Al Agnew

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.