Al Agnew

Zero tolerance policies lead to some really stupid stuff, but I can't say I blame the schools for it. They feel they have to err on the side of caution and follow a set group of rules, or else they leave themselves open to lawsuits and other unpleasantness from the parents, as well as possible danger to the kids. They go overboard sometimes; we hear of kids being in serious trouble for pointing a finger at another student and saying "bang". Or drawing a picture of a gun in class. But I suspect that for every really stupid thing we hear about, there are dozens of similar things where someone in authority at the school DID use a bit of common sense and let it slide. That's a problem in itself...we only hear of the really bad or stupid actions or outcomes with just about any issue like this, we don't hear of the far more common instances where people used common sense and did the right thing.

Yep, it isn't the fight that turns me on, it's the strike and fooling the fish into biting (especially when you can see them hit, and especially especially if you fooled them on something you made yourself). If I have to battle a fish more than about five minutes I get bored and want to just cut the line so I can pursue the next one. Big, hard fighting fish aren't the be-all and end-all for me. It's one reason I don't care to fish saltwater...many saltwater fish are stronger and have more endurance than nearly all freshwater fish.

You don't have to end up with those nubs. Just pull the thread slightly under the wrap, just enough to hold it there, then clip off the end of it so that just a very small portion is still sticking out, then pull it the rest of the way through. If you've cut off the thread at the right length, the end doesn't quite come out.

Pretty tough to call either way. Yep, we'd like to think that everybody in such a position should be as heroic as possible in "doing their job". We'd also like to think we'd do it and either save the day or die trying. But you'll never know until you're in a situation like that. While I don't know and don't care about how many foot-pounds of energy are generated by one firearm or another, I do know that there's no way I would go into a confrontation with a guy armed with a semi-auto rifle while I'm armed with ANY handgun, and have a good chance of surviving, let alone accomplishing anything. I know how inaccurate most people are with a handgun in the real world. Chances are that at best, I'd get one shot...if I was able to get within handgun range without the shooter detecting me, and of course assuming there were no kids either between me and him, or behind him. I doubt if I'd be able to make the shot. So chances are I'd be throwing my life away and accomplishing nothing. But give me a rifle and I hope I wouldn't hesitate. But still...the gunman would have a tremendous advantage, because he doesn't care who is in the line of fire, while I would have to make darned sure no kids were in my line of fire. Shotgun in this situation is probably a worse choice, because the range is a lot less and there is more chance of kids catching pellets. But if I had one, I think I'd rather have #4 shot, not buckshot.

I just erased the paragraph I just wrote because nobody wins when people get into religious arguments. I'll just say that I agree that as a society we have brought some of these problems on ourselves, not as individuals no matter how moral, immoral, religious, or unreligious we are. Other than that, I disagree with you and Wrench emphatically.

Still up about 6 feet at our place downstream from Onondaga. Looked like it had been up about 6 feet higher than that. We went out to Millstream Gardens yesterday afternoon to look at Tieman Shut-ins on the St. Francis...

Well...I would agree that high capacity magazines make any semi-auto more effective at shooting people in bunches. I'd have no problem, personally, in banning them. But there are a huge number of them already out there, and it would take a long time to reduce the numbers to the point that somebody who is not going to obey any gun law anyway can't get hold of some. Here's a big question, or maybe a group of questions...would it work to do all this banning in the hopes that EVENTUALLY the numbers of whatever we're banning are reduced to the point where it would make a big difference? The related question is, is that POSSIBILITY (not a sure thing) worth the fact that any law like that would only affect the law abiding owner for a long time?

Well, most of us have ideas of what to do about these horrific happenings, but the reality is that there is no solution. There are lots of measures that could be taken, and many of them might actually work to stop a particular mass shooter, while not affecting the next dozen of them. And most of them involve doing things as a country that would make this country a very different, and not necessarily better, place. Want to outlaw particular kinds of guns? Yeah, we could do that. But to make it effective, we'd have to confiscate every one of those guns we possibly could. How many people are going to like the police or the "gun squads" crashing into their houses to check to see if they have illicit weapons? Want to keep every person who has ever been judged mentally off in some manner on a database and make sure they never get a weapon? A lot of people wouldn't like that. Want to make it illegal to have a gun in the home of any kid who is taking those behavioral drugs? Horrors! Want to make a mental test mandatory if you want to keep a gun (not buy one, keep one you already have)? I didn't think so. Want your doctor, by law, to have to report anything that appears to be wrong with you that would make you having a gun dangerous? Point is, everything we could do to identify those who potentially could cause these things involves a lot of draconian measures that not many of us would be happy with. And everything we could do to reduce the number of guns in America to the point that it would keep a lot of these people from obtaining one would require even more draconian measures. It's really easy to say that a certain kind of gun, or all guns, should be outlawed...when you don't own a gun and don't know or care anything about guns, and don't live or work in a place where there is a good chance of there being armed bad guys and no cops around. Or we could go the other way and arm a lot more "sane" people in all kinds of different venues. Sorry, I don't have enough faith in "sane" people to believe that some of them won't go nuts, or won't panic in a tight situation and shoot a bunch of innocents, or do something otherwise stupid with their weapon. When I walk into the local Burger King (I'd use McDonalds but I hate McDonalds), should I be more worried about a mass shooter, or Cletus in the next booth with a concealed weapon that he hasn't been trained to "bear"? Do you really think that a teacher with a little bit of training is going to be able to shoot a bad guy, who doesn't care who gets hit because everybody is a target, when said teacher is surrounded by screaming panicked kids and has to worry first about not shooting one of them? We have created a society in which this stuff is happening, and it will never change until society changes. Forget about going back to the way things were in 1960. It ain't happening. But maybe, just maybe, the next couple of generations will start moving the other way, being a little less self-centered, a little less enamored with solving all problems with force, a little more empathetic and understanding of others. The last few generations haven't performed very well.

Lots of guys I know worked hard at jobs that were hard on their bodies all their working lives, and by the time they retired they were all broken down. Nothing could have been done to help that other than not working at those kinds of jobs. I never had to work at hard physical labor--most of my work is sitting. So I could have gone the other way and become so completely out of shape that I'd be in real trouble at this point in my life. But fortunately, I have always stayed very active outside of work. I hate "exercising", but hiking, outdoor sports, and basketball have served to keep me in pretty good shape. For a while Mary and I did yoga, and it was boring but certainly did a lot of good. As I've gotten older, I haven't lost all that much but the spring in my legs (a 24 inch vertical jump has turned into about 8 inches), a bit less sure in balance (can't jump around on the rocks at Elephant Rocks State Park like I used to), and I feel a little more brittle (can't jump down off the bed of the pickup without it being jarring). It's gotten a little harder to throw the 60 pound tandem canoe atop the car, but I can still do it in one motion. I can still hike 10 miles with no problem. Two hours of full court basketball makes me sore the next day, but by the day after that it's back to normal. Normal, though, is a lot of aches and pains after I sit for a long time, or when I get out of bed in the morning.

When I've built rods, I've often bought a blank that is supposed to have the action I want (fast, extra-fast, or moderate) and the power I want, but is 6 inches longer than I want. Then I take a rod that has something close to the action and power that I want, and model from it. I have nailed two big nails into the inside wall of the basement garage, so that I can put the rod I'm modeling from on the wall horizontally, with one nail resting atop the back of the handle, the other somewhere on the bottom of the foregrip, with the rest of the rod sticking out horizontally and free. I hang a weight from the tip guide so that the rod bends as much as it would with a nice fish on it, and mark on the wall at each guide. Then I put the blank on the wall the same way, put the weight on the end of it (usually have to tape the line to the bare end of the blank), and compare its bend to the bend of the rod I'm modeling from. Keep in mind that tying the guides on stiffens the bend a bit, so if the blank has slightly more bend that's okay, but what I'm looking for is a bend that is the right amount of action, not significantly faster or more moderate than my modeled rod. I'll adjust the weight on the end up to 6 inches back, and/or move the handle end up to 6 inches back on the nails, in order to see where I can cut off the longer rod to give it the length, power, and action I'm looking for. I often buy spinning rod blanks to make a casting rod, because the spinning rod blanks are available in more varieties of action and power.

It was killing me not being able to go today. Mary had shoulder surgery yesterday and I was her caregiver today as the anesthesia wears off and the pain sets in.

Pretty sure it's a shadow bass. Although there are a lot of black spots in a row, there are also some gaps. Northern rock bass have the black spots on pretty much every scale, no gaps at all.

First priority shouldn't be one recreational group or another, it should be the protection of the resource, period. It's the resource--the river and surrounding lands--that belongs to all of us, and one user group should not be permitted to wreck it for everybody else. ATVs and horses both do a lot of damage and cause a lot of erosion if not confined to trails that can handle the use. So maybe the solution is to provide for trails that CAN handle it. And that's where the user groups come in. Hikers do a lot of volunteer trail building work in places like the Buffalo National River; in fact, there would be few hiking trails in that park if not for the volunteer trail building. So maybe the trail riders, both equestrian and ORV people, should approach the park people with proposals to build and designate trails carefully constructed for their use. What particularly burns my toast is the amount of illegal ATV use on the upper Jacks Fork, arguably the finest piece of wild floatable stream in Missouri. That ATVs come down roads and trails that were supposed to be closed off, and then get out onto the gravel bars and go for miles up and down the river, which is illegal, but it's a rather remote area where there are few patrols to catch them. And yes, that IS harming the resource. Not only do the old roads and trails erode like crazy with ATV use, but when you run ATVs across gravel bars, it destabilizes the gravel and it moves with the next high water, filling in pools. So yeah, it belongs to all of us. But the reason it was made into a National Park was not because it was a good place to ride ATVs. It was because the Current and Jacks Fork are probably the finest Ozark streams in Missouri, period. So some uses detract from that value far more than others, and should therefore be more carefully regulated, if not banned.

NOW they are looking like a lock for the tournament. If only they had a true point guard. I like Geist, and he's maximized his abilities. But if they had a point guard they'd be pretty darned good. Now the big question is whether or not Porter Jr. plays in the next week or two.

They definitely work. I don't use them much because I figure that something else will almost always work as well or better. But if I know I'm going to be fishing weedy water I'll bring some along. The solid plastic ones that act like a buzzbait on the retrieve. There are some river stretches up in the North Country that will definitely see me throwing them, but most Ozark streams don't have enough weeds to make fishing them worthwhile for me.

I watched the Rams' Superbowl win with my basketball buddies, and when it was over and we were all still cheering, one of them said, "Enjoy this while you can. Years from now we'll still be remembering today, but we probably won't see this again for a long time, if ever." I thought he was wrong. I figured the Rams would be good for a long time (and in St. Louis even longer).

I've built a number of rods over the years, not enough to call it a "hobby", but whenever I can't find the right power and action I'm looking for, I build it. And I've never used ANY of the components of those rod building kits, other than the rod varnish and epoxies. I have to admit having a power rod dryer that turns the rod slowly would be the handiest thing for me to have; I've always just puttered around with something else in the same room while the rod was drying, remembering to turn it every few minutes. But putting several thin coats of epoxy on the guide wraps instead of a thicker, runnier coat makes that more or less unnecessary. I wrap it by hand, using a coffee cup to hold the thread and running it through the pages of a thick book to get good tension. Other than building the handle on to it, that's the main thing with building a rod. So my point is that you don't have to buy a $150 kit to build a rod. Try building one first, and if you like it, then consider getting a dryer. I'm not sure you need much of anything else...if you are handy enough to build the rod, you can build a rack to hold it while building and finishing it.

I know where it is! I know where it is! And I ain't telling! In the summer you'd have to beat the swimmers off with a boat paddle in that honey hole.

Kinda depends upon the weather, since I gotta drive 60 miles to get there, but I was planning on going.

Well, let's see...might as well shut down the website. According to Whitesnoop, we shouldn't post fish pictures, give fishing reports, or post about tactics, equipment, or techniques. From now on I guess I'll just post this once a week: "I like to fish."

I love river largemouth. Whether or not they come out of ponds or lakes (personally I don't think many of the bigger ones do), they are native to all these rivers, and are a valuable part of the species makeup. Plus, they don't directly compete with the smallmouth the way spots do.

I've done enough gigging back in my younger days to know that it isn't as easy as it looks, but a lot depends upon how much time you've spent on the water doing all kinds of other things. Refraction makes judging the exact position of the fish difficult for many newbies, but if you're used to looking at stuff underwater, it's easier to judge. I never had much problem in sticking suckers unless the water was deep enough the gig barely reached the fish. However, all my gigging was done out of a canoe or a little johnboat being propelled by paddle. Watching videos of gigging from jetboats, the boat is moving a lot faster, which would make it harder, I assume.

Yep, the Meramec USED to be pretty good. I can still usually catch a few, especially the fairly recent escapees from Maramec Spring branch in the first mile below the park, but it's been a long time since I caught a nice brown. For a long time my biggest brown came from the Meramec around Suicide, and a buddy caught a 29 inch rainbow and a 29 inch brown in the same year on the Meramec.

I fished most of the day today and got skunked! First time that's happened in forever, and I'm older that dirt. Two bites all day on a hair jig, missed one and had the other on for about two seconds. I went to a stretch of river where I expected the fishing to be somewhat difficult, with the express purpose of fishing two holes that I've always thought should hold some good wintering fish. I fished those two pools and one other where I've caught plenty of smallish ones before from 11 AM to 4 PM. Water temp was 38-39 degrees, river low and visibility at least 12 feet. I spent quite a bit of time in that clear water just looking for fish, and all day long I saw exactly two hogsuckers. No bass. No sunfish. No redhorse. Apparently every fish in the river was hiding under rocks, freaked out by last night's super moon. Yeah, that has to be it. Not my fault I got skunked.

Don't know about the other 6th Sense baits, but their Crush Dogma topwater is pretty nice. Paint has held up okay on it and it's been effective.