Al Agnew

I typed it last night after getting home. Yesterday I got started by 6:30 AM and finished around 4 PM, so basically 9.5 hours of fishing. The day before I was on the water at 9 AM and fished until about 7 PM.

It had been three years since I'd done my multi-day float on my secret creek, but I went yesterday and today. The creek was low (as usual, and as I like it...keeps off the riffraff ). And super clear as usual--it has pools that are more than 10 feet deep, and there weren't any pools where I couldn't see the bottom. I discovered long ago that, while I'm sure one can catch fish in these conditions on lots of different stuff, topwater almost always works. So of course I tied on a walk the dog topwater on one rod. And my homemade twin spin on another rod. I had three more rods, and I planned on trying different stuff just to see if anything else worked. The creek has always been a good "laboratory" for trying things, because you know the fish are there and they aren't very sophisticated. If you can't catch them there on a given lure, it probably ain't a very good lure. However, the floods since 2017 have really done a number on the creek. There used to be a quite a few narrow, deep runs with overhanging trees to shade them, and that's where a lot of the bigger fish always hung out. Those runs are gone. The creek has widened, shallowed, and the bankside vegetation is pretty sparse so it's open to the sun. It was as warm as I'd ever experienced on it. Back in the "old days", I could depend upon catching well over a hundred smallmouth per day, often as many a 200 some days. And out of all those fish, at least a few would be 18-20 inchers. This time, I caught 89 yesterday and 94 today, with a total of 4 around 18 inches. The average size was pretty good...not a lot of dinks, lots of 13-15 inchers. Not up to the old standards, but still pretty sweet. I tried Whopper Ploppers. I tried a double bladed Plopper knockoff. I tried ordinary willow leaf spinnerbaits. I tried ordinary buzzbaits. I tried a twin spin with a swim bait on it. I tried Superflukes. And maybe caught one or two fish on each, except I never got a sniff on the buzzbait or the double Plopper. So by the middle of yesterday I'd given up on them all and was just throwing the topwater and occasionally the twin spin in faster water. What made the trip was the way the fish were hitting the topwater. Many, perhaps most of them, were really hitting it like they were angry at it, often coming mostly out of the water to pound it. I was often surprised when one would explode on it and I would be sure it was a big fish, only to soon discover it was a 13 incher. Really heart-stopping strikes. And the other really cool thing was that the majority of the fish were lying right up against the bank in shallow water. You couldn't land your cast too close to them or the splashdown would spook them in that clear water. But land it five to ten feet off the bank, and they would charge it instantly. It got to where I wouldn't even watch my lure hit the water, I'd watch the bank adjacent to it for a wake. If I saw the wake I'd just be ready to set the hooks. Often I'd see just a bit of "nervous water" against the bank when the lure would splash, and I'd expect a strike within a couple twitches. Wow...it was simply about as much fun as you can have and still be legal! As is usual for walkers, a lot of times they'd not get hooked on the first strike, and would come back and hit it again and again as long as I could keep myself from setting the hooks and jerking it away from them. I caught one of the 18 inchers that way on the twin spin, too...it hit with a massive swirl before the lure had moved 6 inches, but I didn't feel it and just kept reeling and watched it charge out after lure from 10 feet before slamming it again. But those topwater strikes were just unbelievable!

What constitutes "best"? Numbers of fish? Big fish? Average size of fish? I have caught more than 50 smallmouth a day in 15 different float streams in MO, and several wading size streams. I have caught 19 inch plus smallmouth in 12 float streams and again several wading streams. My point is that there are plenty of "good" streams or stream sections, with really none standing out from the rest; the ones you catch the most and biggest fish from are the ones you know well and fish often. It would be far easier to name the WORST fishing stretches. (Worst float stream fishing stretch in my opinion--Current River from Akers to Pulltite.)

How abundant are deer? Compared to an apex predator, extremely abundant. Put that apex predator, or an intelligent omnivore, in remote country, and it's a whole different story than an abundant critter in an area where human activity is almost constant. Again, I don't for a minute believe there are sasquatch roaming Missouri. But I'm not absolutely 100% certain that they do not exist in remote parts of the Pacific Northwest. 99% certain, probably. As for scat...who knows what sasquatch scat would look like? Chances are that it would look something like bear scat. In that case, you see a pile of scat, are you more likely to think it's from a bear, or would you do all the collecting and investigating that would prove it WASN'T bear scat?

And guess what...there are a lot of people who will be MORE likely to buy a product they are pushing. "Poor taste"? They don't care and they shouldn't care if they believe in what they are protesting. The idea is to visibly get their views aired. Where they have failed, if it could be called failure on their part and not refusal to pay attention on the part of those decrying them, is in getting the message out loud and clear as to WHAT they are protesting and WHY they are protesting. When this kneeling thing first happened, people with agendas immediately equated it with sullying the flag and insulting "our troops". When it had absolutely NOTHING to do with either. Can you even tell me what they are protesting at this point? Are you a black person or would you even listen to the concerns of black people in this country? This whole thing infuriates me. Since when did kneeling become a sign of contempt or disrespect. You kneel to pray. You used to kneel to royalty as a sign of respect. They kneel not in disrespect for the flag or the country, but to call attention to things they care deeply about in--guess what--a respectful way. Okay, I'm done...I've been trying to keep my cyber mouth shut about political stuff lately; it just puts me in a bad mood.

Well, let's look at that a little closer... Dinosaurs lived for about 150 MILLION years. THAT'S why we find dinosaur fossils. I wonder, in all the dinosaur fossils that have been found, how many actual individual dinosaurs are represented. I bet it's no more than a few thousand. A few thousand individuals leaving fossil remains that we've found so far in 150 million years of living dinosaurs. How long, theoretically, would a large, bipedal primate have been existing? A few hundred thousand years? And another thing...one reason we don't find dinosaur fossils littering the earth is that they were land animals, and it takes a VERY special set of circumstances to preserve a land animal's bones long enough to fossilize. The remains have to be buried somehow before they decompose and disappear or are eaten by scavengers. Seems that is usually when a big flood came along and buried the remains in mud. Not a very usual thing to happen. Then, the sediment that covered up those remains has to, itself, be covered up by more sediment, for a long, long time, until it turns to stone from heat and pressure. THEN, there has to be enough erosion of all the overlying rock to expose that layer, with its fossils. So when you get down to it, the chances of finding dinosaur fossils is almost vanishingly small, and it's only because they were around for that almost unimaginable stretch of time that enough of them got fossilized to make it possible to find some. Now...another question...how often does somebody wander through the woods and find the bones of, say, a bobcat? Really common predatory animal, but have you ever found a bobcat skull? I haven't. Or how many people out in the West where mountain lions are common stumble across a dead mountain lion? Although there are plenty of mountain lions, they are apex predators and far less numerous than their prey. Sasquatch would presumably far less numerous than mountain lions. And while I don't believe for a second that there are sasquatch roaming the Current River country, there is a lot of VERY remote, wild, rough country out in the Pacific Northwest, country that sees few if any people in a year. I'm not saying I believe sasquatch exist. But I am saying that it isn't quite as far-fetched as most people seem to think. Intelligent, shy creature living in remote country in small numbers...

Yup, I don't trust any animal bigger than I am. And horses top the list. As one of my Montana friends who is a big game guide said, there are two kinds of people who handle horses, those that have been hurt by a horse and those who are gonna get hurt by a horse.

Yeah, I would call the riffles closer to ankle deep in normal summer flows, and studded with rocks. I've done it plenty of times in a canoe, but I didn't float every riffle cleanly. No way I'd even think about taking a johnboat with a motor up there whether I used the motor or not. It's either too low or it's too fast and tight.

Once the fishing goes to crap on a small stream because too many people are fishing it, yeah, people mostly stop fishing it, and a few years later maybe it's back to being pretty good. So what? In the meantime, it sucks. And worse, as has been pointed out over and over, the landowners have gotten tired of all the nimrods showing up to fish it, and have closed off access. THEN it gets good but only for the landowners. The internet has been an unbelievable source of info not only for locations to fish but for techniques. I don't think I've been guilty of divulging locations, but I certainly have shared a lot of my lures and techniques here and elsewhere, and I wonder how much of a negative impact that kind of information being so widely spread has had on stream fishing. I find myself being a little more careful about giving out ANY kind of fishing info on Facebook. Not that my techniques and lures are magical or anything, but to be honest I'd just as soon keep a little more quiet about it because the more people fishing the way I fish, the smarter the fish get to the way I fish, and yep, I'm a little selfish about that...I'd just as soon keep catching fish the way I like to fish. I don't fish river tournaments. I doubt that I'd do well in them, UNLESS my partner was an experienced and successful river tournament fisherman. Why? Because I don't know any of the rivers where the tournaments are fished well enough, except maybe the Meramec. It takes very detailed knowledge of WHERE to fish more so that HOW to fish to win river tournaments. I don't have that knowledge. Put me on a strange river with a bunch of other anglers who don't know the river any better than I do, and I'll probably hold my own. But I ain't gonna beat them on their home waters. I don't know, but I suspect Tyler has done well in the tournaments he's recorded himself in because his partner knew where to fish.

I'm with you, Mitch. I've seen SOME apparent pit bulls that were well-behaved, but a whole bunch that I was uneasy the whole time I was around them. But it isn't the dog's fault, it's the fault of people who own them. And I agree, some of those people are owning them for all the wrong reasons, mainly, I think, just because they think it's cool to own a dog with a reputation for viciousness. But I have to admit that I have problems with a whole lot of dog owners no matter what the breed. Just a few of my grievances with them... 1. Taking their dogs on trails with signs clearly stating "no pets". 2. Taking the dogs off leash in places with signs clearly stating "dogs must be on leash at all times". The excuse I always hear on this one is "MY dog is very well trained." Maybe. But OTHER PEOPLE don't know you or your dog. They don't know whether the dog is charging up to you to bite your face or lick it. These are the kind of center of the universe people who thinks the world revolves around them. 3. Not picking up their dog's poop in places where other people are going to be. 4. Picking up the poop but leaving the bag next to the trail. They say they will be picking it up on their way back because they don't want to carry it all the way with them. What makes them think other walkers or hikers want to see that bag of crap laying there in the meantime? If you bring your dog, you're responsible for it's poop no matter when or where it poops. 5. People who bring dogs to places like public campgrounds and the dog barks incessantly all night long. Train your dog not to bark or don't bring it around other people who you can expect to want peace and quiet. I love well trained dogs. I don't much care for people with poorly trained dogs.

Meh, typed up a comment about Tyler and his fishing spots, but what's the point? We are seeing fishing pressure on small to medium size streams at least double in the last two years. It's all going away. Either the creeks get pounded until nobody can catch much, or the landowners shut them all down.

Actually, Montana has that exact stream access law. If you can legally access the stream from either public land or a bridge crossing, or with the permission of a single landowner, you can travel up and down the stream and fish to your heart's content, no matter whose land you cross, as long as you stay below the high bank. And it doesn't matter how big or small the stream is, as long as it has a population of fish to fish for. It's probably the most enlightened stream access law in the nation, and most landowners are either okay with it or resigned to it. Once in a while, an uber-rich person comes along, buys up a length of some nice trout stream, and tries to keep people off it, and it goes to court...and they lose. And most bridges still have a usable spot to park at least a couple cars, and are still used for access. Could that work in MO? Not in the current political climate. Might not even get passed in Montana today. But it works there.

The Buffalo has a huge watershed, and the lower portion in that area has a very narrow valley. I've seen photos of Buffalo River floods that were lapping at the bottom of the Highway 14 bridge, which is more than 70 feet above normal river level. So yeah, you can see why the floods can build up some immensely high gravel bars!

The problem they have with smallmouth management is multi-faceted. 1. River tournament guys will scream bloody murder if MDC even hints that they might put special regulations on the stream sections where most of the tournaments are fished. The river tournament guys pretty much squelched putting special regs on middle Current River, even though the research showed that they would do a lot of good for that fishery. 2. The enforcement people want to keep regs as simple as possible, so that their jobs are as simple as possible. They always advocate one size fits all regs. 3. Many in MDC are still of the mindset that their job is to maximize "harvest". They seem to have a pathological fear of meat fishermen. 4. Truth be known, the special regulations as currently implemented have not proved to make a huge difference in the smallmouth population. And some of the old guard at MDC were freaked out when the initial studies showed a precipitous drop in the number of anglers fishing some of the special regs areas when the regs were put in place. I think it was an aberration, and so do many of the biologists at MDC, but it still freaked them out. Oops, wasn't done, hit the wrong button. 5. Somehow they have gotten the mindset from studies done on small lakes that slot limits won't work in the rivers, which is what I've advocated for many years. It makes little sense to put on a 1 fish, 15 inch limit if you are wanting to have larger fish make up a bigger percentage of the overall population. It seems to me that the streams are tailor-made for slot limits, which would allow harvest of the abundant smaller fish and protect the bigger ones until they got really big. 6. I think they would rather keep the public off smaller creeks, to avoid confrontations with landowners, rather than give those smaller creeks the protection they need. The personnel at MDC are a mixed bag. Some of the biologists are great, a few are not. Many of the higher ups are bureaucrats, but some genuinely care about the resource.

It's close, but I don't think so. I think the Spoonplugs had a curved scoop-like bill on the front, not this flat bill. Could be wrong.

The accredited info is what it is. On a subject like this, results will vary all over the place because of location, timing, who's running the tournaments, or who knows. SCIENCE will consider all the credible studies, and eventually come up with overall averages, outcomes based upon conditions, etc. People with agendas will cherry-pick the studies that are the closest outcomes to what they want to push.

Living in Montana half the year and visiting other parts of the West frequently, I would say it depends upon the state or area. In our part of Montana, litter is not even close to being a problem, and neither is the other shenanigans that take place routinely on creeks and rivers in MO. Nobody gets stinking drunk on the rivers and does lewd, crude, loud, or obnoxious things. But in Arizona, the rivers I fished were like city dumps; it was ridiculous in some places. And so was California in the couple streams I fished there. Oregon and Washington were pretty clean where I was.

Social media is going to be the death of a lot of sweet little fisheries. Seems like so many of these younger guys want to be Youtube rock stars by videoing their adventures on small, vulnerable creeks. They are showing a LOT of people how good the fishing in these small streams can be, but how long will the good fishing last when they are attracting more and more people to them? And it isn't just the fishery itself. The one young guy has already been run off three or four creeks by irate landowners, and the more these small creeks are publicized, the more people flocking to them, and the more people flocking to them, the more the landowners are going to be shutting them down. I've lost access to a couple of great creeks in the last few years, and every time I go to one of my favorite creeks, I'm always afraid that I'll find new purple paint and no trespassing signs. Yeah, I try to get to know the landowners and hopefully they'll trust that I'll not only treat the creek as a privileged guest to it, but also that I won't tell or bring a bunch of other people to it. But some landowners I know are just fed up with 20 people a week parking at the edge of their land and roaming their creek; they used to be okay with one or two anglers a week and a couple families swimming at the bridge crossing. Go on any of the fishing or paddling groups on Facebook, and several times a week, somebody will ask something like, "What are some of the little known fishing spots (or kayaking stretches) near St. Louis (or some other city)." And...people actually respond, proudly telling everybody their favorite spots. How is there this basic disconnect, not thinking that broadcasting your best fishing creek absolutely guarantees that soon there will be five other guys fishing it when you get there and the fishing will be going downhill fast?

I learned very early in our marriage (now 38 years and going strong) to keep my mouth shut about things Mary does. About a week into the marriage, she fixed fried chicken for supper. She asked me how it tasted. I said that it was good but Mom's chicken was better. (Which was the truth, my mom made the best fried chicken I've ever tasted.) Mary has not made us fried chicken since that day. And brings it up about once a month.

I've yet to find any crankbait that runs more than 8 feet on a normal length cast. The physics just don't allow it. You can troll one on a long line and get it down considerably deeper, or you can stick your rod tip a couple feet into the water and get another foot or so, but every time I've hung up a deep diving crankbait, it's been about 2 feet deeper than I can reach with my rod. By physics not allowing it, I mean that if your cast is 60-80 feet, there just isn't enough line out and time of retrieve to get a crankbait down all that deep. If it does get down 10 feet or more, it's only there for a short distance in the middle of the retrieve. Of course, I'm coming into this as a river fisherman, and in my experience you seldom need to get down more than 8-10 feet, even in the winter. I've caught very few fish, even fishing jigs or weighted plastics, that were lying in water more than 8 feet deep. In the warm weather months, any bass lying in deep water is an inactive bass, because 99% of their food is in shallower water. Having said all that, I'd love to find a crankbait that got down to 10 feet or more on a normal cast; I'd rather be fishing one that runs 10 feet deep in 8 feet of water than one that runs 6 feet deep in 8 feet of water!

Smallmouth/spotted bass hybrid.

What Gavin said...I just looked on the history feature on Google Earth, and at normal water flows there are gravel bars everywhere on that stretch. If the river isn't high you should have no trouble finding camping bars.

I do find it hard to believe that catching and immediately released bass causes 5-10% mortality. But is that because I don't WANT to believe it? Just don't know.

Theoretically, limits are set to maintain the population, and the likelihood of many people being catch and release, or not being good enough to catch a limit, is factored into the set limit. If bowfishers or giggers were allowed to kill the same number of bass as rod and reel anglers, then the limits would have to be adjusted accordingly...it would almost certainly mean that the limit for everybody was reduced. So yeah, if you wanted to go that way, fine, but understand what it would lead to. As for Wrench's comment about me...actually, I agree that in theory, the guy who catches a hundred bass in a day and releases them all quite possibly kills more than the guy who catches 6, kills them, and stops fishing. Mortality from hooking has been studied to death, with widely varying numbers on how many die after being released. The numbers vary widely enough that I don't think anybody has a real handle on it, because a lot depends upon water conditions as well as how well an individual angler handles the fish, or what he uses to catch them, etc. But let's say mortality is 5-10%, kinda the usual range...if he catches a hundred he kills 5 to 10 of them. BUT...how many undersized fish is the guy who is keeping his limit catch? On stream smallmouth, about half the fish you catch are under 12 inches, half over. If he catches 6 keepers, does that mean he's caught 6 more non-keepers? Or does he cull some? Anyway, he's probably killing one or two at least besides what he keeps, as well.

There are rock bass in every creek flowing into the Mississippi between St. Louis and Cape Girardeau. And they will be northern rock bass. You should have a decent shot at catching some. Another spot that I think should produce some rock bass would be the Bootleg Access on Big River headwaters, at the Highway 21 bridge south of Potosi. And any other access on upper Big River should be wadeable, fly fishable, and have rock bass. Now if you want to add shadow bass to the list, you gotta go fish upper Black River, or on the Current and Jacks Fork. But you shouldn't have too much trouble catching a few if you do go to those streams. You can also catch shadow bass on Big Creek around Sam A. Baker State Park--St. Francis there has some, too. Gar are tough on fly tackle unless you use the old frayed nylon rope "fly" instead of hooks. It's just about impossible to sink a hook into the snout of a gar. But if you want the best chance, you gotta float or boat any of the Ozark streams in midsummer when the water is lower and slower, and watch for them in the larger, deeper pools. There will be a school of longnose gar in just about every big pool, even on smaller streams like the upper Jacks Fork. Bowfin...very hit or miss on the lower ends of those creeks running into the Mississippi south of St. Louis...there are few, but not enough to target them specifically. Best place to catch blue catfish is on the Mississippi. You MIGHT be able to catch one on a fly rod by walking the bank when the river gets low enough to do so, and fishing around wing dams, mainly on the upstream side. It might be possible to catch a flathead that way, too. Gonna be tough on artificial flies, though. I'd like to see your list of species you've already caught. Pretty sure I could turn you on to a few more that you may not have caught yet.