kentucky reservoirs, in the same latitude and with a similar growing season, have produced lots of fish bigger than that, including the world record. Since Neosho strain fish don't get very big, could it be that smallies all over the Ozarks are "contaminated" with Neosho genes?

Well, I went to the website that lists all the lands they are proposing to sell. They don't make it easy to figure out where they are, simply giving township, range, and section...no listing by county, which would make it a little easier to at least get an idea of where they are. I spent about an hour figuring out which townships and ranges were in each county that has national forest within it, but got tired of trying to cross-reference which parcels matched which counties, let alone trying to figure out where in the county they are...and of course, at best you can only get it down to a specific section, not the exact piece of land in that section. Methinks they don't WANT us to know exactly which parcels are being sold.

There's a bunch of stuff I totally disagree with in the article in Mocarp's post. But that's neither here nor there. Arkansas has tried Florida strain largemouths before. I think one of the first places they tried it was Mallard Lake. For a while, that lake was producing some really big fish, but I don't think the Floridas thrived. I think I remember reading that research has shown that Florida strain largemouths don't do well unless the growing season is comparable to what they evolved with, which means that it makes little sense to stock them anywhere north of maybe southern Arkansas. They grow fast, but don't live as long as northern largemouths. So I'd guess that probably the Floridas won't mess up the largemouth population or the ecosystem, but may not make things any better, either. I wonder why AGF sees the need to spend the money to stock them. I think we gotta use good science and common sense when deciding upon stocking a non-native species. There have been a lot of mistakes made, such as stocking northern strain walleye in Ozark reservoirs...the average size of the walleye in those reservoirs went down, and former true trophy fisheries became just average walleye lakes.