Al Agnew

Love that place. Back when I was a lot younger, before anybody ever heard of "parkour", I'd go there and just run and jump all over the place, going as fast as I could to get from one side to the other, staying off the trail and in the rocks.

I knew a guy who stopped smoking at about age 55 after being a heavy smoker since he was a teen. He said that if he lived to 80, he planned to start smoking again because he had really enjoyed it. There's a fine line between being obsessively "healthy" in your habits, and being prudent but enjoying life more. Most of us have others that depend upon us, so it would be pretty selfish to just do what you want and eat what you want no matter what the consequences. But take it from somebody who is on the downhill side...life gets shorter every day and the days go quicker with every year. My fly fishing buddy and I have begun saying things like, "Well, we better do this while we still can." And there are things that we wish we would have done when we COULD still do them.

Several considerations...if it's you and your wife, can she help you load and unload it? A 12 foot john is too small, a 14 footer is about minimum size but you could do okay in it. But halfway decent 14 footers are rather heavy, so you couldn't load and unload it on your own. That pretty much goes for just about any powered craft other than a square stern canoe. The old 19 ft. Grumman aluminum square stern canoe would suit your purposes (it is not tippy and is capable of carrying a lot of weight) but it's pretty heavy, too. Whatever boat you have, you won't get up shallow riffles using the motor, so don't even plan on it, plan on wading and dragging the boat up riffles. Trying to push it with a prop motor will result in motor repair! The motor would be strictly for going up deeper pools. There are sections of the Meramec below the mouth of the Bourbeuse where, if the water isn't too low, you could travel quite a ways with the motor, but no other Ozark stream within easy driving distance is that big until you get to the lower Gasconade. So are you and the family willing and capable of getting out and wading frequently?

Huh?? As moguy said, the draft chute shoudn't do ANYTHING in current, as the current would be pushing it at the same speed as the canoe...those things are for slowing a boat in the wind in slack water. You gotta be doing something wrong, or else we're misunderstanding you. Current will push anything that's in it the same speed it is moving, unless you actively do something to slow it down. Are you trying to slow the canoe down and it's still being pushed by the current faster than the kayak was when you were trying to slow it down? That's possible IF the canoe is significantly wider than the kayak and/or significantly longer and you get it sideways. If there is a big difference in the size of the hull below the waterline (either wider, longer, or both), then you'll have to learn to modify the kinds of strokes you did with the kayak to slow it. But adding weight will just put more of the hull below the waterline where the current can affect it. And be very careful if you try a drag chain. As has been said, if you hang it in fast water it can flip the canoe VERY fast.

Not surprising. The Ozarks is classic karst topography, which means the underground is honeycombed with voids, fissures, and caves. It's the same thing that causes big springs, like Mammoth Spring. Grand Gulf is a collapsed cave system. So a new sinkhole opening up is too be expected on a geologic time scale. It's just that this one happened to open up now. It will be interesting to find out how much water is being lost to it, and where that water will come back to the surface. And whether it will enlarge and take more and more of Spring River. Edit: upon reading a little more about it, seems that it's just a hole that opened up to take water beneath a bit of a ledge, and back out just downstream. Not really a sinkhole.

Two differences between the AR types and typical hunting rifles: they look cool and military and “tactical”, and they take high capacity magazines. The “cool” factor makes them especially attractive to the nutcases and the high capacity makes them better at wiping out crowds. Is that enough to ban them? I would say yes, but only if you could somehow insure that the millions already in existence can’t end up with people who aren’t going to care about the law. Otherwise it’s pointless and only punishes the law-abiding.

Yep, the park outfitter uses that access.

Your mistake was that you didn’t pay the price for the “all debouchery provided” campsites.

Well, we’ve already established that the right is limited, hence the prohibition on private ownership of fully automatic weapons without a very hard to get permit. Now we’re just arguing about how far to go in limiting it.

Okay, guys...some of you may know that I’ve been writing a book about the Meramec River system. The writing was easy enough, and I thought that I would have plenty of photos to go along with it. But I now realize that these streams are so familiar to me that I’ve actually taken very few photos of them over the years. So I kinda need some photos...if you have digital photos of any part of the Meramec, Bourbeuse, Big, Huzzah, or Courtois, I might be able to use them. I don’t think I’d be able to pay for the use, though. I would give you credit right next to the photo. Floating, fishing, or people otherwise using the rivers with an emphasis on the scenery is mainly what I need, or just landscapes. Message me if you have any and think you’d like to see them in print, and we can go from there.

Yeah, I’m not sure how you’d differentiate firearms like that nor am I sure the premise is true. “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” While Supreme Courts have wrestled with the meaning, if you just parse it out a with a bit of understanding of history, seems to me that the writers were mostly concerned with being against the idea of a big standing army and thought militias that could be formed by the federal or state governments should take the place of a national army, not hold it in check. Hence the “well regulated” and “necessary to the security of a free state” wording...note it did not say “necessary to the security FROM the state”. But then it said “the right of the PEOPLE”, not “right of the states to arm the people”, which would mean the people should keep the arms. Period. Any other use of those arms that didn’t run afoul of laws would then be implied to be a part of the right to bear them. And given the times, I kinda doubt that the writers could have envisioned a time when almost nobody would need guns just to survive on the frontier. I’ll let you know what my attorney fees are for that opinion😁😁

21 bridge to the park is less than 3 miles, probably too short. Blackwell to the park is actually closer to 9 miles, regardless of what the paddling guide says—Oz Hawksley. made a mistake there, one of two mistakes I found on the mileages in his original book, and it’s never been corrected. Blackwell to 21 is closer to what you’re looking for but not sure if the park canoe rental will do it. Also not sure they do the park to Mammoth float, and it’s no more than three miles. 21 to Mammoth would be about perfect if they would do that one.

I really wish the GoPro I have wasn’t so wide angle that it distorts everything. I hate curved rods and water lines.

Yeah, they are pretty true to size.

I can't believe it. Finally find the almost perfect wet wading shoes, and they discontinue them! I was going to order several more pairs, even planned to order in a bigger size and use them for wading boots over my waders for places where felt is banned. Now I gotta do some research to find out if any of the other Five Ten products will work. Arrgghh!!!

Couple things...first, if you don't already know this, you can tell how close to normal the river is for this time of year simply by comparing the flow in cfs to the median flow for this date. Median for right now is 436 cfs, present flow is 608 cfs. You can then look at the graph for flow in cfs, and compare it to the graph for level in feet, and kinda guess at where the median flow would fall on the level in feet graph, and thus tell how many inches or feet above normal it is. I'd guess from looking at the graphs that it's about 6-8 inches above normal. Now...if you are already familiar with the river, just picture 6 or 8 more inches of water flowing through the riffles. This is for the gauge at Akers, which is just a short distance DOWNSTREAM from Welch Spring, so it's pretty accurate for the area BELOW Welch. However, Welch Spring is a BIG spring, and adds a lot of water to the river. So go to the gauge at Montauk to see what the river is doing up there, and thus get some idea of what it would be like if you're just above Welch. It's flowing 157 cfs, which is just a tiny bit above normal. So I think from those readings that you could probably wade it okay above Welch Spring, but maybe not as easily downstream from Welch. Just in my experience, anything over about 400 cfs is getting pretty pushy for wading in fast water, except for wide, shallow riffles.

Yeah, it's a long way between good pools on several of the creeks I fish, so you gotta cover some water to get to fish enough good water. Good core exercise. Really loving my 5-10 Water Tennies...best wading shoes I've ever had.

Nope, that was a bunch of years ago. Every time I caught her she weighed a little less--she was on the decline, and probably died of old age.

And by the way, I've decided to crimp the barbs on many of my walk the dog topwaters, especially those with three treble hooks. I've found it doesn't make me lose hardly any more fish, and it removes a lot of the danger. I got one in my finger day before yesterday, and slipped it right back out.

Yeah, some goofball on the internet was "testing" the different methods of getting hooks out by sticking a big hook in his own arm. When it came to the string trick, he had another guy that was supposed to be pushing down on the eye of the hook, pushing it toward the buried barb as you're supposed to do. But he only told the guy to hold his thumb on the eye; he didn't tell him to push down on it. He gave the string a yank, the eye slipped out from under the other guy's thumb, and the hook just rotated, actually bringing the barb back out through the skin with the rest of the hook still buried. Which made it easy to cut the barb off and get the hook out, but was extremely painful. Pushing down HARD on the eye is one of the really, really important things to do for the trick to work. If you do, and give the string a hard, sharp yank (not an easy pull, a sharp yank), the hook will come out almost painlessly. (and go flying off into the sunset, never to be found again, usually, so turn your own head away when you give it the yank--it would be a bummer to get the hook out only to have it stick you in the eye!) Trust me, I've done it enough by now to be an expert. It's never failed yet. Last time was just a couple weeks ago, when I had to get one out of my belly. Most difficult time was a couple years ago when I got one in my hand, when fishing alone. You almost need two hands, one to push on the eye, one to give the string a yank. But I figured it out by going up on the bank, finding a log with a nice little bump of a knot on it, pushing the eye down with the knot, and yanking with the other hand. I breathed a sigh of relief when it worked. Only time recently I couldn't get it done was when I hooked myself on the back of the arm where I couldn't see it or reach it. Had to drive home and have Mary push on the eye and do the yank. It was her first time, but she did it perfectly.

Yesterday, the day before the season opens and the slaughter begins, I went back to this creek to fish downstream from the bridge. Forecast was for thunderstorms starting about 1 PM, so I got on the water by about 8:30 AM and planned to stop fishing and hike back upstream around 12:30 PM. Fishing started out a bit slow...I caught a 13 incher in the plunge pool below the low water bridge, and then went about 20 minutes and two pools before catching a 15 incher. After that, I caught fish fairly slowly but steadily for more than an hour, until I got to one of the longest, slowest pools in this stretch. I fished the upper end of it along the deeper bank and caught only a small largemouth, then saw a 20 inch class smallie and two more in the 16-18 inch range swim past me coming from the middle of the channel. Fished down the upper half of the pool with only a couple small ones until I reached a nice downed tree that furnished about the most cover in the entire pool. There I got savage topwater strikes from three different fish, landing two of them, both 16 inchers. Fished on down catching several more fish in that same pool, and from then on I was catching fish just about every pool that was deep enough to hold them. All on topwater, all the bigger fish were just savage. I caught one 16 incher that was lying in a little rockpile--the remains of an attempt at bank stabilization that got bypassed by the creek; the present bank is 30 feet away and eating into a bottom field. It wasn't any more than a foot deep around the rocks, and I'd made a cast to the bank and played the lure out toward the rocks, which were only about 10 feet from where I was standing. When the lure got within about 6 feet of the rocks, this smallie just lanced out of that shallow water and crushed it. I didn't catch any over 16 inches, but ended up with almost 40, and probably 75% of them were between 13 and 16 inches. Fishing was so good I just kept going, farther downstream than I'd ever waded. Then I noticed the clouds gathering. Looked at the time...12:45. Looked like the weather forecast was going to be correct. And I was 4 miles down the creek. I had come to a long pool backed up from what I knew was a private low water bridge. I thought I might hike the road back up to my truck...still better than 3 miles by road, but easier walking. Then, as I approached the bridge, still fishing, a guy came out onto it on an ATV. He watched me catch a 15 incher just above the bridge, and shouted, "Beautiful!" Well, at least he apparently wasn't going to jump all over me for being on his creek. I climbed up onto the bridge and started talking to him, and he asked me how far I'd come. I told him I'd started at the bridge upstream. He was amazed that I'd fished that far. I said, "Yeah, gotta admit I'm not looking forward to the hike back." "Well, I'll take you back," he said. Wow, I was very quick to agree to THAT! Perfect ending to a great morning of fishing.

My biggest bass on the fly rod was kinda cheating...my dad caught an 8 pounder and brought it to my house to put in my pond. A few months later, I caught it on a panfish popper! Also caught it twice on lures within the next 6 months, but never saw it again after that.

We hit a deer in Montana, driving to Yellowstone Park. Totally wrecked the grill and headlight area of my old pickup. Got it fixed for about $3000. High deductible on insurance, so we payed most of that. That was a couple years after a friend borrowed the truck and hit one, doing about the same amount of damage. Our part of Montana is REALLY scary for deer, because the roads are mainly in the river bottoms, which is where the irrigated fields are, which is where the deer from all over the whole country congregate much of the year. You'll see literally hundreds of deer as you drive along a 30 mile stretch of highway, any time of the day but especially early and late, and at night all those deer are roaming across the highway. After this last time, I had a heavy duty deer-catcher grill and bumper assembly installed on the truck, so the next time it happens the deer will suffer but hopefully the truck won't. Not only that, but now that they are allowing the bison to come out of the park and winter in the Gardiner area, there's about a 15 mile stretch of the highway there that is likely to have bison in the middle of it, not to mention elk. REALLY don't want to crash into one of those.

I gotta wonder, too, about the supposed infertility of Ozark waters. Yep, we see that crystal clear water and think it's infertile. But take a closer look and you'll see that there is PLENTY of food for bass. The streams are chock full of crayfish, minnows of various species, and aquatic insects. The lakes have a great base of shad along with the crayfish. And if you look at some of the places across the nation that grow bigger smallmouth than the Ozarks, they aren't significantly more fertile. I believe genetics plays a far stronger role in the size, or lack of size, of Ozark game fish, than the fertility of the water.

Well, that's one time the string trick wouldn't have worked!