Al Agnew

There have probably been a million people standing on that ledge (the millennials call it Hawksbill Crag, but the Ozarker name is Whittaker Point) in the last 30 years or so, and it hasn't crumbled yet. I've stood upon it a couple times. It's pretty large and wide. But I guess at some point somebody could be the unlucky one.

Definitely a lot of questions about the group that is suggesting the change. My understanding is that the park and preserve idea would not turn it over to the state, but would give it a different designation. National Preserves USUALLY have fewer restrictions than National Parks or the Buffalo National River now, and speculation is that they are pushing the preserve idea to be able to develop lands along the river. But they are being coy about what their goals actually are, and just saying that they want to start a dialogue or some bureaucrat speak like that. To me, at best it's a solution in search of a problem. The Buffalo is being run pretty well right now as it is, as well as can be expected with the limited funding that politicians in Washington see fit to allocate to it. But given the makeup of the group pushing this, you can bet there is a whole lot of money to be made somewhere in the mix.

I bought my jet boat in 2007...geez, that sounds like a long time ago but seems like yesterday. I've always used mine almost exclusively in colder weather, because that's when the rivers you can easily use one on are uncrowded and better fishing. I've always reserved the warm weather fishing for rivers too small or too low for a lot of jet boat use, because I would rather fish them out of my solo canoe than run big, crowded rivers in the jetboat. Now that I'm living right on a popular jet boat river, it makes me even sadder what's happened to our rivers. Weekends in warmer weather are just plain nuts. A hundred boats a day going past the house. 95% of the people running jet boats on it aren't fishing, just joy riding. Big boats that have 250 HP engines running incessantly up and down the river. Those incredibly stupid little overpowered mini jet boats that nutcases are always posting videos using on western streams that are so small and winding that if there happened to be a fly fisherman standing in the water they'd be dead, and if there was a moose standing in the same place the boater would be dead. Jet skis. I'm just glad that I can spend a good part of the summer out here in Montana on a river where motorized craft are not allowed, and when I'm in Missouri in the winter it's nice to be able to put the boat in close to the house and not worry much about all the idiots, and to fish in comfort and not have to worry about finding a shuttle. And there are still nice stretches of unboatable but floatable if you want to work at it streams nearby when I'm in MO in the summer. I'm old. If I'm lucky I have another 10 or 20 years left that I might be able to be on the rivers. I'm afraid I'm not going to like what my choices are in another 10 years. I saw the rivers before jetboats. Seeing them now saddens me.

My buddies who are big fly fishermen and who used to fish the North Fork (one of them lives on it) all the time say it has never recovered from the record flood of 2017. I found smallmouth fishing above the trout section to be good the last time I floated it, but that was in 2019. I also spent a day fishing for bass while floating within the trout section down to Dawt, and never caught a smallmouth, only a few largemouth. At that time the stripers weren't up in the river much. I'm afraid that the stripers are slowing the recovery of the trout population.

I don't think a single one of my grates is as straight as that. Of course, I've had my motor for 17 years now, and have never tried to bend around on them.

A rudder helps you keep drifting straight when you're fishing while drifting. But in streams it makes maneuvering more difficult. Depends a lot on what kind of water you are fishing and what the hull shape of your boat is. There are always trade-offs. Ideally you would want a rudder that you can deploy or easily lift up out of the water, because you don't want it hanging down into the water if paddling through a shallow riffle. You probably won't want to do this to your kayak, but there was a time when I thought a drag anchor would be great for use with my solo canoe. I rigged up an eyebolt on the stern plate and a cleat on the side of my seat, got a 15 or so inch length of heavy chain, covered it in rubber, tied it onto a good rope, ran the rope through the eyebolt. I could lift it ALMOST out of the water to run riffles...but there was still a few inches dangling in the water at the back of the boat. That few inches of chain in the water made a surprisingly significant difference in how straight the canoe stayed when I was just drifting with the current. I soon tired of the extra weight and inconvenience of using the anchor and ditched it, and a drag anchor can be dangerous in heavy current so I don't really recommend it much for small craft.

Unfortunately, there are few if any jetboatable streams in the Ozarks where you can catch these numbers of fish routinely, or at least that's been my experience. Now that I live on a jetboat friendly section of the Meramec, I've tried fishing it hard in the summer, and I maybe catch 20% of the number of fish on it that I can do on almost any canoeable stream that's too small for easy jetboat use.

I'm a lot closer to the way you do it if I'm floating an unfamiliar stream. Then it's as much about exploring and soaking in the scenery as it is fishing--sometimes even more so. But I've floated every inch of Big River dozens to hundreds of times. On it I only notice the other stuff in passing. Everybody fishes their own way, or should; I'm certainly not saying my own way it the only right one. And it's not a competition for me, nor do I set goals. It's just the way I like to fish. Canoe control, accurate casting to tight targets, figuring out the optimal casts as I'm drifting down a bank, and just pure efficiency, are all things I truly enjoy doing.

By the way, I started counting fish like this back when I was collecting scale samples and counting fish for MDC. Then I was writing it all down, but if I went to a different river where they didn't need the data, I just started keeping a running count in my head. There's a method to my madness...I just keep the numbers in my head--smallmouth, largemouth, spotted in that order. So my count at any given time might be something like "14/5/16". I can just keep the tally like that in my head as I'm fishing. But I do love fishing in places where you only catch smallmouth with an occasional largemouth; keeping the numbers is easier. Fishing Big River, you gotta keep all three, and often a fourth category--spot/smallmouth hybrids! Also, I found while keeping the records for MDC that on average, about half the fish I catch will be under 12 inches, and then the numbers go something like halving it for each inch or two. So if I catch 80 fish, somewhere around 40 will be over 12 inches, of those around 20 will be 13-14 inches, around 10 will be 14-15 inches, around 5 will be 15-16 inches, leaving 5 or so over 16 inches. This isn't always true, of course, but it kinda shows you an average of what size structure you should catch from a decent Ozark stream. Today, as near as I can remember I caught 6 smallmouth and a largemouth over 16 inches out of 58 fish, so it was a better than average day for bigger fish.

Your math is probably right, but what you have to realize is that a lot of times I get into a nice stretch of bank and I'm catching a fish every other cast. I fish fast moving baits almost exclusively, so a cast only takes about 10 seconds to fish back to the canoe. If I hook a smallish fish, under 12 inches (which I count if it's a bass), it only takes a few seconds to get it to the canoe, and 10-20 seconds to release it. So often I'm catching a couple fish per minute for a few minute stretch. I will also admit that if I get the fish to the boat and lift it out of the water and it shakes off before I touch it, I still count it if it's a small one. The bigger ones I have to hold to count. I find that most people really underestimate the number of fish they catch on a good day. I've had a lot of guys in the canoe with me when we are catching fish, and I keep a running count in my head and keep them apprised of how many we've caught. But in the past I've kept a silent count, and asked them at the end of the trip how many they thought we caught. They invariably underestimate by 25% or more. Why? Because the little ones don't stick in their mind. It's not that I'm proud of catching 40 dinks, it's simply that I want a yardstick for how good a numbers day it was. Today I did 12 mile float, from 7 AM to 5:30 PM. It was a typical fishing day for me in warm weather; I only got out of the canoe three times, twice to stretch my legs and pee, and a 15 minute lunch break. I caught a big one early and had a couple more strikes from big fish in the first couple hours, which always makes me fish even harder, but this is a very familiar stretch of river and much of it not all that scenic, so I didn't spend a lot of time gawking at the scenery or leisurely paddling, I fished hard and hit every spot I possibly could. And it's great habitat, without much "wasted water" to paddle through and the riffles are short. So I would estimate I was actively fishing for probably 9.5 hours of the 10.5 hours on the water. Let me tell you how the day went: 7-8 AM--caught a 12 inch largemouth before I got in the canoe, while tying on lures and casting them to make sure they were working right. A dink spotted bass in the riffle right below the put-in. Then I fished a pool nearly a mile long, with only 2 more dink spotted bass throughout it. At the tail end of the pool, I hooked a really good fish and lost it, caught another small spot, and then caught a 19 inch smallmouth. First hour, five fish. 8-10 AM--the big one made me start fishing hard, and it hit topwater, so I was fishing walking baits a lot, but I was also using my homemade crankbait. I didn't hook any more big fish, but caught a couple nice smallmouth in the 15 inch range, and a bunch of spotted bass. I believe that by 10 AM I'd caught 4 smallmouth, 2 largemouth, and 11 spotted bass total, so second two hours, 12 fish. 10-11 AM--Mary called me around 11, and asked me how many fish I'd caught so far. I remember telling her that I was up to 24 fish, so I must have caught 7 in that hour. One of them was an 18 inch smallmouth, which I caught on my homemade twin spin, which made me start fishing it a lot. It's probably the fastest lure I fish because I reel it so that it bulges the surface. If I'm fishing that lure I make a LOT of casts! 11 AM-1 PM--I stopped for lunch about 1 PM, and called Mary again. This time I told her I was up to 31 fish, so 7 fish in those two hours. 1-3 PM--the fishing seemed to slow considerably during this time, with long stretches of no fish or maybe one dink spotted bass, but I hit a couple stretches of good fishing. At about 3 PM I passed one of the major landmarks on this float, and had three miles to go. I remember at that point I was up to 24 spotted bass, 9 smallmouth, and 7 largemouth. So I caught 10 fish in that 2 hour period. 3-4 PM--I had stopped using the twin spin and was trying other stuff, and not catching much. I think I only caught 6 fish in that hour, but one of them was right around the end of the hour, and was my second 19 inch smallmouth--as soon as I'd picked up the twin spin rod again! I also hooked and lost two more big ones on topwater. 4-5 PM--then things really got slow. I only caught two dink spotted bass in this hour. I was up to 48 fish total. 5-5:30 PM--the big reason I can be so precise on these times is that I was supposed to be at the take-out at 5:30 to meet my shuttle person, so I was timing the float more than I usually do. In that last half hour the big fish turned on. I hooked and lost another big one on top, then caught my best of the day, a 19.5 inch smallmouth, and had strikes from two more big ones. So obviously I was fishing really hard that last half hour. I only had a half-mile to go, and in that half hour and half mile I caught 10 fish to bring the final tally up to 58. Now...double those numbers for a day of more than 100 fish. Believe me, it isn't that hard to do if the fish are cooperating and you're counting every bass you catch, no matter how small. I've had a few days in the past where I seldom made more than a half dozen casts without catching a fish. Heck, my buddies and I all kept count one day on the John Day River in Oregon, when you literally could have caught a smallmouth on every cast the little ones were so thick; the only reason we didn't is because we were trying a lot of big lures to try to find the bigger fish. We all caught between 140 and 250 fish apiece. Cory Cottrell and I kept count on the trip up north this year, and caught 140 our best day between the two of us, and the great majority were over 15 inches. We were fishing mainly spinnerbaits and buzzbaits in murky water where most of our casts were very short, and we burned them back to the boat if the fish didn't hit in the first 3 feet off the bank.

Brown trout are gorgeous fish! My favorite of the trout, other than native cutthroat in their native streams.

When I was a kid and the original Rapala was still a "new" lure, I caught a pile of smallmouth, including my first 20 incher, on a 2 3/4th inch long Rapala. I did NOT fish it as a crankbait, I fished it as a surface lure, just twitching it quickly but gently enough that it stayed on the surface. After fishing it through the assumed strike zone, I burned it back in. Sometimes a bass would zip out after it when I was cranking it back in and slam it. But I found out as time went along that other lures were simply better. I haven't used any shallow diving minnow lures for probably 40 years. I'm sure they still catch fish, but I'm very happy with the lures I DO use. That section of Big River was one of the original three special management areas. I caught one of my two biggest, by weight, smallmouth on it, which was also the longest smallmouth I've ever caught (22.5 inches) long before the spotted bass invaded and it became a special management area. It has never been a great stretch for numbers of fish, but used to produce big ones with some regularity until the spotted bass resulted in a decline of probably 70% in the smallmouth population (which also means a decline of something like 70% in the numbers of BIG smallmouth). On a different stretch of Big River last week, I caught 80 bass, including 6 between 17 and 18 inches. Had I been floating the stretch you floated, my numbers would have been less than half that under the same conditions, I suspect.

But...but...but...MDC denies there are mountain lions in MO! I see this on social media constantly, along with "they stocked (bears, rattlesnakes, wolves, mountain lions, bobcats)". I still patiently explain that MDC said there were no mountain lions in the state because there was no REAL evidence. Your grandpappy's stories of seeing them on the back 40 don't count as evidence, because MDC had no way of knowing the reliability of ordinary people as being able to identify mountain lions. If there were as many of them as there are people saying they see them all the time, we'd be overrun with the critters. Once that evidence showed up (dead bodies, good tracks, game cam photos, etc.) MDC reported it. And there is still no evidence of a breeding population, but I suspect it's only a matter of time before that evidence shows up as well. One big blurb on social media reported this and said, "be careful out there". Yeah, right, mountain lions are going to be stalking hikers and floaters in MO any day now. Living part of the year in great mountain lion country in Montana, I have exactly zero worries of mountain lions, or wolves, or black bears. Grizzlies are another story...I'm paranoid about grizzlies...because a person gets chewed up by a grizzly about every year in Montana.

That same week that I floated in the trout section in May and found water temps as high as the lower 70s, I also floated the upper North Fork and had the best day of smallmouth fishing I'd ever had on the river. So no, I don't think the smallmouth in the UPPER river were much affected.

I don't know why I can't get this comment to not be in bold type, so I'll just keep typing... The reason you didn't catch many smallmouth is because that section is simply too cold for a good smallmouth population. There aren't many bass in the North Fork between where the big springs come in and Dawt Mill, though they get more common the closer you get to Dawt. The upper river has a good population of smallmouth. The flood of 2017 did great damage to the trout population in two ways. One, it wiped out a lot of the aquatic insect life. Two, and in my opinion far more important, it scoured most of the trees out of the banks along the river, exposing it to the sun a lot more than it had been. The river is warmer now in the summer because of that exposure. I floated the entire trout section in 2018, in MAY, and measured water temps in the lower half of the trout section at 71-72 degrees. I think it's simply too warm now for the trout to thrive except in the first few miles below the springs. There was a big controversy among trout anglers about the removal of the mill dam at Dawt. They knew it would allow the stripers to move farther up into the trout water. It did. And there is no doubt that the stripers are doing a number on the already suffering trout population. In a way it's funny...one introduced species being decimated by another introduced species.

I never used Hot N Tots, but there are several lures in that photo that bring back memories. The Hellbenders and Bombers, especially. When I was a kid bass fishing with my dad on Wappapello Lake nearly every Sunday, Bombers and Hellbenders were our favorite lures for crankbaiting the stump fields on the lake. Although I don't see our go-to colors represented in the photo. With Hellbenders, we used the shad colored one in the largest size other than the Magnum Hellbender. In Bombers, we used the Christmas Tree color, which was white with green back and lots of silver flecks, in the 400 and 500 series sizes. I do see a coachdog Hellbender, which for some reason was Mom's favorite color. Some of the other lures were ones we tried during those times and decided that they just weren't good enough. The three bigger ones in the boxes are Bomber Company Water Dogs, and they should have been as good as the Hellbenders, but they just didn't catch fish for us. I also see an Arbogast Mudbug, which was far inferior to the similar shaped Bomber. And almost hidden among them is a South Bend Midge-oreno, which is the lure that I learned to add a skirt to the belly hook to make it one of the best river smallmouth lures ever conceived.

A guy on one of the fishing groups I frequent on Facebook put up a post in which he said he got immediately into tournaments when he first started bass fishing, and now he is at a point where he wants to just fish for fun, with no pressure to catch a limit of fish or big fish to win, but he can't turn off his wanting to fish as hard as possible. It got me thinking... When I was a kid, from about the time I was 7 or 8 years old, I was fishing every Sunday with my dad on Wappapello Lake. That was back in the early 1960s, and you could have counted on the fingers of your hands the number of really serious bass fishermen on the lake back then. Dad was one of them, and I wanted to be like Dad, so I tried to be one of them, too. And it was all run and gun, power fishing back then. Topwater lures like the Devil's Horse and a Lucky 13 with a prop on the back in the spring and fall, deep diving crankbaits in the summer, hitting the stump fields. That was even before many spinnerbaits had appeared; if there had been spinnerbaits like we have now back then, I'm sure we would have fished them. I quickly learned to use a baitcast outfit, after starting out with a Zebco spincast rig, because that's the way power fishing like we did was done. No spinning reels. No light line; we used 20 pound test Trilene. We made thousands of casts each day, and man, did we catch fish! When I first started fishing the local river, at about age 10 or 12, I was given my first spinning reel, a Mitchell. But the fishing remained the same. Make a lot of casts with lures like Rapalas (this was not long after the original Rapala swimming minnow first came out). Cover a lot of water and just cast to everything. I never got out of that mindset. I still far prefer fishing with fast moving lures. Unless it's cold weather or I get desperate to catch a fish, I never use slow moving stuff on the bottom. I guess as an angler I have Attention Deficit Disorder. I want to keep moving and keep casting. It's how I like to fish. And if it doesn't always work, so be it; I'm not going to change. Oh, I carry a rod with something I can fish slowly and on the bottom, rigged just in case I see a situation where it might work. I see people ask all the time what you use to catch river smallmouth. Seems like 90% of the answers are stuff like tubes and jigs and Nerd Rigs. At least 90% soft plastics fished slowly and deep. That's almost an alien concept to me. I fish fast, and high in the water column. Here lately I've had four rods rigged with a walk the dog topwater, the plopper lure I fell in love with, a shallow running crankbait, and a spinnerbait. And even on my one "slow" fishing rod, I've been using a swimbait. Monday, I floated a stretch of river that doesn't see much use because of inconvenient accesses. Covered about 10 miles in 10 hours. Between when I started at 8 AM and noon, I caught 40 bass, mostly on spinnerbaits. Only one was a good one, about 18 inches. I considered it a slow morning. But in the afternoon the fishing got a lot better, and between noon and 6 PM when I reached the take-out, I put another 70 or so bass in the canoe, including 8 that were all around 17 inches, a lot on the spinnerbait but the later it got the more they hit topwater. It was a great day, fishing exactly how I wanted to fish. Then today, Mary and I floated another stretch of river. This one sees a lot more pressure, and the fishing was tougher. I just kept fishing what I like to fish, even though I suspect I could have done better if I'd slowed down and fished the optimal spots carefully with the bottom stuff, especially because it was such a bright sunshiny day. I probably only caught about 20, none over 16 inches and most under 12 inches, in 6 hours. But I was fishing the way I want to fish. So getting back to the tournament guy...I still fish HARD when I'm on the water. I cannot turn that off any more than he could. But I'm fortunate in that it's the way I WANT to fish. Catching the most fish possible or the biggest fish I can is just not that important to me; if the stars align as they did Monday and I catch over 100, fishing like a danged fool, I love it. If they don't align and I have a day like today, so what, I'm still fishing the way I want to, enjoying the casting, the working of the topwater lure, seeing the fish hit, hoping for a big blow-up or the bulge on the surface as a big one takes a shallow running crankbait. People who know I fly fish out in Montana all the time often can't figure out why I don't do more fly fishing in MO. Well, it's because I love fishing with light baitcasting tackle just as much as I like fly fishing; in fact, probably more than I like fly fishing. I get my fly fishing for trout fix in Montana, in Missouri I get my baitcasting for river bass fix. I'm fishing the way I want; heck, I'd rather fish with streamers than anything else for trout, even dry flies. I've been known to fish streamers when the trout were rising and my buddies were catching them on dries. I might not catch as many as they do, but I just love stripping streamers, and hoping for that big meat eater.

Must have just been a good day for river fishing. A buddy and I floated a 5 mile stretch of a local river this morning, and caught about 40 bass in less than five hours, including a half dozen smallmouth between 17 and 19 inches.

Hmm...about that half man, half bear, half pig...apparently somebody didn't study fractions!

Only of the biggest one…21 inches and probably 6 pounds or better.

I used to fish a three day tournament, small, not professional, friendly, but money on the line, every year. It was three days of fishing as hard as I ever fish. And I never won it. Only once finished in the top three, fishing with my dad. Both of us were decent reservoir anglers back then, and we weren't fishing against pros, just guys that were a little better than we were. So I know just a tiny bit of what big time tournament fishing entails. I also just got back from four days of HARD fishing on a river somewhere in the North Country. Not quite tournament angling...get up at daylight, drive 40 minutes from the motel to the boat ramp, fish about 10 hours, on the trolling motor the whole time, power fishing with spinnerbaits and buzzbaits and topwaters, catching 60 to well over a hundred smallmouth in places where you had to really wrestle them out of heavy wood cover. Big fish, like half of them over 17 inches. That has to be as hard as most tournament anglers' days, and I'm 71 years old today. But of course, I don't do it for a living. I didn't HAVE to catch those smallies to cash a check, nor fish that hard. And I won't fish that hard for that many days in a row the rest of the year. But maybe it was a pretty good representation of what one tournament is like as far as traveling, staying in motels, eating restaurant food just before the restaurant closes, trying to get a good night's sleep, keeping your gear in order (for one thing, I went through more than a dozen spinnerbaits, either losing them to fish in heavy cover or the fish tearing them up, and had to change out blades and skirts on the ones I had left to get something that worked best), and then fishing all day and keeping your focus. Are they athletes? Nah, not really. Do they work hard? Yup, but not as hard as some working folks. But consider this...a lot of people who work for a living work very hard, taking a toll on their bodies...but it's a physical job where they do just a few things. They don't also have to continually figure things out, they don't have to keep a laser sharp focus on what they are doing, they aren't under pressure to succeed in beating most of their competitors, they don't have to also be a "people person" who presents themselves well to the public. And then you have the workers who DO have to really be sharp mentally, beat out competitors to succeed, and present themselves well to the public...but they tend to not work hard physically. Professional bass fishing is something that combines both, and that's a relative rarity.

My best double of many over the years...the larger one was a bit over 18 inches.

Got back to MO over the weekend, and had my annual three day solo float planned for this week. I kept looking at the long range forecast, and seeing little to no chance of rain during the week, so I figured it would be great weather--I hate doing overnight floats if there's a chance of thunderstorms. But...I didn't really pay attention to the forecast temperatures. Stepping off the plane in St. Louis, I was hit by a wave of humidity that was worse than a sauna. So I paid a bit more attention to the forecast, and saw the temps in the 90s and 100s and the humidity. Well, maybe...I've fished all my life in hot weather, and it never much bothered me, but I think I'm getting more sensitive to it as I age and as I spend more time in the negligible humidity of Montana. And Mary, who doesn't do heat well, is always worried about me when I'm gone overnight in such heat. I needed to do some stuff around the house yesterday, so I got up at 6:30 and walked outside, again being hit with the wave of humidity, temperatures already in the 80s. I thought that it wouldn't be comfortable sleeping on a gravel bar in this kind of weather, and was coming to grips with the fact that I wasn't going to do my solo float this week. This morning I worked a bit more in the yard, then decided, heck with it, I was going to do some exploring and checking out some spots to wade and fish; surely it wouldn't be too uncomfortable if I was standing in the water, would it? Having made the move to our place on the Meramec, I was a good distance from all the wading creeks I had usually fished, so I needed to find some new spots. I loaded a cooler of drinks, some topwater lures, and my creek fishing cast rod, and headed for the first creek I wanted to check out. The first bridge I stopped at was fairly far down on the creek, looked slow and a little murky. First cast at the low water bridge I got a strike from a nice green fish, either a largemouth or spotted bass. Missed it. I waded up the creek about a quarter mile, caught a couple little largemouth and a couple small spotted bass. Never got wet up to my shorts legs. It was hot. As far as I could see, slow, shallow water. Decided to check it out farther upstream. I stopped at another bridge, with a lane leading off the highway down to the creek. Looked it over...not much water flowing, a little clearer, could be fishy...but still wide open to the sun. I wasn't too impressed, decided to check out a couple other spots a little farther upstream. Neither looked all that great, mainly because there was really no good place to park at the low water bridges. So I gave up on that creek and headed for the far upper reaches of the Bourbeuse. I had checked out several road crossings on the Bourbeuse a few years ago when researching for the book I was writing on the Meramec river system. The book has never gotten quite finished, and I didn't know if those accesses were still viable. The first one I stopped at was good looking, except that even as high up on the Bourbeuse as it was, the water was very murky. There was a big, deep-looking pool above the bridge, and what looked like short pools and big water willow beds everywhere downstream. I started wading downstream, fishing that same topwater. In the first pool, I got a strike from a really good fish, had it on for a bit, and lost before seeing it well enough to tell what it was. Next cast I caught a small largemouth. Next pool, I caught four straight smallmouth from the same 10 foot section of bank. Third pool was too shallow. Fourth pool, three more smallmouth. None were over 14 inches, but plenty of fun. Long section of shallow water. Very tough wading on chunk rock. Finally reached another decent looking pool, caught one small smallmouth at the head of it, nothing through the rest of it. I suddenly realized that I was REALLY hot. I'd been wading up to my waist in places, but the water was warm, had to be in the 80s. The sun was beating down. The humidity was stifling. I was beginning to worry that I might be getting a little bit of heat exhaustion. I stripped off and got into the water, submerging head and all, lolled around for a bit. I felt a lot better, but the thought of wading farther and then having to trudge back up to the truck just didn't sound appealing. So I headed back. Got to the truck, dug a cold beverage out of the cooler, and started the drive back to the house. Took a nap when I got home. Dang, I must be getting old!

I was wading in waist deep water along an undercut bank when a beaver shot out from under the bank and by me, glancing off my leg. Scared the bejeebers out of me!

I knew the biologist in charge of otter reintroduction, too. He told me after they began to be a problem not only what Mitch said about farm ponds, but also about the habitat, especially wintering habitat, in smaller streams. Many smaller streams do not have the large, deep, cover-filled pools they once had. When fish are squeezed into smaller areas, especially in the winter, it makes things easier for otters. He also said that ALL the studies and the literature on otter reproduction turned out to be wrong when it came to Missouri, probably because of farm ponds and habitat deterioration. He said the otters were reproducing NINE TIMES faster than the literature said they should be. But, when you think about it, with the lack of otters, a first class predator of fish, perhaps populations of game fish in smaller streams were "unnaturally" heavy. This is the same thing I think about when you're talking about the undeniable decline in turkey populations from the 1980s and 1990s. When turkeys were reintroduced into Missouri, the found a huge unexploited habitat niche, and predators that didn't know how to exploit the turkeys. So they exploded in population. The turkey population at its height was probably way larger than a natural turkey population. Then the predators caught up, and the turkey population dropped. It's the same with game fish in small streams...without the otters preying upon them, their populations may have been unnaturally high. Once the otters showed up and found a smorgasbord of fish and no natural predators, they went the same way, exploding to unnatural levels, and dropping the fish populations in small streams to a point where in many cases they were almost wiped out. Eventually, theoretically, it should all work out; the otter population and fish population stabilizes, probably at a level that we human anglers won't like because there aren't as many fish as there used to be. However, we humans need to be part of the population control mechanism for otters, since they still don't have any natural predators except for the handful of mountain lions that may or may not be roaming the woods. With some human population controls the otters and fish might stabilize at levels happier for us anglers.