Al Agnew

Minus 7, 10:45 AM. No fishing today!

The most snow we've ever experienced in Montana...18 inches. Temps have been a few degrees below zero at night.

That's definitely true when it comes to the White River dams. The lower North Fork, according to many of the old timers, was the best fishing of all of them, though far less well known. And not a whole lot of people knew much about how good the upper White was above the James. Lower Kings must have been something, too. Interesting that, with all the dams that WERE built in the Ozarks, it had three of the greatest success stories in stopping the dams. First was Current River, slated at one time for 5 dams that would have flooded the entire river and all the big springs. It always had a lot of opposition to the dams and the Corps of Engineers gave up on Current River dams without much of a fight. Then came the Buffalo, which had three dams planned which were only stopped after a long and acrimonious battle. And finally, the Meramec, the only dam stopped AFTER the land had been acquired and work on the dam had actually started. Funny also that the Missouri Conservation Federation started out being against the dams, then turned to be for them, and finally came out against them again. And MDC was for some of them. They originally agreed to support the Meramec Dam in return for the Corps abandoning plans to dam the Gasconade and Big PIney. But in the end they were instrumental in stopping the dams in the Meramec Basin. At one time, there were plans for a LOT more dams than what were finally built. Three on the Gasconade. One on the Eleven Point. One on the James itself. One on the Bourbeuse, two on Big River. One on the lower White that would have wiped out much of what is now the trout water.

Chubs weren't the sought after bait for walleye, stonerollers were. If you could find a creek with 6 inch stonerollers you were golden. Chubs and striped shiners were second choice for big minnows. I once had a creek that had 6-7 inch chubsuckers, and I thought they would be good but I never caught much on them. The biggest walleye I ever caught bit a 4 inch bleeding shiner.

Yeah, there were probably periods in the Ozarks where there were few Indians living in the region, though it was probably used as a hunting ground by those in surrounding areas. When the civilization centered at the Cahokia Mounds was thriving up and down the Mississippi, only a small offshoot settled in the Big River valley. The rest of the Ozarks at that point was probably sparsely populated by small groups that were still in the Woodland period as to their culture, though some traded with the Cahokians.

Fshndoug asked in another thread about suggestions for fishing Montana with his new driftboat. So here's some stuff I have found out from fishing here for a number of years... First, there are all kinds of trout fishing opportunities. I'd venture to guess that for the visiting angler, Montana offers MORE trout fishing than any other state, and in some ways that includes Alaska. Wanta catch wild browns and rainbows? They are everywhere. Want to go for native cutthroat? Two or three different subspecies. Bull trout? Yep, even if you can't keep them and aren't supposed to specifically target them. Brook trout? Yep. Even grayling. And lake trout, though I question why anybody would want to actually fish for lake trout when they have all those other trout to pursue. Want to fish still water? Plenty of small lakes and big reservoirs with trout. Big western rivers? All over the state. Little creeks where the trout haven't seen an artificial fly? Uh-huh. And best of all, Montana has the most enlightened stream access laws in the country. Basically, if you can find a place to get on it without having to use private property without permission, you can fish it for as far upstream or downstream as you can reach, no matter who owns the land around it...with a few exceptions. But that's what makes Montana different. Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado...all have a lot of water that is strictly private and off limits. Not Montana. Yep, it can get crowded at times and in places, but having all that water to fish really does spread out the pressure immensely. You'll probably see fewer anglers on a given day in Montana, on average, than you will on public water in Colorado. I don't much care for lake fishing, so I almost never do it in Montana and don't know that much about it. As for streams...I certainly haven't fished them all. I wouldn't be able to fish them all if I was 18 years old and had my whole life ahead of me and nothing else to do. Here are the ones I have fished and/or at least know people who have and therefore know something about: Bozeman-Livingston area (my stomping grounds) Yellowstone River--my "home waters" in Montana. Leaving aside the river within Yellowstone Park, which is mostly in Wyoming anyway, I've fished it from Gardiner to Big Timber. That's something like a hundred miles of prime trout water. Holds browns, rainbows, and native Yellowstone cutthroats. Big, fast, powerful river, but still has wading opportunities. Gets fishable at about 10,000 cubic feet per second some years, drops to minimums of 1500 cfs some years. Has some great hatches. But it can be one of the tougher rivers to have real success on. A good day on the Yellowstone will net you a dozen or so trout, and most will be 12-15 inchers. Under the right circumstances you can catch multiple 20-23 inchers in a day, but the right circumstances are rare. And it gets extremely crowded with rafts and driftboats full of rod waving anglers in July and August. You can still catch fish even if you're 10th in line to fish that bank, but the fish get sophisticated about avoiding patterns that worked a couple days before. Gallatin River--known for smallish fish. It's a much smaller river than the Yellowstone, and far different for much of its length, flowing through a deep, narrow canyon with just the river and a highway taking up most of the canyon bottom. A lot of it is fast, pocket water with big boulders. Once it emerges onto the big, flat valley around Bozeman it changes to a river much like a far smaller version of the Yellowstone, with riffles, pools, and a bottom mostly covered with rocks the size of your head. I haven't fished it all that much because there are rivers I like better, but I've had a few good days of dry fly fishing on the lower portions. It's pretty much all wading water. Floating it is problematical in the canyon and in places illegal down by Bozeman. Most of the trout you catch will be under 15 inches. Madison River--one of the most famous of Montana's rivers, with good reason. Basically, most of the Madison is just one big riffle; wide, shallow, studded with rocks and clumps of submerged aquatic vegetation. It gets extremely crowded in the summer between West Yellowstone and Ennis (with anglers) and just as crowded on the lower river below Beartrap Canyon, but with party floaters, since the lower river comes off the top of Ennis Lake and is warm enough to be comfortable for swimming--and warm enough to be stressful for trout. Still, I love fishing the lower river in the spring and fall. The Bozeman area guides always take their clients on the lower Madison when the Yellowstone gets blown out, and some of the Livingston guides do, too. Lots of browns, maybe more of them than rainbows, and they can get big. Boulder River--this is the one near Big Timber, not the other Boulder River in Montana, which I've never fished. It's wading water, easy access in most places, not easy wading in many stretches because it's aptly named--boulders the size of basketballs to the size of a Volkswagen everywhere. Can be excellent fishing. Some brave guides float it in the spring when it's a little high. At that point, the Yellowstone will probably be blown out, but the Boulder stays clear (and cold) even when it gets pretty high. As my guide buddy said, though, you have to know how to make the right moves on the Boulder in high water. Plenty of resident rainbows and browns in the 12-18 inch range. Shields River--a little stream, wading water except in the high water periods, mediocre fishing but it's close and easy to wade most times. Gets too warm and stresses the trout in mid-summer. Mostly smaller fish. Stillwater River--a lesser known float stream, and if the Boulder is aptly named, the Stillwater is the most IN-aptly named river on earth, because there is just no still water on the Stillwater. Most of it is a boulder garden, punctuated with a few ledges that form scary rapids in higher water levels. But the fishing can be terrific. Upper reaches in the mountains are beautiful and interesting wading water. Lots of 14-18 inch trout. Small creeks that are tributaries of these rivers--get up in the mountains on National Forest ground, much of it Wilderness Areas, and if you are in shape and don't mind worrying about grizzly bears, you can find cutthroats that have probably never seen another angler. Even when the creeks get closer to the rivers (but before they all get diverted for agriculture) you can find good fishing for native cuts. Few of them will be over 12 inches, but it's great fun. Some farther away rivers I've fished Bighorn River--one of Montana's most famous and popular rivers, it's a tailwater fishery. Fairly big river, clear, not too fast, used to have the highest concentration of browns and rainbows of any river in Montana but it's not quite as good as it once was. You'll see trout rising everywhere a lot of days, and you probably won't figure out how to catch them, but other days you can fish small nymphs and catch 14-17 inchers all day long. And then there are those days when they all get stupid and you catch them on dries or even streamers. Big Hole River--suffers some years from too much water being taken out for agriculture, but on good years it can be terrific fishing for BIG browns, with rainbows and even grayling on upper sections. My best streamer fishing day EVER ANYWHERE was on the Big Hole in April. Missouri River--in the Craig area is where I've fished it a number of times. It gets tough in mid-summer mostly because of too much dislodged, drifting aquatic vegetation; the trout are still there and willing but you can't make a cast without fouling your hook. But most of the year, as a tailwater fishery, it's very fishable and very, very good, with 14-20 inch trout seemingly everywhere. For a combination of numbers and average size, it may be the best stretch of river in Montana. Big water but not too fast, and easy floating with some wading opportunities. Smith River--I haven't fished this one but my guide friends have. It's a permit river--you have to apply at the first of the year for a permit to float it during a specific time period. It's kinda like the Montana version of the Jacks Fork, smaller water, narrow canyon, wilderness character. When it's best fishing it's almost too low to float, and if you try to get a permit for when it should be good fishing, you might end up not being able to float it because it's too low. But it's absolutely beautiful and the fishing can be great if you hit it right. Musselshell River--the parts that have trout are pretty small, but it's a little known stream compared to most. Access is problematical, though. Obviously there are a bunch more rivers in Montana...Blackfoot, Clarks Fork, Flathead, Ruby, Bitterroot, Beaverhead, the other Boulder, Jefferson, Judith, Kootenai...but these are the ones I know well enough to mention. When to go--first of all, when probably NOT to go...it's COLD in Montana in the winter and the winter lasts a long time. Unless you live here, you probably won't get lucky enough to find fishing from mid-November to mid-March. And the other period you probably won't want to plan your vacation for is in May and June, because that's snowmelt time and all but the tailwater rivers will probably be flooded and unfishable. If it's a cold spring, you might still have fishable rivers up into May, and if it's been a dry winter they might get fishable again by mid-June, but don't depend upon it. You can still find fishable water during the snowmelt on the tailwater rivers like the Bighorn and Missouri, but your options are definitely more limited. Which leaves three basic periods. First is in March and April. This is my favorite time to be out here for the fishing. The trout have just come through a long, hard winter and are hungry, there are some decent hatches and one or two terrific ones, and there aren't as many tourists out here fishing. The "Mother's Day" caddis hatch on the Yellowstone, if the stars align, is unbelievable both for numbers of bugs and for dumb trout the first couple days of the hatch. After that they get satiated with caddis and the fishing gets tough even if the bugs are still there. Weather in March and April can be surprisingly pleasant or unpleasantly cold and snowy, and can be both in the same week. But if you don't mind a good possibility of bad weather, it's a great time to fish. If it's a warm spring, some rivers can get blown out in mid-April, or get temporarily muddy even before then, but usually even in a warm spring you can find water to fish up through April. Second, July and August. By far the most crowded time. If you come in late June, you can hope for the salmon fly hatch, which usually happens then but often happens before the rivers get down enough from the spring high water. The salmon fly hatch on the upper Madison will probably see the greatest concentration of anglers anywhere in the state at any time, because the Madison tends to get fishable a lot earlier than most other rivers and so the salmon flies are hatching in fishable water levels. Personally, I've fished the Madison then but my strategy is to go where the hatch ISN'T happening (it doesn't happen over the whole river at the same time), because then I'll probably have the river almost to myself. After then, by late July the hopper fishing will start happening. There are ALWAYS lots of hoppers, but not always good hopper fishing, from then all the way into September. Some years it can be great, other years the fish just don't seem to want to eat hoppers. Weird. The major rivers will be full of guides with clients in driftboats and rafts, but you can avoid some of the crowd by putting in a daybreak--the guides usually don't get on the river until 8 AM or so. September and October. Like the spring period, the weather can be great one day and horrible the next. We usually get the first snowfall in southern Montana in early September, but usually a couple days later it will be 70 degrees and the snow will be gone. The rivers are low and clear and the fish have had all summer to get smart, so it ain't easy fishing. But the scenery in the fall in Montana makes everything worth it. In a warm fall the hopper fishing might last til October. You get good hatches of lots of flies, and sometimes the trout actually eat them with abandon. You won't see all that many anglers. Fall can be especially good on the tailwater rivers because it's been tough during the summer and now the anglers are going to all the other fishable rivers and neglecting the tailwaters a bit. For the visiting angler like Fshndoug with a driftboat--all the popular larger rivers have shuttle services--just call them and arrange a shuttle on whichever stretch you want to go. Carry spare keys for your vehicle, and all you have to do is put in, leave your vehicle at the put-in with keys somewhere you've arranged with the shuttle service to find (most everybody just puts them inside the gas cap unless it's a locking gas cap), and sometime during the day a driver will be let off to take your vehicle to the take-out. The services have it all down to a science. You can get shuttles online at shuttlequest.com. Scenery and stuff for the family to do Of the rivers I've fished, the Yellowstone in Paradise Valley upstream from Livingston, and the upper portions of the Madison are both spectacular, with wide open vistas to high mountains. The Gallatin canyon is beautiful though a little closed in. Scenery on the Missouri and Bighorn is so-so. Big Hole is very pretty in the upper portions. Stillwater in the floatable sections is more dry-land lower hills and agricultural land, as is the Yellowstone below Livingston, though the Absarokas and Crazy Mountain range is usually in view. Lower Madison is pretty, not spectacular. If you stay in the Livingston area you're an hour from Yellowstone Park with all it has to offer. Lots of stuff to do in and around Bozeman. If it's open (it can be closed from October into June), the Beartooth Highway is one of the most spectacular drives in the country, and the highway from Ennis to West Yellowstone is nothing to sneeze at, either...including Quake Lake and the visitor's center explaining the 1959 earthquake that caused the landslide that created Quake Lake by damming the Madison. But the Livingston/Bozeman area is just one place to base your operations. The Missoula area is probably just as good, though I haven't spent time there. Ennis is terrific if you want to hit the Madison. This post has been promoted to an article

I agree with Greasy, so to that aim, I'll start a thread in the trout fishing section...

I've wondered that, too. Some of the true arrowheads from later periods have excellent workmanship, but most of it doesn't compare with those early points. It had to be a cultural thing. Maybe there was cultural, even religious, significance to the way the points were made, not just utilitarian. I've found plenty of points from later periods over the years, far more than the early ones. There was one field I hunted years ago that had points from every period, from Dalton on, so it was obviously a highly valued camp or village site. But another thing I find interesting and mysterious is why you really CAN (supposedly) tell how old a point is from its construction. Stop and think. Why do all points from a given period look like they were made by the same individual? Why the "purity" of style? Weren't there mavericks out there who made points their own way? Obviously, with some exceptions, a point could be made in many different ways and still accomplish its purpose. Was there a big workshop where all the flint knappers got together and learned how to make points using the exact same patterns? Why didn't somebody from the Woodland period find a Dalton point and think, "Hey, I like how that thing looks. I think I'll try making some just like that; I'm pretty sure they'd work as good or better than what Joe the expert flint knapper back at the village is making." And DID Indians from one period find old points (like we do these days) when they were plowing up their field and decide to use them? Surely they did. I really miss artifact hunting. It's gotten so difficult to find spots to hunt that I gave it up. The last few I found were when I plowed up my own ground for putting in food plots, and it was just uplands with no particular attractiveness to Indians. If you can actually find three or four points in a couple acres of nondescript ground, just how many points are actually still waiting to be found, and how many of them were made and lost or discarded anyway?

Guys who fish for walleye on Black and Current rivers guard their minnow spots zealously. It isn't easy to find creeks with a lot of trappable or seine-able 4-7 inch minnows in the winter. One old-timer I knew way back when bought goldfish when he couldn't obtain big minnows, but he didn't consider them to be nearly as good as creek minnows. I had a few good spots back when I fished for walleye regularly, and still have one spot that will furnish me with enough for a trip or two. But even back then, I probably spent more time getting bait than actually fishing.

Plus, I can't imagine the logistics of handling a jetboat on that river when you couldn't use the motor. I think it would be a bad idea. The lower Buffalo has a few tricky rapids and a lot of slow water. I'd do it in a river john or even just a 14-16 ft. light johnboat with a trolling motor, but a jetboat would just be way too heavy.

Those were romantic times for a person who loves float fishing. But nearly all the floats back then started at Galena, so floating what's left of the James isn't much like what those trips were. By far the most scenic parts of the James are now under Table Rock. Yeah, Jim Owen said how much he loved the James and White, but he was an entrepreneur first, last, and only, and quickly saw ways to make a buck from the lakes after the rivers were gone. And yes, there were a lot of people killing bass any way they could all throughout the glory days of the James and White. In truth, the fishing back then probably wasn't nearly as good on those rivers as it is now on some of the Ozark streams. I can't imagine how good it could be with the kind of at least decent management we have now if the lower James and White were still flowing.

I did quite a bit of sucker grabbing on Big River when I was a kid. Seldom saw anybody outside our little group of teenagers doing it. Haven't seen anybody around here do it in many years, though I'm sure some still do.

Archaic artifacts. 8 to 10 thousand years old at least, from back in the days when the first "Native" Americans hunted stuff like mastodons. Clovis points are the oldest of all the artifacts found in Missouri. They are lanceolate (leaf shaped), average about 4 inches long, beautifully flaked, with fluted, thinned bases. They were spear points, meant to be mounted on heavy spears, and the shape is such that there wouldn't be any protuberances once they were mounted, unlike the slightly less old Dalton points, which have slightly flared bases and are designed for lighter spears, with the bases sticking out a bit from the spear shaft. The theory is that Clovis points were designed for hunting huge animals like mastodons and mammoths by surrounding them and repeatedly stabbing them and removing the spear, so that the animal eventually bled to death even if a vital organ wasn't reached. Hence the streamlined shape when mounted on a heavy spear shaft...nothing to get hung up in the animal. Dalton points, on the other hand, are 6-8 thousand years old, made and used after the huge mammals disappeared, and designed for use with atlatls for hunting deer and elk, and having the spear point stick in the animal to cause it more problems as it ran off. Clovis points were found in association with mastodon bones at what is now Mastodon State Park, proving that prehistoric people in Missouri hunted mastodons. There are salt springs at Mastodon State Park, and either the hunters ambushed the animals there, or found them mired in the swampy land surrounding the springs. I remember all this from research I did for the book I'm still trying to finish writing about the Meramec river system.

Cattle farmers (I'm surrounded by them both in Montana and Missouri) absolutely have to care for their land and animals to make a living. But here's the problem. You can keep your own land sustainable for raising livestock, and still be contributing greatly to waters that may not even be on your own land. What is good for cattle is actually seldom if ever good for fish and wildlife. At best it's somewhat benign. My neighbors in Missouri raise beef cattle. Their own land is virtually a wildlife desert...no, not even a desert, a moonscape. For short periods of time in the spring the fescue is green and fairly lush, otherwise it's little higher than the fairway of a golf course, either because the cattle have been in it (rotationally), or because they cut the hay, and it holds just as much wildlife as the fairways. They keep their fencerows clean to get a few more feet of good pasture. The cows also run in their patches of woodland, which are about as open as the average city park. They spread manure on their fields to keep the fescue growing, along with some other fertilizers, and I feel fortunate that only a tiny bit of their pasture is within the watershed of my pond, because their own ponds are green with overfertilization. So their land continues to grow good beef cattle, and will for the foreseeable future. But it grows little else. And that's a couple hundred acres of land with absolutely no value to wildlife. Who knows how much overfertilization they are contributing to the nearest creek, which runs on their neighbor's property, but it's definitely overfertilized as well. But it's not on their land. They are good people, but cattle (and a few horses) are their priority, nothing else.

Ah, stop complaining. This is what is out our window here in Montana for Christmas! Merry Christmas everyone.

There are simply so many qualifications to trophy status with trout. As others have pointed out, it depends upon whether or not it's a wild fish and where it comes from, and also what you consider "trophy" to mean. Basically, if it's 20 inches or better and has intact fins and a bright, hard body and comes from Ozark waters other than a trout park or other put and take fishery, I consider it a trophy rainbow. Now if it comes from one of the small wild trout streams, the size criteria goes down, but then you have to ask yourself if it's a trophy or a different category, like a great catch...can a 14 inch rainbow be a trophy?

When I was a kid a really wanted to be a falconer. One time when my dad and I were fishing Wappapello while it was flooded up into the trees, we came upon a just fledged kestrel (sparrow hawk) that had apparently fallen from the nest and into the water. We rescued it and I talked Dad into letting me keep it. That was a really cool little bird. I fed it a diet of grasshoppers that I worked like heck catching, and the occasional sparrow I shot with my BB gun. It was usually pretty docile, but one time it bit me right on the pad of my index finger. That hook on the end of its beak sunk in all the way to the bone. OUCH! I once shot a sparrow and only broke its wing, so I gave it to my hawk alive. Apparently the instincts are all there, even though I'm not sure how many critters it had killed before falling out of the nest. It pounced upon that sparrow, mantled over it, and gave it about three good pecks on the skull, killing it almost instantly. After about a month, I decided to see if it could fly well enough to let it go. It could. That was the last I ever saw of it.

Times Beach (route 66 state park) is fine to launch. I was there a few days ago. Valley Park and Greentree Park are probably fine as well.

Actually, spotted bass have had major adverse effects on smallmouth in many of the northern Ozark streams. The first place where it was very noticeable was the Moreau River and its forks. Maries River and Tavern Creek were also impacted. The lower Gasconade used to be all smallmouth, now there are spotted bass in some numbers well up into the middle Gasconade. Keep in mind that on the smaller streams like Tavern Creek, they have pretty much taken over the habitat most suitable for them on the lower portions of these streams, but are uncommon in the upper portions where the habitat doesn't suit them as well. But those lower portions once had good smallmouth populations--they don't anymore. I don't know what the smallmouth fishery was like in rivers like the Sac and Pomme de Terre, but it was probably better before spotted bass. Some streams seem to be more or less immune to spotted bass invasion. They are rare in the Niangua above Tunnel Dam; probably the dam shortstops them coming up from Lake of the Ozarks, but it could also be the influence of the cool water from Bennett Spring. They don't seem to be much of a problem in the Big Piney.

I seem to miss fewer of them than Hog Wally for some reason, but I miss a few. I always tell myself the ones I miss are little bitty ones, anyway

Plenty of worms in them in the winter, too. They are easy to see and pick out, but when there are so many that each bite would have a half dozen, it hardly seems worth the effort to pick them all out. They are harmless to humans, so eating them is okay, but just not very appetizing. Their life cycle goes through great blue herons and snails as well as the fish. And yes, spotted bass have considerably more of them than smallmouth, and largemouth have the least number of them, for whatever reason.

Yeah, really appreciated Hog Wally controlling the boat while I just fished.

Nope, stocking is unnecessary and as Gavin said, not good genetically. Regulations are the only way to accomplish anything, and they only work if most anglers buy into keeping spotted bass. And unfortunately, a lot of spotted bass in these streams are chock full of yellow grubs and not very appetizing; I've had to throw away a lot of the ones I've kept. It goes against the grain to "waste" them, but if we really wanted to get serious about it, the regs would REQUIRE keeping every one caught, coupled with protecting the smallmouth. And then you run into the problem of people misidentifying largemouth as spots. So the best we can do, in the real world, is to keep encouraging anglers to keep them up to the limit, while releasing all smallmouth. MAYBE the current regulations are part of the reason why the ratio of spots to smallmouth seems to have stabilized in many stretches. Or, maybe the population has simply reached equilibrium in those stretches. Or, maybe put MDC to work electroshocking the rivers a lot more and killing all the spots they shock up? Get volunteers to clean them at the end of the day, at least those big enough to eat, and have a massive fish fry. The last time I went on a shocking run was quite a few years ago, on Big River above Blackwell. We shocked up a ton of little spotted bass, and very few smallmouth, even though that stretch still has more smallmouth than spots (barely). Which shows that shocking is a very inexact science.

Wow! I put in at Flamm City last winter and thought it was low, but that's an order of magnitude lower than it was then. I suppose not only is the Meramec low but the Mississippi is low as well and not backing up any water into the Meramec.