Al Agnew

The economy is fine if you have good investments in the stock market. Tell any small business owner in places hard hit by Covid that the economy is fine, and you'll probably get cussed out or laughed at.

But they ARE infringing upon you and yours. THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT HERE. For about the thousandth time, you wear masks to protect others FROM YOU, more than you wear a mask to protect you from others. And you avoid crowded indoor gatherings to protect others from you as much as you from others. If everybody is on board with this, the chances of ANYBODY getting it go way down. But the more people that aren't on board with it, the more people get it, even if they are being reasonably careful, and the more people that get it, the more danger everybody else is in, and the more that the economy and a lot of small businesses suffer. You said above somewhere that I want everybody to do it my way. Nope. I want everybody to follow BEST SCIENCE. Best science says masks help, social distancing helps, and large indoor gatherings are some of the worst spreaders so should be avoided.

Are you serious? Our governor refuses to even consider putting on a mandatory statewide mask order. The county health department supervisor in the county I grew up in, one county away from where I live now, resigned because as soon as she tried to get a county mask order instituted, she got nasty phone calls at all hours of the night, death threats, and people sending her emails threatening her kids. The county where I live, the health department supervisor says it's not her job to put on a mask order, and the county commissioners say it is, that it's not their job, so nothing has gotten done. And because there are no mask orders in any of these counties, the Walmarts and other big box stores here can't enforce their own mask mandates, because people scream and threaten any worker that tells them they have to wear a mask. I have never in my life seen such selfish, willfully ignorant people, people I know, people I thought were good, intelligent people. It starts at the top and goes down, and the poor peons at the bottom who are trying to get something done get absolutely no support from their higher-ups, and in fact we have politicians doing everything they possibly can to make spreading this easier, not harder. In the states or counties where mask orders and bans on large gatherings exist, people ignore it and dare the officials to do something about it. By taking it seriously, I mean everybody being on the same page, and realizing that the only way to deal with this is for everybody to do their part. And I never said lockdowns and quarantines don't work. I said that people are ignoring them and in fact doing all they can to battle against them, and THAT'S why they aren't always working.

Well, that only makes sense IF you receive complete immunity after getting it the first time. Burning through the population? And...it's real easy to say that people at high risk should quarantine/isolate, but in reality, how does ANYBODY do that? You still have to eat, and have to visit doctors, and maybe have to do a number of other things that potentially expose you. Even if you are very elderly and home-bound, bed-ridden, whatever, SOMEBODY has to come and take care of you, and that somebody can potentially be carrying the virus. We all know that no measure is 100% effective. We also know that there's a small possibility that you can pick it up from surfaces. You'd have to live in a bubble with no input from outside your bubble except for objects that are sterilized. And it's also really easy for people who AREN'T in high risk groups to say that those who are should just isolate themselves. But put yourself in their shoes for just a minute. I'm at higher risk than many, being 68 years old and having high blood pressure (controlled) and an occasional irregular heartbeat. I haven't been into a restaurant since this all started. We have done take-out food about a half dozen times since it started. We order most of what we need from online services like Amazon; haven't been anywhere actually shopping inside a store, except for a few times at the hardware store, with a list and taking no more time than it takes to pick up the stuff on the list. We do curbside pickup whenever possible, including at the grocery store. I have played basketball 2-3 times a week for most of my adult life; it's one of my biggest pleasures. Not anymore, and let me tell you, it really ticks me off because I know I don't have very many more years to play. I haven't fished with any of my buddies since this all started, either. Have only visited a few friends and family members in outdoor settings where we can social distance. So...in many ways my quality of life sucks right now, and has since this started. So yeah, when I hear somebody say that if you are at risk, YOU take precautions and I'll do pretty much as I want, it rankles. If EVERYBODY had taken this seriously from the first, there's a real good chance we would have this under control now, with few enough cases that it would be possible to isolate the active cases, contact trace those who were exposed to them, and it would be fairly safe to do all those things I haven't been doing. Instead, the numbers, especially in Missouri, are through the roof and trending the wrong direction, the at risk people have to be more careful and more isolated than ever, and another thing...at our age, there's a greater chance that something besides Covid could happen that would necessitate a hospital visit--but now all the hospital beds are full because of Covid. And finally, before I end this rant, can we think about the people who get this disease and DON'T die, but have lengthy hospital stays, suffer through being very ill, have lingering effects for weeks or months, and may have long term effects that detract from their quality of life for years to come? What percentage is that? 10%? 20%? I've heard both figures. Do you really want to take THAT chance?

There is plenty of good science on it. With all the resources across the world that have been going toward understanding this virus and then doing something about it, you have to believe that everybody working on it is totally inept to think there isn't plenty of good science by now. Do we know everything we need to know about it? Nope. Do we know enough to have an idea of how to combat it? Yep. I hate to get into the political weeds, but this whole "government control" thing just seems patently ridiculous to me. What the heck do you EXPECT the government and government officials to do? Apparently, many expect them to do absolutely nothing, and let us wallow in our freedom to be stupid and selfish until a few million die and a few more tens of millions of gravely ill totally wreck our whole health care system along with our economy. Do you honestly think that government officials seeing the kind of stuff that is happening to our hospitals (and funeral homes) are doing things just so that they can be petty tyrants? Please tell me, what do they really have to gain? What is their end game if they are doing this to "control" us? Oh, gee, they are gonna make sure we wear masks forever? Maybe some of what has been done has been the wrong thing to do, ineffective, non-sensical. But I know darned good and well that if I was a city or county or state government official, I wouldn't be standing by and watching people die and hospitals be completely overwhelmed without doing SOMETHING...and listening to the experts and not doofuses who don't have a clue but do have an agenda. The best argument against "strains" is that people who are exposed in the exact same way, whether family members or groups of people going to the same wedding or other big event, are having vastly different outcomes. There may be strains--certainly, as I said, there have been mutations. But they aren't the reason for the widely different outcomes of people getting this virus.

As I wrote earlier, best science presently is that it's likely that some re-infections are actually the virus hanging around in the body and flaring up again, not a new infection. If less than 30 days, that would seem likely. Also those types of flare-ups tend to be worse the second time than the first time. True re-infections have happened but are rare. The virus, by the way, HAS mutated...they've seen several different mutations, but none so far have made the virus more resistant to the antibodies. When you have this many people carrying the virus all over the world, mutations can happen in a hurry. Nobody knows whether it will mutate to make it resistant to the old antibodies. Immunity after being infected and recovering is still an open question...could be as little as 4 months, or as much as a year or more. There is some evidence that the T cells that can produce the antibodies remain in the body for at least a year; question is if enough of them remain to easily fight off a re-infection after a longer period of time. Probably the best case scenario is a situation much like the flu, with flu shots necessary each year, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be better, or worse. Given the number of people getting extremely sick and dying from it across the world, the pressure is on for better controlling it. Viruses have a vested interest, if you will, in actually NOT killing their hosts, at least not on a time frame that will keep the virus from spreading before its host gets too sick to spread the virus around. It's why Ebola, as scary as it is, is actually pretty easily contained (so far). It is TOO deadly. Flares up, kills a bunch of people in a few areas, but is obvious who is sick. It's why Covid is SO much more difficult to contain...it kills some, but doesn't hurt many who become spreaders. All this crap about it only killing 1% or 2% is actually the worst scenario, because it really sucks if you're one of the 1%, or one of the 10-20% who get really sick and may suffer long term problems, and yet there are plenty of "healthy" spreaders.

I just acquired a new (to me) canoe, a Dagger Reflection that a friend wanted to sell. I couldn't resist it. But I really don't need three tandem canoes, so I'm going to sell one of my two Old Town Penobscots. I have an old one, probably nearly 30 years old, and a much newer one that I picked up less than a year before the demise of Royalex. I got the newer one as a blemished one from an REI "garage sale". I think it's the one I'm going to sell. This is a green, Royalex canoe, 16 feet, weighs about 60 pounds. It's in decent shape, the bottom is scratched up but only worn into the ABS layer under the vinyl outer coating, not down into the foam core, and that only in the area near the rear end. However, the bottom is slightly warped, a bit higher in the center than near the ends, and also has a slight indentation in one area. It still paddles well, and I still think the Penobscot is one of the sweetest tandem canoes for Ozark streams--it is fairly fast, tracks very well, and has great secondary stability. The bottom is not too wide and flat, so it may feel a little squirrely to you if you're used to a wide canoe, but it resists actually flipping, and you soon get used to the slight feeling of instability. As many may know, Royalex is no longer being manufactured, so Royalex canoes are in high demand on the used market. If interested, make me an offer! You can private message me, now that I've cleared space in my in box.

Good question, Mitch. It appears the vaccines are somewhere around 95% effective, and near 100% at keeping you from getting as severe a case even if you still get infected. But from a societal point of view, until the disease gets down to a level where it's easy to contact trace and the hospitals aren't under any pressure, I would think that mask wearing should continue.

So yeah, tick borne illnesses are causing hospitals to be operating at capacity and past capacity, wearing down the health care workers in them as well as putting them in constant danger, causing most hospitals to put holds on all elective surgery procedures because they don't have the bed space, etc. If "only" 1 in 100 are dying, there are still a heck of a lot of people getting sick enough to need hospitalization. THAT'S the more realistic way to look at it. By the way, I've been bitten by more than a thousand ticks in my life. I ain't gotten sick yet. But I'd still just as soon not get bitten by a tick.

Sigh...NOBODY says masks are perfect protection. But the SCIENCE says that the virus particles are carried in water droplets. Are the droplets small enough to go through a mask like most are wearing? Some are. Some aren't. And of those that are, they aren't intelligent, they don't seek out the holes in the weave of the mask. Many, probably most, will be caught by the mask. Now...maybe in the next 15 minutes as you breathe in, you'll pull a few more off the mask and into you. But the viral load you end up receiving will be lessened overall. So yes, wearing a mask does provide you with some protection. Not nearly as much as others wearing one protects you, for the reasons we've already stated. So yeah, you wear a mask for three reasons. Biggest one, to reduce the likelihood of you spreading it to others if you're infected. Second reason, not as big but part of the whole strategy, to protect yourself a bit. Third...BECAUSE IT'S THE RIGHT THING TO DO IN A CIVILIZED SOCIETY. Since your refusal to wear a mask puts others at more risk, AND makes those of us who understand the whole thing a lot more uneasy about the danger you're putting us in, to not wear one is the height of selfishness. Here's a piece I wrote last night on my Facebook page...I think it's time to start thinking about an end game in this thing, which starts with the vaccines. I get a limited number of free articles online from National Geographic...I really should subscribe to it. They have been posting a lot of articles on Covid, and the one I read tonight I found very interesting, and somewhat encouraging. It was talking about re-infections in people who have already had it. The numbers of reinfections are rising, and probably being under-reported. But they are still quite rare, in the tens or hundreds per country. Some apparent re-infections end up being more serious than the original infection (more about why I said "apparent" later), while others are less serious or asymptomatic. Apparently the experts mostly expect re-infections to keep happening, but many think that some cases of re-infections, including some of the worst, are because the virus itself remains in the body, so they aren't technically re-infections. And in some people who have such re-infections, the body simply didn't develop enough B cells and T cells, the cells that produce the antibodies, to have a robust response to the virus when it flares up again. They think most people with healthy immune systems will develop enough of those cells to fight off the virus in future exposures. Early evidence is that the vaccines being developed will force the body to produce enough of those cells to ward off the disease, and that enough of those cells will remain in the body to produce antibodies for a long period of time. So while you probably won't develop complete immunity to the disease, you will, if you have a healthy immune system, produce enough antibodies to fight it off with fewer and milder symptoms when you are exposed again. Of course, the rub here is that you CAN get it again, and even if you have mild or no symptoms, you are still contagious and can pass it along to someone who doesn't have as strong an immune system, or who may have never been exposed to it before. Which means a couple of things....unless and until it is shown that most people have enough immunity response to fight it off, such measures as masks and social distancing might be around for a long time. Unless, of course, enough people actually take a vaccine, at whatever time intervals is deemed necessary, to achieve the kind of herd immunity needed; because herd immunity otherwise will require at least 60% of the population to actually contract the disease, according to other experts I've read. That's 180 million people in the U.S. alone. And if 1% of those 180 million people die from it, that's 1.8 million people dead in however long it takes to get that percentage infected. The nice thing about getting an effective vaccine is that, at least, it becomes more a matter of the stupid being weeded out, instead of the innocent along with the stupid. If there is a vaccine and you don't take it and I do, I no longer have to worry about you spreading it to me. You can get it and suffer however much you will, but you'll only spread it to others as stupid as you were in not taking the vaccine. Right now, your irresponsibility in not social distancing and not wearing a mask in public indoor places or other crowded places can adversely affect others. At least, though, maybe this article explains in more depth what the future may hold. Science isn't perfect, but it's a heck of a lot more reliable than internet "experts" with agendas.

Good question...but in practice, the state water patrol and county law officials are mainly responsible for enforcing the laws, whatever they are.

Yup. The whole phrase "navigable waters" is usually totally misunderstood. As you said, the Mississippi, Missouri, and short sections of the lower ends of the Grand, and I think a couple other rivers (the lower end of the Gasconade might be one) are the ONLY navigable waterways in Missouri. They are FEDERALLY navigable, and that designation means that they are governed by different rules than any other waters in the state. This includes the fact that on those waters, property owners own only to the top of the river's alluvial banks. With all other Missouri streams, the landowner owns the bottom of the stream to the center line of the channel. I would have thought, however, that the Corps of Engineers has "ownership" of the water on any lake that it built. Lake of the Ozarks, however, was built by Union Electric Company, so that throws another monkey wrench in the legalities of it. As we've discussed here before, all the floatable Ozark streams are governed by the MO Supreme Court case, Elder v Delcour, which basically gives the public an easement to use them (including using the gravel bars and stream bottom), even though the landowner owns everything but the water.

Couldn't have proved it by me today. I fished my stretch of the Meramec near our cabin today, which I am more and more convinced has to be the worst section of the middle river. Caught about 10, more largemouth than smallmouth, none over 14 inches. There is this one pool that I have always been convinced has to be a terrific winter pool...deep water, good slow eddies, plenty of rock structure on one side and log structure on the other, even has a south-facing bluff. And got, as usual, zero. Just shows I don't know as much as I think I do.

Been thinking about this a lot these days...it's been something like 40 years since I caught my personal best Ozark river smallmouth. You'd think that in all that time I would have finally caught one bigger than 22 inches and 5 pounds (give or take a quarter inch and a couple ounces). Other people have caught slightly bigger ones. I don't know that I've actually seen, let alone hooked and lost, more than two or three that I would be fairly certain were bigger than that personal best. Heck, I know more now than I did then. I have better equipment. I fish waters that COULD hold a bigger one more often. Just goes to show you how rare those 21 plus inchers are.

I prefer floating, simply because of the way I like to fish. I like to keep moving and make lots of casts to lots of different places, and be able to quickly skip over unproductive water (too slow or too shallow). Don't get me wrong, I love wading small creeks as well, but I find myself 4 miles up the creek and then dread hiking all the way back to the car. Still, I have a few favorite wading creeks that regularly produce 15-18 inch smallmouth, and I love fishing them. However, I'll only fish each stretch once or possibly twice a year, simply because I don't want to wear it out.

Yesterday. Warm, cloudy, river up just a bit and very slightly murky. I'd switched over my lure boxes to my winter fishing stuff the day before, and I was ready. It had been more than 4 months since my last smallmouth trip, having been in Montana all that time. I was looking forward to it. In fact, I was so excited that I put the boat in, jumped in and took off upstream...and after I'd gone several miles up the river I realized I'd left my cell phone in the truck. Didn't want to go back and get it. Oh well, I just hoped I didn't catch a huge smallmouth and not be able to photograph it! Ran into a couple friends in the pool where I had planned to start fishing. Stopped to talk, made a few casts on the gravel bar side of the pool with a crankbait, bingo. A 17 incher to start! They had already fished most of the pool, so I hung around fishing the "wrong" side and caught several more. They took off upstream to the next good pool, so I decided to keep fishing the pool I was in to see how many I could catch behind them. Another boat came up the river and stopped in the same pool. I caught a bunch, including an 18 incher. They caught a few. I heard my friends take off on upstream, so I cranked up the motor to head up and fish the pool they'd just left. Was reeling the crankbait slowly behind a big boulder, coming up to the back side of the boulder, when I got a strike. The fish bored deep and apparently under the boulder. I kept a bit of pressure on, and it came out. Big one! It turned out to be a very thick 19 incher. Great fish. I caught an 18 incher just downstream. Several more fish, both largemouth and smallmouth. My friends came back down, started fishing the pool behind me, and caught a few; then they headed on down to fish that first pool one more time before they had to leave. I followed them and went past them to another pool, within sight of the first one, where I occasionally find a good school of fish. Yup, they were there...along with, of all things, a loon! An eagle flew over and the loon made it's typical loon call; now that's something you don't hear every day in Missouri! Caught another 18 incher. A bunch of 14-15 inchers. Then I headed downstream to fish one more pool. Caught another 17 incher, several more fish. It seemed to be getting darker. I had no phone so no way to tell time. Decided I'd better start back to the truck. Got back, and looked at my phone...3 PM. I coulda fished another hour! Of course, no pictures, so I guess none of it happened.

I guess that "spring" means Memorial Day to June 21st?

I'm sure you guys realize that weigh-in type tournaments are illegal from March 1 to Memorial Day weekend, due to the closed season on stream bass. They have to be immediately released when caught.

I'd throw every one of those lures on any river in the Ozarks and catch fish. Back in the old days, the Heddon River Runt, Lazy Ike (especially that yellow one with the spots), and the two-prop topwater were absolute killers. And although those twin spins aren't Shannons, they were deadly then and would be now.

Mary is big on making bone broth. So far I haven't joined her.

Mary is big on supplements and probiotics, and stuffs some down my throat now and then. We've been regularly taking a couple of things that are supposed to bolster your immune system's fight against viruses since Covid came on. I have no idea what they are except one is made from some kind of mushrooms (and smells like it). Mary has been intermittently fasting for over a year now...hasn't lost as much weight as it seems a lot of people do, but has lost a little and still eats a lot closer to what she wants than she did on all her other diets. I have always somewhat intermittently fasted, since I seldom eat breakfast and don't eat until after noon, and don't eat much after supper, so most days I've always gone 16-18 hours without eating. But I did fast for a while more religiously with Mary, and quickly lost 16 pounds, which put me back at my fighting weight where I wanted to be. However, I suspect the biggest factor in that was cutting down my Coke intake to a couple 20 ounce bottles a week, where before I was drinking at least 20 ounces a day. I think if I would have kept it up I would have kept losing weight, so I went back to not being religious about the fasting and now I'm holding my weight about where I want it. Other than that, we eat fairly cleanly. We do eat a lot of red meat, but it's beef raised by our family without all the crap that goes into it, and venison. And we eat a lot of vegetables and fruits. But Covid has also been good for my own diet, because I no longer go into quick shops every time I buy gas, and pick up sweet stuff like Twinkies and Little Debbie's snacks. Out in Montana, my favorite quick shop had stuff like jalapeno corn dogs that I was addicted to, but not this year. So thanks to Covid I'm eating a lot less junk food.

I think the outer skin (gel coat) on kevlar canoes is the same as glass canoes. I've used glass canoes on Ozark streams for a long time. They scratch easily, but really not much easier than Royalex. And deep scratches in either glass or kevlar are easier to repair than scratches in plastic. Glass canoes can't take really hard bumps against hard, sharp objects like jagged rocks; it will spider-web the gel coat and can put a hole in the canoe. Kevlar is stronger as well as lighter than glass, so while the same thing can happen, it will take a harder bump with kevlar. What you can't do with either one is wrap it around a rock or log. But really, glass or kevlar will work pretty well on Ozark streams.

To add something to what I said to Gavin, seat placement in a solo canoe is extremely important. If you go the Discovery 119 route, get the plain jane Disco 119, and NOT the "Sportsman" package with the molded seat. Unless they changed it, the seat in that one is too far back, and not easy to move forward, while the seat in the plain Disco 119 is about where it should be.

I owned a Pack for many years, and my experience was that it was not wobbly at all. Why? I suspect it was because I moved the seat forward significantly. When I got mine, it WAS wobbly. But the seat placement was WAY too far back. If the seat isn't in the widest part of a solo canoe, it will be ridiculously wobbly. I moved my seat forward to where the front edge was just a couple inches from the center of the canoe, and that fixed the problem completely.

Nah, after you put the first few scratches on the bottom, you're good to go from there on!