Al Agnew

You can do park to park in a day, but don't plan on fishing much. I float from St. Francois Park to a private access near Blackwell, about 14 miles, in a day, and fish hard, but it's 7 AM (as early as I can usually get into the park) to 8 PM. And I paddle through some of the longest pools, and often have to paddle the last mile or so. There is one dead pool that's a mile long, and a couple more that are close to a half mile long. There isn't a whole lot of development in that stretch, so there are several good gravel bars for camping where you won't be in sight of a dwelling if you decide to do it as an overnighter.

There is a creek that comes into the river about a quarter mile above the Leadwood Access--it's right where the river divides and bends sharply to the left against the last bluff (on river right) above the low water bridge. That is where the runoff from the farthest upstream mine tailings (the Leadwood Mine) comes in. So from Leadwood Access to Bone Hole there is a significant amount of tailings on the bottom, but not enough to fill in the pools much. Bone Hole is the beginning of the five mile bend--only a half mile across the neck of it there--where the Desloge Mine's tailings once filled the entire inside of the bend, and continually eroded into the river. The farther you went around that bend, the worse the tailings in the river were. By the time you completed the bend, the bottom consisted of 90% tailings. At the downstream end of the bend now, you'll come to a 75 ft. high slope covered in rip rap, with a couple bluff outcrops sticking out of the rip rap. That was once a slope of mine tailings that covered even most of those bluff outcrops, and came right down to the river. The tailings were partially excavated there as part of the Superfund cleanup and then stabilized with the rip rap. The photo I've attached is an old photo of those tailings the way they used to be. The tailings were bad enough, but the county was stupid enough to buy most of the inside of the bend from the lead company and make it their county landfill, without worrying about how stable the flimsy little dikes holding back most of the tailings. Eventually the dikes gave way and not only dumped 50,000 cubic yards of tailings into the river all at once, but also the trash and garbage that the county had buried in the tailings. This happened in 1977, and it was a mess. Farther downstream, Flat River Creek comes in (about a half mile below the 67 bridges north of Desloge). The tailings from the two biggest mines, the National and Federal mines surrounding Flat River (Now Park Hills), flowed down Flat River Creek to the river, and from there to St. Francois Park is the worst section of tailings. There was a time when the bottom was little better than a concrete channel, the tailings packed on the bottom, the gravel bars mostly tailings. And the tailings are almost sterile, so nothing grew on the bars and only that nasty algae grew on the bottom. The river is actually in much better shape now. The bottom still has a lot of tailings, but some of the pools are deeper and the habitat is somewhat better than it was for a long time. The nasty algae is still a problem in mid to late summer, and there is plenty of development along the river that wasn't there before, but it's not bad floating...except for the Newberry Riffle about a half mile below Flat River Creek. The EPA and Corps of Engineers decided to try something to remove some of the tailings...they built what amounts to a dam, but instead of a single dam wall, it's a stairstep rapid of big boulders piled up in four distinct steps. The idea was to form a slack water pool above the "riffle" where tailings would settle (the tailings are the consistency of fine sand and small gravel) and be periodically dredged out. The "riffle" was supposed to be shaped so that it could be floated over in normal water flows, thus not impeding floaters. But a huge flood right after it was built kinda jumbled up the boulders and made it very difficult to float. If the water is low you have to clamber down the rocks dragging your boat, and if it's up a little it's basically impossible to float and even more difficult to drag over or around. If it's up more than that, it makes a serious whitewater rapid.

For $200, you can get a better rod and reel than the BPS combos. Or actually a better rod. The reel isn't all that important in Missouri fly fishing, basically all you need is a reel that will hold the line and has some sort of a drag, doesn't have to be great. You can find reels for $40 that will do the job. Then spend about $120 on the rod (Redington and Temple Fork Outfitters have some decent rods in that range.) And the rest of your $200 on the line. Sure, you can catch fish on a $100 combo. But you'll cast better and easier and it will feel better if you go closer to $200. I've owned both BPS and Cabelas fly rods, and in my experience the Cabelas ones were better for the same price, so if you go the combo route I'd try a Cabelas combo rather than a BPS one.

Actually they are members of the sunfish family, same as bass and bluegill.

Not really a great fan of any saltwater fish...good but not great. Halibut is about as good as any when you catch it yourself and take good care of it.

Just to add a bit...there is a flow into the river about a mile below Bone Hole that started out as a drill pipe atop a high mud bank on river left. It gushed out of the pipe in the strongest flow of any of them and dropped off the bank and into the river in a little waterfall. As the years have gone by, I started to notice that I could no longer see the pipe on top of that bank, but the water was still flowing. Finally, last year I decided to see what was going on. The water is now coming out of a big pool back away from the bank that looks just like a natural spring. I really wonder if that was one of the original springs, and as the pipe rusted away the flow shifted back into the natural spring conduit.

I explained the bore pipes in your inquiry on Facebook, but will go into it here...Large scale lead mining started in the Lead Belt area around Bonne Terre and Leadwood during the Civil War, and by the turn of the century there were huge excavations of the five main mines. Leadwood and Desloge mines were closest to the river, and there are vast excavated caverns beneath the river in that area. The boreholes were originally exploratory, and several were drilled along the banks of the river, since that was the lowest ground and had the shortest drilling to the potential lead deposits. These boreholes were lined in iron pipes and capped with an iron cap, originally to keep the river OUT of them, as you didn't want water running down them into the mines. Once a mine was excavated, groundwater continually flowed into it and had to be pumped out of it to the surface. Apparently groundwater was close to the surface before the mines; in fact, my grandfather told me of several significant springs that fed the river that gradually stopped flowing as the mines were further excavated. So the springs dried up, but probably most of the water that had previously emerged as springs was now trying to fill the mines and was being pumped out into the river. There was a shaft just above Terre du Lac (it looks a lot like a cave and is gated now) from which a lot of water was pumped up and flowed over a pretty little rocky waterfall into the river at the base of a bluff. When I first started floating the river in the late 1960s this water was still entering the river, along with another large flow just below Terre du Lac at a place that was once a public access called Leadwood Beach. Between the two of them, they probably dumped about 25 cubic feet per second into the river, and in low summer water levels they about doubled the flow of the river. The last of the mines ceased operations in the early 1970s, and they simply stopped pumping that water out. It took about 10 years for the mines to fill with water. And once they did, by that time the iron pipes and especially the caps on those boreholes had rusted away, and it was a perfect conduit for that groundwater, that used to come out in springs, to instead come up the pipes and into the river. The springs had been dry for 50 years or more and had probably been clogged up by that time, so the pipes were an easier path for that water. When the mines stopped pumping water, summer river flows were cut in half, and for that 10 years or so the river in that stretch flowed about half what it had flowed before. But gradually the water started emerging from the boreholes, and brought summer flows up. The river still doesn't flow as much water as it did while the mines were pumping water, though. By the way, that groundwater would probably be pretty clean if it wasn't for the fact that when the mines shut down, they simply left every bit of their equipment, including excavating equipment, down there, where it sits to this day, slowing rusting away and leaking mechanical fluids.

I've used Bone Hole hundreds of times over the years, and never had a problem leaving a vehicle there, but there are some very sketchy people that show up there regularly. So it's probably a crap shoot and I've just been lucky. The Leadwood Access is the start of the water affected by the lead mine waste, but it doesn't get bad until just below Bone Hole. The first mine waste to enter the river comes in via a creek that enters the river just above the Leadwood Access, the second major source of mine waste is the old mine tailings that covered the entire inside of the radical five mile bend starting at Bone Hole. That mine, and the mines that were in the Flat River Creek watershed, were the main sources of tailings in the river--Flat River Creek comes in a mile below the Desloge 67 Highway bridges. If you floated above Mounts (the low bridge access that is now private and charges a fee), from a spot a mile below the Hwy. U bridge in Irondale you were on water that once suffered from massive gravel dredging all the way to Mounts. That was 50 or more years ago, and it's no longer obvious unless you know what you're looking for, but it took a long time to recover. If you noticed, there are still long stretches of mostly bedrock bottom in that stretch. That's because the gravel was excavated down to bedrock, and surprisingly, there hasn't been enough gravel coming into the stream in the many years since to fill up the channel again. You may have also noticed that those long stretches of bedrock, especially in the couple miles below where the dredging first started, have a general lack of large sycamores along the banks, just smaller sycamores and willow trees. The big sycamores were removed for dredging and haven't had time to grow back yet. The gravel dredging continued for a couple miles below Mounts, but that was where the oldest gravel dredging took place, and the only evidence now is old spoil banks barely visible through the trees in a couple places. But the Mounts to Leadwood stretch suffers from a lot of cattle waste entering the river, and most years it has tremendous weed growth in the summer due to the overfertilization. The excess weed growth actually disappears about the time the mine waste appears. From there, the biggest problems are the influx of rather poorly treated sewage from all the towns of the old Lead Belt. Floating from Bone Hole down, you hit the first sewage influx in the Desloge area, but the main influx is Flat River Creek, because the Park Hills city complex (including the towns of Leadington, Elvins, and Esther) has their main sewage treatment plant a mile up Flat River Creek. In the summer, floating from there down is a slightly unpleasant experience. You can smell the treated sewage in the water all the way to St. Francois State Park, and it reacts with the mine tailings on the bottom in a way that produces an algae that forms thick grayish green mats on the bottom. These mats eventually come loose from the bottom and float to the surface, so you have these chunks of smelly, greenish black algae spread out across the surface floating down the river. They are stopped by any obstruction and pile up in masses that are just nasty. How anybody thinks swimming in that stretch of Big River in July and August is a good idea is a mystery to me. And in recent years, development along the river has exploded in that stretch as well. Not trying to dissuade you from floating any of it, just telling you a bit of the unpleasantness to expect. On the other hand, there are still some pretty spots, and the fishing is still pretty decent. Though the evil spotted bass have reduced the smallmouth population by half at least all the way up to the Leadwood Access; if floating from Mounts down, you may not catch a single spotted bass down to the Leadwood Access, but then you'll catch as many spots as smallmouth, sometimes more, from there down.

I think others have said that flavor depends upon how they were cooked. I would add that flavor also depends upon how they were taken care of before being cooked, and what kind of water they came from. I love fish. I'll eat just about any kind of fish and probably enjoy it, IF it's from decent water, cared for, and cooked well. But my test of good tasting versus bad-tasting fish is in eating some that are prepared in the simplest way; simply quick frying them with only a few seasonings and no breading or coating. I do that occasionally when I don't want to make a big production out of things. Fixed that way, I find most saltwater fish and most fish you can buy easily commercially to be far inferior to the best of freshwater fish. My rankings of fish fixed that way probably go: 1. Bluegill fillets, or other sunfish big enough to fillet, including goggle-eye. 2. Crappie. 3. Small bass, under 14 inches; the smaller the better. An 8-inch spotted bass is terrific. 4. Walleye. 5. Redhorse. 6. Pickerel. 7. Wild trout. 8. Catfish from CLEAN water. Catfish tend to take on the undesirable characteristics of the water they live in more than most other fish. By taking good care of fish, I mean the following: Kill it immediately. Put it on ice immediately. Clean it carefully, avoiding getting stomach contents on the meat. If freezing it, freeze it immersed completely in clean water after cleaning the fillets carefully. If you let a fish die or nearly die (fins faded out and color washed out but still alive) on a stringer or in a live well, or just let it swim around on a stringer or a live well in warm water, taste will suffer. If you don't freeze it immersed in water, it doesn't take long for the taste to suffer. So if I'm going after eating fish, I plan accordingly. I do keep spotted bass in the livewell in the winter when the water is cold; they'll usually do quite well all day. But in the summer it's a questionable practice for fish you plan to eat. I'm also against heavily seasoned breading. That's for bad fish. Good fish like those at the top of my list, I want them deep fried in cornmeal with nothing but salt and pepper to taste, and first dipped in a mixture of egg and milk so that the cornmeal sticks to them well. And DON'T overfry them; you want the meat to just be flaky, so much so that it's difficult to lift a fillet without it falling apart. Overfrying makes them tough and they lose half their flavor.

I wouldn't depend upon having decent smallmouth fishing in the trout section of the Niangua. Nice float, plenty of outfitters, but lots of people as well. In the spring, however, you could float above Bennett Spring and get into all smallmouth. Your other choice would be the Gasconade...fewer outfitters but also fewer party floaters.

Caught my first (four) fish of the year today. Three smallmouth and a spotted bass. And it was a TERRIBLE fishing day; should have caught way more fish than that, and the jetboat traffic on the river was as bad as some summer weekends. Note to self, it may not be worth fishing on New Year's Day if the weather is as nice as it was today.

The Rogue still works as long as you weight it so that it suspends in a fairly level attitude. Most anglers today aren't attracted to it because it doesn't look as realistic as the high dollar jerkbaits with all kinds of realistic details and color patterns. But I don't really think the fish care much.

There are several small springs entering the Meramec a short distance below 32, and springs feeding Hutchins Creek. I think that's where the water that goes underground on the upper Meramec comes out. There are short sections well above Highway 32 that flow year-round before sinking back under the gravel.

Yup, that's the bridge. As for putting in at that spot on Hutchins Creek, that road dead ends at a house just past the bridge, and I suspect the bridge is private. But if you check it out let me know.

It's an interesting question. I aimed for many years to own a home on a river, where I could walk out my door and fish whenever I wanted. Got it in Montana on the Yellowstone. But I also wanted a home on my favorite Ozark river. Just moved in August to a home on the Meramec. In either place, I can fish from my own land, though neither place is really perfect for wading. But in either place, I have 50-75 miles of river within 45 minutes drive, and the nearest boat ramp is less than 2 miles away. And I can be pretty darned happy fishing the same stretches over and over, given that I have that many miles that close. Big River used to be my "home" stream, the stream I grew up on, and I always fished it a lot more than anywhere else. I'm sure I'll still fish the same stretches of Big I always have, as well, and now I'm pretty close to the Bourbeuse, so I'll fish it more than I have in the past. In Montana, I have the Boulder and the Shields that are not far away, and I'll fish them quite a bit. But it's always fun to fish new water, or even just water I haven't fished in a while. Every late summer I do a multi-day solo float somewhere else in the Ozarks. Most years, I'll fish someplace else in Montana with my buddies. I once had the goal of fishing a river in every state (well, except a few that simply don't interest me, like Kansas or Mississippi). I guess I no longer have that goal, because I don't have the drive to travel that far every year anymore. But there are sure streams I haven't fished that I want to, like the Devils River in Texas, the Smith River in Montana, the Snake in Idaho. And a bunch of streams I want to get back to at some point, like the Penobscot in Maine, the New in Virginia, the John Day in Oregon, the Salmon in Idaho. And a lot of Ozark streams that I floated many years ago and haven't been on them since. Other kinds of fishing? Not really. I love rivers too much. Give me smallmouth or trout or river walleye and I'm happy, though I wouldn't mind catching some of the more obscure bass species, like shoal bass and guadalupe bass. I do usually go on one or two trips a year to places far from my homes. But other than that, I have enough water within an easy drive that I don't really wish for a lot of exotic locales.

Hog Wally texted me last night and said he was thinking about going out today and did I want to go. I told him Mary wanted me out of the house, so that would be perfect. Of course, the weather didn't look very good when I got up at 7 AM. Rain. Cold. Well, at least no wind. These days I live less than 2 miles from Hog Wally, so it didn't take long to get there. He said his wife was sure I'd cancel because of the weather, but he knows me better than she does. The idea was to fish a certain area of the river where he had found a bunch of bass. But we both talked about the fact that it was a walleye kind of day, dark, gloomy, rainy, cool...Not many people know how to catch walleye on the river better than Hog Wally, and he said the places we were going to be fishing had some big walleye. But this wasn't Black River, or Current River, where the really big walleye are. We figured we'd catch a couple nice ones if we were lucky. I caught a 16 inch smallmouth on my first cast at the first place we stopped, but although I got a couple other bites, we caught nothing else there. So we headed on to the place where we really wanted to fish. The bass were there. Again I caught a nice spotted bass on the first cast on a jerkbait, and we fished along the rocky bank, catching some smallish smallies. Then we got to a nice dropoff coming out of the riffle, and HW hooked a big fish. When he got it up within sight, he was all excited. "It's a big walleye! A real big walleye." He netted it. Laid it on his measuring board, which goes to 26 inches. It was a couple inches past the end of the board. I guessed it at a good 6 pounds. He said that fish made the day for him, and I agreed.It was far too pretty a fish to keep. He released it. A few casts later, he got another walleye, this one about 22 inches, and he decided to keep it to go with the spotted bass we were keeping. Then he got a third fish, this time a nice sauger. It went in the live well, too. We drifted down the pool, picking up bass now and then. Finally HW suggested we go back up and try that walleye spot one more time. He hooked another big fish. "This one's big...really big...OH MY GOD!" I've seen some big walleye on Black River, but this rivaled some of those fish. The northern Ozark streams just don't produce the huge walleye that Black and Current do, but here was the exception. I netted it eventually...His scales, which are pretty accurate, settled at 11.95 pounds. I believe this might be the biggest walleye I've ever heard of coming from the Meramec. It was certainly HW's personal best from there. Yup...it was a walleye kinda day.

Speaking of big walleye...Hog Wally and I went out today. We commented that it was a walleye kinda day, even though we were supposedly fishing for bass...See my trip report in the main fishing forum. Fish was just shy of 12 pounds.

Nope, they disappeared about the time jet boats got popular. The best wintering pools for walleye weren't easy to get to with a good boat until jet boats. Now, they get pounded unmercifully. MDC's management hasn't changed. In my opinion their management of the native Black River strain walleye has ALWAYS been stupid. This strain has the genetic potential to easily grow to world record sizes; they may be the biggest top end size walleye anywhere. But MDC has managed them with a four fish limit and a low minimum length for a long time. And NOBODY releases a legal size walleye down there. They should be managed strictly to produce true trophies, and catch and release should be the rule for everybody. Instead, the females get cropped off about the time they reach 24 inches or so, and never get a chance to grow big.

I know the spot you're talking about. Since it is right at a good boat ramp, it gets pounded pretty hard. There are walleye in that hole, but catching them isn't easy. I fished it a whole lot many years ago, before there was a good boat ramp; then you had to use a good 4WD vehicle to get any kind of boat other than a canoe into it; I fished it a lot from my canoe, which you had to carry down a high, steep embankment off the highway. Mostly fished with big live minnows, and caught some walleye. Since it was a good hour and half from where I lived, I didn't fish it all the time, but would make several trips each winter. There were some very big walleye caught there every winter back then, though I never got a big one there. Biggest I ever saw caught weighed 17.5 pounds. The boat ramp was put in about 15 years ago, and since then I haven't heard of any really big ones being caught there.

The first couple low water bridges are surrounded by unfriendly landowners. There is a bridge farther upstream, county road 428, with little parking but the last time I was there the purple paint was lacking, at least. But that's probably because the river is usually the next thing to dry at that point. You can put in there and drag a boat down almost 2 miles to where Hutchins Creek comes in. Hutchins Creek flows a lot more water than the Meramec above it where the two come together, and from there down the river always has SOME flow. It's almost 12 miles from 428 to Short Bend. Don't bother going above there, unless you just want to float it for fun after heavy rains. The river is basically dry in dry weather from there on up.

There are long stretches of the middle Dry Fork that are so completely dry that the stream bottom will be covered in weeds and saplings most of the time, even lacking isolated pools. There are permanent pools and occasional flow in between for a few miles above Little Dry Fork, and a tiny bit of permanent flow from there on down. But access is pretty much non-existent. There are only three bridges, including the Highway 8 bridge, crossing it in the over 19 miles between the Little Dry Fork and the mouth. And only one of them, the one just below the Little Dry Fork, is a possible access, and even it has no real parking. Only the last 3 miles, in the Woods Conservation Area, are really accessible. I've talked to guys who have floated it. You obviously have to know somebody and you have to catch it after a rain, or be willing to walk your boat long distances in bare trickles. And it's murky to muddy more often than not. But there are some big pools that hold fish. The guys I talked to said that smallmouth are fairly rare, but the largemouth can be good. It's an intriguing stream. Dry Fork is longer, and has a bigger watershed, than the Meramec does above where the two come together. If it wasn't a losing stream, it might be a premier float stream; it certainly has a lot of bends and probably, from what I can tell from topo maps, a lot of impressive bluffs. But you trade that float stream for Maramec Spring. As you said, nearly all the water that SHOULD be flowing through Dry Fork instead sinks underground to emerge at Maramec Spring.

The heic format that Apple, in their greedy stupidity, decided to make Iphone photos recently takes a bunch of extra steps, including getting different apps, to make it usable outside of Apple platforms.

It's nice having a new (to us) house on the river; I can look down from the house and see how low and clear the Meramec is. It's REALLY low and clear. And with the cold snap, the water temp had dropped into the mid to upper 30s. But I figured a couple reasonably warm days might have gotten it a little warmer, and I needed a relaxing day of fishing. Plus, I was really wanting to see how much power my new trolling motor has. I had needed new batteries, and I bought them yesterday. I had to drive into town to get gas for the motor, otherwise the ramp where I was going to put in would have been a 15 minute drive from the house. Getting gas added an extra 5 minutes. Darn. (It sure beats an hour and a half, which was how far this ramp was from our old house.) When I got to the ramp, there were already two boat trailers on the lot, and another truck and boat came in while I was backing down the ramp. Guess I should have expected it with the good weather and the end of deer season. I headed upstream. The first good winter hole had a boat fishing it. So did the second one. There is a third pool upstream that LOOKS like it should be a good winter spot, but I'd never caught much from it. I thought maybe I should really concentrate on it and try to figure it out. But a couple miles upstream are two more good, proven winter holes, so after dithering a bit, I headed on up to them. The low water made running the river a bit tricky. I had to pick a narrow line through a rocky riffle, and then go over a log that I kinda expected to bump, but cleared it. I stopped at the downstream of the two holes, and started up the log side of it, fishing a jerkbait. Found a little group of spotted bass in a brushpile and caught one, got a strike from another one. With 10 feet of visibility, it was easy to watch them take it; no having to feel soft jerkbait takes! I remembered that we were low on fish in the freezer, so I kept the 10 incher, hoping to get enough for a meal. I fished the rest of the way up the log side of the pool with no more action, then started back down the bluff side. With the low water, the current was very gentle at the upper end, slow enough that I thought there could be some fish there. Sure enough, I caught another spotted bass, a nice one, 15 inches. My hope for a meal took an upward turn. Then, a couple casts later, a very nice smallmouth took the jerkbait. Can't complain about a 16.5 incher in these water conditions. I fished down the bluff side of the pool, picking up a fish here and there. Another 16 inch smallmouth. Then a third 16 incher on a hair jig. No more spotted bass, but several smaller smallies. I had one big smallmouth, looked to be 18-19 inches, materialize beneath the jerkbait, but no matter what I did I couldn't get it to take. Same thing happened with several spotted bass, including a couple 15-16 inchers. This is usual for water this clear and cold. I was taking my time, fishing very slowly and thoroughly, and soon realized that I'd spent a good 3.5 hours in this single pool. I made the run up to the second pool I had in mind to fish. Again, I fished up the log side. Caught a 12 inch spotted bass that went into the cooler, and a 12 inch smallmouth out of the same deep flat area on the hair jig, but other than that had only a few small spots staring at the jerkbait without taking. Had two nice bites at the upper end in a slack eddy and missed them both on the hair jig. Then I started back down the bluff side. In exactly the spot I expected to catch a nice one, my fourth 16 inch class smallie took the jerkbait. Then a couple more smaller smallmouth, and the fifth in the 16 inch class. But I was more happy about the final two spotted bass I caught; giving me five, enough for a meal. I'd spent another two hours in that pool, and it was well after 3 PM and the sun was getting low. I headed back downstream, stopping for a short time at a couple spots, but now I was hurrying my fishing and nothing was happening. So I took off for the truck. In cleaning the spotted bass, they were all full of crawdads. So much for crawdads going dormant in the winter; apparently there were enough of them out roaming to furnish a good meal for bass. One of the crawdads was not your usual species. It was a freckled crayfish. Freckled crayfish are a species that ONLY lives in the Meramec river system in all the world. And for the most part, they are only found in the upper sections of the Meramec, Huzzah, Courtois, Big, and Mineral Fork; it's very unusual to find on as far downstream on the Meramec as I was. Just one more cool thing about the day!

Cardiac is a long walk, but not too steep. Suicide is a clamber down a bluff, short but very steep, like holding onto bushes steep. The trout fishing is still decent if you kinda know what you're doing. Where you end up at Suicide is about the last of the good trout water, because the escapees from Maramec Spring don't spread much farther than that, and there is a long, deep pool just downstream that seems to warm the water quite a bit. Upstream, it's mostly decent wading all the way up the mouth of the spring branch.

Fell in out in Montana just before we left to come back to MO...I was jumping off the raft trailer into about two feet of water, and tripped on the raised lip of the trailer and planted myself face down in the water. There was a decent current, and it took me maybe 15 seconds to get my feet under me and stand up. I had a wader belt on, and I was wet from the top of the waders down to the belt, then damp down the back of my pants inside the waders down to about my knee on one side and my sock on the other. But no water in the bottom of either leg of the waders. I don't know how long it would have taken for the water to really fill up the waders, but I was fairly happy with how the wader belt slowed it down. I used to think I was invincible. I don't anymore. I'm pretty careful when fishing in cold water. There was a time when I'd do canoe trips in the middle of the winter and never wear a PFD. Used to take my little solo canoe out on the big gravel pit hole on Black River at the 67 Highway bridge multiple times each winter walleye fishing, and never wore a life jacket. One time I finally realized that I was out in the middle of a big hole hundreds of yards from either bank, and if I somehow flipped I was dead. It was a sobering thought.