Al Agnew

Not ours, not public. Private landowners have always been okay with people fishing it, mainly because not many people did and those that did, like me, were very careful and considerate. Just sad to see what was once amazingly good fishing for the size of the creek go downhill to almost nothing.

I'll start by giving a little history. There's a creek that's not far from my house; in fact, it's about the closest creek with smallmouth in it to my house. When we moved to Ste. Genevieve County, I looked on all the maps I had and saw this creek that I was unfamiliar with. I drove to the two main bridges on it and looked it over. Small. But maybe it had some fish. I went to check it out with my brother in law from the upper bridge. We waded downstream, but soon found that one of the landowners had bulldozed out a long section of the creek. Shallow water. Bedrock in places. But in the few spots where we found a bit of depth, we did catch some smallmouth. Still, I didn't think it was worth fishing. That was perhaps 30 years ago. About 20 years ago, I spent a couple of days fishing it from the lower bridge, both upstream and downstream. I caught a few small fish, nothing of any size, and was not impressed with the habitat. Downstream was a little better, and one of the times, in early summer, I even caught a couple of young of the year walleye, so apparently the walleye come up into the lower end of the creek, where it meets another creek of similar size, from the Mississippi. I floated the combined creek down to the Mississippi once, catching quite a few spotted bass, but few smallies. Now fast forward to about 15 years ago. I had an afternoon free and decided to try the creek again, going upstream from the lower bridge. The habitat had gotten somewhat better. It's still a small creek, with riffles that you can just about jump across in the low water of mid-summer, and the pools are mostly shallow, averaging only a foot or two deep, and with only a few spots reaching five feet or so. But...I discovered the creek was chock full of smallmouth. And some of them were amazingly big. In the next few years, I fished the creek from both bridges, both upstream and downstream, and the fishing was almost phenomenal. I was catching 20 fish per mile of creek, and 17-18 inchers were common. I even caught a couple that were legitimate 20 inchers. I kept quiet about the creek. I told almost nobody. I only took my brother to it, nobody else. And for a few years, the fishing remained terrific. I could depend upon catching a bunch of fish with some really nice ones every time. I didn't pound it; I fished each section only once or twice per summer. Then, some doofus who had relatives who lived on the creek starting bragging about all the big smallmouth he was catching--on an internet message board. The next time I fished the creek, I noticed signs of other anglers. And unfortunately, signs of them keeping and cleaning smallmouth. In the next couple of years the fishing went downhill. It never got bad; I could still depend upon catching quite a few fish, though not the numbers I had previously. But those 18 inch plus smallies were pretty much gone. Then came the big flood last spring. I went to the creek once a month or two after the flood, wading downstream from the upper bridge. What you have to understand is that this creek has shallow gravel and rock beds over solid bedrock. Remember that first time, when somebody had bulldozed the creek? They had spread the gravel around and made everything shallow, and scraped some of it out of the creek, exposing the bedrock. In the years since that time, the creek had gotten back to a somewhat more natural appearance. The bars are finer gravel intermixed with bigger rocks, 6 inch to 24 inch cobbles and scattered bigger boulders. In the heyday, the pools were mostly bedrock bottomed, but the rock bars formed little dams backing up the pools and making them deep enough to hold fish, and the scattered bigger boulders in the creek provided hiding places in the usually very clear water. But the flood had simply blown everything out. Those little dams were gone, the rocks scattered and pushed far up the banks, the gravel blown out into the bottoms and far downstream. The bedrock was scoured, the boulders were moved around. I didn't even fish very long. I didn't go back last summer. Today I went to the lower bridge to wade upstream. The lower section has more gravel and longer pools--or at least it did have longer pools. But now, the pools were filled in with finer gravel, some of them completely gone. The habitat, never really good, had gone way downhill. I caught one lone smallmouth, a 14 incher, two little largemouth, and two spotted bass/smallmouth hybrids, also small. Then I went up to the upper bridge. There was a 10 inch smallie in the first little pool. But the next pool, one that had always produced a fish or two, was nearly gone, the couple of big boulders that had furnished cover had disappeared, and I caught nothing. The next pool, always one of the best for big fish, was completely gone. The pool on the bend, a bluff pool, was still there and really wasn't much different. I ALWAYS caught fish from it. Nothing. Next pool, another bluff pool, was also intact. Nothing. And from there on down as far as I cared to wade, there were no more good pools, just gravel and rock bars on the sides and shallow, bedrock bottom runs. It seems the big flood had finished the creek. Maybe in a few years it will come back. I'll keep checking it once a year to see. But I returned home saddened. It was never a stream that could handle fishing pressure, it was never a stream with really good habitat, yet there for a while it showed how good these small streams can be once the habitat improves just a bit, and the bass are protected by being ignored. Small creeks are fragile, susceptible to all kinds of abuses, from bulldozing to otters to poor land use practices in the watershed to anglers pounding them. But sometimes you find a real gem. And sometimes the gem disappears.

Don't know. It would slightly surprise me if the clipping was done by MDC. Could be some private individual clipping the fin for his own curiosity. IF it is manmade, it ticks me off. I have a problem with mutilating wild fish.

Disagree. I almost never go into the woods with a gun unless I'm hunting, and I spend a lot of time hiking in country with mountain lions, wolves, and grizzlies. The griz are the only critters I'm really worried about, and all the latest studies show bear spray being more effective at stopping an attack than any gun (and I have a .44 magnum revolver, but I'm pretty sure in the stress of an attack I wouldn't be effective with it, it would be kind of a last ditch hail mary once the bear is on me). Yes, there have been a few more mountain lion attacks in recent years, nearly all in places where the lions are living in close proximity to people and are not hunted. I don't think there has ever been a documented lion attack in Montana where I am half the year. And wolves aren't even on the threat radar.

Guess it just depends upon how dedicated you want your truck to be for hauling your boats and gear. Personally, I want mine to be as good at hauling that stuff as possible. I have a GMC Canyon, kinda mid-size pickup, 6 ft. bed (can't believe anybody thinks a 5 ft. bed would be better). When I bought it, I began the search for the perfect rack system, coupled with the perfect cap. I wanted a cap that rolled up and got almost completely out of the way, not one of those that raise up on hinges. I wanted racks that didn't interfere with the cap and that would hold two canoes or kayaks. Problem is that nearly all the covers used clamps to hold the framework on the inside of the bed, and most racks also attached the same way, so you ended with the two in conflict. Finally found a set of racks that attach in the stake pockets, and a cap that rolls up nicely. That way I can haul the canoes on the racks and have plenty of (more or less) dry storage space for the gear. Or, I can haul two canoes on the racks and up to two more canoes or kayaks in the bed. Or roll the cap out of the way and carry a load of firewood that sticks up higher than the sides of the bed.

On the river, not the trout parks, I'd hate to be restricted to the bank. In the parks, you have a lot of groomed land behind you and nice paths, you have fish all piled up in easy to reach places, and fishing from the bank is very doable. But on the river, the fish aren't nearly as concentrated, they hold in spots that aren't always easy to reach from the bank, and there's always something obstructing your backcast. Yes, you can always roll cast, but it's usually better to be in the water. The easy fly fishing is always in and around the riffles. I don't want to be restricted to just one riffle area, I want to be able to wade (and float, possibly) to several different riffle areas. Tough to fight brushy banks to get up or down the river very far. So I kinda agree with Wrench, it would be better to work on your wading legs and get to where you can wade, if you want to fly fish. It's tough to position yourself to fish a riffle area from the bank, as well. So while fly fishing is very easy and effective in the parks for the bank angler, the river will be a lot tougher.

Yeah, I agree that Dawt is ugly...looks like they decided to put up some sort of building on every available square inch. Kinda what you could expect with no building restrictions along the rivers.

I am a member of a loose organization made up of a bunch of guys who get together twice a year just to enjoy each others' company, drink a bunch of adult beverages, eat good food, and fish. We were laughing this time that our organization never does any good works, we just have organized to have fun with good friends in a systematic manner. We usually have our gatherings at a cabin near Maramec Spring, but this spring it was decided to have it down at Dawt Mill on the North Fork, since two of our members have houses on the river in the vicinity. So Thursday found me leaving the house at about 8:30 AM, headed south for the North Fork. My buddy Tom was going to be there much of the day, though the real gathering wouldn't begin until Friday, and he planned to fish part of the trout section. My plan was to float a half day on Bryant Creek, and he would pick me up at the end of the float. But he texted and said that there had been heavy rains in the Bryant and North Fork watershed, and the rivers might not be fishable. Later, he texted again and said the North Fork was muddy where they had planned to fish. I crossed the North Fork at Twin Bridges not long after I got that text, and it was slightly high but plenty clear enough to fish, so I filed that fact away and went on to my put-in on Bryant Creek at Sycamore. But when I got there, it was high and very murky, pretty much unfishable. So I texted Tom back and told him I had a change of plans and would get the folks at Twin Bridges to shuttle me up to Hebron for a float back down to their place. It was weird. The water had about 3 feet visibility, and that often makes for good fishing with my homemade crankbait as well as other lures I liked to use, especially on these streams that are ordinarily very clear. So I started out with the crankbait, my twin spin, and a larger walk the dog topwater. Nothing was working. In fact, I went well over two miles and nearly three hours without hooking a fish. Then, I switched the twin spin for a tandem willow leaf spinnerbait. Very quickly, I caught a fat 18 incher, and two casts later a 14 incher. Three casts after that, a 12 incher. Wow. Suddenly, most of the spots that looked like they would hold a smallmouth were producing fish. I was drifting down a fast, rock-lined run when I hooked another big fish. This one was 19 inches! In the next fast run, I hooked another very good fish, and realized I was drifting right for a big log in heavy current. I had to take one hand off the rod to do a hard sculling draw stroke to miss the log, and couldn't control the fish, which went into some brush piled up against the log and broke me off. That was my only spinnerbait exactly like that, so I put on another that was somewhat similar. It didn't quite work as well, but ended up producing my third good fish, a 17.5 incher. I finished the float with a total of well over 30 smallmouth, after not catching a thing the first half of the float. I drove down to the house of the member of our group who had set the whole thing up, Randy, and Tom was grilling porterhouse steaks. It was me, Tom, Danny (Tom's fishing partner for the day), Randy, Randy's wife, and Tom Shipley of Brewer and Shipley fame, our newest member. We spent the night at Randy's house. The next day, another member, Chris, made it down early in the morning, and we all planned to float from Patrick Bridge to Dawt Mill. We drove to Dawt to get the keys to our rooms where we would be staying the rest of the weekend, and arrange to park vehicles there for the day, and then went up to Patrick Bridge to put in. Tom and Danny had not done well yesterday, having opted to wade up at Kelly's, where the water had been clearer than it had been downstream. They caught a half dozen trout, but nothing special. But the river had cleared during the day, and though it was still high it appeared to be very fishable where we were floating, with about 4 feet visibility. The others were floating in pontoon craft, while I was in my solo canoe. Everybody had brought both fly and spinning tackle, and under those conditions there was a good chance of catching a big brown with spinning tackle and minnow lures. Indeed, Randy scored on a nice brown soon after we started. But nobody else was catching anything. We were stopping at every riffle and drifting nymphs with little luck. So, I had brought all my bass fishing tackle, and I decided to see how many bass I could catch in the trout water. I mainly fished the slower water areas with a spinnerbait and crankbait to begin with, and quickly caught a 14 inch largemouth. Then I had a big striper or hybrid follow the spinnerbait in, at least a 10 pounder, and thought I might be a little under-rodded for that kind of fish. I saw one more of them, but didn't hook any. I did catch several more largemouth and spotted bass before switching to a topwater lure and catching a nice 16 inch smallmouth. I ended the day with 20 bass caught, while nobody else caught more than two or three trout. The amount of damage the huge flood last year had caused was amazing. There were long stretches of bank where nearly all the trees had been uprooted and lost. A lot of the local anglers were afraid that far too many trout had been washed away, but I think the biggest problem the trout in the river will have in the future is the lack of shade, with all those trees gone. The water temps in the stretch we floated already seemed to warm for the trout. I didn't measure the water temp, but I'd guess it to have been in the upper 60s to near 70, which is not good for trout. I'm afraid that the lower sections of the trout water are really going to suffer from those warmer temps due to the lack of shade. The other members of our group who were coming all arrived that evening at Randy's, where we had brats and burgers and spent the evening catching up on each other, drinking good wine and home-brewed beer. Then those of us staying at Dawt Mill headed for our rooms. It had been many years since I'd been to Dawt Mill, and it was nothing like I remembered it. I remembered just the mill building and a store, but there seemed to be a whole little city there. The rooms were nice. The mill dam is now half gone, with a good rapid at the site. Yesterday, having had poor luck on the trout the day before, nobody could decide where to fish. The others were all geared for trout, and finally opted to float from Blair Bridge down to Randy's place. But I wanted to got back to smallmouth water, so Randy helped me with a shuttle from Twin Bridges to the North Fork Forest Service campground. The float started out crazy, with smaller smallies hitting topwater with wild abandon. I caught 15 in the first half hour and half mile, in decent but not great habitat, and I was thinking it was going to be a terrific day. Then I came to a bigger, deeper pool where I thought I'd really catch some fish, and went down the whole pool without a strike. And just like that, the good fishing was done. I only caught 15 more bass the rest of the five mile float, none of them over 14 inches. I paddled quickly through the last half mile of the float, because there was thunder and lightning and ominous skies to the northwest. I quickly loaded the canoe, and just as I finished tying it down, hail started bombarding me as the crowd of swimmers at the take-out scrambled for their vehicles. The others had not fared well with trout, either. But that evening, we gathered at Dawt at their restaurant, where they prepared salmon, pork loin, duck meat tacos, and other side dishes on their outdoor grill while we relaxed at the outside patio and bar. After eating, we played cards and told jokes and stories until nearly midnight. It was a great finish to the gathering. This post has been promoted to an article

No, not necessarily. Any stream section that's a bit too small for the canoe rentals to operate, whether a tributary or the headwaters of a larger river, will be pretty similar. The key for me would be to pick a stream, or an area with several streams, where you have a choice of several different accesses. Keep in mind that when you start exploring headwaters and smaller streams, you may run afoul of landowners. If the stream is actually large enough for canoeing at least part of the year but not big enough to support a canoe rental business, you shouldn't have any trouble, though there are always a few landowners who wish to give everybody grief, and a holiday weekend might bring them out. You also can't depend upon the info on the usability of all the accesses in Chuck's book, because things have changed since he wrote it in many areas. As you check out accesses, note whether they look well-used, there is adequate parking, and there's a lack of purple paint and keep out signs. If it doesn't look like the access is used much or at all, there's probably a good reason.

Looks like you can also get it through Amazon, apparently coming from Appomattox River Company...or order it from them direct.

Looks like you could order the canoe from the Old Town Store part of their website. They say it's in stock and will ship by truck within three days. However, price on canoe is $699, and there is a $100 shipping fee to your curb. If you have a dealer that will work with you, however, you can have it shipped to the store for $50. Just depends upon whether you're willing to pay the extra bucks to get the thing in a timely fashion.

Hey, I invited you on this one! But no...somebody thought making a living was actually more important than fishing😁

The problem with Memorial Day weekend is that you not only have to contend with the party and splash 'n' giggle holiday crowds, but you also have the meat fishermen who have waited all spring to be able to keep a bunch of bass. So while the former tends to congregate on the popular and well-known streams, the latter are usually locals who pound the wading creeks and less well known streams. So if you're primarily wanting to wade and fish, you can immediately cross off any stream big enough to have one or more canoe rental places on it. Then, I'd just pick a stream from Chuck's book that has several accesses in a row, well above the popular parts that have the canoe rentals. Start by driving to the lowest access that's above the stretches served by the canoe rentals VERY early in the morning. If there are already cars parked there, try the next access upstream. Keep going until you find the access with the least vehicles. Hopefully, if you are on the stream at daybreak, you'll be ahead of the others and find at least temporary solitude, and by the time others show up, you'll be well away from the access and happily fishing. As for WHICH stream to pick, it really shouldn't matter all that much. Most Ozark headwater streams have somewhat similar bass populations.

Mary agreed to pick me up at the end of a float on one of my two favorite stretches of the river today, and I didn't even look at the weather forecast, just got up a 6 AM, loaded the solo canoe and gear, and took off for the river. Beautiful morning, little or no wind, warm but comfortable, the river was surprisingly clear--close to 5 feet visibility--and flowing well. I figured at least some smallmouth would be on beds, so I didn't even bring a rod for fishing anything slow on the bottom. I had my usual topwater rod with a walk the dog topwater on it, my spinnerbait rod with twin spin, crankbait rod with homemade crankbait, a stiffer rod for fishing Superflukes, and one more rod for trying various things. I started out trying the homemade Whopper Plopper type lure I'd made; this would be its first trial. Near the end of the first pool, using the WP prototype, I caught my first fish, and it was a good one, an 18.5 inch largemouth. Hey, my lure works. However, I was noticing it wanted to roll over occasionally. I fished it a bit more, but then decided it needed a bit more work. I tried my homemade crankbait, but the water was too clear for me to have the kind of confidence I have with it when Big River is closer to its usual murkiness. I like 4 feet or less visibility for it. Still, I caught a couple of fish on it in the next pool, but they weren't very big--which was disappointing because that pool is a big fish spot. Tried the twin spin, not much happening. Tried the Superfluke, got plenty of action from 8-10 inchers, not much from anything bigger. Put on my homemade Subwalk for a bit, got a couple on it. Topwater wasn't working. And that's the way things went until lunchtime. The upper half of this stretch is decent-looking water, but never seems to be as good fishing as the lower half, so as usual, I planned to fish it a little quicker, saving time to fish the lower half more thoroughly. And as usual, I didn't exactly follow my plan. By noon, halfway through the float time-wise, I was only about 3.5 miles through the 10 mile float. The problem was that the fish weren't very active but once in a while I'd see a good one, though I couldn't get them to bite. I kept trying different retrieves on the lures I was using, experimenting with different versions of those lures as well. And that was taking some time. I ate a bite and then decided to paddle for a while, because the next mile was pretty poor water anyway. I paddled along banks that I figured the bass would be spawning on, and sure enough, saw a bunch of the males on beds. Then I got into better water at about the 4.5 mile mark, and that's when I started throwing a new walk the dog topwater that I'd bought last winter. It's a little smaller than a Sammy 100 but has three small treble hooks, and those hooks are wicked sharp. And that's when the fish turned on. It took me more than two hours to fish the next 3/4th mile because I was catching fish on what seemed to be every other cast. They weren't very big, most of them 10-12 inchers, nearly all smallmouth. One other reason it took me so long to cover that little stretch was that halfway through it, I hooked a decent fish, and when it jumped and threw the lure near the canoe, that 3 treble hook lure came back and hit me right in the belly. Yep, through my thin shirt and one hook buried past the barb in my belly. I'd already been a little scared of that lure with all those little needle hooks trying to lip bass, and I had a feeling something like this would happen. I dug out the side cutters and cut the split ring holding the hook to the lure, got out my knife and cut the other two trebles out of my shirt, then had to carve up my shirt around the buried hook to get the shirt away from it. Then I got my little length of fly line out of my pouch clipped to the tackle box and got ready to do the string trick to get the hook out. Yep, I'm prepared for this eventuality these days. Looped the line around the bend of the hook, pressed on the eye pushing it toward the buried barb, took a deep breath, and jerked hard and sharply on the fly line. Plink. Hook disappeared. Mission accomplished. I replaced the treble and split ring from another lure in my box, but then I decided to take a lesson from the experience, and bent the barbs down on all three trebles. By the time I finished that little stretch, which ends at a spot where I can take out if necessary, the wind had suddenly come up. And did it come up! Suddenly there were 30 or more mile per hour winds blowing me around, and dumping vast amounts of the little flower things off the trees. The river quickly got almost completely covered with that gunk. And pollen. My eyes were watering, I was sneezing and coughing and my nose was running, as my late aunt used to say, "like a sugar-tree". And it was well after 3 PM, and I still had nearly five miles to go, the better five miles of this float. I obviously wasn't going to be able to fish it the way I wanted, because Mary wanted to pick me up no later than 6 PM. I was frustrated by the pollen and stuff coming off the trees, not to mention that wind. So I called Mary and asked her if she could leave now and pick me up at the intermediate access. She said she'd leave right away, but it would take well over a half hour to get there. Which gave me time to drift downstream another quarter mile in order to fish one of my favorite pools. So far, the action had nearly all been smaller fish, but at the head of that pool, I made a cast over a limb a foot above the water, and a big largemouth took the lure as it dangled on the surface. No way I was getting that fish. Luckily, the hooks came out when it shook its head. A few casts later, a big smallmouth hit the lure twice, failing to stay hooked the second time. Not sure how big, but probably over 18 inches. Next cast, another nice smallie hit, and I got that one--17 inches. I caught a couple more in that pool, and then paddled back up to where I had to drag the canoe up to the road. Mary showed up a few minutes after I got there. So I ended up doing half the float I'd planned, the half that wasn't as good, and caught 76 bass; 14 largemouth, 19 spotted bass, and 43 smallmouth. Would the fish have kept hitting like that through the rest of the float? Was that last little flurry the start of the bigger fish getting active? Had I finished the float I'd planned, I would have almost surely caught well over 100 bass, and maybe some bigger ones. Who knows? But it was nice to be able to avoid fishing in that wind and slop, and Mary was happy that it wasn't too late when she had to pick me up.

Got back to Missouri from a month in Montana over the weekend, and though I had things to do both Monday and yesterday, I got out for a couple hours yesterday afternoon. I drove to one of my favorite small wading creeks, a half hour or a bit more away from the house. The spot where I accessed the creek was a low water bridge that happened to be the spot where I caught my first ever smallmouth, back when I was maybe 6 or 7 years old. Though the bridge has been replaced a couple times since that day nearly 60 years ago, it's still a nice spot to get on the creek. Last summer, this creek was magic. I fished it once in early summer and caught a pile of smallies, including a couple that were pushing 19 inches, which was bigger than I'd ever caught on this small creek, on a marathon wade that covered a full day and more than four miles one way up the creek. I went again a little later with a guy visiting from Oregon, and the fish were still there, though he didn't catch any...I kept catching nice fish as I fished behind him. So I was really curious how the fishing would be this year, since this creek tends to hold a lot more fish some years than others. The first pool above the bridge is short, no more than thigh deep at most, and has little cover except a big log half buried in the gravel near the tail. There were no fish on the log, but a 17 incher engulfed my topwater lure over next to the bank just upstream. Then a spooked one the same size off the shallow bank where I was wading; I looked to see if it had been on a bed but there was no bed there. I had a couple follows near the head of the pool, and then as I waded up to the riffle I spooked a couple more decent fish. Okay, I thought, looks like last year's fish are still here. And then I fished the next mile of creek without seeing but one 14 inch smallie, which followed my lure in. I switched lures a couple times with no change. Where were all the fish? There's a pool about a mile up the creek, where you can drive a car right to the water's edge, so it's a popular swimming hole in the hot summer. But for some reason it seems to always hold a couple of nice fish. I figured if I didn't catch anything there I'd definitely call it quits. Kabloosh! A very nice smallmouth attacked the walk the dog lure on my second cast into the pool. 16 inches, not bad. Then the next cast, SWOOSH! This one was bigger, another 17 incher, very scarred and with worn fins, but fat. A couple casts later, another strike, but I missed this one. Okay, I'll fish two more pools. The next pool was shallow, but it produced the biggest smallmouth of the day, an absolutely gorgeous 18 incher. I thought about snapping a picture with my cell phone, because this fish was very richly colored, with bright red eyes, perfect fins, and no missing scales, totally unlike the last one. But I was afraid it might be in spawning mode, and decided it was better to release it immediately. Next pool upstream was deeper...but no fish. I decided I'd gone far enough, and planned to fish a bit below the bridge when I got back down to it. I watched a couple eagles as I made my way back down along the extensive gravel bars. I fished that pool where I'd had the one follow...and caught that 14 incher. But when I got to the bridge, a large family was swimming in the plunge pool below it. I decided to call it a day. Not exactly as I had it planned, only five fish caught, but who cares when they are that kind of quality.

The mine water comes in downstream from Leadwood Access for the most part. In fact, there is a spot no more than a couple hundred yards downstream from the bridge where it boils up out of the river bottom, through the remnant of an old iron pipe. And a bunch of other places in the five miles or so downstream from there. I've never gotten a definitive answer why all these bore holes were drilled in the first place...most are either in the river itself or in the bottoms very close to the river. They once had the iron pipes sticking up a few feet out of the ground and capped, but now the pipes have mostly rusted away. Back when I was a kid, a couple buddies and I were camped on a gravel bar in that stretch when a couple came down the river in a canoe. They asked us what those pipes sticking up out of the water were. We told them, "They're flood control devices. When the forecast calls for heavy rain, a ranger comes down the river and unscrews the metal cap off the pipes so that the excess water can drain down into the mines." I think they believed us.

Most of the floatable streams actually get easier with higher flows, but the cost of mistakes gets MUCH higher. In low water she probably just wades out before being swept into the tree. It's always a juggling act for the canoe rental people, but most err on the side of caution unless they are convinced you are experienced and responsible.

Seems like you almost have to order 303 from somewhere...nobody around here carries it. There have been some arguments on various paddling websites about how good 303 really is. Some have said it sheds oil into the water for quite a while after application. Others say it's terrific. Personally, I've used it and several other UV protectants on my Royalex canoes, including good ol' Armor All, and they all seem to work just fine. I especially love how easily it is to slide the canoe over logs and gravel bars when I put that stuff on it. I do it every spring, and again sometime in mid-summer.

Yep, good weather and water conditions will put a LOT of people on those three streams on spring Saturdays. You won't be by yourself. Huzzah and Courtois will probably have more people than the Meramec in that area, but on the Meramec you'll also be contending with jetboaters. So pick your poison. Gavin's advice is exactly right if you can swing it...put in early, like just after daybreak, fish until the crowds catch up to you, relax until the commotion dies down and wait a little longer, then finish your float later in the afternoon. Both Huzzah Valley and Bass have 5-6 mile floats from their place downstream that you can probably get an early start on if staying at their resort.

I love the Goat Trail. A ledge no more than three feet wide in a few spots, never more than 8 or 10 feet wide, 350 feet above the river, with another 175 feet of cliff above you. Big Bluff is THE highest bluff in the Ozarks, though a few of the stairstep bluffs on the lower end of the Buffalo are pretty close from the river to the top of the highest stairstep cliff.

Just one of the gems in the most spectacular little part of the Ozarks. From Whittaker Point (Hawksbill Crag) to Hemmed-in Hollow to the Goat Trail on Big Bluff to the Indian Creek canyon, and a bunch of other lesser known but just as impressive spots, that upper Buffalo country is amazing.

I think Gierach's stuff is a lot better than a lot of fly fishing books, which tend to get a little pretentious and have way too much navel gazing. I buy every book he publishes. Other than that, though, I'm not a huge collector of fishing books, although over the years I've accumulated quite a few. As high brow as some of the fly fishing books are, though, I like them better than most bass fishing books, which are either unrelenting how-to without good writing, bragging on how good they are at winning tournaments, or way too redneck southern cornpone. I wish there was a writer in the river smallmouth fishing world that writes the kind of stuff that Gierach does. I'll photograph my collection when I get a chance...at least the Missouri collection, because I have about as many fly fishing books at our place in Montana as I do in Missouri, and none of them are duplicates.

Last week when Missouri Tom, Montana Tom, and I were fishing all week and spending the evenings drinking wine or beer and eating good food--and shooting the bull--one night we got to talking about mentors and learning. Missouri Tom said that he'd learned a heck of a lot from Montana Tom. I said I had, too. Then Montana Tom, who was our first and almost only guide in all the years we came to Montana before I got the place out here, said that he had to figure out early on, like the first day he ever had us out, that he had to treat me completely differently from Missouri Tom. "All I had to do with Tom was to tell him to do it my way, but with Al, I learned I should just let him alone, because although he was usually unconventional, he always figured out how to catch fish." I said, "Well, I watched and learned, but you're right, I never liked people actually telling me how to do it." This was an important epiphany for me, though--I learned fly fishing much like I learned a whole lot of things--not by taking classes or instructions, but by reading on my own, watching on my own, and doing it on my own. My dad was a fly fisherman before I was old enough to fish with him, but by the time I was four or five years old he was reservoir bass fishing every Sunday, and the fly rod was relegated to a corner of the garage. When I was in my early teens, I saw it and asked him about it, and he said he'd always fished for smallmouth on Big River with the fly rod, usually with something like a black gnat fly and spinner. By that time I was avidly fishing Big River by myself often, and I decided to try it. I took the old 7.5 ft. glass rod and automatic reel, with the old, rotten fly line on it, for about three trips, caught one smallmouth on it as I remember, and gave it up. That was in the late 1960s. I didn't pick up a fly rod again until sometime in the late 1980s. Mary and I were at an art show in Michigan, and some of the other artists told us they were going fly fishing for king salmon on the Pere Marquette River after the show for a couple days. They had a big clubhouse at a lodge on the river rented, and said they had room for us. I said I didn't have any equipment, but one of our artist friends said he had two extra rods and sets of waders. So we did it. It wasn't exactly classic fly fishing, basically standing 20 feet away from a salmon redd and drifting egg flies across it. In reality it was flossing the fish--egg fly separated by about 12 inches from the weight, drift it so that either the fly went right into the fish's mouth, or the line between the fly and the weight went across its mouth and dragged the fly into it. Kings migrating up the rivers don't feed, but supposedly they will instinctively grab something that drifts close enough to their mouths...but I know you hook a lot more because of the flossing. So my first mentors were those other artists who had done it before, and they taught Mary and me how to drag flies across a redd with a chuck and duck type of short cast. We planned on doing it the next year, so I went to Bass Pro and bought a couple of 7-8 weight fly rods, BPS brand, cheap reels, and figured we were set for salmon fishing. But the next year the show was a month later and the run was about done, while the steelhead run was just beginning. We didn't have any idea how to fish for steelhead, weren't even sure any were actually as far up the river as we were. We took the rods to Alaska a year or so later, and had fun catching silver salmon on the Russian River. But we also spent a couple days at a cabin on Lake Creek, where there were plenty of rainbow trout. The rods and equipment didn't work so well with 12-16 inch rainbows. So when we got back home I decided to buy a trout fly rod. My first one was 4 weight, 2 piece Sage. I'd like to say I still have it, but in reality I have the third replacement for that lifetime guarantee, a totally different model. I tried it a few times here and there, but I didn't catch many trout. I just wasn't into it enough, and didn't have any friends who fly fished much. 1996. I'd met Missouri Tom a few months before, and he invited me to go with him and another friend to Montana. We were to spend a week at Yellowstone Valley Ranch, in cabins overlooking the Yellowstone in Paradise Valley, the first week of July. But that happened to be a year of record floods. The Yellowstone was still blown out, so we spent the evenings sitting in front of our cabins, looking down at the river, and wishing it would clear up just a bit. That was where we met Montana Tom. We told the lodge people that we were interesting in fishing, and the food and other amenities of the lodge were way down the list of what was important, so we wanted a guide who understood that. They assigned us Montana Tom, along with Dennis, another guide who also became a good friend as the years went by. Missouri Tom had tied me up a bunch of flies for the trip, and loaned me another rod to go with my Sage. He's a Winston guy, and it was a sweet rod. He also gave me pointers before the trip on a shakedown cruise to the Meramec. So he was my first real trout fly fishing mentor. The first day, though, I learned how good Montana Tom was. We went to Sixteenmile Creek, a small stream a couple hours away from the lodge that was on private land and held browns, rainbows, and brook trout. I watched Montana Tom give Missouri Tom a lot of instruction, picked up a lot of it myself, and we caught a pile of fish. And Montana Tom learned how serious we were; at noon he asked if we were ready for lunch. We said, heck no, we're catching fish. At 2 PM he asked again. Nope, still busy catching fish. At 4 PM we finally agreed to eat lunch. At 6 PM he said we had to leave then if we wanted to make it back to the lodge for dinner. We said we'd rather fish. We finally quit about a half hour before dark, and got back to the lodge at 11 PM! The next year, we went again, this time the second week of July. We hired Montana Tom again, but stayed at the historic Murray Hotel in Livingston. And it was the second year of record floods and the river was again still blown, though we did finally fish it late in the week. Over the years, we almost never missed a trip per year, often switching to April before the snowmelt started. The three of us always fished together, but at different times we had other friends along. Montana Tom and Dennis kept guiding us, and the two of them, and Missouri Tom, continued to be my mentors. Finally, about 12 years ago, Montana Tom told us he was no longer going to guide us, which actually meant he was still going to fish with us but we'd take turns rowing the boat so that he could fish as much as we did...and without the guiding fees. Over the years, I'd accumulated a half dozen rods and reels, upgraded my waders and other equipment several times, and became almost as avid a fly fisherman as I am a river smallmouth angler. Mary and I bought a cabin in Paradise Valley ten years ago, and three years later we sold it and bought our house on the Yellowstone. Mentors. I haven't really had many. I learned a lot of it on my own, and some of it turned out to be wrong. I'm still not the greatest fly caster, nor do I match the Toms in pure expertise, but I learned, I experimented, and I watched and listened to those two great fly fishermen.

I went back and answered the first question differently the second time. If you say you do gig, they ask how many times per year and how many years you've been doing it, then they ask the same questions as if you'd answered that you didn't gig. So...not any particular bias that I could see.