Al Agnew

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe gigging IS prohibited on some of the trout management stream stretches. Of course, it is okay on all the smallmouth management stretches. It would be interesting, and certainly would be informative, to take ONE smallmouth special management area, perhaps the Meramec from Scott Ford to Birds Nest, and prohibit gigging on it for a few years, and see if the numbers of larger adult bass improved. I'd bet they would, but unless MDC can quantify it, they won't follow up with regs on other special management areas. As for the assertion that gigging rough fish improves game fish populations, I can't believe they actually said that. Gigging happens to be mostly illegal in Arkansas (so much for your "Ozark tradition") and the Arkansas streams are full of BIG redhorse, bigger than anything you'll usually see in Missouri streams because the Missouri redhorse are cropped by the giggers before they can grow to large sizes. And while Arkansas certainly has its problems, there are still plenty of smallies and other game fish in Arkansas waters. Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating banning gigging. We mainly need to get a lot more serious, both MDC and anglers, about enforcing the laws, and maybe also putting a few further restrictions on gigging.

Thing is, if they could get it right with native river strain walleye, it could become a world class fishery, since Ozark river walleye have the potential to grow to world record size. Problem with Bull Shoals, even though it has a good population, is that it only has one real spawning area, below Powersite. None of the streams running into BS are big enough to furnish much spawning area. But Table Rock has both Kings and James running into it, along with the White on the upper end, so it could potentially have more spawning area and more chance of producing huge fish. But I think the biggest thing holding back the possibility of record class walleye in Missouri is the tradition of eating every walleye caught. Danged few walleye are ever caught and released, so danged few get the chance to get really big. Since walleye will never be a really abundant fish in the Ozarks like they are in places like Minnesota, it would make a lot more sense to manage them for trophy fisheries, with a high length limit and low creel limit of one or two fish.

The thing that ticks me off about the gigging situation (other than the low-lifes who intentionally gig game fish) is that MDC greatly lengthened the gigging season just at the time when jet boat technology enabled gigging to be much easier and more convenient. It wasn't ever easy to run a prop boat on Ozark streams at night, or to do shuttles for a gigging float trip. And it used to be that gigging season only lasted a month or two--don't remember exactly how long, but it didn't start in September like it does now. I don't buy the idea that people gig smallmouths by accident. Anybody who has spent any time at all in a gig boat (and I have) can easily tell a smallie from a sucker. Nope, there are a lot of guys on the rivers I'm familiar with that are gigging bass on purpose. The Meramec in the Steelville and Sullivan area is really getting hammered by illegal giggers, and my friend who lives there and has vocally complained about it got a bunch of gigged and filleted smallmouths in his mailbox a few weeks ago. He and I fished the river a few weeks ago, just after this incident, and saw dead bass on the bottom. And the only place where we caught a bunch of bass was in a backwater that we had to wade up into because the connection to the river was too shallow to get a boat into it. Coincidence? Of the few bass we caught in the river, two had fresh gig scars. This stuff is worse now than it has been in the past. It really saddens me, because on streams like the Meramec, gigging is most certainly depressing the population of large adult smallmouths. If you belong to a bass club whose members fish the rivers, try to get the club to get vocal and really complain about this situation. If you see or hear of illegal gigging, report it. Nothing will be done about it unless MDC get a lot of complaints.

Yeah, the lower White River, down in the flatlands of eastern Arkansas, used to be the most famous place in the world to catch huge alligator gar. The dams on the upper White apparently put a stop to the gar fishery on the lower river, because even that far downstream the water now remains too cool in the summer to support a population of fast-growing alligator gar. A lot of anglers swear they have seen huge alligator gar in some of the Missouri reservoirs, but according to the book, The Fishes of Missouri, the only reliable reports of alligator gar in Missouri have come from the Mississippi River. Pflieger reports two specimens caught in 1965, one of 110 pounds from near Chester, IL on the Mississippi, and a 130 pounder from near Cairo. As of the writing of the book, The Fishes of Arkansas, the AR state record was 215 pounds, but there was a published photograph of an 8 ft. 3 in., 350 pounder taken from the lower St. Francis River in AR. Alligator gar have been sampled on the lower Eleven Point and lower Black River in AR, so it is possible that they could be in the lower Black and lower St. Francis in MO. But I suspect that most of the "alligator gar" that people say they see in Ozark streams and reservoirs are simply very big longnose gar. Alligator gar are told from other gar by their very short, broad snout. The biggest longnose gar reported in AR was 6 ft. 8 in. Biggest in MO was 4 ft. 5.5 in. and weighed 21 pounds.

We all owe a huge debt to the Ozark Society and other conservation organizations that were instrumental in saving the Buffalo River from the dams that were planned for it. This is truly a river worthy of the status of "National River". No other river in the Ozarks has such spectacular bluffs, beautiful water, wilderness-like areas, terrific hiking and backpacking along it, and just plain wonderful country. I try to spend a few days on it every year, both floating and hiking. The only thing the Buffalo lacks sometimes is enough water to float! And the nice thing about that is, if you're willing to work at it, you can just about have this incredible river to yourself during low water periods. But it is work. My wife and I did a float with another couple, good friends, a few years ago in late August. We put in at Gilbert and floated 6 days to the White River. And we probably walked more riffles than we floated, especially BELOW Buffalo Point. The river flows almost as much water at Gilbert (or actually just below Gilbert, where a good sized creek comes in) as it does below Buffalo Point, but the riffles tend to be narrower above Buffalo Point, so they also tend to be a little deeper in dead low water. The fishing was great fun. The water was very clear, and very warm, felt almost like bath water, and the fish were whacking buzzbaits with wild abandon. I watched a lot of fish actually see the lure in the air and position themselves under it before it hit the water. Others would charge it from 20 feet away as soon as it landed. None were huge, though I caught a couple in the 17 inch class. I remember the first time I ever floated that stretch it wasn't as low nore quite as clear, and I found the fishing to be tough. That lower end is all rock and gravel, with only one or two places that looked like the water I was used to fishing on Big River--clay banks and logs. But, in one of those places I caught a 20 inch smallie! I've floated all of the river at various times from Ponca to the White River. I've never done well fishing the upper river, from Ponca to Pruitt, maybe because I've always floated it in early spring except the very first time, which happened to be in late June but after some heavy rains that had put quite a bit of muddy water in the river. But who cares? No other river in the Ozarks, and maybe in the country, is as scenic as the Buffalo below Ponca. And where else can you stop and hike a place like the Goat Trail, which follows a ledge across the face of Big Bluff, the highest bluff in the Ozarks. You're 350 feet above the river with almost 200 more feet of cliff above you, and the ledge is no more than 5 feet wide in a couple of places. Or stop and hike up Hemmed In Hollow to see the highest waterfall in the Ozarks. Or just stop at ANY hollow coming down to the river and hike up it a ways and see geologic wonders that would make state park status in most states. The middle river is, to many people, not as spectacular as the upper and lower ends. It's a little more of a typical Ozark stream, with wide bottoms and somewhat lower bluffs. But it's still got some beautiful multi-colored cliffs, fast water, and it's got the Narrows, a knife edged ridge dropping straight off into the Buffalo on one side and Richland Creek on the other, less than 3 feet wide on top. And the middle river CAN be excellent fishing as well. While snorkeling in it one time, I came face to face with the biggest flathead catfish I've ever seen while snorkeling. That thing's head looked to be a foot wide!

The Niangua is a great river. It's almost four rivers in one...you have the upper river, above Bennett Spring, which is rather small, rather murky, and good fishing for both smallmouths and largemouths. Then you have the trout section from Bennett to Prosperine. Below Prosperine to Tunnel Dam you have a good sized, fast, cool river that just shouts big smallmouths. And below Tunnel Dam it's a river that is much affected by Lake of the Ozarks, with a lot of fish like white bass coming up out of the lake. I floated the upper end, from Big John Access to Williams Ford, a few years ago, and did pretty well, including hooking and losing a big smallmouth. It was good habitat and I'd like to try it again. I've also floated from Moon Valley to Bennett, which is also good water, though it gets a lot of canoe traffic. I did a float in the trout section a couple of years ago with Bob Todd and the Director of MDC. It was the first time in a long time (actually the first time since I really learned enough about flyfishing to be effective) that I'd floated that stretch, and the trout fishing was very good. The first float I ever did on the Niangua was from Prosperine to Blue Spring Resort. It's a beautiful river down there, with big glade-like bluffs and fine water, and I caught several 17-18 inch fish. A couple of years ago I did that float again, the last year that the resort was open, and although I didn't catch any big fish, I caught plenty. I always wanted to float from the resort down to Tunnel Dam, but the resort closed before I could do it. The accesses down there are problematical, being at the wrong distances apart and the wrong sides of the river, and since there are no bridges on the Niangua between Bennett and the slab ford below Tunnel Dam, getting from one side of the river to the other entails LONG shuttles.

I've been on the Osage Fork a few times...have floated from Drynob to Hull Ford twice, and from Hwy. B to Drynob once. This has got to be one of the best looking smallie streams in the Ozarks. Water with some color, lots of cover, moves along just enough. But my trips have been rather mediocre fishing. I did one trip with several members of the MO Smallmouth Alliance, and everybody caught some fish. On the upper float I was with my buddy Cory, who fishes much the same way I do and is a terrific angler, and we really didn't do as well as we expected. One thing I've noticed about the Osage Fork and the upper Gasconade is that catch and keep fishing is definitely alive and well on those streams. I've seen lots of guys with stringers of bass, and lots of bass remains at the accesses. Although I'm sure that the Osage Fork can produce some very good fishing, I suspect it would be even better with a little less harvest of bigger fish.

Hi, Fox...been awhile since I've talked to Larry. I well remember getting those pictures. Glad you're hanging around here!

Did you know that the Gasconade is the longest river that is completely within the boundaries of Missouri? And the longest undammed river left in the Ozarks? We're talking 250 miles of floatable water. One of my goals is to someday float the whole thing in one trip, which would take at least three weeks. In the meantime, however, I've floated most of it at one time or another. I've done all of it from Hwy. E, 11 miles or so below the highest put-in, down to Paydown, which still leaves me a little less than 80 miles on the lower end to do someday. The first time I was ever on the Gasconade was the float from Hwy. 28 to Jerome. The river was up a couple of feet and murky, and it was a lot bigger water than I was used to, having done most of my floating up to that time on Big River. I thought the river was always that big. I remember catching one very nice largemouth and a few smallies. The next time was a three day trip from Hwy. 17 at Waynesville to Jerome, in early November. The river was very low and clear. I couldn't believe the difference. That was a beautiful time to be on the river, with fall foliage in full color, but the fishing was tough. I did several trips on the river below Jerome before the spotted bass started moving in, and caught some nice smallmouths. But I haven't been on that part of the river in many years, and I'm kind of afraid to go now and find that it's full of small spotted bass like the lower Meramec. One of the most "interesting" floats on the Gasconade is to do the river from Ozark Springs to Hwy. 17 in low water conditions. As you get to the upper end of the Narrows bend above Schlict Spring, a good part of the river disappears! This is what is known as a "losing reach", and during low water conditions, you'll have about 75 cubic feet per second flow or more above the Narrows, and then less than 30 cfs below. I put in at Schlict Spring once and the river was barely a trickle there, and almost totally weed-choked. it was pretty difficult floating, though the fishing wasn't bad for a while, but it got worse as we went farther downstream. Finally we were walking the canoe more than paddling it, the water was stagnant, the fishing was marginal at best. Then we came to the Rockslide Bluff. This is a spot where a huge section of bluff collapsed on November 3, 1971. A section of cliff 200 feet long, 60 feet high, and 20 feet thick fell into the river and totally blocked it. It's still an interesting rapid in the river there, and the bluff still looks like it was a fresh rockfall. It is here that the water that sank into the ground upstream starts to come back into the river. There are springs bubbling up out of the river bottom, and three good sizes Springs, Falling Spring, Creasy Spring, and Bartless Mill Spring, all enter the river within the next mile or so. The fishing--and the ease of floating--definitely picked up from there down to Hwy. 17.

Hey, I know it's a trout stream. In fact, the only time I floated the Little Piney, from Milldam Hollow down to the Gasconade, I caught some nice rainbows on the upper part of it. But, they were kinda overshadowed by the 19.5 inch smallmouth I caught a little farther down. A few more nice smallmouths were caught, as well. It's a stream that's on my short list to get back onto.

Just the name alone was enough to make me want to see this river. And I'd heard and read about it for years before I finally floated it. The first time was from Mason Bridge to Slabtown, a beautiful stretch of river, and when I first saw the river I was impressed. It had that green, slightly murky color that used to shout at me that it had big smallmouths. But...as I remember, the fishing wasn't all that great that trip. My usual homemade crankbait, which should have been made to order for the Piney, wasn't producing. At the time, I was almost a one trick pony, if the crankbait didn't catch fish, I didn't have enough confidence in anything else to use it well. Later, I found out why the crankbait wasn't the magic lure it had been on other Ozark streams. Seems that a very similar lure was used at the time by almost all the good bass anglers on the Piney. But anyway, I was almost convinced that there just weren't any good fish in the Piney, until we passed a wading angler with a bait bucket hanging off his belt, along with a stringer with four smallies, all of them over 18 inches. Later, I floated the Piney from the highest usual access at Baptist Camp down to Mason Bridge in four days. It was a great trip, but again the fishing wasn't all that great. I remember hooking and losing one really big smallie. So I kind of avoided the Piney for a few years, until I decided it was time to give it another try. This time it was a float from Mineral Springs to Boiling Spring, a day after I'd done the upper Gasconade and caught over 100 bass. On this float I almost matched it, with well over 80 fish. That was about 5 years ago. Two years ago, my wife and I got back onto that stretch, and I was really looking forward to another great fishing day... I got SKUNKED! Not a single smallmouth, or anything else except a couple of sunfish. It was weird. There were crawdads everywhere, out in the open, something you just don't see when there are plenty of predators around to feed on them. What happened to the fish? The people at Boiling Spring confirmed that the fishing had been pretty bad, and blamed it on otters. I've seen otter damage on smaller creeks, but this stretch of the Big Piney was big enough that I didn't think the otters could have wiped out the smallies. I haven't been back to that stretch since, though I did stop off and fish for just a few minutes at the MDC access above Baptist Camp, where the river is small enough to really be susceptible to otter predation, last summer, and caught three smallies, so I know there are fish up that far now. I wonder how the stretch above Boiling Spring is doing these days? That's how the Piney always seems to be, either hot or cold. In the special management area from Slabtown to Ross Bridge, I've had days in recent years when the fishing was TOUGH, but other days when it was easy. My wife and I had a great two day trip on that section a few years ago, with lots of fish and several in the 17 inch class. The second morning we floated down to Ross Bridge, catching fish all over the place. I met Bob Todd there since he and I were going to go on down and camp below Ross with some other outdoor writers. The fishing simply turned completely off below Ross. I don't think Bob would have believed me about how good the fishing had been that morning if he hadn't seen me catch two nice fish right in front of the Ross Access. I've floated the entire river, except the marginal stretch above Baptist Camp and the 4 miles at the lower end below Devils Elbow. Floating through the Fort was an experience, with artillery booming in the distance, although along the river itself there isn't really much sign of human activity. We caught lots of fish through the fort, and my buddy Cory caught one that went 21 inches, the biggest fish I've seen come from the Piney.

Have you ever seen Jam Up Cave? Let me describe my first time floating the upper Jacks Fork and seeing Jam Up. It was a springtime trip with a group, no fishing done, river up and flowing very well. We put in at the Prongs. This upper Jacks Fork is like a smaller version of the Buffalo in Arkansas with all the big bluffs, and it's almost a wilderness experience, with the river flowing through a narrow canyon with no bottomland at all, just a bluff on one side and a wooded hillside on the other. When we got to Jam Up Cave, we stopped to go up into the cave. It's a huge, yawning opening in a high bluff, with the base of it littered with huge boulders that you have to climb over to go down and into the cave. And geologically it's very interesting, because Jam Up Creek, a small, sometimes dry stream, comes down off the plateau to the south in a little canyon, and as it approaches the river it has carved out the opposite side of the cave bluff, leaving a rather narrow hogback with the Jacks Fork on one side and the creek on the other. At one time, geologically speaking, the creek then swung away from the Jacks Fork to carve its canyon on for several more miles before finally entering the river. But sometime in the geologic past, the creek took advantage of a fissure in the hogback ridge and took a shortcut through it to the river, forming Jam Up Cave. There is the opening where the creek enters the back of the cave, and there is also another opening in the roof of the cave. The creek pours over a waterfall in the back of the cave, and there are a few hours during a few days a year when the sun comes through the other opening in a shaft of light that strikes that waterfall. This was one of those times! It was possibly the most sublime sight I've ever seen on an Ozark stream. I've floated all of the Jacks Fork. The stretch between Alley Spring and Eminence is one of the better places in the Ozarks to catch chain pickerel. The lower river below Eminence has produced some good fishing trips for smallies, though you have wonder about all the horse manure running into it. The upper river? Well, I still try to do at least one overnight trip on it each year.

I've only floated the Spring once. It was many years ago, and it was the float that finally wore a hole in the bottom of my first canoe, a 15 foot Grumman. The river was low and those ledges were wicked! I caught a few trout, and as I remember a couple of nice largemouths. Civilized water, and a strange float with all the solid rock bottom and ledges. I'd like to explore the Spring some more...it's on my short list of rivers to float.

Ah, where to start on the Meramec? I've floated the entire river from Short Bend to Times Beach. In fact, I floated the whole thing in one trip one time. It took 12 days, and it rained on my friend Clyde and I 8 out of the 12 days. The first two days, down to Maramec Spring, was nice weather and terrific fishing, including several 17-19 inch smallies. Then it rained the second night, Dry Fork turned to mud, and the next two days down to Steelville it was too muddy to fish. It finally started clearing below Steelville and the fishing got good again, and just kept getting better. I remember catching a 19 incher just below the mouth of the Huzzah, another one above Meramec State Park, and a third one just above St. Clair. We stopped at St. Clair, called Clyde's uncle, and he came down and delivered us a Pizza Hut pizza. Below St. Clair I caught two smallmouths that were both 21 inches. Then the rains came again, the Bourbeuse got muddy, and below it we couldn't fish for the rest of the trip. That was in 1982. At the time, the Meramec was probably the best big smallmouth stream in MO. There was excellent smallie fishing all the way down to Times Beach. I caught some big fish in the Pacific area in those years. Then the spotted bass started showing up, and now smallmouths are a rarity below St. Clair. That stretch from St. Clair to the mouth of the Bourbeuse used to be my favorite stretch of river for big smallies. Bob Todd and I once caught 8 smallmouths between 19 and 21 inches in one day on that section! One of my two biggest Ozark stream smallmouths came from the Meramec. It was during the height of the controversy over the Meramec Dam, and I'd never floated the stretch that was slated to be buried by the dam, so I figured I'd better check it out. So I put in at Onondaga and did a two day trip to Meramec State Park. The first fish I caught was a 19 inch largemouth, and the first day was pretty much non-stop action, with some very nice fish. I had a huge smallie follow my lure in right under the Campbell Bridge...I can still remember the sight of that fish. The second day the fishing was slightly slower, but I was fishing my homemade crankbait along a very deep clay bank when this big smallmouth engulfed it. The fish was 21.5 inches and 5 pounds even. Needless to say, after that trip I was VERY active in writing letters against the dam to newspapers and politicians. I've spent a lot of time on the trout water, hiked and climbed Cardiac and Suicide many times, had good days and bad. I even fished this water with Bob Knight, when he was still coaching at Indiana U. He was drifting nymphs through a piece of ugly, log-laced water just above Dry Fork, and getting hung up on every cast. After about the fifth time of snapping off and retying, he turned in disgust to go fish someplace else, and tripped over a submerged limb, falling flat on his face in two feet of water. The air turned blue for several miles up and downstream! The smallie fishing on the Meramec is a shadow of what it was in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The spotted bass took over the lower river, and the jet boat traffic took over much of the rest of it. For a while, the jetboat wakes apparently messed up the spawn...I believe the fish weren't adapted to the wakes and commotion and siltation caused by the advent of jetboats, and the population of smaller fish just dropped to almost nothing for a few years. So for a while there were very few bigger fish, as those year classes went through their life cycle. But the smallies eventually adapted, and the population went back up somewhat. But fishing pressure, and especially the increased gigging due to the convenience of jet boats, still keeps the smallmouth population much lower than it was when I first started fishing it. But the Meramec is still one of my favorite rivers. Beautiful green water, big bluffs, and smallmouths along with trout, what more can you ask for?

At one time or another I've floated all of Current River from Tan Vat to Doniphan. I even guided on it one summer when my friend and guide Gaylon Watson needed an extra hand. I remember one float where we were guiding a big family group, and I got stuck with two teenage girls in my canoe. They weren't all that into fishing, and continually hung up in the trees when they did fish, but I was proud of the fact that one of them actually caught the biggest smallmouth of the trip. This was on Gaylon's favorite stretch, from Powdermill to Van Buren. He had a perfect gravel bar a short distance below Paint Rock Bluff that he always camped on overnight, but on this trip one couple refused to camp on a gravel bar, and we spent one whole day before the trip getting a camping trailer down a very rough road to the vicinity of Paint Rock, so that the couple could camp in it while the rest of the party camped on the gravel bar. On a trip with Bob Todd below Big Spring, we were drifting through a side channel off the river when we jumped a doe. Then we saw two fawns standing on the bank where the doe had been...and one of them was an albino! Beautiful little creature. The stretch above Cedargrove is the only place where I've actually seen a live armadillo in Missouri (plenty of road kills, but no other live ones). I've spent a lot of time flyfishing between Montauk and Baptist Camp and below, and that's where I've caught my biggest MO brown trout, a 29 incher. I floated from Williams Landing to Two Rivers this past summer, and caught more than 70 smallmouths. None were very big, though...I think the biggest was about 16 inches. It's a great river, and only the boat traffic and party floaters keep it from being one of my favorites.

First time I ever floated the Eleven Point was on a college sponsored canoe trip with a bunch of other college students. It was in early April, and we floated two days from Greer to Riverton. As I remember, the trip got off to a bad start. I slammed my finger in the car door as we were unloading gear, and had a really sore and swollen finger the whole trip. I also remember that all I had to camp with was a piece of canvas tarp...I'd done plenty of gravel bar camping, but never had a tent, just slept out under the stars. Well, it got COLD overnight, and I wrapped myself in the tarp. Woke up the next morning with frost covering the tarp and my hair. I don't remember anything about the fishing, so it must have been poor. I floated the upper river, Thomasville to Greer, on a four day trip with Gaylon Watson and Gene Jackson, who at the time were guides on Current River. The Eleven Point trip, which Gaylon did every year, was his pleasure trip as opposed to the work trips on the Current. Gaylon was really into goggle-eye fishing for fun, and would spend hours in a single pool working the goggle-eye over. I was more into covering territory and seeking smallmouths, so slowing myself enough to stay with him wasn't easy. The fishing that trip was poor, although the river was in good condition. I did a nice float on the river below Riverton with Bob Todd in November one year, trying to catch walleye. No walleye were caught, but we did catch a few nice smallmouths. But on another trip with Bob, this time on the upper river from Thomasville to Cane Bluff in early spring, Bob caught nothing and I caught one 6 inch smallie. So...although I know the Eleven Point is good fishing, I've never had a good fishing trip on it. But it's a beautiful wild river.

Hi, everybody. In looking down through the list of stream forums, I realized that I've been on most of them, and since this is something I really love...Ozark streams and fishing, I decided to just make some comments and tell a few stories on each river. This is the first one... First time I was ever on the North Fork was on my first honeymoon, back in 1977. My new wife and I floated it above Twin Bridges (above the trout water). I don't remember much about it, but I have photos of a beautiful little river and I remember catching a couple of 15-16 inch smallmouths. I fished the trout sections with Shawn Taylor, who lives on the river and at the time was guiding on it, with my best trout fishing buddy Tom and our friend the Montana fishing guide. It was his first time on the river, and he was very impressed with it (this from a man who guided regularly on the Yellowstone). Of course, the first fish he caught was a 20 inch wild rainbow, so that may have colored his impressions a bit. We stopped and fished every riffle, and Shawn had a rather unique way of boat handling. We were in a big johnboat, and he was out of the boat and in the water, often in water up to his neck, holding the boat back so we could fish deep fast water areas. A day or so later, the three of us floated it in canoes without Shawn. That was the day that Tom broke his newest, high dollar Winston. I also remember a trip in mid-October, when the fall foliage was at its peak. The river was low and clear, and fishing was tough, but was it ever gorgeous! Beautiful river, and the closest we have in Missouri to a Western trout stream.

Thanks, BB... Yeah, that was in 1986, for the 1987 trout stamp. It was a fun design to do, with the old stocking truck and milk jugs. I've been on the river with Turner a time or two. Joel and I never have gotten a chance to fish together. I've spent some time with others at MDC. For those of us who care about stream smallies, Kevin Meneau, the biologist who is mostly in charge of smallie regulations, is about the best friend we can have. For some reason, I don't really know anybody who fishes much for the white bass and stripers. I've never gotten into it, myself.

So...favorite ways to fish for smallmouths: I love to fish out of a solo canoe, even on streams that most people might consider too small to be floatable. I like to cover a lot of water and fish fast moving lures, many of which I make myself. To me, the greatest thing about river smallmouth is the way they strike surface and near surface lures, and I love seeing them attack a lure. So my favorite lures are topwaters, a crankbait that I make myself that runs only a foot or two deep, and a homemade spinnerbait that I almost always fish so that it runs just under the surface. Of course, I fish for smallies yearround, and when it gets cold the fast moving lures don't work, so I go to homemade hair jigs and tubes this time of year. And once in a while the fast moving lures aren't working well even in the summer, in which case I'll go to a jig and pig and various soft plastics. I occasionally use a fly rod for smallies, but mostly reserve the long rod for trout fishing.

I sometimes wonder, in reality, how many meat hogs learn about fishing spots from the internet, however. As Butts and Sharps alluded, it seems that most of the meat fishermen I run into are locals, who obviously already know about the creeks they are fishing. Not saying they wouldn't be checking out stuff on the net, but would they be likely to travel halfway across the state to fish somebody else's creeks? I don't know...but I'm not willing to take the chance. The meat fishermen have always been around, both the legal ones and the illegal ones. There may be fewer of them now than there once were...but on the other hand, with all the advances in equipment and knowledge, they are probably better anglers than in the past, and able to do more damage. And even in the absence of meat hogs, pure fishing pressure CAN affect a smallmouth stream. Seems to me that, unlike trout streams which seem to be able to take an unbelievable amount of catch and release fishing pressure and still provide good fishing, a heavily fished smallmouth stream will eventually become tough to catch fish from. Are the fish learning to avoid lures? Are is there more delayed mortality than we think there is? Or is it something else? One thing is certain, there are a lot more threats to smallie streams than just fishing pressure. I used to spend a LOT of time on the Meramec River, everywhere from Maramec Spring all the way to Robertsville. I watched the fishery on this river decline very abruptly in the mid 1980s. The only reason I can come up with for the decline, which was in numbers of smaller fish first, was something affecting the spawn, and the only thing I thought could have affected the spawn was the advent of jetboats, the wakes of which were causing commotion and stress to spawning fish along the banks, and stirring up silt which covered the nests. For a long time I was totally against jetboats for that reason. But as time has passed, I believe the fish finally became accustomed to jetboat wakes, and that they no longer affect the spawn the way they once did. That doesn't mean that unlimited jetboat use is totally benign, however. A lot of people who have spent the years on the rivers that I have are convinced that jetboat wakes have widened and shallowed a lot of the riffle areas on the Meramec, Gasconade, and Current. The constant pounding of the shorelines of the rivers by the wakes of large boats in such confined spaces have caused quite a bit of bank erosion. And maybe the WORST thing that has happened to the population of BIG smallmouths from jetboats is the fact that they have made gigging so much easier and more popular. Far too many giggers illegally kill smallmouths and other game fish, and there is virtually NO enforcement of laws against it. And before you think I'm only against jetboats, I'm really getting concerned about the lack of enforcement of the laws against riding ATVs in stream beds. Seems like that problem is now growing again by leaps and bounds. And thanks to a political climate in which MO DNR is handcuffed by lack of funds and lack of support for enforcement and protection activities, gravel dredging and other destructive development practices along the streams are getting worse. But enough ranting...sorry to hijack the thread, which started out to be about favorite smallie streams and favorite ways to fish them!

I agree with the "secrecy". The stream that I am certain is the best in Missouri for numbers of smallmouths, with the occasional 18-20 incher, is one that I have yet to see another angler on during the low waters of summer (although I know that there are others who know about it and fish it). And I intend to do all I can to keep it that way. The best small wading creek in my area (only about 3 miles of fishable water, but you can easily catch more than 50 fish on it up to 19 inches or so), I made the mistake of telling somebody without stressing to them to keep it quiet. Found out later that they had told a couple of other people, and I'm just agonizing over whether I'm going to see the fishery decline abruptly next summer. Fact is that fishing success on smallies in Ozark streams is VERY much related to fishing pressure. All other things being equal, if the stream is big enough to have jet boats, tournaments, and lots of gigging, it will be poorer fishing than a canoeable but not jetboatable stream, simply because the jet boats make it so much easier and more convenient to fish (and gig). The canoeable streams that have lots of canoe rental outfits will not be as good as those that are strictly do-it-yourself floating. And the little creeks that don't have convenient access will be better than those that do. Fishing on Ozark streams is also continually changing. I've been fishing Ozark rivers for more than 40 years. Overall, the best fishing on the larger streams was back in ten year period from 1975 to 1985, when the 12 inch length limit on MO streams had time to take effect, but before the advent of jet boats--and on northern Ozark streams, before spotted bass started taking over. The middle and lower Meramec and Gasconade were, at the time, probably the two best streams in the Midwest for big smallmouths. The best fishing on the smaller but canoeable streams was from about 1990 to 2000, but they've been getting more popular since the beginning of that time, and now I'm seeing a decline in the fisheries in them. Gravel mining, pollution, erosion, and maybe even predation from otters in a few cases, are all contributing to the decline. That's why, if you have a great creek, you better cherish it and be very protective of it...the great creeks are getting fewer all the time.

Count me in if possible. No doubt that the upper Buffalo is the most beautiful stream in the Ozarks, and maybe in the nation.

Hey Sam, good report. Last time I was on the Current, I watched a pretty disreputable looking character doing his best to snag trout. I was kinda happy to catch 3 nice ones just upstream from him...didn't see him get anything! I'm glad to find this site. Gavin, glad to see you're hanging around, too.