Al Agnew

The guy that was MDC's "otter ambassador", back when MDC was just considering reintroducing otters, traveled around the state with several "tame" otters giving programs. The otters, of course, were the stars of the show. I knew him well, and talked to him about the otters. I may have mentioned how cool animals they were and they seemed very friendly and acclimated to humans. He just shook his head, and rolled up his sleeves. His forearms were a mass of scars. He said he really didn't enjoy handling the otters, because they could be "real s.o.b.'s", docile one moment and vicious the next.

Nobody ever touted walleye or crappie as hard fighters for their size. Indeed, most people pursue them because they are great to eat, and once you find them, easy to catch in most places where they are found. Brook trout aren't the best fighters, either, compared to some of the other "real" trout (brookies are char, not trout). They are pursued mostly because they are trout but kinda easy, and in the east, because they are the only native trout and live in some wonderful streams. There is no doubt that bass are not quite as great fighters as mythology says they are. Comparing species at their best--in moving water that is optimum temperature for their metabolism, and wild fish, rainbow trout are faster and jump higher, brown trout are just as strong and often jump just as well, catfish are stronger, and a whole bunch of saltwater fish would pull a smallmouth inside out if they were hooked together. But the beauty of bass is that they do a little of everything; they pull hard, they go for cover, they jump, and it takes them a while to give up. This combination of fighting abilities, and their aggressiveness and the myriad of ways you can fish for them...heck, even the fact that they are easier to handle once you get them to hand than most other fish, makes them almost the perfect game fish.

I know plenty about streams in the area of SW Montana where we live half the year. I know a lot less about Wyoming streams. If it's anywhere from the Missouri River south and in between the Bighorn and the Big Hole, I can help. The choices are endless, from tiny mountain streams full of native cutthroat that are so small and so brushy that you never actually make a fly cast, to big, brawling rivers like the Yellowstone (which still have places to wade but are mostly fished from boats). A few pieces of general advice... Don't fall in love with idea of a road trip fishing rivers all over Wyoming and Montana. This is BIG country, and there is often a LOT of space in between rivers. You end up doing more driving than fishing. Pick a region where there are several rivers and all their tributaries all within a couple hours' drive. For instance, in my area, within two hours or so I can fish 50 miles or more of the Stillwater, 40 miles of the Boulder and the West Boulder, a hundred miles or more of the Yellowstone, 75 miles of the Gallatin, 50 miles of the Madison, and goodness knows how many miles of smaller tributaries. And there is a LOT of variety in all those waters, it ain't like cookie cutter streams. There is far more variety in Western streams than there is in Ozark trout streams. So pick a base to stay and branch out from that base to whatever rivers or creeks that most interest you that you can easily drive to without wasting half the day. Guides are essential for fishing the big rivers from boats. They are far from essential if you're wanting to fish smaller streams by wading. Personally I'd advise doing at least a little of both, and hiring a guide for a river trip. You should learn a lot about things like the spots trout hang out in from the guide, and how to fish those spots, if nothing else. There are plenty of good fly shops, but don't get too hung up on "local" and "hot" patterns. I use pretty much exactly the same stuff in Montana that I do in Missouri...basic nymphs, dries, and streamers. For instance, my Montana nymph box has a whole bunch of Hare's Ears, Prince, Pheasant Tails, Copper Johns, scud patterns, San Juan Worms, Pat's Rubber Legs, and some soft hackles. Any other nymphs found in my box were bought on a whim and are unlikely to ever get wet. Yes, it will be hopper season when you're out here. Don't fall in love with hopper patterns, though. Try them, but what we are finding in recent years is that the fish in the more heavily pressured rivers are so conditioned to avoid hopper patterns that they've almost stopped eating the real grasshoppers. I discovered last year that all the foam hoppers that look so realistic that the fly shops sell by the truckloads weren't working at all, and I went old school and fished a Joe's Hopper and actually caught some nice fish on it. First good hopper fish I'd caught in a couple years. Let me know if you decide to fish in my area. I'm not saying it's the best region; it certainly gets a ton of fishing pressure and the fishing can be tough. But it's a beautiful area.

Actually the population of whitefish in the Yellowstone is down considerably. Apparently the record flood last year did a number on them. I floated today by myself in my Water Master raft. Had to cut the float short because I lost one of my swim fins. But I caught 14 trout and not a single whitefish, and I don't think that's ever happened before.

For Ham…first time on the Yellowstone this year. Mary and I were just floating, planning to stop here and there to fish good looking riffles. This is the first riffle we stopped: Fourth cast: River is still high, not many places to wade and fish yet. Caught a bigger whitefish at the first spot and a half dozen at one more spot. Caught one rainbow.

Yup, and lake whitefish are pretty good. Totally different species.

Nah, drum are far superior to whitefish. Drum are pretty decent. They are in the same family as saltwater redfish (the only freshwater member of the family). If you like blackened redfish you'd like blackened drum.

I tried whitefish a couple times once I started living here in Montana part time. Nobody here eats them unless they smoke them. I quickly found out why. At best they are mediocre. They have a considerable stripe of red meat, and like most fish with red meat, the red meat is pretty vile. And it isn't easy to remove. I found one source that suggested soaking the fillets in milk for 24 hours...don't know what that was supposed to do, but it made the red meat portions a little less vile. I could eat them pan fried after being soaked in milk. But they just aren't worth the trouble to clean them and do all the stuff you need to do to make them edible. Too bad, because they are so easy to catch and they aren't very bony. I don't mind catching whitefish, and do not throw them on the bank when I catch one. I usually handle them much like I handle trout I plan to release, but I may not take quite as much care with the whitefish, given their abundance. However, the last couple years they have not been as abundant on the Yellowstone as they had been; a disease of some kind went through them about three years ago and killed a fair percentage of the population. They take smaller flies readily, and though they don't fight anywhere near as well as trout, and don't jump at all, they keep things interesting when the trout aren't cooperating.

Yup, that's the key...I've caught a handful on streamers, but mostly smaller flies. They absolutely love Prince nymphs, size 12-16.

I don't think I do...it's so routine to catch them, and they never get over a certain size, that I've never thought to take pictures. Next time I catch one I'll get a picture for you. There aren't a whole lot of other fish in the rivers out there that I fish. The most common by catch other than the whitefish are mountain suckers. They get pretty big; I've caught some up to 24 inches long. I hate hooking them, though, because they have the nastiest slime on them of any fish I've ever caught. It is real thick and scrapes off on your line, and it's real sticky and difficult to get off you or your line. Other than that, I caught one beautiful golden redhorse one time, and a grayling over on the Big Hole. Haven't yet caught a bull trout, though I've fished a couple rivers where they are found. Smallmouth are slowly making their way up the Yellowstone as the summers get hotter and drier. They are common up to Billings, possibly fishable population up to Laurel, breeding up to about Columbus, and there have been a couple caught around us at Livingston. One was caught last year all the way up at Gardiner at the entrance to the park.

Just seems like a foreign concept to me to have trouble catching mountain whitefish. Where I fish in Montana you catch 10 whitefish for every trout, maybe more if fishing nymphs, a little less if fishing dries. That's the trouble with the West...it is a lot of miles of driving between your destinations. A whole lot of people think it's a good idea to do a whirlwind tour of two or three states and a half dozen rivers, and find out pretty quickly that you spend way more time driving than fishing. My advice is always to go to one place that has two or three rivers and a bunch of tributary creeks within an hour or two driving time, and stay there.

Yup, that's a spotted bass. And you're right, they haven't made it past the low water bridge at Leadwood access yet in any numbers. If you catch any more in that stretch, PLEASE kill them.

Not only does superglue require a near perfect fit of the tip as tjm said, but it's basically a one off thing. Once that tip is superglued onto the rod, you can't get it off if you need to replace it. I have rods that the tips have needed to be replaced more than once. I have a couple sticks of hot melt ferrule cement that I've used for more than 40 years, and still have enough left to put on 40 more years of tips--I'll certainly be gone before they are.

I can't find any good photos of the whole thing, but I can tell you how I built it. I was fortunate enough to have a gently sloping yard, sloping downwards toward the house, so excavation of a natural-looking "stream" was easy. I drew it out on paper...farthest upstream pool would be about 6 feet long by 3 feet wide by 8 inches or so deep, then a waterfall dropping into the next pool about 8 inches tall. The next pool would be shorter, about 4 feet long, but deeper, 14 inches or so, gradually rising to a steep riffle about 3 feet long into the next pool, which would curve to the right, and be about 10 feet long by 4 feet wide by 12 inches deep. There would be a gentle riffle about 5 feet long into the next pool, which would curve to the left, be about 8 feet long by 3 feet wide by 8 inches deep, and then a low waterfall into the final pool, which was 12 feet long by 5 feet wide by 20 inches deep. The bottom of that pool was about 30 inches below original ground level. I excavated the general shape of the pools and their depth, then collected a lot of rocks of various sizes and shapes off our land and piled them up. Had my nephew who was just starting a landscaping business bring over a bobcat and bring some rocks too big to move by hand...I had some rocks that were up to 4 feet by 3 feet by 2 feet. I planned out where I would use the bigger rocks, making vertical "bluffs" on the outside of the bends, and planning to use flat rocks to have the water pouring over for the waterfalls. I carefully dug out the edges of the channel so that the various rocks would fit. Then, I took the rocks back out and lined the whole thing with rubber roofing material. Placed all the rocks back into their locations atop the roofing material. Now I had the basic configuration finished. I glued flaps of the roofing material onto the main bottom material where the waterfall rocks were, and glued the other edge of the flaps to the edge of the rocks, so that the water couldn't seep underneath the waterfall slabs but had to run over them. I dug a trench from the end of the bottom pool to the upper end of the top pool for the water line that would circulate the water from the pump at the bottom to the beginning of the stream, and laid the piping. Now I was ready for the final landscaping. I backfilled dirt and gravel around the rocks along the edges. In places I'd kept the banks gently sloping and covered with the roofing material well away from where the water itself would be, and these areas I covered in creek gravel so it would look like little gravel bars. I started out covering the bottoms of the pools with gravel as well, along with scattered larger rocks. I found out fairly quickly that this wasn't a good idea; it made cleaning the pool bottoms periodically impossible, so I ended up draining it and digging the gravel all back out; the bottom of all the pools ended up being just the roofing material with the scattered larger rocks, and the bottom of the big pool at the lower end was nothing but flat roofing material, because it collected all the sludge and leaves eventually and really needed cleaning out the most often. The riffles were partially exposed roofing material which was black in color, and partly covered in rocks; algae soon covered the roofing material and you couldn't easily tell what it was; it looked like slick bedrock, which was a pleasant surprise. I planted some aquatic and semi-aquatic plants I got from a local water garden store in buried pots along the edges. One plant, that had a strong and pleasant minty smell, took off and grew everywhere. The others were well-behaved. I also brought some semi-aquatic grass back from a trip to Minnesota. It spilled out of the pot I had it in and tried to take over. And then I planted a couple sprigs of water willow, and it was a relentless spreader...you DON'T want to plant water willow! In the 20 plus years I had the water garden, I went through 3 pumps and was on my 4th one when we left. I tried several different ways of enclosing the pump so that it wouldn't continually get clogged with debris--one time a pump went out because a big water snake got sucked into it and gummed up the works! Never did find an ideal solution to that; just figured on spending another couple hundred dollars on a new pump every 6 years or so.

It had been many years since I'd floated the lower portions of the Bourbeuse. I had always floated it far less than the Meramec or Big, simply because it was farther away. Probably 40 years ago, I had occasionally floated a couple sections when there was a little outfitter in St. Clair who would shuttle me. Back then, there were no spotted bass. I generally had 50-60 fish days, about evenly divided between smallmouth and largemouth. After he closed, I just stopped floating it. The only two trips I can remember in the last 25 years were when the Smallmouth Alliance would put on their spotted bass "roundup". The spots had exploded in population on the lower river, and I always knew I could catch a bunch of them there during the Roundup. One float I remember was from Angler's Resort or whatever it's called to Reiker Ford, another was from Mayer's Landing to the Union Access. On that one, I caught a 20 inch smallmouth, though 75% of the fish I caught were spotted bass. But, now I'm living outside St. Clair, and the lower Bourbeuse is the closest float stream, other than the Meramec, so I decided to get reacquainted with it. A couple weeks ago, I floated that stretch from Mayer's Landing to Union Access. And the fishing was, in a word, terrible. I caught 7 bass, only one a smallmouth, none over 13 inches, in an all day float. So I was more than a little bummed...what had happened to the Bourbeuse I remembered? But, today I decided to give the Bourbeuse another chance, on a different float. I had Mary shuttle me, and started down the river...and immediately started catching fish, though they were all spotted bass. And like on Big River the other day, they were eating that flat-sided plopper lure. About a mile down the river, I finally caught a smallmouth. Then back to spotted bass. My second smallmouth came in the middle of a dead pool, blowing up the plopper 20 feet from the canoe, and it was a big one. I grabbed my net, and felt a sharp pain...I'd grabbed a lure in the bottom of the canoe at the same time. I dropped the net--fortunately the handle floated. Paddled backwards to get the net with one hand while holding the rod with big smallmouth attached with the other. Finally got the net and netted the fish. I laid it on my paddle blade, which has a mark at 20 inches...it came up a half-inch short of the mark. I was holding the fish in the water while trying to get my phone to get a picture, and it flopped out of my hand, so no photo. After that, the smallmouth seemed to come to life. I caught several soon after that. Even caught one that tried to take the lure away from a green sunfish I'd hooked, and got them both in, an odd double. I caught several more in the 14-15 inch range. And finally caught my first largemouth, a 15 incher. The Bourbeuse is an odd river. It is slower than nearly any other Ozark stream. I think that's due to its particular geology. Most of the rivers in the Missouri Ozarks run off the middle of the uplifted dome, either toward the north and the Missouri River, the northeast and the Mississippi, or to the south. The Bourbeuse, instead, runs kind of sideways to the center of the dome, and it just doesn't drop as much as the others. That's probably the reason it's also the crookedest of Ozark streams. When the uplift was just beginning, all the rivers meandered across a low, flat landscape, but the Bourbeuse dropped even less than the others, and thus its meanders were more extreme; the flatter the gradient of a river, the more it meanders. As the dome was uplifted, the streams all started cutting downwards, but the uplift was so gradual that they retained their meanders. I say all this to note that, when the Bourbeuse is low (and it was low enough that I didn't float many riffles cleanly), the only real current is within 50 feet or so of the riffles themselves, and most of the fish are in that zone. The middle of the long, dead pools is usually almost fishless. I caught some spotted bass in the dead water, and that big smallmouth was in almost dead water, but I concentrated most of my efforts in the short pools and near the riffles. It was in a short pool with a big log right in the middle of it that I had another big blow up, this one only five feet from the canoe. It was my second largemouth, and a giant. It was an inch and a half past my 20 inch mark. The fishing really picked up in a short, rocky pool, where I had a strike on nearly every cast, and most of them smallmouth. I stopped for a late lunch at the bottom of that pool, and maybe I shouldn't have, because when I got back on the water the fishing had slowed considerably. The rest of the trip was continual strikes from really small spotted bass, and the occasional gar, with once in a while a decent fish. Total count for the day...42 spotted bass, 22 smallmouth, 3 largemouth. A far cry from the way it was before spotted bass, but at least it was a pretty good day, highlighted by the two big fish.

Here's the thing with me, Wrench...I love using light baitcasting gear even more than I love using a fly rod. And I love fishing for smallmouth the way I grew up fishing for them, using fast moving, high in the water column lures with baitcasting tackle, where most of the time I can SEE the fish hit. I don't care how many I CATCH. I just love watching them attack a lure the way only smallmouth can; the tug ain't the drug for me, the strike is. Heck, I've thought about taking the hooks off my topwaters on days when they are really whacking them, and I might if it wasn't for the chance of catching a huge fish that I'd want a picture of. And in the off season, when they are probably not going to come up and hit a topwater lure, I love the challenge of finding a few big ones in some wintering hole that will eat a jerkbait or a hair jig. The other big reason why I don't enjoy using fly tackle on Missouri smallmouth is that I MOST love fishing from a canoe, in the canoe, drifting down the river...and that simply doesn't lend itself to fly fishing, especially when I'm fishing solo. And regarding the original question...in the summer, I fish walk the dog topwaters every day, all day; probably 40-50% of my stream bass then are caught on the WTD lures. Another 40-50% are caught on my homemade twin spin, my homemade crankbait, a regular spinnerbait, and a buzzbait. I only fish low and slow when I can't catch anything high and fast, and that's only maybe 5% of the time in the summer. Oh, and by the way...if you ever see me fishing a Nerd Rig, just shoot me.

I've been fishing these rivers since the 1960s. And I've kept pretty good records off and on, though not continuously. So I have a pretty good handle on how they have changed. First big change: the 12 inch minimum length on stream bass was instituted in 1974. Within a couple years the fishing for bass over 12 inches improved dramatically. I mean it was very obvious on my rivers. From the late 1970s to the late 1980s, the fish got bigger and the fishing got better. But on my rivers in the eastern side of the state, a few things happened in the 1980s that turned that around... 1982: Otter reintroduction begins. While otters haven't been terrible for EVERY stream, they certainly did a number on some of the smaller streams I fished. 1982: The first spotted bass were collected in the lower Meramec. This was a harbinger of the absolute worst thing that happened to smallmouth in the Meramec river system. 1987: Jet boats had become common on the larger Ozark streams. This was the second worst thing that ever happened. By the later 1980s, spotted bass were colonizing the Meramec up to Meramec State Park, Big River up to the highest mill dam in Jefferson County, and the Bourbeuse up to Goode's mill dam. For every pound of spotted bass biomass, there was one less pound of smallmouth. But, even before that, my catch rate of smaller bass on the middle Meramec had dropped to 25% of what it had been before. I was still catching about the same number of larger adult smallmouth, but something had definitely happened to the spawning success starting in the mid-1980s. This did NOT happen on Big and Bourbeuse, only on the middle Meramec. I am certain it was jet boat wakes, pounding the spawning banks, stirring up silt, and disrupting spawning. By the early 1990s, the big fish were scarce, too. So scarce that I all but stopped fishing the Meramec below Onondaga. And on the lower Bourbeuse and Big, the spotted bass had pretty well taken over and smallmouth, once common everywhere in these rivers, were limited to a few select spots on the lower portions; the rest were dink spotted bass. I can't stress enough how huge of an impact the spotted bass had on smallmouth there. 1992: The first three smallmouth special management areas were instituted--Meramec from Scott Ford to Bird's Nest, Big from Mammoth bridge to Brown's Ford bridge, Big Piney from Slabtown to Ross Bridge...one fish, 15 inch limit. Did they have a huge impact on the populations of bigger fish? I don't think so. In 1995 sections of the Gasconade and Jacks Fork got a one fish, 18 inch minimum length limit, and THAT made a difference. There were definitely more big fish in those sections in the next 10 years. Now...as to what happened after that, the spotted bass eventually colonized most of Big River and Bourbeuse. They also, in the same general time period, colonized the Gasconade and lower Big Piney. The smallmouth fishing on those streams will NEVER be as good as it was before spotted bass, period. The smallmouth population on the middle Meramec stabilized, and I think the fish eventually adapted to the jet boat wakes; they now spawn on rocky banks where there isn't as much silt to stir up, while before jet boats they spawned a lot on alluvial banks. The catch and release ethic got strong enough that there are still big smallmouth in most Ozark streams. And I KNOW more about catching big smallmouth than I did before, as do a whole lot of anglers. I think that, had I known in the late 1970s and early 1980s what I know now, I would have been catching a LOT of big smallmouth. I think that may have been the high point in the numbers of big smallmouth on the streams in the Meramec Basin. But a lot of big ones are still caught these days, mainly because more people are fishing, jet boats make fishing the streams easier, and the knowledge of how to catch them is more widespread. But fishing pressure has also made fishing tougher on the larger streams, even with catch and release being so common. And the numbers of smallmouth of catchable size on the Meramec, even in portions where spotted bass have never been able to dominate, is a fraction of what it was back in the early 1980s. The numbers of catchable smallmouth over much of Big River and the Bourbeuse is half or less what it was before spotted bass. The numbers of bigger smallmouth on a lot of streams, like the upper Jacks Fork, are also declining in the last ten years or so, both from fishing pressure and perhaps from otters. The thing is, the fishing was EASY between the mid 1970s and the late 1980s. It is now more difficult, and getting more difficult every year. When I first discovered the lower middle Meramec in the mid-1970s, I EXPECTED to catch one or two 18 inch plus smallmouth, and at least 50 bass, every time I went. I even went on weekends; yes, there were already hordes of rental canoes, but if you put in at daylight you avoided the crowds and caught fish like crazy. And there were NO jetboats. Now, fishing the same waters in the summer like I did then, I do NOT expect to catch 18 inchers, and I usually catch 15 or 20...and that's even with knowing a lot more about how to fish. And I don't even think about going out on weekends; living on the river in a section I fished a lot back in the day, I watch a hundred or more jetboats screaming up and down the river every Saturday and Sunday, and a dozen or more on weekdays. It saddens me. I fish the streams too small for jetboats in the summer, and only fish the jet boatable stretches in the off season.

You're welcome...I had a water garden with about 50 feet of running stream in five separate pools from 1 to 2 feet deep until I moved last year. Had a big pump to circulate the water from the bottom pool back to the top one, the pump flowed about 35 gallons a minute. I kept it full of minnows and sunfish, but found that no matter which pool I put the fish in, nearly all would fairly quickly move down to the lowest pool, which was the biggest and deepest. A few would stay in the middle pool, which was about twice the size of a bathtub and 1.5 feet deep. I'd have a little trouble with filamentous algae in the spring when the water first warmed up, but it would go away by late spring. But I had planted some semi-aquatic plants when I first built it, including water willow...and the plants tried their best to take over the whole thing. That, and trying to keep a ton of leaves out of it in the autumn, where the biggest problems I had. I finally purchased a huge sheet of netting that was sold to cover whole apple trees to keep something or other out of them, and covered the whole thing from late September until November. I'd have to clean leaves and sludge out of it about once a year by mostly draining it. I kept a little stock tank heater in the lower pool in the winter to keep it from freezing solid, and just ran it all winter. Had a great blue heron that discovered the "warm" water and fish to feed on, and kinda straddled the heater while looking for a meal! Had a pair of water snakes take up residence; it was fun to sit quietly on the deck next to the lower pool and watch the rocks until one of them stuck its head out from a crevice. I'd put in green sunfish a couple inches long from time to time, and in a year or two they would get to be 8 inches or more and terrorize the other fish, so I'd walk up to the pool with my fly rod and a fly and catch them and toss them into the little creek in the woods behind the house. I put crayfish in it, too, and they did well. Frogs colonized it, toads layed eggs and hatched little black tadpoles, dragonflies flitted around, birds came to drink and bathe...it was an endless source of entertainment!

Buy a minnow seine, and find somebody to help you seine. If you're not familiar with seines and seining, a seine is a net, usually about 3 feet by 10-20 feet. It will need handles on both ends, usually something like wooden broomsticks. It will have floats on the top and weights on the bottom. You and a partner get on each end, and drag it through shallow water, scooping up any fish that are in that water; you will want to drag it parallel to a gravel bar and then the person on the end away from the bar takes his end in an arc toward the bar while the one closer to the bar stops and holds his end there. Thus you scoop the fish in it out onto the bar. Pick places that don't have big rocks and other obstructions. Look for minnows along the bar and when you see them, run the seine. You CAN use a seine by yourself in small streams...just lay the handle on one end at the edge of a bar with the bottom of the net toward the bar, and make an arc with the other end until you drag it up to the edge of the bar. You'll get plenty of minnows if they are there. As bfishn said, you won't get many, or any, of the creek minnows to reproduce in a water garden. But they will live in it for years. You are likely to get bleeding shiners, as well as striped shiners, creek chubs, hornyheaded chubs, and stonerollers, and you will probably also get longear sunfish and darters. In a good creek you may get several more species. Most of the public MDC accesses on streams near St. Louis seem to be in big pools that aren't conducive to seining, but a few suggestions on easy public accesses that could be easily seined...Reiker's Ford on the Bourbeuse, Mill Rock on the Bourbeuse, Leadwood on Big River, St. Francois State Park on Big River, Washington State Park on Big River, Onondaga Cave State Park on the Meramec River, Bootleg Access on upper Big River, and any of a number of low water bridges on Huzzah and Courtois creeks (also Red Bluff Campground on upper Huzzah). There are other low water bridges on various creeks in the area that would probably be okay as long as there is an obvious place to park and a lack of purple paint and no trespassing signs. Be prepared for predators when you get your water garden set up. When I had one, I had water snakes take up residence in it and scarf down my minnows, and herons would visit it regularly as well.

I have no idea what the answer is. Anything that makes it more inconvenient to visit and post will run off potential members, whether it be paying a few dollars a year or having to sign in every time. I'm active in a bunch of Facebook groups but only because the forums I belong to are just not active enough to make me spend the whole evening on them; I hate the Facebook format. But I don't understand the lack of participation in the forums anymore. On River Smallies when it was still forums and not a Facebook group, people were saying that there just wasn't much new to talk about anymore, that it had all been covered dozens of times. I always said that I didn't care; that there were always supposed to be new people who hadn't seen it covered, and not only that but my opinions and outlooks changed over the years, so the post I would put up now on a given question might be different from what I put up on it five years ago. And besides, I just love talking (or typing) about fishing! But apparently a lot of people aren't the same as I am.

I understand the flowing water is not the problem, but the disease makes them come to the water to try to drink. In former years where blue tongue was prevalent I've found a number of dead deer along the rivers, far more than usual.

So I floated one of my favorite stretches yesterday. Got a shuttle from Jason Wolfe, and he gave me a couple lures a buddy of his paints to try out. They were flat-sided Whopper Plopper types, and very well painted. Now I'm not a big fan of Whopper Ploppers. I've tried them now and then, but find the actual Ploppers to be a bit frustrating to use. They don't immediately stay on the surface, and you have to lift your rod high and reel for a couple feet before they "plane" and sputter the way they are supposed to. And they are picky about rolling and twisting your line if the wire isn't perfectly straight. And I've used them quite a bit on days when the fish were hitting topwaters well and just eating up my usual walk the dog lures, and the ploppers never produced as well. So I tossed Jason's gifts into the box and thought I probably wouldn't try them on this day, at least. When I'm on this stretch, which I've floated hundreds of times over the years, I can pretty well tell you where I'm going to catch fish, almost down to the exact casts. And I can predict from fishing the first two pools whether the morning and maybe the whole day is going to be good or not. First pool...the sweet spot is on the downstream end, where the bank switches from rock to alluvial and the current just starts to pick up. I might catch a fish in the rocks before that point, but if I don't catch one on that short stretch of alluvial bank, I am disappointed. Second pool...this one has shaly rock, and there is a little point where the rocks stick farther off the bank. I'm almost certain I'll catch a decent fish there. If I don't, I know it's going to be a tough morning. I got nothing, either place. I also get kinda stuck in a rut in these first few pools. I know exactly what I'm going to throw. The first pool, I'm fishing my homemade crankbait. I pick up the spinnerbait rod for the faster water between the two pools, and then the walk the dog topwater when I hit the second pool. Since I didn't get anything with the topwater, I went back to the crankbait and spinnerbait for the next quarter mile. I caught a really nice largemouth, about 18 inches, on the crankbait and a few little ones, but things were slower than I thought they should be. And that's when I thought, what the heck, I'll try one of Jason's ploppers. First of all, I REALLY liked it. It didn't roll and it didn't sink when it landed. And for the next two hours the thing was a fish catching machine. At the end of that two hour period, I'd boated 30 bass. None were big, but the action was pretty fast. And then the fishing slowed drastically. In the next 7 hours, I caught about 20. Finally got a 17 inch smallmouth to hit the crankbait, but that was the only action from anything of any size. As is usual for this long float, I found myself with not too many hours left and too much river left, so I paddled through a few pools. And then the fishing finally picked back up. In the last two hours, I caught 25 or so more bass. Still nothing else big, but... I had been fishing the walk the dog topwater and catching a fish now and then, and saving the plopper for faster water areas. I was coming down a vertical alluvial bank, and the current had picked up, so I switched to the plopper. There was this huge explosion as a giant smallmouth came most of the way out of the water to slam the thing...and miss. The canoe was already pretty close and moving toward the site of the explosion, so I dropped the rod and paddled as hard but quietly as I could to back off and into the slow water away from the bank. I picked up a rod with a jig and craw on it and tossed it where I'd seen that fish. Bingo. I set the hook and knew it was that fish. I fought it for quite a bit, and thought I had things under control, until suddenly it took a hard lunge and I felt that sickening slack nothingness. I reeled in and discovered the HOOK had broken on my jig! Now I have to admit that I never got a REAL good look at that fish. It looked absolutely monstrous when it hit the plopper with its body mostly out of the water, but that happened so fast, and I've been fooled before on vicious strikes like that. And it never jumped and the light was wrong to really see it well as I was fighting it. But I THINK it was really big, like 21 inches plus. Some other events of the day...I saw more deer along the river than I can remember seeing on a single trip...at least 15. Which makes me wonder...could it possibly be a year for blue tongue disease, which makes deer come down to the water to drink? Hope not. I did smell something dead in a couple spots. I came upon a just fledged eagle sitting on a gravel bar. It took off, flying slow and laboriously, and then an adult that I hadn't seen flew out of a tree just downstream to follow along with the youngster. That was cool. Made me think again about how common and routine it is to see eagles on just about every float, when 30 years ago an eagle on these streams was unheard of except during the winter. The river is getting low. Jason told me he had floated this same stretch the day before, and had to get out and drag several times. I only had to drag once...another reason solo canoes are better than tricked out fishing kayaks that weigh a ton (insert smiley face emoji here). Herons were thick, including some just fledged youngsters. But I passed a heronry that I've known was there, on the other side of a big island, for a long time. You can't see it from the river, but I'd walked up to it before and it covered five big sycamores and often has at least 20 nests. And, when the young ones are still in the nest, you can certainly HEAR it. I could hear some still yammering. Nice day.

The snail darter became famous for almost but not quite stopping one of the last, and most useless, dams in the Tennessee Valley Authority, back in the 1970s-1980s. The Niangua darter is found only in the Niangua and tributaries and is indeed an endangered species. There are a LOT of species of darters, including probably a half dozen very common species found in the Niangua, so it was probably one of those species you were seeing. Darters are not minnows...they are actually in the same fish family as walleye, sauger, and yellow perch. They are all small--the biggest species is the logperch, and it only reaches about 6 inches in length. And sure, fish feed on them...fish feed on any kind of fish they can swallow. But it's tough to find darters big enough to furnish a mouthful for a good sized bass, not to mention that it isn't easy to catch many of them, as they don't usually go into minnow traps because they eat live food, small aquatic insects and such. And don't get me started on the gravel thing...there are a LOT of very good reasons to not dig gravel out of river beds, and I'm glad that dredging within the river channel is no longer allowed.

No outfitters serve that stretch, partly because of the Newberry Riffle; Steve at Cherokee Landing has been trying for a couple years to get them to fix it so that it doesn't pose a danger, because he won't put in floaters above it for that reason. There is one guy that does shuttles on upper Big, and Cherokee Landing is a small outfitter and campground. But for the most part it's do-it-yourself floating and thus not very crowded at all. There are a couple other reasons for that...it gets too low to easily float over much of the summer, access is limited, and there is more human abuse of that river than any other in the Ozarks. It's also basically easy and slow to float; the gradient isn't all that great. All those things combine to make it less crowded than most. Of course, it's my home river; I grew up within a mile of where the Newberry Riffle is now, and spent a good part of my childhood and teenage years on that stretch of river, so I still love it.

Interesting. Everybody went low-profile when palming the reel became the fad. Personally I HATE palming the reel. Rod handles were made to be gripped. The only parts of the reel I ever touch are the free spool button and the reel handle. Given that, it doesn't matter to me in the least what shape the reel is. I started out using Shakespeare Sportcast direct drive reels when they were the gold standard. Switched to Ambassadeur 5000s when they were the best reel out there, and went through all the other iterations of Ambassadeurs over the next couple decades. Switched to the first U.S. Shimanos, the first low profile reels, when it became obvious that they were an improvement in weight and smoothness. And now I have no loyalty to any company and no preference on reel shape.