Al Agnew

Why is it that some people assume you HAVE to believe in a higher power and an afterlife to have a "quality" life? I suspect (I obviously don't KNOW) that this life is all I'll have. I think the chances are very great that I am exactly what the writer cited above said. So what? Life is what YOU make it. I have a whole LOT of quality days. I feel very fulfilled and happy with my life, overall, and can't think of very many people, Christian or otherwise, with whom I'd trade it. I've had sadness and sorrow and loss, like everybody, and I'll probably have more. I've also had success and great joy. Precisely because I DON'T expect to have any other lives once I'm dead, I've tried to make the best of this one, to live it to the fullest and make to make a difference. I think I've touched lives in positive ways, and I know I've been touched by other lives both human and non-human. Whether God or natural selection gave us our "minds", we have the capacity to use them for good or ill in THIS world. So what if it's an insignificant planet in a meaningless universe. Its significance is that it is OUR little planet, the only one we know, and WE are the ones who give our lives meaning. We don't need the universe (or God) to do so. Edited to add: At least that's what I think. As Dennis Miller used to say, I could be wrong. And if your faith gives your life meaning, that's great. Happiness and fulfillment, it seems to me, must be a personal thing, and one person's meaning can't be compared to another's. There are only two things about faith and religion that bother me. One is when the religious person feels superior to others because of their religion, and the other is when they try to convert others by force and coercion, or use their religion to run other people's lives. If I've offended anyone I'm truly sorry, that was not my intent.

Hmm....so much to talk about here! Transitional fossils...I've studied the latest findings on fish to tetrapod fossils, and I don't see any problems in what has been found. Are there disagreements among scientists? Yeah, some. Does it bother me that so few fossils have been found in the MAJOR transitions, like fish to tetrapod, amphibian to reptile, early mammals? A bit. But I also know that a lot of transitional fossils have been found, and I understand the concepts of why transitional fossils might be rare. As for "Nebraska man"...you're doing the same thing that the global warming denialists do when they bring up the deal about "30 years ago scientists were worried about the next ice age and now they are worrying about global warming". Fact is that a small minority of scientists were "touting" global cooling back then, with a much greater number either disagreeing or at least questioning, yet the media picked up the story and ran with it for a while as if it was fact. Same thing happened with Nebraska man. Most scientists at that point were questioning its validity, but the questioning never gets the coverage. And it was one more "triumph" of the scientific method, in that further study proved it invalid and it was dropped. Irreducible complexity...yep, I've read about it and studied both sides. We're getting back to one of the favorite subjects of ID people--that some organs or processes are so complex, and so specific, that there is no way they could have developed through natural selection, because their "primitive" components would not have been useful for the purpose. Yet when those components are studied in depth, it is usually found that the components were either more useful than nothing (or more useful than even MORE primitive components), or else they were useful for something else and were later "borrowed" for their consequent purpose. Mind-blowing? You bet it is. But what IDists don't seem to realize is that the incredible complexity and interconnectedness of nature is actually the best argument of all for natural selection. A key element of "intelligent" design is simplicity. The simpler you can make something and have it still serve its purpose, the better. Yet, nature is anything BUT simple. Natural selection is, as I said before, anything but random. Each creature evolves to fit its niche to near perfection, and each niche is exploited. And if a niche changes, the creatures that used it either evolve to fit the new one, or other creatures evolve to take their place. (I'm using "creatures" as a catch-all for everything from animals to plants to bacteria.) If life on earth was designed, it was done by a pretty mediocre designer, because extinction would be a failure of design, and totally different critters performing the same functions (like whales and whale sharks, for instance) would be unnecessary redundancies. Hey Trav, feel free to back me up. But to all of you who "disagree" with evolutionary theory, all I ask is that you do so after some study of it. If you wish to believe God did it, that's perfectly fine. He certainly COULD have done it through evolution, or through some method that would give a BETTER explanation of what we actually SEE and KNOW. I can accept that. What I can't accept is that the word of a several thousand year old book, written by an ancient, poetic, but scientifically clueless people, negates everything we have learned since. Even if God dictated every word to some Israelite sheepherder back then, had He told the REAL story in all its complexity, neither the sheepherder nor anybody else for thousands of years would have understood a word of it.

Some of you guys just aren't getting it. The "theory" of evolution is much more than what a non-scientist thinks of as a theory. It is just one step below a proven fact, or a "law". We KNOW, absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, from ALL fossil evidence (not picking on you, Phil, but NO scientist who has ever examined the various dinosaur/human tracks considers them valid), that life has evolved over time. Darwin's "theory" is actually the theory of natural selection--that mutations occur, randomly and at random intervals, in individual animals in given populations (a fact), and those (few) mutations that prove beneficial to the survival of the genes of that animal get passed on. The mutations are random, but natural selection is anything BUT random. ONLY those mutations that help the critter to survive and pass on its genes get selected. That's the "theory" part of it. There may be, for all we know, other mechanisms that drive evolution, but we haven't found them, and natural selection seems to work--it fits the evidence and it is predictive. So we start out with observed phenomena (the diversity of life, the fossil record) and we come up with a theory of how it happened. In examining everything from new fossils to DNA, we find that it all (so far) fits that theory. If anything DIDN'T fit it, the theory would falter. But contrary to what some of you and the creationists want to believe, while there are gaps in our knowledge and in the fossil record, there are no "holes" in the theory of natural selection, if you take the word "holes" to mean "problems" or contradictions. ID, on the other hand, STARTS with a premise, that "evolution" CANNOT adequately explain the diversity of life, and that there is/was some entity who had to have designed it. But there is nothing in that premise to TEST. If an entity is powerful enough to "design" life, that entity could use anything and everything to "design" it in any way he/she/it wished, including evolution. So ANYTHING, any evidence, any fossil, any test result, can neither support nor contradict that premise. The only "theory" that ID has is that life is too complex and works too well to have come about randomly. But it DID NOT come about randomly, it came about through natural selection, which is anything BUT random. As an aside, Phil, your note that in the movie Richard Dawkins is filmed talking about aliens being the intelligent designer is a good example of how misleading the film was. What the interviewer asked Dawkins was whether he could see ANY possibility of an intelligent designer. I don't know his exact words, but they were something to the effect that he supposed that it was a remote possibility that some alien civilization could have seeded life on earth. The film spun that to make it seem like he BELIEVED that aliens were the intelligent designer, when it reality he not only doesn't believe there WAS an intelligent designer, but that natural selection makes an intelligent designer unnecessary as well as supremely unlikely. Why unlikely? There are many reasons, but one of the best is that, in reality, evolution is not neat, it's messy and full of "mistakes". Things like eyes and wings evolved multiple times in multiple ways. You would think that a good designer would have made such features in the one "best" way to begin with, instead of having to invent the wheel over and over. You can see exactly HOW it came about that features evolved differently in different critters, and it is because of the different paths evolution was forced to take once it started in a given direction. Bottom line--the "Big Bang" is a theory that has been developed to fit the observed phenomena of an expanding universe. It isn't faith. It isn't belief. It's a scientific theory, continually examined for validity. It isn't something to be believed in, except in so far as the evidence supports it. Natural selection is a theory developed to fit the observed phenomenon of evolution over time. It isn't something to be believed in, either, except in so far as the evidence supports it. ID is a belief, not a theory, because it was NOT developed to fit observed phenomena but to make them mesh with religious belief, and not only can there be no evidence specifically supporting it until God comes down from the heavens and says "I did it", and then shows us how, but there also can be no evidence specifically opposing it. For that reason, there is always the possibility that it could be true, but there is nothing scientific about it.

Ummm....the dinosaur and human footprints have LONG been discredited, beyond any shadow of a doubt. If the only thing you ever read about it was in creationist literature, you might believe it to be true. But for a long time the owner of the tract upon which the prints were found in the creek bed wouldn't let scientists in to study them. When they were finally studied in depth, the "human" footprints were found to be eroded dinosaur prints. Remember that this is in a creek bed, so just like the potholes in places like the shut-ins in Missouri, gravel gets into crevices and erodes them into larger and more rounded depressions. The "human" footprints were worn into oval depressions with suggestions of "toes". You have to have a vivid imagination to believe they look a whole lot like human prints. And the clincher was, once the creek was diverted to expose MORE of the formation, it was possible to follow the "human" footprints, and where they were less eroded they were obviously dinosaur prints. Ozarkkid...maybe you SHOULD become a bit more well-versed in evolutionary theory. It's just the basic theory underlying ALL the genetic and biological sciences. To say it has "so little evidence" is, to put it bluntly, ridiculous. There are vast amounts of evidence, including your "missing" links, in the fossil record. And, the "theory" of evolution not only has the evidence, it also has, at this point, ZERO evidence against it. And further, it is predictive, which means you can make predictions based upon it and investigate, and so far no predictions have ever been found not to be the case. If your human and dinosaur prints HAD been real, they would have most certainly discredited evolutionary theory. But so far, nothing like that has ever been found. You can predict that, in rocks of certain strata, you'll find certain fossils. You won't find dinosaurs in Cambrian strata. You won't find human fossils in Jurrasic strata. And, once and for all, evolution does not say our ancestors were apes. It says that we and apes descended from a common ancestor. There is a big difference.

Phil, the ID argument is that it takes a bunch of specialized proteins, all working in concert, in order for blood to coagulate, and if any one of them is left out, the process doesn't work...and since it wouldn't work unless all of them were present, there is no way that each one evolved independently. This is called the argument of irreducible complexity, and it's a favored one of ID proponents. However, the blood coagulation process HAS been very elegantly explained by evolutionary biologists. The proteins involved are modified versions of digestive proteins found in the same organisms. Any one of them had uses for other purposes before being "borrowed" for the coagulation process. And there are plenty of examples in the animal kingdom of creatures lacking one or more of them, and their blood clots, but just not as perfectly as ours. As I read somewhere else, the arguments ID proponents put forth DO have a valuable purpose...they are a catalyst for a lot of research that ends up showing how wrong they are.

Guys, as the resident agnostic here, I don't expect to change anybody's mind once it's made up. But I've read a number of reviews and descriptions of the advance showing of the movie, and from all I've been able to read, it is absolutely NOT even-handed, nor accurate. It purposely distorts evolutionary theory in so many ways it would be ridiculous to anybody with a modicum of real understanding of evolution and natural selection. And its very strong statement blaming Darwinism for Hitler and his atrocities is outrageous. The accusations of universities firing or otherwise persecuting teachers for advocating Intelligent Design have already been proven to be either false or exaggerated in most, if not all cases. Please, if you go see it, watch it objectively. Make your own decisions on whether you are being manipulated.

The 2X4 to your roof rack will work...IF you have a bombproof way of fastening the lumber to your factory rack...IF you have a bombproof way of keeping the canoes from sliding sideways on the 2X4s...and IF you can fasten them with NO give in either direction to the front and rear of your vehicle. There is simply no way of knowing for sure whether the bolts on the factory racks will or will not pull out of the roof of your vehicle...they weren't put on there for carrying something as big and wind-resistant as two canoes. But as long as there is no way the canoes can go sideways on the racks, and you have them tied very well to the front and rear of the vehicle, the strain won't be on the fastening points of your factory racks. A few other hints...make very sure that your tie-down points on the front and rear of the vehicle are on something VERY solid. Make sure that the front ends of the canoes are even with or sticking out in front of the tie down points, and the rear ends of the canoe are sticking out past the rear tiedowns. I once watched a canoe go sliding forward and coming to rest on the hood of a car because the front end of the canoe was behind the front tiedown when it was attached. And make sure the canoes are as straight and level as possible on the roof when tied down. A canoe is very aerodynamic when it is going perfectly straight into the wind and the front end is level with the back end. It's very UNaerodynamic when it is slanted a bit into the wind or when the front end is high and scooping air! And make sure you use straps or ropes that are plenty strong enough. I once lost a johnboat off the roof of my car because I tied it down with rope that was too thin.

Yes, they are very similar. On the Huzzah, Huzzah Valley puts in at Harper's Slab for a six mile float back to their place, and you can also go from their place to Scotia Bridge for another six mile or so float. Bass puts most canoes in on the Courtois, usually the first lowwater bridge below Hwy. 8 down to their place, and it's another 6 miles or so from Bass down to Scotia. Both places prefer to put in upstream on weekends, so they don't have to wait on drunken idiots at the take-out downstream, but both upstream and downstream will be crowded if it's a nice weekend. The fishing can be tough on both streams because the water is usually very clear. But it can also be very good if you are on the creek when the crowds aren't. I fish both streams a few times a year, and have done well on both...don't really have a favorite or even a favorite stretch.

All the fault zones from the New Madrid up the Ohio River Valley are interconnected in some ways. It would seem to be another indication that the New Madrid is due. The ones up in S. Ill. seem to be relieving pressure, but not the New Madrid. But then again, with all the study of the fault zones in this area, there are still a lot of unknowns. It's hard to study a fault (the New Madrid) that's under several thousand feet of sediment.

Yep, first shock woke me up and the second one was longer and rattled things pretty good. Strongest one I've ever felt. And the epicenter is quite a ways from Ste. Genevieve County! Wife sat up in bed and asked, "Is this the big one?" I said no, but it's pretty strong. I've always been somewhat of a student of the New Madrid and related faults. In the back of my mind, there has always been this rather sick wish that the next big New Madrid quake happens while I'm alive to experience it...even though I KNOW that it will be a true disaster for the Midwest and the country.

I ain't saying...

The www.buffaloriverandrain.com that delta queen mentioned will be your best place to gage the river levels. But if you're floating from Ponca down, it should probably be toward the lower end of floatable on those gages. There are plenty of tricky places that, at higher levels, would be very difficult with a heavily loaded tandem canoe, and I'd say there would be a significant chance of getting wet and getting your gear wet. At least with lower levels you might drag bottom some, but the current won't be as strong and the river won't be up in the willow strainers. With higher levels, the middle and lower river flattens out for the most part, while that upper section from Ponca to below Kyles gets bigger waves to go along with the strainers. So if the river is toward the high end of floatable on the gages, you might consider Gilbert to Buffalo Point for a two day trip. Gorgeous scenery. But the flyfishing will be difficult at best if the river is toward the high end of floatable. Basically, no matter WHERE you float it, for flyfishing it just about HAS to somewhere close to normal for this time of year. On the USGS real-time gages, "normal" is denoted on the flow in cubic feet per second graph by the little triangles for each day. Actual flow should be somewhere pretty close to those triangles before I'd try to flyfish it. There's a link to those gages at the top of this message forum.

The Sullivan gage said the Meramec was flowing 2600 cfs. Normal for this time of year is about 1200 cfs. The 80th percentile on the table was right at 2600 cfs, and I usually consider the 80th percentile figure to be right at the very upper end of fishable. In addition, everything I'd heard pointed toward the river in the area I wanted to fish it being very murky. But Dad and I decided to take a chance that it was at least marginally fishable. The first adventure was getting the jetboat in the water. The high water had washed away the end of the ramp, and it dropped off precipitously. I always just tie a rope from the front end of the boat to the front end of the trailer, unhook everything on the boat, and back it in until it slips off the trailer, then pull the trailer out. With Dad to hold the rope instead of tying it to the trailer, it should be even easier. Except that when the trailer dropped off the end of the ramp, the boat slid off but the strong current picked up the trailer and deposited it off the downstream edge of the ramp. We were both amazed that my Toyota Highlander pulled it out easily. We also figured getting the boat out at the end of the day might be interesting. But what the heck, worst case scenario would be for Dad to haul the Highlander to the next access, while I motored down to it, figuring that the ramp there would be in less current. The river WAS high. Higher than I'd ever fished in this stretch. And murky, visibility about 1.5 feet. And the wind was blowing about 40 mph mostly downstream. Holding the boat back in order to fish was going to be an adventure, as well--the current was strong everywhere, no slack water. Even the side channels were flowing strongly. I figured there was no way we could fish anything slow and deep unless we could find out exactly where the fish were holding. We took off upstream, running about 9 miles upriver, planning to fish our way back down. To make a long story short, we didn't figure out the fish. Using spinnerbaits and crankbaits, we caught a total of about a dozen fish, and most of them were less than 14 inches. I had the boat pointed upstream the whole way, using the trolling motor to slow us enough to fish. I have a 24 volt, 75 pound thrust trolling motor, and there were plenty of places where it wouldn't hold the boat even on maximum speed. I had it on medium to high all day, and after 5 hours or so the batteries started going downhill. But...at the lower end of the deep pool where we started fishing our way downstream, throwing a white spinnerbait, Dad hooked into one. I heard him grunt, and then he said, "I don't know what kind of fish I have on, but it's big!" I looked back in time to see a LOT of bronze come to the surface, and told him it was definitely a smallmouth. It's been a LONG time since Dad caught a really big river smallmouth, and he played it carefully. Finally I lipped it and held it up. Dad said, "Well, THAT makes the trip worthwhile!" A bit over 20 inches, and definitely better than 4.5 pounds. The look on Dad's face made the trip worthwhile for ME! We made it back to the ramp in 6 hours, covering the 9 miles and fishing as thoroughly as we could in that strong current and wind. And I was able to keep the trailer just above the drop-off and crank the boat onto it, although lining the boat up with the trailer in that cross-current took some doing.

Yep, just kinda dropped the canoe over the fence. Parked on the shoulder...didn't see any no parking signs when I was there. Could be a problem, however, as the county cops seem to be cracking down on parking on road shoulders. This really, really ticks me off. I'm getting pretty sick and tired of county commissioners making it difficult to access streams, even when it should be legal. There is plenty of room to park there at Hwy. 47, and no safety concerns, since you can get well off the highway. It's a highway right of way, and should be public.

Simplest way to know what normal level is for this time of year is to look at the flow in cubic feet per second graph. The little triangles you see on that graph are the median flow for that particular day throughout all the years of record. Median means that half the time it was higher than that, half it was lower. So the median flow is a good approximation of normal. On the Steelville graph, median for today is 593 cfs, and the flow today is 1180 cfs. That's twice the normal flow. But in reality, it's less than a foot above normal for this time of year, because small rises in level will equal pretty large differences in flow rate. Keep in mind, however, that springtime "normal" is a lot higher than summertime normal. In the summer, a normal flow would be somewhere around 250-300 cfs at Steelville. Wading at this time of year is problematical even at normal flows, and 1180 cfs is higher than I would want to wade. You won't be able to reach the good spots, and the current will be strong enough to be difficult and possibly dangerous.

I've fished the lower section a few times in the last few years. Did fairly well. The access at Hwy. 47 sucks, of course. The last time I was there, the big landowner had strung a fence across the path leading to the river from atop the bridge, with a big sign that said something to the effect that you had to have a valid fishing license to cross the fence, and that there was no swimming. I think they are trying to put a stop to the partying and littering that has always gone on underneath the bridge.

Just about everybody that I've ever talked to that owns one loves it. The only drawback I can see FOR THE OWNER is that you can't use 'em on the upper Current. Like Gavin, I question the necessity for the HP and size on a lot of Ozark rivers.

I totally agree about dog owners controlling their pets. Nice thing about where I live is that there aren't any neighbors close enough to see me if I dispose of one of their dogs. (Actually I haven't had to do it yet, but wouldn't hesitate if the dog was threatening us or our cats or chickens.)

Keep in mind that if it's a nice weekend and the water levels are okay, the lower Jacks Fork will be pretty crowded, and the upper river will probably also have quite a bit of canoe traffic. The problem with looking for solitude is, if you're dependent upon canoe rentals, by definition that means you're not going to be able to get away from the crowds on a weekend. I don't really know for sure, but I bet you wouldn't be able to find a canoe rental to shuttle you or rent you a canoe for the upper end of the Niangua. A couple of possibilities...you might try Gasconade Hills Campground and Canoe Rental--1-800-869-6861. They are about the only ones who might rent canoes or do shuttles on the Osage Fork...and even if they won't, they are the only canoe rental on the Gasconade in that area, so it shouldn't be TOO crowded. However, that area of the Gasconade is going to still be pretty high and flyfishing will be difficult, so the Osage Fork would be the better choice. Or you might go a little higher up on the Gasconade and try Gravens Resort--417-453-6367. Very nice people, and they are the only canoe rental on the upper Gasconade. A third possibility that just occurred to me...the Little Niangua. Two resorts that rent canoes: Cedar Camp--573-363-0042 and Green Mill Campground--573-363-5577. I've never been on the Little Niangua (it's on my short list of streams to float) but I believe it would be pretty likely to be fishable and it wouldn't be exceptionally crowded. And one other thing...don't count the Eleven Point out. The good smallmouth fishing is above Greer Spring, and that section should be fishable (and may not be too crowded).

Great! Really looking forward to reading them. The reason you never saw spotted bass before the 1970s was because there weren't any! In fact, I don't think there were hardly any until the early 80s. I first started seeing spotted bass in the St. Clair area in the early 1980s. They started colonizing the river from the mouth upstream around then, although on Big River (which runs into the Meramec around Eureka) I caught a few hybrids in the mid 1970s in the area around Morse Mill and Browns Ford. I've gone into the history of spotted bass in the Meramec river system in an earlier thread. But I fished the lower end of Big River in the late 1970s and never caught a single spotted bass (and plenty of smallmouths). But I fished it again about 1985 and it was practically nothing but spotted bass. I also fished the lower Meramec in the Pacific area around 1979 and there were no spotted bass. By the mid-1980s, they had become common in the river up to St. Clair. There were none in the Bourbeuse River when I fished the lower end in the late 1970s, but by the late 1980s they had become common up past Union. I didn't fish the Bourbeuse or the lower Meramec enough to document their spread exactly, but I did Big River. They started becoming common in Big River in what is now the special management area, between Mammoth Bridge and Browns Ford, around 1990. The mill dams on the lower river were a barrier to their spread, but by then they had made past the barriers. By the late 1990s they were starting to show up above Washington State Park. Between 1999 and the present, they continued to spread until now they make up more than half the bass population below St. Francois Park, and nearly half the population for 17 miles above the park. There are two lowwater bridges on upper Big River that slowed their spread, but they have a strong foothold now above the first bridge, and it is only above the second bridge, at the Leadwood MDC access, that they are still rare. Apparently, the stronger flows and cooler, more heavily spring-fed water of the Meramec compared to Big River and the Bourbeuse is poor enough habitat for them that they have never gotten real common on the Meramec above Meramec State Park, and I hope that continues. But given the habitat on the other two streams, I fully expect them to colonize ALL of Big River and the Bourbeuse in the next few years. They are evil critters on streams like these where they are not native. PLEASE kill every one you legally can. It truly appears that, for every spotted bass in these rivers, there will be one less smallmouth.

jd, I see your point...a lot of people never read past the headlines, and if the headline says something that only gives one side of a story, it would appear to be slanted that way. I must say, however, that I get a little tired of this constant accusation of the press being liberally biased. Most of the stuff I read or hear from the media that I actually take the time to delve more deeply into, I find to be not biased but just sloppy, incomplete, superficial reporting. And that is what ticks me off the most. Even when the story only gives the "liberal" side, it does it so poorly and superficially that it actually does a disservice to that "liberal side". You read the story or hear it on TV in a poorly conceived, 30 second sound bite. And then, lots of people go to the talk radio blowhards or the internet to get the other side, and usually get a long, involved, often inaccurate but very detailed version of the other side. So which one are they gonna believe? Of course, we're all somewhat to blame. Way too many people neither demand accuracy, nor take the time to investigate for themselves all the sides of any story.

Yeah, come to think of it I remember the one at Onondaga, too. I don't remember ever seeing the others on Courtois and Huzzah, because I never fished those two streams back in those days. I think I saw at least one of those on the upper Meramec, but don't remember which one. I didn't really start fishing the Meramec until the 1970s. There are the remains of what was apparently a hog trough bridge a bit below Dry Fork...know anything about it?

I'd really love to read those old log books! Back when I first started fishing the Meramec in the 1970s (I grew up on Big River and didn't fish much anywhere else until I graduated from college), I'm convinced it was the best big smallmouth stream in the Ozarks. I spent a lot less time up in the Steelville area than I did farther downstream. The stretch from Onondaga to Meramec State Park was a terrific big fish producer, and the lower river, below St. Clair, was even better. As I mentioned in other threads, the Meramec produced one of my two all-time biggest river smallies, a 21.5 inch 5 pounder that came from a spot above Meramec State Park that is no longer there (the river totally changed its course a few years ago), and my all-time best big fish day--I and my partner caught 8 smallmouths over 19 inches in one afternoon below where the River Round access is now near St. Clair. The biggest I ever caught back then above Onondaga was a 21 incher somewhere around Saranac, although I've caught 19 inch plus fish all the way up to Cook Station. Spotted bass were the worst thing that ever happened to the Meramec in the St. Clair area, but the much greater fishing pressure much of the river gets these days doesn't help. Like you say, there are still big ones in the Meramec...I've caught 20 inch plus fish every year in the last few years from it. But the fishing is a lot tougher than it used to be.

Flooding affects smallmouth a lot less than what a lot of people think. A flood that results from relatively warm rain, like this last one, tends to get the fish moving, and after the water goes back down they should be scattered into their spring and summer areas. The biggest difference will be in the river itself...lots of changes in cover and in where the fishable water is. The other problem is that the river will be higher than normal for quite a while even though it will be clear enough to fish, and the fishing will not be easy because the fish have so much water they can use, and fighting the current to fish effectively will be a lot more difficult. I went last Wednesday, the day before this last flood started. The river was still a good 1.5-2 feet above normal, and just a bit murkier than normal for this time of year. Water temp was around 54-55 degrees, and I figured the fish would be in eddies out of the main current. However, I soon discovered that the smaller eddies along the banks adjacent to deeper water, where I expected them to be, were not producing anything. The only places I found fish were at the edges of bigger eddies on the insides of the riffles. This was in stronger current than I would have expected, and in places that, when the river is at normal level, would be too shallow to produce much. They were also some of the most difficult spots to fish. The point is, you just never know when the water is high, so you gotta fish everywhere you can. But I've had some excellent trips when the water is first getting back into fishable condition after a flood.

Great photos...I thought that one was at the Scotia Bridge. I remember the Scotia hog trough bridge, and the one at Blue Spring Creek.