Al Agnew

Nope, no trout. It's getting to be pretty big water by the time it gets to Van Buren, and the jetboat traffic can be pretty bad, especially if the local bass club is having a tournament. I'd plan on being on the water late in the afternoon after most of the traffic is gone. Maybe put in early in the morning, float and fish until the hooligans get thick, and then take a nap in the shade or read a book on the gravel bar for a few hours in the middle of the day (and watch the bikini hatch). Then finish the day's float late in the evening. Topwaters work early and late, but when there's traffic the fish tend to go deeper during the day. Fish for them in water deep enough that it isn't easy to see the bottom, with tubes, finesse worms, and other baits you can fish on the bottom. Also, if you want to work at it, you can often find some fish in the little pockets and obstructions in fast water, places where the average person can't or won't stop the canoe or boat to fish. Sundays are less crowded than Saturdays. But if you can fish during the week--doesn't sound like you can on this trip--it's a whole different river, even in the summer, although it's never deserted.

I gotta say I'd be just slightly uneasy about eating large quantities of fish from the James below Springfield. Their treated sewage is released into the river, and with the population of Springfield that's a lot of sewage. Back 20 or more years ago, Springfield's treatment plant was overloaded and the river was getting WAY too much fertilization from the sewage, but it seems to be better now. HOWEVER, while modern treatment plants do a good job of removing organic waste, we are finding out that they don't remove a lot of the pharmaceuticals that go through the human body without being fully metabolized, and they also don't remove other common household chemicals that get washed down the drain. In some parts of the country, these chemicals are believed to be responsible for fish with sexual and other disorders (like male fish with female organs). If what's in the water is doing that to the fish, who knows what it could do to us. While Springfield and surrounding towns aren't as big as some of the cities that dump their waste into those rivers, it's big enough. So while I wouldn't hesitate to eat fish now and then from the James, I don't think I'd want to eat a meal of James River fish a couple times a week.

Campbell Bridge to the park is 15 miles, and the lower portion is a little slower, with some long still pools. Nice overnight trip but a little too long for one day if you're fishing. Blue Springs Creek to the park is a good day float. Keep in mind that on spring and summer weekends these stretches will all be pretty crowded, and the jetboats will be out in force now since the water is high enough yet to be easily runnable. Ozark trout fisher didn't mention it, but the stretch from Onondaga to Blue Springs Creek is probably the most scenic stretch of the river. Lots of big bluffs, including Vilander Bluff, in my opinion the prettiest one on the Meramec.

Nope, it's good to ask. Since you're new to the scene and interested in various jetboatable waters, I can give you a few pointers on what to look for. Whether a given stream stretch is jetboatable depends partly on water level. But unless you're only planning on motoring up to the nearest obstruction or bad spot, these eastern MO river stretches are simply NOT jetboatable: Meramec above Maramec Spring Huzzah and Courtois Creeks Bourbeuse above Noser Mill Big River above the mouth of the Mineral Fork (above Mammoth Bridge basically) Castor River above Hwy. 34 St. Francis River above Hwy. C-N bridge the forks of Black River Jacks Fork above Alley Spring Current River above Cedargrove Eleven Point River above Greer Spring Any tributary of these rivers or any other creek in southeast MO that's not mentioned at all above. That's not to say that none of them can be run in high water or if you don't care at all about your boat, but in my opinion these streams should be entirely off limits to jetboats. Streams that are runnable if there's higher than summer normal water levels and if you are very experienced (and not too worried about your boat): Bourbeuse below Noser Mill (the entire Bourbeuse gets way too low during dry summer water levels, and personally I don't really consider any of the Bourbeuse to be jetboat water) Meramec from Maramec Spring to Onondaga (some long stretches of this section are runnable in normal summer water level if you know the river well, but there are also a lot of tricky stretches, and the non-motorized traffic will be thick in the summer) Big River below Mammoth Bridge Castor River below Hwy. 34 (low summer water levels and log jams will make this stretch marginal) St. Francis River below Hwy. C-N bridge (again, the St. Francis gets way too low in the summer) Black River from the forks to Clearwater Lake (it also gets too low in the summer, and canoe traffic is thick) Current River from Cedargrove to Round Spring (thick canoe traffic is the worst obstacle here, but there are lots of tricky parts that I wouldn't dare run in low water) Jacks Fork below Alley Spring (same as Current River from Cedargrove to Round Spring) I personally will not run most of these stretches unless it's wintertime and the water level is adequate, but some do. So anything bigger and farther downstream should be runnable, but no Ozark stream stretch is so easily runnable that you don't stand the chance of mishap, and dead low water will make the Meramec below Onondaga and the Current between Round Spring and Powdermill very tricky to run.

The Bourbeuse is flowing well over 2000 cfs at Union right now, which is plenty of water to run a jetboat in itself. BUT, it'll also be very murky to muddy when it's flowing that much water, and you won't be able to see obstacles. And the river up around Mill Rock will be very narrow, brushy, and log-jammed in places. In my opinion as a jetboater and canoe angler, jetboats simply have no business being on the Bourbeuse anywhere above Noser Mill. Even if the river is full enough to be doable, a stream that size is simply not jetboat water. Dang it, leave some of the rivers for those of us who want to float without the possibility of encountering a loud, high speed boat in a narrow spot!

It's been a while since I floated those stretches. I remember the upper portions being a little narrower and murkier than the stretch right above Gravens...I thought the smallmouth type habitat was a bit better down closer to Gravens. But I only floated the upper stretch you're talking about once, so my memory may be faulty.

Hank, I just looked at the Hazelgreen gage, which is well below the stretch you're talking about and below the mouth of the Osage Fork, and the rise there last night was insignificant, so apparently the upper watershed didn't get too much rain. Can't say the same about the river right along I-44--the Little Piney got a 5 ft. rise. But you should be alright--probably a bit more water than normal but it should be fishable.

Thalweg, even though I own one, I think much along the same lines as you. I'd happily sell mine to somebody in a less enlightened state if they were ever banned on Ozark streams. But it ain't gonna happen. Way too many people own them now. The time to put controls on horsepower and limitations on where you could run them was back in the 1980s when they first appeared on the scene, but nobody had the foresight to do it back then. I don't push the envelope with mine. I don't run it on some of the marginally jetboatable streams where I probably could, especially given the experience I now have with mine and the knowledge of what I can and can't do. I avoid the popular canoe stretches of rivers like the Meramec in the summer. Mine isn't a real big high horsepower model, either. And I use it strictly for fishing--I don't joy-ride up and down the river, ever. As a canoeist for many years, I've been on the bad end of jetboat joyriders way too many times. If you're on the river and see me go by, you'll only see me do it once because I'm either heading up to where I plan to start fishing for the day and drifting back down, or heading back up to the access after drifting downstream and fishing. I'm ALWAYS aware of the intrusiveness of a loud, high speed, high wake boat on other river users, and minimize it as much as possible. And it scares me half to death to think about running up a narrow riffle with limited visibility and coming upon kids swimming in the river, so I'm always extremely cautious when using mine, especially in the summer.

Just a note...if you're new to jetboating, there's a definite learning curve. It ain't like running a regular outboard. See the thread about places on the Meramec to run a jetboat in the Tips and Tricks board here. With all the rain we've had, the Meramec should be fairly easy to run below Onondaga, but even in the easiest parts there may be downed trees and other obstructions that may make things pretty tricky for the inexperienced jetboater. And if you go on a weekend, your biggest obstacles will be the hordes of canoers and rafters and tubers and swimmers. It's purely a wonder that more people aren't killed in jetboat collisions with other users on that river during the summer.

One of my most treasured books is "We Always Lie to Strangers" by Randolph. One joke in it that always sticks in my mind is when a traveling salesman stops at a crossroads in some hardscrabble Ozark county to ask directions and strikes up a conversation with an Ozarker there. As they are talking, a cat runs past them full speed, heading west. They continue talking, but soon, ZIP, another cat runs past, going in the same direction. After this happens a couple more times in the next few minutes, the salesman finally asks the Ozarker what's up with the cats. "Well," the Ozarker says, "about two miles thataway happens to be the only patch of dirt in this whole county."

I've fished Big River for 50 years now, and there have been a few summers during that half a century that the fish would get into a pattern where at some point during the day--about the same time every day--they'd suddenly go nuts. You'd be fishing fruitlessly and swearing there couldn't be a half dozen fish in the whole river, and all of a sudden you'd start catching fish and then there'd be fish everywhere, hitting with wild abandon. This would last for an hour or so and then usually would begin to taper off gradually until you were back to catching practically nothing. But it always seemed to start with a bang. But this hadn't happened to me for a long time...until yesterday. I put in about 9:30 AM for a seven mile float. This stretch is not one of my favorites--it has some very good water and a lot of pretty poor water, but it's easy to get to and I always float it at least once a year. The water was down to about spring normal after two big rises in the last three weeks, one of them a 25 foot rise. It was fairly clear, visibility about 4 feet. In the first mile below the put-in I always seem to catch a bunch of fish. It's some of the better water on the float, with several nice runs, a couple of short rocky pools, and a big pool with lots of rocks on one side and deep logs on the other. Not today. I didn't catch the first fish, a 12 inch smallie, until I got to the lower end of the big pool. I caught another one immediately afterward, and hooked a third fish briefly. Not good. The stretch below that one starts out fast and shallow where it usually produces several little smallies, then gets slower and deeper and good largemouth water. Well, I did catch one more smallmouth there, and a couple of largemouth. After that, the river goes through one of it's somewhat non-productive stretches, with only a handful of spots that are dependable...and none of them were dependable today. I stopped for lunch at 1 PM with only a half dozen fish caught so far, and I'm thinking this may go down as one of the worst trips for numbers of fish I've had in years. Right below where I ate lunch the river reaches one of my favorite little spots. It doesn't look like much. It's a run of moving water about 2-3 feet deep, 50 yards long, studded with a few nice boulders. For some reason it seems to always produce several fish, usually with at least one of them being 16 inches or better. It's a piece of water that can turn a slow day around or at least make it a little more worthwhile. But not today. One half-hearted strike from a fish that wasn't very big anyway. Now I'm really getting a little disappointed--if that hole isn't producing I'm in trouble. Below there the river reaches a longer, shallow, rocky pool. If the fish are doing well, this pool can produce several nice fish, with the occasional REALLY nice one. But I'm pretty pessimistic. It's now after 2 PM and I've caught barely more than one fish per hour so far. But then it starts. Halfway down through that pool, to be exact, at about 2:15 PM. I'm fishing a Sammy up against the rocky bank in two feet of water when I get a wild, slashing strike and a solid hook-up with a 15 incher. Nice. Next cast, another hard stike, another 15 incher. Two casts later, a third strike, 12 incher. Then another strike, miss the fish. He comes back for seconds, miss him again. Looked to be about 14 inches. Then I'm out of the best water of the pool, nearing the lower end. Still, I get a 10 incher out of the shallows. The next pool is longer, deeper, big rocks on one side and shallowish logs on the other. It's seldom produced many fish for me--just seems to be a little too slow and slack water. But today is different. The switch is turned on. I catch fish after fish in the upper half on the rocky side, then when I stop catching them there, I switch over to the logs and catch a 16.5 and a 17 off them. Below that pool the river goes through a fast section with some nice deep runs. I decide to experiment and see if the fish are hitting something besides topwaters. My crankbait produces nothing. My homemade spinnerbait produces a couple of decent fish, but the fish don't seem to be in the fast water very much, until I get below that little piece of water. At the head of a long, shallow, almost coverless pool in fast, shallow water, the smallies are stacked, and I catch a half dozen 11-15 inchers on the spinnerbait. Down through the pool, I catch a couple more and hook a really nice one on the topwater. But that's the heart of the flurry. Things begin to slow down. In the last 3 miles of the float, the fishing is back to being fairly slow, although certainly not as slow as it was that morning. I'm still getting strikes on the topwater, but now they aren't hitting it as positively and I'm missing fish. I catch a couple nice largemouths on the spinnerbait. I stop to fish a couple of spots with tubes and catch a couple decent fish. And the final highlight of the day is a 17.5 inch smallmouth that blasts the topwater in a strike that had me convinced I'd hooked Ol' Walter himself. Total fish caught--24 smallies, 15 largemouths. Probably at least 2/3s of them came in that one hour period when the switch was fully on. Some fish porn... pretty little warmouth. You don't catch many of these on Big River. Only about 13 inches, but really beautiful coloration...why we call them "brownies". The 17 incher caught during the big flurry. The lean, mean 17.5 incher that capped the day.

Hey, Creek Wader, your photos are of the LOWER end of the river...Phil floated the upper section. That's the thing about the Buffalo. On most Ozark streams the scenery deteriorates as you go downstream...the bluffs get lower and the bottomland gets wider. Not so the Buffalo. The lower section is almost as spectacular as the Ponca to Kyles stretch. No other river in the Ozarks, and in my opinion no other river east of the Rockies, compares with the Buffalo in scenery. Big Bluff has my vote for the single most impressive sight in the Ozarks, whether you are floating down to it as Phil's photo shows, beneath it, or hiking the Goat Trail across the face of it.

It's probably going to be pretty tough wading at that level. Problem with the Bourbeuse is that it is almost always murky, so seeing the bottom is a problem when you're wading. And while there is a lot of shallow water, there is also a lot of water that is deep from bank to bank in both those areas. I find that on streams the size of the Bourbeuse there during spring normal water levels, you are very limited in the amount of good fishing water you can reach by wading.

They are very common on most streams. They have a life cycle that goes through snails and wading birds like herons as well as fish. They tend to be more common in smallmouth than largemouth, for some reason, and on the river I usually fish they are really rampant in spotted bass. While like others here I don't eat smallies, I try to eat the invasive spotted bass, but many of them on this river are so infested that, even though I know the worms are harmless to humans, I can't bring myself to eat fillets where every bite has a half dozen or more of them, and they are so numerous it's not worth the time it would take to pick them out of the meat. On fish that are mildly infested, you can pick them out easily with the point of your fillet knife.

Other than a few wade-fishing trips, I hadn't been on an Ozark stream since the Shoal Creek float in early April! Deadlines and weather conspired against me. But yesterday I finally got the chance to go. Nice thing about all the rain we've had is that all the creeks are running full. Wet springs always give you the chance to float higher on the creeks than the usual float stretches. It used to be a ritual to do at least one new creek each spring when there was enough water to do it. However, since I've pretty much floated all the creeks within a couple hours of home at one time or another, it's gotten to where I am going back and re-visiting some of the ones I did years ago. This stretch is the upper end of a stream that gets big enough for lots of floating farther downstream. I first floated it while doing a multi-day trip covering the whole stream, back in the early 1980s. I remembered it being pretty decent fishing, fast water, lots of logs and driftwood piles, and stretches where land use practices had not done it any favors. I was looking forward to renewing its acquaintance. The creek was air-clear and flowing quite strongly where I put in. There was plenty of water to float. The water felt cold on my ankles as I slid the canoe into the water. I climbed into the solo canoe and as always, paused with paddle across my knees to soak in the surroundings. I closed my eyes and felt the current, sniffed the river odors, and thought for a few seconds how fortunate I was to be on an Ozark stream once more. Then I stroked the paddle a few times and picked up the fishing rod. The first mile or so was VERY slow fishing. Habitat consisted mostly of short shallow pools and holes around rootwads. The current moved very quickly and necessitated slowing the canoe continually to fish. The first smallmouth came on my homemade spinnerbait in a little backwater just off a riffle. But usually if the spinnerbait is working well, I will see fish coming out of cover in the clear water to investigate it, and that wasn't happening. The weather had been cool, especially the night before, so I figured the water was still cold and the fishing would warm up as the sunny day went along. In the cool morning water I thought a jerkbait might work, so I tied on an X-Rap. Sure enough, I immediately started catching some fish, most of them under 12 inches. They were almost never in strong current, usually in very slow-moving eddies close to deep water. As the morning went along, I started to notice something a bit odd. I was seeing a lot of fish, including some nice ones, out in the middle of the creek over featureless gravel bottoms, mainly hanging in little dips in the gravel. These fish would occasionally charge my lure from 15 feet away or more, but mostly the bigger ones were ignoring it. And making myself cast to such spots was difficult even when I could see them ahead of time. In the clear water, long casts were necessary or else the fish had already seen me. It was a pattern that would continue the whole day, and I saw a lot of VERY nice fish, 17-20 inchers, out in those places. I also saw lots of beds, almost none of them occupied although they still looked fresh. Was spawning over? Or did the earlier beds get flooded out in the high water? Did the fish start to make new beds, thus the fresh appearance, but were temporarily holding off them since the water had cooled? About noon I started fishing topwater. I was throwing a Sammy, and some fish were willing to come up for it, but they were striking short and seldom getting hooked. So as the day went along I made two adjustments. One was to switch to a popper type lure, which the fish often will take more positively when they aren't really eating the walk-the-dog type. The other was to go underwater with my homemade Subwalk, a subsurface walk-the-dog lure. Both worked. For a period of about an hour the fish were really on the popper, and I hooked nearly every one that struck...except for a couple of the biggest ones. But the subsurface walker, while not producing as good a percentage of hook-ups, was more consistent at attracting larger fish. Some things I tried that DIDN'T work very well...the spinnerbait caught a few fish throughout the day, but it wasn't the lure it usually is in such water. Tubes got nothing. A Superfluke caught a couple but they weren't really attacking it. A couple of slightly weighted walk-the-dog lures that I'd modified to make what I'd call "walking wake baits" caught a couple but weren't magic, either. The water remained clear and beautiful. The scenery was gorgeous. Even the stretch I remembered that was suffering from poor land use was quite pretty, but I remembered accurately. For a couple of miles, probably all owned by the same person, the trees had been cleared right down to water's edge and cows were in and out of the stream everywhere. This stretch was beaten down banks, huge gravel bars, floods eating away the bottom fields. That landowner was an idiot. The floating was...well, fun. There were only a couple of places where I had to drag the canoe around obstacles, but a lot of fast runs were real obstacle courses from all the downed trees. One place in particular, the creek came into a fast, deep, narrow, high banked rapid that crashed into a log jam. There was an opening around the right side of the jam, but on that side there was another downed tree with roots against the bank and the main log running parallel to the bank down to the right end of the jam, with many limbs coming off the tree. I studied it from the top, and figured out the only way to do it without dragging the canoe up the bank. I don't usually take chances when I have a lot of fishing tackle in the canoe, but by this late in the day I'd had plenty of practice and figured I was handling the canoe about as well as I ever would, so I decided to give it a shot. Here's what I had to do... Start down the middle of the rapid, foot high waves, fast, two or three feet deep, about 15 feet wide. Draw stroke on the right as soon as I pass the rootwad of the tree on the right to move the canoe sideways a little closer to it. I couldn't get too close because of limbs coming off it angling downstream. The log jam, which nearly all the current was sweeping under, is about 35 feet downstream at this point. Clear the next limb angling off the tree on the right. Now the jam is 25 feet away. A quick, hard back stroke to angle the canoe so the rear (upstream) end is pointed somewhat toward the tree. Clear next limb, log jam 15 feet away. Now it's the critical point, because the spot where I have to get OVER that tree, the only place where the trunk is underwater a few inches, is now even with where I am right now, tucked in almost behind that last limb coming off it, and about 10 feet to the side. I have to backpaddle HARD to ferry the canoe in behind that limb and get the back end over that log. There is only about a 5 foot section of trunk that's deep enough for the canoe to slide over it, and I have to hit that section paddling hard enough to get the canoe over it backwards, angling upstream. The only good thing I have going for me is that the big rootwad above is still blocking much of the current, so if I can get the canoe out of the main current quickly enough, getting it to go upstream and backwards over that point of the tree is doable. If I can't, I'm going to have to bail out in about thigh deep pretty strong current and grab the canoe to hold it out of the jam below. When you're hot you're hot. It worked perfectly. I ended up with about 50 smallies for the day, two of them 17 inchers. I didn't get any of those 18-20 inchers I saw, but I'm already planning a paddle and walk trip for later in the summer to see if they are still there.

Crooked Creek has a noticeable lack of good public access points. The only ones are, from highest upstream: Harmon Public Access--call this mile 0.0. County road north of Hwy. 62. Spur Hwy. 62 off 62 in Pyatt--mile 9.0. Pyatt Access--mile 9.5. County road east of Snow--mile 21.0. County road just west of Yellville--mile 31.5. Yellville Access at Hwy. 14--mile 34.0. Lower Crooked Creek public access a half mile below the Hwy. 101 bridge--mile 52.5. Next public access below there is on White River about 7 miles below Hwy. 101. Keep in mind that during dry weather like in mid-summer, the lower river below Yellville goes completely dry in a lot of places. Crooked Creek is a classic "losing stream"--its flow sinks underground below Yellville. I've crossed it at Hwy. 101 many times when it was bone dry. For flyfishing, I agree with hoglaw, best time to go in when the water is dead low in the summer.

Several thoughts here...about fishing licenses, I was of the impression that you needed to have the paper even if you did the transaction online, does anybody know for sure what the case is there? Glory, you admitted it was your fault you didn't have the confirmation number...seems to me that if you DON'T have to have the paper, the confirmation number would have to be VERY important. Picture this...say the agent wasn't near his car radio to check out whether you were in the system. He would have no way of knowing whether you were or not until he got back. Certainly no way to enforce the law that way except to give you the ticket. I suspect that he would have been following the law to ticket you JUST because you had neither paper or the confirmation number, no matter what the law is about the paper. Whether or not he did it politely or not, I suspect he WAS cutting you some slack there. As for when you are legally fishing, I think that if there are fishing rods in the boat or on your person when you are on or near the water, it is legally assumed that you are fishing. While your rods were still in the car, once he asked you for the fishing license and you DIDN'T say, "We aren't fishing", it is legally assumed that you ARE planning to fish (which he would have easily ascertained anyway just by continuing to watch you load the boats). I once got a stern warning because I was floating the Buffalo with a woman who DIDN'T fish (this was many years ago), and the agent said that it would be legally assumed that we were both fishing because there was more than one fishing rod in the boat. (And actually, I could see the point of her even needing a license simply because she was handling the canoe so that I could fish, although I didn't think of it at the time and don't think the law reads that way.) As for the driving onto the gravel bar, how obvious was the embankment he said you drove over? Was it obvious that other people had been driving onto the gravel bar the same way? If so, he should have been more polite about that. His other questions seem to me to be valid ones. So it seems that the only real gripe you have was that he was a horse's rear end about the way he asked them. While it doesn't excuse his attitude, I suspect that if you deal with drunk or potentially drunk party floaters all day, your attitude might get a little jaded. Too bad his seems to be.

If it was me I wouldn't spend the time below Akers. The Akers to Round Spring stretch is beautiful, but not really very good fishing for either trout or smallmouth. The lower Jacks Fork is better for smallies (no trout in the Jacks Fork). Or if you want to do more fishing for smallmouth, go below Round Spring. You can actually get into some smallies as well as the trout from Cedar Grove to Akers, as well. But like the others said, Tan Vat or Baptist Camp to Cedar Grove is a must for trout...don't know how well the obstructions will be cleared by the time you get there, but there should be enough water.

Yes, there are lots of rivers that flow north, all over the country and the world. Funny thing is that there are many people who think rivers CAN'T flow north...because that would be flowing UP on the map! It just happens to be a coincidence that the general drainage patterns in much of the U.S. seldom drop off to the north. I've fished the New...beautiful river with a well-deserved reputation for big smallmouth. It's a bigger river than the Gasconade or any of the smallie rivers in the Ozarks, starts out in North Carolina, flows northward all the way across Virginia and halfway across West Virginia. It has several dams on it and lots of rapids and small falls in the free-flowing sections, and some really serious whitewater in West VA. And the smallmouths can get bigger on the New than on any Ozark river--20-23 inchers that can weigh up to 7 pounds. When I fished it (for two days in northern VA) the river was quite clear and the fishing was tough. I didn't catch anything over 14 inches, but I did hook one big one, at least 20 inches, on a buzzbait. Problem I had was that I was used to fishing Ozark streams where you do a lot of casting to the banks. The New in most places had a solid rock bottom that was almost always shallow along the banks, and the best places to fish were mid-river ledges and rocks. Where I hooked the big one was on one of the few banks that looked like an Ozark river, vertical clay bank with lots of logs.

You just have to experiment. Start out with a full skirt, and if it isn't wobbling very widely it's probably too full. Thin it until it wobbles and waves the skirt nicely. Too thin and it starts getting a very erratic wobble.

I thought long and hard about writing this, but by now lots of people know the secret and the guy who swore me to secrecy is long dead, so... I'd just guided the canoe through a rather difficult riffle when I saw the tackle box, lying on the bottom wedged against a tangle of logs, right where it would have lodged after somebody had trouble in the fast water above. I beached the canoe, stripped, and waded into the 4 feet of strong current, finally reaching a point where I could feel the box with my foot, and then I dipped completely underwater to grab it and came up sputtering. It was a metal tackle box that looked like it had been in the river since the last high water period, a rise of a foot or so a couple weeks back. When I got back to the canoe I opened it. Among the typical assortment of hooks, sinkers, plastic worms, and spinners, there was no means of identifying the owner, but there was a set of eyeglasses in a leather case, a pouch of disintegrating pipe tobacco, and several lures. Two of them were of special interest to me. At the time, I had been out of high school a year or so. It was in the early 1970s, and the bass tournament craze was just getting into full swing. I belonged to a local bass club, the Pecheur Des Lacs Bassmasters. "Pecheur Des Lacs" was supposedly French for "fisher of lakes", and don't ask me why we named it that--I was one of the founding members and I couldn't tell you. Not only that, but most of us did as much river fishing as lake fishing, and we even held the occasional tournament on Big River. One of the members was an "old guy"--ancient to a 20 year old, at least--who was well known for catching big smallmouth on the lower portion of Big River. He fished mainly alone on the river, and was rather close-mouthed about how he caught those big smallies. But he'd told us at one time that he caught a lot of them on a "Midge-oreno". The Midge-oreno, a smaller version of the venerable Bass-oreno, was even then a lure that wasn't easy to find. I'd never used one, but in looking at the pictures in the one catalog I'd found that carried them, I thought it was meant to be a surface lure, with its wooden floating body and scooped out head. I equated it to a Lucky 13, which my dad and I often used to lure big Wappapello Lake bass to the surface. The two lures in the tackle box were Midge-orenos, sure enough. I vowed to try them at some point, even though I was perfectly happy with my usual surface bait, the Tiny Torpedo, for river smallmouth. Back home, I changed the rusting hooks on them and threw them into my tackle box. And there they sat for a month or two, until the second part of the old-timer's secret came to light. We fished together in a tournament on a local lake, and at one point during the day, I saw his Midges, and they all had skirts on the belly hook. A little later, he tied one on, but he only made a few casts with it. I noted, however, that he was casting it out, letting it sit for a long time before barely twitching it, and then reeling it in steadily. Now I was curious. Maybe they weren't meant to be surface lures. But a skirt on the BELLY hook? Back in those days I was sensitive about being young and inexperienced and what others thought of me, so I didn't ask him about the lure as I should have. Later, I dug around in my spare lures and found a couple of old spinnerbaits with usable skirts that I could remove and add to those Midges I'd found. And then I had to try them out. The Bone Hole low-water bridge on Big River was probably one of the most popular spots on the river in the Old Lead Belt area. It was nearly always crowded with swimmers and bank fishermen in the big pool below, and the bridge, a concrete slab with a couple of culverts running through it that were nearly always blocked, formed a dam of sorts that backed water for a half mile upstream, so anglers often put boats in above the bridge and fished up through that pool, then through a short, deep riffle and into another long pool. The area probably saw more fishing pressure than anywhere else on the river. But it was close to home and easy to get to for a couple hours of fishing. I slid the canoe into the water just above the bridge, tied one of my new-found Midges onto the 12 pound test line on my Shakespeare direct drive casting reel, and made a practice cast in the slack water to watch what the lure did on the retrieve. It wobbled and dove a foot or two deep. Nice, wide wobble, waving the skirt enticingly. It looked pretty good. I decided to make a few casts in the swirling, foaming water at the base of the falls coming over the bridge before getting into the canoe and fishing my way upstream. It only took one cast. The strike came as the lure disappeared, wobbling down into the bubbles, and I caught just a glimpse of a big slab side. The fish was a largemouth. A big largemouth. At least four pounds! I clipped it on a stringer. A half-dozen more casts below the bridge netted a couple 10 inch smallmouths. I was impressed. I started up the river. I caught two more nice largemouths in the two pound class in the long pool, and then in the deep riffle a huge smallmouth engulfed the lure just as it dove beneath the surface. When I held up the 20 inch, four pound smallie, I was sold on this lure! Two more 16 inchers in the pool above just reinforced my feelings. I kept a limit of six fish that probably weighed a total of 17 pounds, all in two hours of fishing with that lure--back in those days I wasn't as serious a catch and release angler, and I had to show those fish off. I drove to my best fishing buddy's house and gave him an eyeful, and then I called the old-timer and told him of what I'd caught on his lure. He said, "Yeah, I've kept quiet about that skirt trick. Without the skirt, you either fish it on top or you have to reel it very slowly to make it work at all, but with the skirt it really wobbles. I've caught more big smallmouth on it than anything else I've ever tried...But I'm going to ask you something. Please, promise me you won't let the secret get out. I wouldn't want everybody in the country to know about it." I promised him I'd keep his secret as much as possible, but of course whoever fished with me would probably see me using it. He replied, "I know, but if you ever fish with somebody who might publicize it in a magazine or something, make them swear to keep it secret." I've often wondered since then why he was so adamant about that. Did he think the lure was so effective that once the secret was out it would really harm the big bass population? Did he just want to keep it from his "competition", the other members of the bass club? Or did he plan to maybe one day market the idea somehow himself? I never found out, but for as long as he was alive I kept the secret. Sure, those who fished with me saw me using it. But in the articles I later wrote for regional outdoor magazines I just called it my secret crankbait. When I fished with an editor of Field and Stream magazine and caught a 21 inch smallmouth on the Meramec, I made him swear not to tell what lure I was using. As the years went by and my reputation as a knowledgeable river smallmouth angler spread and other outdoor writers interviewed me and fished with me, I swore them all to secrecy. One writer, who shall remain nameless here but who is still quite active in the field, went back on his word and mentioned it in an article, but apparently few people paid attention. Time passed, and I must confess that I enjoyed keeping the secret even after the old-timer passed away. After all, that lure had become one of my absolute best big river smallie baits, and through the years I caught more 18 inch plus bronzebacks on it than on any other lure--and probably used it more than any other as well. Not only did I use it all over the Ozarks, but I caught big fish on it in locales as widespread as the John Day River in Oregon and the St. Regis River in New York. But the Midge-oreno, as I said, wasn't a popular or easy to find lure, nor did it come in a lot of good colors. In addition, the patent to the lure kept changing hands, and each new company who produced it changed it in one way or another, and seldom for the good. By the 1980s I started making my own. First I made them as close to the Midge pattern as possible, but later I discovered that you didn't have to shape that scooped out front end, but just flatten the front at an angle, and it worked just as good or better. I turned them out on a lathe, using whatever workable wood I could find, and figured out how to shape them off-center on the lathe so that the bellies were flat from front to rear while the backs bowed considerably, a change that probably didn't make them any more effective but pleased my eye. My paint jobs were seldom very elaborate--it might surprise people to know that I get enough of painting fine detail in my artwork, and don't wish to spend a lot of time meticulously painting lures. I've worked out methods with a few colors of enamel in spray cans to produce the three patterns I find effective. Like I said, I've caught fish on my homemade crankbait on every river I've ever tried. But the first few times I fished the Big Piney, I caught relatively few fish on it even though the conditions seemed perfect. The third or fourth time I floated the Piney, I was being shuttled by another "old-timer" and on the drive to the put-in in his truck, I happened to notice a lure on his dashboard. It was a Baby Lucky 13--with a rubber skirt on the belly hook! I asked him about it and he told me that lots of guys fished them on the Piney. I began to think back... The mentor who had originally let me in on the secret of the Midge only fished on lower Big River. When I, and a few others, started fishing it on the upper river, it was pure magic for a while, but as a few years went by it got a little less effective. Perhaps those fish were learning to avoid lures with skirts on the belly hook. Perhaps that's why it wasn't quite as effective on the Piney--too many anglers already using it. Perhaps that's why the old-timer didn't want me to spread the word around. Later, Stacy King and a couple other "famous" tournament anglers from the Ozarks mentioned the Baby Lucky 13 with skirt on the belly hook in articles and even in a couple of talks I happened to attend. So my secret wasn't so secret as I thought. As I found out when I tried it, the Lucky 13 with skirt works very much like the Midge and my homemade version. As I write this, I can look up on my studio wall and see a group of old lures hanging from an old steel casting rod. Over toward one end is a Midge-oreno with a simple coppery brown with black pattern. It has been painted and repainted several times, and the present paint job is chipped and scarred from bass teeth, but it's obviously one of the old models. In fact, it happens to be one of those two old Midges I found in that tackle box all those years ago, and if it could talk it could tell you of many, many river smallmouth. I'll never know who that old metal tackle box belonged to, but with the eyeglasses and pipe tobacco, I'd like to imagine him as another old-timer, one in a time-line that started with my own dad and grandpa and the love of river fishing they instilled in me--Grandpa has been gone many years, but Dad is still my best partner on the water. It continued with that fishing buddy who learned the rivers and smallmouth with me and who was the first person I wanted to show that stringer of big river fish. Rick died much too young, and I still miss the old days with him. And then there was the "old guy" who later taught me many of the nuances of using his favorite, secret lure. Thanks, Gene, for sharing the secret. It continues with all those through the years who have fished with me and shared the wonderful experience of floating Ozark streams, those who said they learned from me, and those like another Gene, an old Ozark river guide from whom I learned much. Once, when a big smallmouth exploded from the depths of Current River to attack my homemade lure, Gene exclaimed, "That thing came up like a Polaris missile from one o' them atomic submarines." So, I guess it's time to pass on the "secret". If there is one thing I've learned, it's that there are no magic lures. As another old-timer I know said, "an ounce of biology is worth a ton of tackle". The best lure in the world won't catch many fish if you don't use it with knowledge and care, and even a bad lure will catch fish when a good angler is on the other end of the line. But just two days ago, on a little nameless creek, the old secret homemade crankbait chalked up another 18 incher.

Seems to me there is more to a knot than just strength. Ease of tying and simplicity is just as important. Can you tie it, and tie it RIGHT, in poor light, freezing weather, when that big brown trout is rising steadily? The best knot for YOU is one you can tie with eyes shut in 30 seconds or less and do it consistently enough that you KNOW its strength and limitations. For me, it's palomar all the way. The palomar is plenty strong enough, even if it may not be the absolute strongest, and it's exceedingly simple to tie as long as you're not trying to tie it on a big, multiple hook lure. Since I always use a snap on hard baits, I almost never tie onto something that's big enough itself to make tying the palomar a problem. Snaps, hooks, jigs, it's a breeze to tie and consistently tie perfectly. I even like a palomar when tying on two flies on my leader. Tie the upper fly with the palomar, leaving a tag end that's as long as you want the dropper to be, using the tag end as the dropper, and tying on the lower fly with another palomar.

I've floated a couple of Ozark rivers at flood stage, but none like the upper Buffalo. There is a big difference between floating a good size river like the Meramec or Big River that drops less than 3 feet per mile, and floating one like the upper Buffalo that drops 12 feet or so a mile. The rivers I floated mostly just leveled out, and as long as you stayed away from the banks it was actually pretty easy floating...but you had to plan WAY ahead to make sure you stayed away from obstructions. The problem, of course, is that your margin for error is zero--you don't want to go into the water, because then you are entirely at the mercy of incredibly powerful current. I've paddled canoes for 50 years, and there's no way I'd float that section of the Buffalo under those conditions in anything but the big raft! I did float a couple of much smaller creeks when they were up several feet, and found just what Bobber talked about, big wave trains that you'd never guess would appear when you saw the creek at normal levels. Little drops that normally look like nothing generate big waves with enough volume.

I'm gonna be a bit contrary, here... Yes, the Rebel Craw is a great crankbait for river smallies. BUT, part of the reason it's so effective is because it catches fishermen really well. It looks about as close to a real crawdad as you'll ever find in a crankbait, comes in nice colors, and is very well-known for catching lots of smallmouth. So lots of people buy them and use them. But my point is that it is probably no more effective than a bunch of other crankbaits. While it LOOKS like a crawdad, neither it nor any other crankbait MOVES like a crawdad. Crawdads don't wobble much. They don't go along digging up the bottom, nor do they swim steadily and slowly in mid-water or close to the bottom. Crawdads either sit still mostly hidden, crawl very slowly across the bottom with lots of starting and stopping (without floating upwards when they stop!) or when they're scared they dart pretty quickly just off the bottom and then stop and settle to the bottom. Even seen ANY crankbait do ANY of that? Bass are opportunistic feeders. If it moves and looks like they can swallow it, they'll take it if they're in the mood. They don't have much higher cognitive function, so they probably don't "think", "Hey, that thing looks like a crawdad so I'm gonna eat it." Nor do they think, "Hey, that thing looks like a crawdad but I never saw a crawdad moving like that, so I ain't gonna eat it." They see it, and if something about its profile, movement, or vibration trips a circuit in their little pea brain they take it. So, while the Rebel Craw is as good a crankbait as any, I believe that any crankbait of the same general size that runs at similar depths will work just as well over a season of fishing. I've used Rebel Craws in the past, and haven't found them to be any better (nor, it must be said, any worse) than my current favorite crankbaits that run at the same depths. Having said that...I love crankbaits in the rivers, especially the larger, less clear rivers like the Meramec and Gasconade. I use mostly my homemade crankbait, which runs shallow, in heavy cover, and cranks that run 6-8 feet deep in deeper water with less wood cover. The bodies of most of my crankbaits, not including the bill, are almost always 2 to 2.5 inches long. Long ago when I was a teenager I spent hundreds of days fishing with live crawdads, and found that smallies preferred crawdads in that size range. So I've used it as a general guide in choosing crankbaits, not because I think I'm perfectly imitating crayfish with them, but because I suspect that is the optimum size of thick-bodied prey that trips that circuit in the smallie brain that I mentioned before.

Taxi, as a fish artist I always look very critically at the paint jobs on taxidermy work, and have done four of my own fish, so take this for what it's worth...those fish are certainly a cut above the average paint job! The average taxidermist relies way too much on the airbrush. To do a largemouth right, you have to hand paint practically each scale. When I did mine (two smallmouth, a largemouth, and a walleye), I probably used 3 or 4 colors on each scale. I didn't even own an airbrush back then, and wouldn't have used it if I had. Fish are tricky to paint, both three dimensionally or two dimensionally. Not only is there a lot of different colors on a fish, but each scale on a largemouth for instance has at least two "tones". On the upper sides, the inside portion of the visible scale is darker grayish green and not iridescent, while the outer section can be silvery, or almost gold, or bronze, or a lighter greenish, but IS iridescent and changes color with the angle of light hitting it. Not only that, but the live fish can change color, go darker or lighter, extremely quickly. I appreciated the close-ups because they show that you knew and duplicated that.