Al Agnew

Very good point. When I'm in the zone, I can watch the indicator AND watch the bottom where I think my nymphs are drifting for any movement or the flash of white of a jaw, if the water is clear. And hook fish before I see the indicator pause. But I'm not always, or even often, in that kind of zone. My best fly fishing buddies can do it a lot better than I can. Fact is, using an indicator, you are conceding that you're going to miss some takes completely. The hinge between the indicator and the flies, the slant and/or bow of the line between them, having to make a decision when the indicator does something just a bit funny whether to set the hook or not...all conspire against you detecting strikes quickly enough, or at all.

Well, I'll disagree with you in one situation, which is VERY common out here in Montana on big rivers like the Yellowstone...90% of my nymph fishing is casting to runs that I can't wade close to because of deep or heavy water. So I'm nymphing 40-50 feet away from where I'm standing, often with a couple differential currents between me and the drift I'm making. In that case, I'd like to see somebody nymph without an indicator. I do really like fishing without one, and will often drift the fly with my indicator above the water when I'm fishing close, fast water. I hardly ever use an indicator on the spring creeks here. But it's a necessity when wade fishing the Yellowstone.

My wife is the kind of person who much prefers to learn stuff in a classroom setting. I'm just the opposite, maybe because I'm an introvert and don't particularly like to be around people. I learn by far the best with self-motivation and on my own. With the internet, you can learn a whole lot without going to school, but a lot of people don't have the skills to separate the good stuff from the bs. College was great for me when I went as a kid. I hated high school, even though it was exceedingly easy for me. Hated just about every moment in a classroom. Got into a special summer college math program at the local junior college, 6 credit hours of advanced math, the summer after I graduated high school. Was in WAY over my head, since I hadn't gone past algebra in high school and math was my worst subject--still don't know how I got into that math program. Worked my tail off, for the first time in my scholastic life, trying to pass those courses. I did it. But by that time I was burnt out on classrooms. I had a scholarship offer from Mizzou, turned it down. Took two years of junior college, where I spent more time in the cafeteria playing cards and playing pickup basketball in the gym than I did in the classroom...heck, one class I only took because I liked the teacher. I attended the first two weeks, then he got sick and I found out I didn't like the substitute, so I didn't go to that class the rest of the semester, though I never bothered to drop out officially. The good teacher came back with 2 weeks left in the semester, and I showed up in class. He called me into his office and asked why I hadn't been in class the whole semester. I told him I preferred him over the sub, which sounded like sucking up but was the truth. "Well Agnew, how am I supposed to pass you when you haven't been here all semester?" "Do what you have to, but I know this stuff anyway." "Okay, take the final. If you get a B or better, I'll pass you." I aced it. So basically, I learned nothing very useful in junior college, and when I got my famous "Associate of Arts" degree, I thought I was done. Two years later, after working full time in a grocery store bagging groceries and cutting produce, I realized it might be a good idea to get a real degree. So what degree to get? My original scholarship was for a major in wildlife conservation (now THAT would have paid well, said no MDC conservation agent ever), but I had changed my mind...why not get a teaching degree? Teach kids, HAVE THE SUMMERS OFF! Of course, it helped that a girl I was infatuated with was going to that same school that fall. The girl dumped me, but wow, did I have fun in Southeast MO State, even though I'd finally gotten serious about making good grades. College was still easy. Now did I learn a whole lot of useful stuff? Nope. You don't learn much about the actual job of teaching with a teaching degree. When you get into the classroom yourself, it's sink or swim and learning how to handle kids on the fly. I majored in art, of course, and had a terrific watercolor painting instructor, Jake Wells. I learned to love watercolor from him. But I can't think of another thing I actually learned in class that I use today. But, college greatly broadened my horizons. For one thing, it turned me from a bit racist (like practically everybody in my home town in the early 1970s) to realizing the people of different skin color were just like white people, some good and some bad. Playing pickup basketball with a bunch of black dudes helped do that. Heck, we had one black girl in our whole high school, and I doubt if I'd spoken two words to her the whole time we were in high school. In fact, I probably hadn't said two words to ANY black person before I got to SEMO. And it turned me from a pretty shy kid to one that at least had some confidence in myself, just from interacting with a lot of people from different walks of life. I took writing and public speaking courses just because they were electives and sounded interesting. So what I really learned from college is that you may not learn much that will be useful in later life, but "going away" to college is a pretty good way to grow yourself up. Now that doesn't apply to an older adult going to college. Or maybe it does. Maybe the simple classroom interactions with other students from other situations is broadening even when you've got a lot of years of experience. And...learning is fun if it's something you might be interested in learning.

Vaccine and booster seems to have worked for Mary and me. Our niece is living with us out in Montana right now, and she got Covid around Christmas, pretty mild, seemed to recover, then got sick again 10 days ago. Living in the same house, eating together, etc. She tested positive, had symptoms of a bad cold plus very tired, recovered a few days ago, tested negative yesterday. Mary thought she had a few symptoms, got tested, negative. I have felt perfectly normal all through it.

Cool little film about mussels from MDC:

That's kind of a good rule of thumb for how deep to fish in the winter. The fish aren't always in the deepest water around, but you need to be fishing water deep enough to not be able to see the bottom. Of course, when it's really clear, you can't hardly find water deep enough to obscure the bottom...but then, the fishing is really tough in those conditions anyway, so the rule of thumb still kinda holds. The St. Francis is the best crappie river that I know of. I used to make a couple early spring floats on the upper sections every year just to target crappie. Not every pool held them, but most of the bigger pools did...all you had to do was fish every treetop and brushpile until you found the school in that pool. Usually one school to a pool, unless it was a REALLY long pool.

I was glad of the sensors on my Ram truck the other day...I'd been having a tire (almost new) lose about 2 pounds of pressure a week according to the sensors (on this truck it shows the actual pressure of each tire), so I was intending to get it checked out, but hadn't gotten around to it yet. But I was watching it closely, so I kept the screen up that showed the tire pressure. Mary and I had left the house, driving to the cabin, and I happened to look down at the screen on the dashboard, and noted that a different tire had lost a couple pounds. It was a cold, windy morning, so I thought maybe the cold had something to do with it, but in about 15 miles it had lost another pound of pressure. By the time I'd driven it past one town and was approaching the next, it had dropped from 36 pounds to 28 pounds and the warning was sounding. So Mary found a tire repair shop in the town we were approaching, called them, and they were able to get us in immediately. That tire had a big staple in it (the tire repair guy called it a "steeple", which always cracks me up when somebody says that). If the sensor hadn't warned us, I'd have driven past that town. If we hadn't stopped and gotten it fixed in that town, it would have gone flat somewhere out in the boonies and I'd have had to change a tire in that nasty weather.

Put a double wire weedguard on that bottom one and it would be pretty close to what I was thinking of. And basically, I want Paul's jig heads, but on a 5102 Owner 60º Deep Throat Jig Hook. That's the exact shape of hook I want. I had a bunch of Mitch's jig heads that he had made for me years ago, and I was bending the hooks on them into that shape...but the hook would snap on about every fourth one.

I need to find somebody to pour some jigs for me. I know exactly what I want, down to the jig head shape, wire weedguards, and the exact hook...and NO company produces anything like it. And that's for hair jigs (I'll tie the hair myself) and a different head for swimbait jig heads. (But no company makes a mold for the shape of swimbait head I want.) I've thought about pouring my own, but don't want to take the time for the learning curve. Those jigs look sweet!

I like cats (better than dogs--I guess my psychology is closer to a cat's). But I don't hesitate to shoot feral cats, for the very reasons described. You can admire them as pretty cool critters and still know the effects they have on bird and wildlife populations. Had a calico cat for many years, that we really loved. She had a weight problem. But it didn't keep her from killing birds, mice, voles, and chipmunks. Think she also might have done a number on our flying squirrel population. We kept her inside most of the time, but anytime we'd let her out she'd kill something. I watched her stalk a group of adult hen turkeys going through the yard one time. Here was this really fat, black, orange, and white cat, flattening herself to where her back wasn't 4 inches off the ground, and seemingly just oozing like the Blob toward those turkeys. They finally saw her when she was almost within charging distance and calmly walked away.

Here's my first one...smallest of the day: And the biggest of the day:

I'll probably go tomorrow, and expect to get my first one then. It will probably be a smallmouth. I'll try to remember to take a photo of it. I should have quit 2021 a day before I did. Fished the afternoon of 12/30 and caught several nice smallmouth 15-16 inches. Fished all day 12/31 and got exactly five bass--1 spotted bass and 4 largemouth, and the biggest was barely 12 inches. Did briefly hook a giant largemouth that would have made the day and topped the year off very well...saw it clearly when it took a jerkbait, but it didn't stay hooked. At least 22 inches.

Was having a discussion on how much it weighed on "social media". We did weigh the 20 incher in the above photo...3.5 pounds. But look at the size of the tail on it compared to the rest of the body. And look at how much smaller the tail is on the one today. Geez, if that fish had a tail of the same proportions it would be 23 inches! I'm guessing it at 5 pounds, maybe a bit over.

It's been a weird year. I'm finding fish in some odd spots, and having to use some odd presentations. The long stretch of dry weather made the water super clear, and that can be really tough in cold weather. The absolute BEST winter stretch of river I know had plenty of fish, but the fishing was slow overall while the water was so clear. I tried a different river stretch that is usually pretty mediocre, and caught some little ones. Then a different stretch yet that is also usually mediocre, and caught a 19.5 incher on my fourth cast of the day (after catching a nice largemouth on the second cast), and ended up with a dozen spotted bass that I kept and several decent smallmouth. But I had to make long casts with a small jerkbait to catch fish. Then tried a different river, a stretch I'd never fished, with a friend who knew it well, after one of those warm spells a couple weeks ago, and guess what the only thing that worked was...TOPWATER. So tried it back on my home river the first cool day after the warm spell...water temps were still pretty high, and it worked again. Even caught one over 18 inches on it, and had blow-ups from several other big fish. You would have sworn it was August. Then the rain came, and now the rivers are in good shape. Caught a 20 incher on a crankbait and a couple dozen other fish the other day, and today got my biggest in probably 10 years, a 21.25 incher, on a swimbait. Weird today...the swimbait was the ONLY thing that was working (except for one 16 incher on a crankbait).

Ask and you shall receive...21.25 incher today. It was a slow day numbers wise, only 13 smallmouth and a spotted bass. But all but two were over 15 inches. Caught a 17, 17.5, 18, and 18.25 in addition to this one. It's my biggest smallmouth of the year, and probably of the last 10 years.

There are PLENTY of lures that work for winter smallmouth. As Wrench said, they aren't smart. And as several have said, finding them is the key. 95% of the fish are in 5% of the water in the winter. However, the other problem is that, more so than in warm weather, even if you find them they may not be active. I've fished pools where I SAW the fish, hundreds of them, and couldn't get them to bite anything. So if you're just trying to find them, you might have found them and not even know it, which can be frustrating. I THINK I know what to look for in holding areas for winter smallmouth, yet there are pools that I just KNOW should be good where I've never caught much of anything. It's not an exact science. The only ways you figure them out are by going out and trying, or having somebody who knows where to fish for them show you. Getting back to lures...my winter tackle box consists of a bunch of my homemade hair jigs, a bunch of swimbaits, some deep diving crankbaits, jerkbaits, spinnerbaits, HD Craws, a few other soft plastics meant to be fished on the bottom (but not Ned Rigs, I refuse to fish them), and even a handful of topwater lures. I've caught winter fish well on every one of them.

Back in the days when I used to do a lot of winter walleye fishing on Black River, I'd catch a mudpuppy now and then. We used big live minnows, really almost too big for a mudpuppy to swallow, but once in a while one would choke a 5 inch stoneroller down. Whenever we got bites from mudpuppies we pretty much knew we weren't going to catch walleye at that spot for a while...apparently big walleye will eat the things very well, so they aren't likely to show up where they would get eaten. They also had a weird way of attacking minnows; they would invariably first grab the minnow in the middle and try to chew into its belly. When you'd get a "bite", and the "fish" wouldn't run with the minnow but just tug on it steadily, we'd eventually get impatient and try to set the hook, and bring in a minnow with its gut chewed up. When we caught one, it was sometimes hooked on the outside of the head. They got up to about 12 inches long, and they were pretty slimy and the slime would stick to your hands when you tried to handle them. And yes, they had pretty strong jaws and would chew on your hand like they chew on minnow bellies. As somebody said above, the difference between mudpuppies and hellbenders is mainly that mudpuppies have external gills, hellbenders do not. They also look a lot different, and hellbenders get considerably bigger.

Haven't been on here for a bit, so didn't see this thread until now. Mary and I were still out in Montana. We didn't set an alarm to see the eclipse, but happened to wake up at the perfect time, about 30 minutes before the maximum. Our hot tub is right outside the bedroom, so we just jumped in with our binoculars and watched it for that 30 minutes. Air temp in the low 20s, water temp 103. Can't beat that!

Well done. It's a tough creek to fish.

Good point...I should have said that so far my eyes still allow me to see very well with whatever corrections I have. I've been told that cataracts are down the road a bit. I can still remember getting my first pair of glasses...it was in 1964; I was 12 years old. What convinced my parents to get me to an eye doctor was that I was complaining that I couldn't watch the World Series (with the Cardinals in it) on the TV that was up on the stage of the auditorium at my school...yes, my junior high teachers could opt to let us out of class during the games to watch them in the auditorium. I can still remember being amazed that with my new glasses I could see individual leaves on the trees.

So far, at age 69, my eyes still give me no problems. For a while, like about 6 months, I was having a weird thing happen where if I concentrated on close-up work for too long, the center of my vision blurred. Worried and worried about it until finally going to the doctor, got a thorough checkup, and was told it was simply due to eye fatigue. Got new glasses, transition trifocals for all my art work, and problem went away. My wife got Lasiks 21 years ago, and is still happy with it. She was more near-sighted, but had less astigmatism, than I do. I thought about it after she was so pleased with hers, but was worried about two things at the time...first, I was still able to take off my glasses and do really closeup, finely detailed work with no glasses as long as my eyes were within a foot of the work, and I was afraid that the Lasiks would affect that, as at the time that was completely the kind of work I was doing. Second, I was still doing a lot of night fishing at the time, and was worried that without glasses, I was unprotected from Jitterbugs flying back in my face! My other vision/glasses issue was wearing prescription safety goggles while playing basketball. I have scars on my face from having balls and elbows hit my glasses while playing (one time the same guy put me and another player in the emergency room the same night with his elbows). I tried a pair of prescription goggles, and had terrible depth perception (not good for your shooting percentage) because they were wrap around and the lenses were curved too much. Got a pair with flatter lenses and it was a lot better.

It's simply amazing when you think about it how much information is available at our fingertips. I wasn't curious enough to look it up for myself, but I should have known the explanation could be found. Thanks!

Given the size, it could only be a silver redhorse or a river redhorse, and since silver redhorse are usually, well, silvery, and river redhorse typically have a golden tint, I'd say it's probably a river redhorse. It also appears to have parallel folds on the lower lip, which is a characteristic of river redhorse. So I think that's the best guess.

Glad I was a help. One of the beauties of the USGS gages (if you know where to look and what you're looking for) is that they can tell you a huge amount of useful information about streams you may know nothing about. If you're familiar with the river and the particular gages (or the apps) that cover it, then pretty much all you usually need to know is either level in feet or flow in cfs, the median flow, and what the river has done in the last few days. But if it's a completely unfamiliar river, or one that you've only been on a couple of times, then digging deeper into the USGS gages will really give you a lot.

There is a huge amount of info you can get from the USGS gages. 1. Exact location of the gage. 2. Number of years of record on the gage. 3. Record high and low flows for the given day. 4. Present flow, and present gage height. 5. Median flow for the date (a good approximation of normal flow, BUT you have to look at number 2 before you can evaluate how accurate it is for normal flow. If the gage has only been recording for a few years, there aren't enough years represented to get a really accurate approximation of normal. The gage probably has to have been in operation for 20 years or more for the median to be a really good approximation of normal.) 6. 75th percentile flow--the flow was lower than this number 75% of the years of record on this date. It is not particularly useful, but may give you some kind of idea on the highest flow that would still be fishable. 7. 25th percentile flow--the flow was lower than this number only 25% of the years on record. It give you an approximation of how low they river can get during a really dry period. 8. Mean flow--this one I find the least useful so I ignore it. 9. What the river has done the last seven days. You can easily change the parameters to show what it has done for weeks, months, or years in the past. You can also change it to show what the river was flowing on an exact date or a given period in the past. For instance, I was planning a trip to the John Day River in Oregon a couple years ago, and was concerned about how the flows on that river translated to whether it would be high enough to float in a raft. I'd been on the John Day back in 1988, and remembered what the river looked like that time. I knew it would have been barely raft floatable during that trip, which was done in inflatable kayaks. So I figured out the exact dates we had done it back then, and looked back at what the gage was showing on those dates. It told me that the cfs number the river was flowing back then was probably about the minimum number we'd need to get a raft down it on our coming trip, which told us whether or not we would be able to use a raft when the time came or would have to use kayaks or canoes. As it turned out, a look at the gage the day before we left for the trip told us we'd be able to use the raft. 10. Current state/discharge ratings--this is a table that will tell the figures they use to convert the measured height in feet to flow in cubic feet per second. Thus, if somebody tells you that in their experience River X is floatable at a minimum of 2.7 feet, you can convert that to what 2.7 feet is in cubic feet per second. 11. The daily, monthly, and annual mean flows for every year of record. In other words, you can look at a table that tells you the mean flow for every day of the year, or every month of the year, or every year on record. I find this interesting to see how the "normal" flow varies from month to month or even from day to day during the month, and also to tell how the mean flow has varied over the history of the gage, with some years and decades being drier and flows less than other years or decades. 12. Peak streamflow. This is a graph of the highest floods of each year of record, and is interesting to see how many years had really big floods and how the trends look in whether big floods are getting more frequent (they are). 13. Field measurements. This is a table telling you exactly when personnel visited the gage site and actually measured the stream flow in order to make sure the gage was properly calibrated, and what they measured the flow to be and how well it corresponded to their conversion tables of gage height to streamflow. 14. Some gages also give the precipitation that has happened recently, and some give you water temperatures. I wish they all did, as those are very useful things to know (especially water temperature during the winter months). So while most of us simply look at the level or flow, check the graph to tell what it's been doing the last few days, and maybe look at the median flow to tell how close it is to normal, there is a lot more to be learned from the gages, some of it useful in determining the character of the river, or the fishing, other info mostly just interesting to know.