Al Agnew

Google Earth Pro. Using a Wacom tablet and a stylus to exactly trace the course of the river and the "path" measuring tool. And then checking it with topographic maps and a measuring wheel to make sure the results matched within a few tenths of a mile over long distances. I haven't actually gotten the new edition yet, so I don't know how many streams were revised.

Yup, actually we put in upstream and took out at mile 0.0!

So I was contacted by MDC a year or more ago to ask me to write some revisions on Big River for the new edition of the Missouri Paddler's Guide, the book that replaced Missouri Ozark Waterways. The edition is now out. In all previous editions, mile 0.0 was the road just off Highway 67 north of Bonne Terre, and there hasn't been an access there for many years. Plus, there are plenty of miles on Big River above there that are floatable. So I wrote up the descriptions of the river upstream. Mile 0.0 is now what has always been called Mounts, from the company that once had a gravel operation there, at the bridge on the Benny Meyer Road, almost 30 miles above the old mile 0.0. That bridge has always been a popular access, but is now a private fee access. The first public access is the Leadwood MDC Access at mile 7.8. Big River suffers these days from poor accesses and in places non-existent accesses, compared to what it once had. For instance, there are no good public accesses between the new mile 11.1, what was once known as Bone Hole and is now Owl Creek County Park, and St. Francois State Park at mile 26.8, and from the lower park access at mile 28 to the Washington State Park boat ramp off Highway 21 at mile 48.6. Some of us know people or are willing to use very inconvenient and questionable accesses in between, and the Cherokee Landing fee access is usable and Steve has an in to a private access for upstream floats, but for the most part access to upper Big is difficult.

I once found a great horned owl dead underneath a power pole, with a starling still clutched in its talons. But my best story about such things...we were sitting in the living room one night watching TV when there was a bright blue flash outside and all the lights went out. So we called the electric company after a little while, and they told us they were glad we called and told them about the blue flash because they were looking for a transformer failure that had knocked out power to a significant portion of the county and it sounds like our transformer, which was just off a major transmission line, might be the culprit. They immediately showed up and one man climbed up the pole. Sure enough, our transformer was blown, and the reason? A big black rat snake had climbed the pole and into the transformer and shorted it out!

As for foreign parts...Ontario--smallmouth bass, muskie, pike pumpkinseed, don't remember the name of the river. New Zealand--rainbow and brown trout, two rivers. Australia--two rivers, rainbow trout and some kind of catfish. Zimbabwe--Mozambique talapia, a goby, a little fish called a happy that looked a lot like a rock bass.

There was a time when I had the goal of catching a smallmouth in every state that had them. Then the goal shifted to fishing a stream in every state. Now I don't have any goals like that anymore...the states that are left on my list are just not places I really want to take precious time to fish! But here is my list of states and streams I've fished, and the fish I caught: Washington--Little Spokane River, rainbow trout and northern pikeminnow Oregon--John Day River, smallmouth bass, immature steelhead, pikeminnow California--Kern River, smallmouth bass and rainbow trout Idaho--Snake River, Salmon River, Middle Fork Salmon River, Canyon Creek, steelhead, smallmouth, west slope cutthroat, bull trout, pikeminnow Utah--Provo River, rainbow and brown trout Arizona--Verde River, Salt River, Oak Creek, Wet Beaver Creek, largemouth bass, redeye bass, rainbow trout Montana--a whole bunch of streams, rainbow trout, brown trout, brook trout, Yellowstone cutthroat, grayling, mountain whitefish, mountain sucker, shorthead redhorse, yellow perch, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, common carp Wyoming--Snake River, several streams inside Yellowstone Park, Snake River fine-spotted cutthroat, rainbow trout, brown trout, mountain whitefish. Colorado--South Platte River, Frying Pan River, several other streams, brown trout, rainbow trout, Colorado cutthroat New Mexico--San Juan River, rainbow trout, brown trout Oklahoma--Illinois River, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, longear sunfish Minnesota--Mississippi River, Rum River, Crow Wing River, Pine River, St. Croix River, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, muskie, pike, rock bass, walleye Iowa--Maquoketa River, smallmouth bass Missouri--way too many streams to list, way too many fish caught Arkansas--Kings River, Buffalo River, Crooked Creek, Strawberry River, South Fork Spring River, Spring River, Ouachita River, about every kind of game fish you can catch in the Ozarks Illinois--Cache River, largemouth bass, spotted bass Kentucky--Green River, largemouth bass Tennessee--Buffalo River, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass Michigan--Pere Marquette River, king salmon New York--St. Regis River, St. Lawrence River, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, pike Pennsylvania/New Jersey--Delaware River, smallmouth bass Virginia--New River, South Fork Shenandoah River, North Fork Shenandoah River, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass Massachusetts--Housatonic River, rainbow trout, smallmouth South Carolina--Edisto River Florida--Withlacoochie River, Alafia River, largemouth bass, snook Maine--Penobscot River, Kennebec River, smallmouth bass Hawaii--Waimea River, smallmouth, largemouth Alaska--Lake Creek, Kenai River, Russian River, Kasilof River, Kvichak River, several other streams, king salmon, silver salmon, chum salmon, sockeye salmon, pink salmon, rainbow trout, dolly varden, arctic char, pike, grayling

Aw heck, I just finished my nightly bottle of Bud Light. I'm a neophyte compared to you guys. The question of whether instinctual behavior can be modified and passed on is a good one. I think it's quite possible that instincts have differences for individual fish. I suspect that some individuals are not triggered instinctually by certain things like the appearance, movement, and sound of a given lure as much as other individuals. In other words, some fish are almost uncatchable on your favorite lure. Now...even though most bass anglers release all their fish, we know that there is a significant amount of delayed mortality. So the more a fish is caught, the more likely it is to die from being caught at some point. So more of the fish that are susceptible to the most popular lures are caught multiple times, and therefore more of them die. Which means that the fish that aren't as susceptible get to pass on their genes to more little fish, and eventually you'll have a population where most of the individuals are not susceptible to most of the lures we use. And we see this all the time. We know that heavily pressured waters are tougher fishing than lightly pressured waters. Is this because there are fewer fish in those heavily pressured waters because too many of them get caught? Or is it because too many of the fish that are instinctually susceptible to our lures are caught so many times that they die off, and the ones that aren't susceptible have greater spawning success and their genes become more prominent in the population?

I think the splitters are going a little overboard on this. It takes sophisticated DNA analysis to confidently differentiate between some of these bass, which were once races or at most subspecies but are now considered different species. Neosho bass and smallmouth are a good example. Neoshos readily and without any problems hybridize with smallmouth. They have the same habitat requirements, the same spawning habits, and it's questionable whether even an experienced angler can differentiate between the two by appearance; the variations in individuals are greater than the variations between the two "species". So it would seem that the only way to say whether one is a smallmouth or a Neosho is by arbitrarily calling it one or the other because of where it was caught. But then we know that smallmouth were stocked all over the Ozarks, including in streams where supposedly Neoshos were historically. So are there really any "pure" Neoshos? And WERE there ever any pure Neoshos? Neoshos are found in the streams that all collect into the Elk and Spring river systems, which eventually all reach the Arkansas River. But there are a lot of other streams that also enter the Arkansas, just a little farther downstream. So there were no natural barriers to separate Neoshos from the smallmouth in those other streams like the Illinois River, Big Piney Creek or the Mulberry River. Were the "Neoshos" almost but not quite the same genetically as the Mulberry, Big Piney, and Illinois? And were the smallmouth in those streams different enough genetically from, say Meramec River smallmouth (because of the really wide separation as far as river corridors go) to warrant being a different species or subspecies? Heck, anybody who has fished up North knows that the smallmouth in Minnesota appear to be more different from the smallmouth in the Ozarks than the smallmouth in the Meramec are different from the smallmouth in the Elk. It's getting to the point where when it comes to bass, a world record will be considered different for almost every river system. The redeye bass is a great example of that. There are now, what, like seven or eight different species of what were once called redeye bass, with slight differences in appearance depending upon where they were caught.

Good points. The truth is that it's impossible for us to get into the brain of a fish to understand their reaction to much of anything. We can only observe how they react, not why. Another big question: why do they attack lures? No lure on earth is a perfect, or even a really good, imitation of what they eat. And some lures are NOTHING like anything they eat. Yet there is something about any good lure that triggers an attack reaction--sometimes. Maybe that something is not some slight resemblance to something edible, but a stimulus that we aren't even thinking about.

One question might be, does this creek connect to waters that do hold smallmouth? In other words, can a smallmouth easily get from this stream to one that holds smallmouth? If not, that could be the answer. Other possibilities are that perhaps at some point in its history, something happened to the creek that killed all bass in it, and they simply have never recolonized it. Or there is something about the water chemistry that is inimical to bass. There is a creek close to where I grew up in the old lead mining district of southeast MO. When I was a kid, I spent thousands of hours playing in this creek, fishing it, seining it for bait, etc. Never once did I ever see a bass in it. But 40 years later, after the lead mine tailings that continually eroded into it were stabilized, it became a pretty decent bass stream with a good population of both smallmouth and spotted bass.

Ever since the big flood, North Fork has had a problem with high water temps in the lower part of the trout stretch. It scoured most of the trees off the banks that once shaded the river. You are definitely wise to go as high as possible in the trout section in mid-summer.

Mitch has put a lot of thought into every lure he's ever designed. They are designed to catch fish, not fishermen. I don't think you can give higher praise than that.

Yup...really the only question that holds real relevance to anglers is how do the fish react to these sounds, as you said. Look, there is absolutely no doubt that the fish hear your sonar sounds, your trolling motor sounds, any sound you make moving around in your boat, from distances equal to the length of your casts at least. For stream anglers, they hear the splash of your paddle strokes, and may even feel, with their lateral line, the water displacement from your paddle strokes, as well as any noise you make that is transmitted through your canoe or kayak bottom. And if you're wading on Ozark streams, they definitely hear the crunch of gravel you do with every step. And yet we still catch a lot of fish. So apparently a lot of fish don't associate all these sounds with danger. Maybe it's proximity...they don't much fear a sound that is coming from a cast length away, but that same sound 10 feet away from them spells danger. Maybe with some of the mechanical sounds it's just outside their experience and evolutionary history and it makes no impression on them. But they CAN learn. And since there is so much catch and release fishing, a huge percentage of bass have been caught more than once. Maybe they can learn to associate all kinds of sounds with danger after hearing those sounds and then being snagged with a hook. Maybe that's just one more layer of handicap when it comes to trying to catch the larger, older fish. I'm cognizant of the sounds I make. When wading I make a lot of long casts, and if it's a small creek I often stand at the foot of a riffle while wading upstream and make casts starting at the bottom of the pool above and continuing up the pool for as far as I can cast, before wading up the riffle; I'm hoping the riffle noise masks any sound I make. I almost never get out and wade to fish while floating in a canoe, because I'm sure I'm making less noise in the canoe than I would be wading. But when it comes to fishing from the jetboat, especially during the winter, seems like my sonar is always on, and I'm on the trolling motor all the time. Which brings up a slightly different question...the way I've always used the trolling motor is to keep it at a fairly high power and use it intermittently whenever I need to make the boat move. Some anglers tend to keep the trolling motor on lower speeds and stay on it steadily. I wonder which, if either, is more noticeable to the fish.

Only one I ever lost that way...when I was a teenager I went on a vacation trip with the family of a good friend. The plan was to go to Wappapello Dam and fish below the dam for a couple days, then relocate to Clearwater Lake. While we were fishing at Wappapello, I snagged a rod. It was one of those old Snoopy Zebco rod and reel combos. I cleaned it up and discovered it still worked, and I could cast about 40 feet or so. So when we moved to Clearwater, we took out the boat and went up to the head of the Black River arm and parked on a gravel bar to fish for catfish and carp. I baited up the little Zebco with some corn and tossed it out the regulation 40 feet and propped it on a stick...and a minute or so later it went flying out into the lake, never to be seen again (carp are notorious for that). Easy come, easy go!

I'll be the first to admit that in my fishing I don't feel the need for FFS or other fancy electronics, and I also have some reservations about where the electronics are taking us. But so what? It's a worthy topic for discussion, and I suspect that anybody who fishes reservoirs should benefit from your posts even if they don't like FFS. I've never understood getting so butt-hurt about what people hiding behind their keyboards say to you...I've had some pretty nasty stuff said to me over the years and I just either laugh it off, ignore it, or try to tell them why I think they are wrong. But if it raises your blood pressure and gives you ulcers, then do whatever you have to do. Personally, I don't like to let the (insert derogatory curse word here) win.

It would be interesting to see what your plans are exactly; that way we'd know what part of Montana would be easiest to reach from where you are in the other states, and perhaps what you could do in one state that would be different from what you find in another. If interested in Yellowstone cutthroats as part of your cut-slam, I can give you some can't miss options.

Maybe...but what if it lays its eggs in YOU? Well, you could at least be like RFK Jr. and run for president with a worm in your brain.

Yeah, that was a great story, and it was great to hear it from Norm. Great guy! I wonder how Nimitz handled that kind of thing. Was he protective of his image or authority? The only thing remotely like that which I ever experienced was, not too long after the first Gulf War, I was the featured artist at a big art show, and for whatever reason they had General Norman Schwarzkopf there to give some kind of keynote speech. I met him, and talked rather briefly to him. But at one point during the proceedings, the show people had hired some quite beautiful and scantily clad ladies to parade around, photographer in tow, and generally provide some eye candy. They latched onto General Schwarzkopf and draped themselves all over him, the photographer snapping photos. Schwarzkopf immediately pushed them away, his security detail went bananas, and the photographer's film was confiscated. Whether or not Schwarzkopf enjoyed having the ladies all over him, he had an image to protect at all costs. I suspect some heads rolled among the security people. And by the way, I found him to be quite gracious and personable.

Good enough. It got up a couple feet with some reasonably warm rain. It's still flowing enough to allow fairly easy fish passage.

Maybe it's the weather, with temperatures jumping up and down like a 8 year old who has just eaten a whole bag of marshmallows on a trampoline. Or maybe the fish know that sooner or later the periodic cicadas are going to show up. But I've had a really strange spring of fishing. Seems like every time one of my friends goes out he catches a bunch of big fish. But when I go out, even with him, we catch very little (though I did pull out 19 incher the other day fishing with one of my friends, while he caught nothing of any size). So after a few more days of cold weather (at night at least), I got the chance to float a stretch of river that is becoming one of my favorites. I've already caught a couple 19 inch class smallies and a couple 6 pound plus largemouth from it (last year). I had no idea what to expect today, though. I started out in the cold of the early morning, trying first a spinnerbait (nothing), my shallow running crankbait (a couple little spotted bass), a walk the dog topwater (a couple more little spotted bass), and a plopper (a couple more little spotted bass and a decent largemouth). By the time I'd gone two hours and, really concentrating on fishing different types of water, less than two miles, my score was 14 spotted bass, 3 largemouth, and 4 smallmouth, none over 14 inches. I had NOTHING figured out except that nothing was in fast water. And then I came to a nice bluff pool, one of many on this river. I was using the crankbait, and as soon as I came through the riffle and the current slowed, I started catching smallmouth along this rocky bank. I caught a half dozen or so, all good fish 14-16 inches. So, curious, I picked of the dog lure. And the smallies proceeded to go absolutely nuts. I was getting a strike on almost every cast. The wind was blowing downstream so I was working to keep the canoe from drifting into the water I wanted to fish. And these were really good fish. In a 50 yard stretch of rocky bank, I caught 20 smallmouth, with at least 8 of them 17-18 inches, capped by a heavy, thick 19 incher. And I lost several more, including one that was about the same size as the 19 incher I'd just caught. These fish were chasing the lure from 10 or more feet away. If one missed, I'd make a few more twitches and it would whack it again. Once I got past that stretch of rocky bank, I was out of the fish. I fished through the rest of the pool, almost dead water, with nothing but a couple more spotted bass. So, maybe the pattern was rocky banks in the upper portion of bluff pools? I hurried down to the next bluff pool. It was shorter, with a shorter section of good looking bank, but the fish were doing the same thing. I caught 12 good smallies off that little stretch of bank, and lost a 20 inch class fish at the canoe. And it was obvious when I got to the end of the good water...nothing. Okay...I paddled through the next stretch of riffles and mud bank pools, heading for the next bluff pool. I just knew the next one would really produce a big fish, because it's one of the prettiest in this stretch... I caught one small spotted bass from it. And in fact...for the rest of the day, I didn't catch another smallmouth! All I caught was a spotted bass here and there. And there were plenty of pools just as good as those two pools where I'd caught all those fish. So...ten miles of river, 10 hours of fishing, and I caught 32 smallies from just 75 yards of bank, and only four other smallmouth the whole float. The weirdness continues.

A lot of the mortality studies were done with tournament caught fish, because that's the easiest way to collect and study a bunch of fish. Tournament caught fish are kept in live wells, wrestled around to catch them to put them in the weigh in bag, carted off to the scales crowded together in the bag, weighed, held up for hero shots, and finally, hopefully, released into the area of the weigh-in instead of where they were living. It's a wonder as many survive as they do...not to mention the guys who are fishing around the weigh in site from the last couple tournaments trying to catch the same fish. I highly doubt that I'm killing more than 5% of the bass I catch. I've seen them survive bleeding gills and torn esophagus. (I know they did and know that it was long term survival because I'd caught them in my pond several times over a period of a year or more). I just caught a big flathead while bass fishing that had a big worm hook crossways in its gullet (I ate it). But I do try to handle the bass as carefully as possible and I don't use a lot of lures that I might deep-hook fish. If I had to guess (and yes, it's almost a WAG), I say the average of catch and immediately released fish mortality is somewhere around 5% in cold water and 10% in warm water. The key question remains; is catch and release fishing depressing fish populations? Is it having a significant impact upon size structure? In other words, is the delayed and immediate mortality of these fish making fishing worse?

I was never completely out for my first one more than 20 years ago. I could hear the doctor and nurse talking, but couldn't move or feel anything, or say anything. It was weird. Second one, at age 60, I was completely out and was surprised when I woke up that I was completely out. Third one, at age 70 (last year), I knew what to expect. However, in waiting for the anesthesiologist to show up to knock me out, lying all hooked up to the monitors, my occasional irregular heartbeat took that time to make an appearance, showing up on the monitor for the first time after a half dozen tests and examinations. It didn't concern anybody, as I'd been told before, so it was kinda nice to have it more or less confirmed. So I go in last year, after the colonoscopy, to my regular doctor, and he's looking over my charts on his computer. He says, "Oh, yes, I see you got your colonoscopy and everything was fine. Well, that will probably be the last one you'll get." We had been talking about my age, and I must have looked a little startled, because I was thinking, "Is he saying I'm gonna die before I need another one in 10 years?" He hastily added, "Oh, I mean we usually don't recommend having one after age 75...I didn't mean you were gonna die in the next 10 years!"

I've thought a lot about this as well, and my thoughts align fairly closely with those of the author of the article. We really ARE playing with our food. We really ARE causing a lot of stress on the critters we catch for no good reason other than our own pleasure. And the better the angler, the more fish he's killing by "accident". All the studies show that delayed mortality after being caught runs somewhere between 5 and 15%. Even if you are as careful as possible, if you have a day where you catch 50 bass, you're killing somewhere between 2 and 8 of them even if you release every one. Heck, I have the occasional 100 fish day, and even though I don't think I'm badly injuring many of them, I'm probably killing at least as many of them as my daily limit would be anyway. But there is always a difference between consideration for individual fish, and consideration for the POPULATION of the fish you seek. Worry too much about the lives and comfort of each individual fish and you go the way of the animal rights folks. I prefer to consider the population of bass in the streams I fish as a resource. I do what I can to protect that resource, and don't worry about the individual fish I catch except to handle them as carefully as possible if I plan to release them...because the point of releasing them is to keep them in the population, so it behooves us to give them the best chance to stay healthy. To that end, I think that the ethical angler learns as much as he can about the population of the fish he seeks in the waters he seeks. The beginning of ethics is to follow the regulations, but it's not the be-all. Most regulations are one size fits all, and most waters are not the same. It might very well be that some fish need to be culled in some waters, up to the legal limit, while in other waters if everybody kept a legal limit the fishery would soon be horrible. I love to eat freshwater fish. And I eat them about every other week, and several at a sitting. In one way, the invasion of spotted bass in my home rivers has been great; I can kill a dozen spotted bass whenever I want a great meal or two. I haven't eaten a smallmouth or largemouth from any of these waters in more years than I can remember, but I've sure eaten a pile of spotted bass. I also eat smaller bass from ponds that need thinning, and a few crappie and bluegill meals whenever I get the chance.

I've lived long enough and have been aware for long enough about when things bloom that I can tell you that redbuds have almost always started to show color the first week of April around where I live. This spring they were at least THREE weeks early. The dogwoods are always blooming by about a week and a half after the redbuds are in full bloom but before they start to show green leaves. So far I haven't seen any sign of dogwoods blooming; probably the mostly cooler than normal weather the last week or so has slowed them. You can easily check to see how low the rivers are compared to what they normally are this time of year by comparing present flow in cfs to the median flow. You can also compare the flows to the record low flow for today's date. Here are some highlights from checking just now: Niangua above Tunnel Dam: today 257 cfs, median 1040 cfs. That's a record for the date, previous record low flow was 316 cfs. Gasconade at Hazelgreen: 336 cfs, median 986 cfs. That's way above the record low flow for this date of 90.6 cfs. Meramec at Sullivan: 466 cfs, median 1409 cfs. Record low flow is 287 cfs. Black above Annapolis: 258 cfs, median 641 cfs. Record low is 157 cfs. Current at Van Buren: 1050 cfs, median 2260 cfs. Record is 620 cfs. James near Boaz: 173 cfs, median 1170 cfs. Record is 110 cfs. While only the Niangua is showing a record low, ALL those streams are below the 25th percentile, which means that they are lower today than they've been over more than 75% of the years on record. So yup, they are definitely a lot lower than normal.

Partly because I just love the streams in the Ozarks, partly because I grew up here and have lived here all my life, partly because I know how to catch fish here better than anywhere else. There are other places with bigger fish, more spectacular scenery, etc. But the Ozarks is a great combination of fun but easy floating and fishing and nice scenery.