Al Agnew

Actually, I floated Dry Creek once years ago...I didn't run into any irate landowners (it probably helped that I floated it during the middle of the week--didn't see ANYBODY else) but as I remember the habitat was pretty poor throughout most of it. Caught a few trout and other fish, but it was somewhat disappointing fishing. That's not to say that floating it would or would not be a good idea. One never knows on these very marginally floatable creeks whether you'll run into zealous landowners or not. I've floated a LOT of creeks that are seldom if ever floated, and never yet been hassled once I was on the water--although there was one time I got run off before I could get the canoe off the truck. Guy told me I could float it if I wanted to but to not expect my vehicle to be there in one piece when I was finished. Discretion was the better part of valor in that case. Trout do live throughout the creek. Once in a while one shows up in the Huzzah at the mouth of it at Huzzah Valley, and I've actually caught a couple of trout in the Huzzah both above and below Dry Creek.

I love mantises too. One time we found this brownish foamy looking "growth" on a plant and brought it into the house. We didn't realize it was a nursery for mantises. A day or two later they all hatched out, and we had little mantises crawling all over the house for weeks!

I've got a Pentax WPi. Takes great underwater shots. Only problem I have with it is that there is no viewfinder...you compose the picture on the screen on the camera back. That is not easy to do when you're trying to capture a moving fish underwater. However, I love the camera for taking along in the canoe on float trips...no worries about it getting wet, and it fits in my shirt pocket. Olympus makes some underwater point and shoots as well, but I've had bad luck with the two Olympus point and shoots I've owned (before the digital days). Both threw craps soon after the warranty ran out, and the camera repair people told me that both would be so expensive to repair that buying a new one made more sense. And the Pentax's I've owned have all been very reliable cameras. So I went with the Pentax rather than the Olympus.

Next good public access downstream from Boiling Spring is Mason Bridge, just off Hwy. 32. There are a couple of hard to find accesses below there, but the next good one below Mason Bridge is Slabtown. As near as I can remember without looking it up, I think it's 4 or 5 miles from Boiling Spring to Mason Bridge, and ten miles or so from Mason Bridge to Slabtown. Gavin's right, not a whole lot of water above Slabtown.

Dad and I fished in our 17 boat bass tournament Wed., Thur., and Fri... Bunch of friends have been getting together for this tournament for 24 years now. Fishing was pretty tough. Several limits (5 bass, 13 inch minimum) were caught, but very few good fish. Wed. the biggest fish was a bit over 4 pounds and no others were caught much over 2 pounds. Thur. the biggest was a beautiful 6 pounder, but no others were caught much over 2 pounds, again. The guys reported three muskies caught those two days, one of them a 48 incher--and one of them apparently just stocked, not much over 14 inches. Had a couple other blow-ups from muskies on Spooks and buzzbaits. One guy caught a flathead that weighed well over 40 pounds on a crankbait. Dad and I didn't do well...but would have had it been a drum tournament, since I caught two big drum on jerkbaits. Also caught a nice 24 inch walleye.

My brother-in-law Jeff had a friend who is part-owner of a place on the Kvichak River in Alaska, and 15 years ago he had been there and fished it. He had regaled me with stories of the big rainbows he'd caught, and this year he wanted to go back to both fish and bowhunt for moose and caribou. The friend invited him back, and he and his wife suggested my wife and I come along. The Kvichak (pronounced "Kweejack" by the locals) comes out of huge Illiamna Lake and flows into Bristol Bay. It gets a big salmon run, all five species of Pacific salmon, and the rainbows that live in the lake in the winter come down into the river to gorge on the salmon eggs, flesh, and fry, so they grow big. I was pumped to go try them. We left Missouri on Sunday the 2nd of September, flying first to Dallas where we caught a plane for the 7 hour flight to Anchorage, arriving Sunday night. Jeff and Sheila were already there, having explored the Kenai Peninsular for a couple of days, and met us at the airport. We stayed that night and the next at a hotel in Anchorage, doing some hiking the next day and stocking up on groceries for the stay at the friend's place. On Tuesday morning we caught an Illiamna Air Taxi flight to the tiny native settlement of Igiugig (pronounced IG-ee-AH-gig by the locals) in an eight seat Pilatus. We were met at Igiugig by Jeff's friend Kent and Butch, the caretaker of the place, in their big jetboat. A ten minute boat ride downriver brought us to the "lodge", which consisted of a plywood building the served as a kitchen, a plywood two bedroom building, a shower house, a two holer outdoor toilet, a utility shed, the generator shed, and two quonset hut type soft plastic shelters. It was located on a big island on the river. The Kvichak is a big river by Missouri standards. At the island there was a main channel that was a couple hundred yards wide, 4-8 feet deep all the way across, and fast, along with a channel around the back of the island that was about half that size. The water was slightly silty, visibility perhaps 4 feet, but Kent said that was because there was a northeast wind that was kicking up big waves at the lower end of the lake and stirring up silt that was coming downriver. By that first evening the wind had died and the river had cleared to at least 8 feet visibility. I was anxious to test the fishing, and Butch suggested that I don waders and fish up to the shallow, fast water at the top of the island. He said most anglers were using beads and other egg patterns, but the silver salmon were totally done and rotting and the sockeye spawning was winding down, and that flesh flies might be a better choice. Like I said, it is a big river, and I was somewhat intimidated by the size and by how little of it I could fish effectively. But there is such a thing as beginner's luck after all. As soon as I reached what looked like some good water, pockets of deeper water in and just below some shoals that had spawning sockeyes and chum salmon, a drift of the flesh fly produced a hard strike. I set the hook and the fish instantly shot downstream, ripping off line at an alarming rate, far into the backing of my 8 weight reel. Then it paused in heavy current and suddenly shot out of the water, clearing the surface by at least four feet...and it was just about the biggest rainbow I'd ever SEEN! Two more leaps, just as spectacular, then it came back upstream (I simply reeled in fast enough to keep a tight line, I certainly didn't reel the fish in!) It got in close, and I got too anxious and put to much pressure on and the line snapped. Actually, it snapped at the butt of the fly line itself, something that's never happened to me before. I was bummed. But two casts later I got another, similar strike. This one didn't sizzle off a run. In fact, it didn't do much of anything, and I soon brought in a 14 inch grayling. A few casts later and another strike. Again, not much fight...a whitefish (and Kent said he'd never seen a whitefish in this river before, and it was the only one I saw in eight days of fishing). Then, a "small" rainbow, about 14 inches, that leaped out of the water at least six times, three to five feet high, so fast it looked like the fish was bouncing on a trampoline. And finally, another hard strike and another awe-inspiring run downstream, and another big fish leaped high in the air. This one I played carefully, and it took a long time, several leaps, a bunch of heart-stopping runs, before I slid the fish into a couple inches of water and admired it. With nothing to measure it, I laid my rod down next to it and noted where the nose and tail came to on the rod, snapped a few pictures, and released it. I was pretty sure it was the biggest rainbow I'd ever caught, and when I got back to the cabin and measured my rod, I found that the fish was 28 inches. It was a silvery fish with just a hint of pink and inconspicuous spots, looking like a steelhead, but a lot thicker than steelhead I'd caught on the Salmon River in Idaho. That was all for that evening. The next day, Butch took Mary, Sheila, and I out in the boat. His preferred way of fishing was to backtroll, letting out about half the fly line behind the boat and idling the motor so that the boat slipped slowly downstream while gently moving side to side, letting the flesh flies drift along in the current. It was effective, and produced several fish in the 24-27 inch size range. The next day I explored a bit further along the upper end of the island, working down the back channel. I hooked one huge fish and caught several 18-24 inchers. Each day after that was a little different. One day we went down to "the braids", where many of the local guides took their clients. The sockeyes were thick in the shallow runs of the braids, and there were lots of trout, but also lots of anglers. We didn't get any big ones there, but caught a bunch of smaller fish. Another day I found a great sockeye spawning riffle on a side channel off the back channel of the island, and caught a 27 incher and hooked another a bit bigger. And Mary caught her biggest, a gorgeous 29 incher, from the boat in a run up near the lake two days before our last day, right before I almost matched it with a 26 incher. The flesh flies, however, were getting less and less effective. I tried egg flies, as most of the guided anglers were using, with little success. There WAS a lot of fishing pressure and the fish were getting "smart". So, on the evening before our last day, after a long and mostly unproductive day of drift fishing and backtrolling in the boat, I decided it was time to try something different. I had a few big bunny hair streamers I'd originally tied for smallmouths, and I put one of them on, an olive and yellow thing with a bulky body and long red squirrel tail, and started stripping it in the riffle at the head of the island. First cast, bang, a 24 incher. A few casts later, a bigger one hit but got off. A bit later, another big fish that ran a long way downstream before suddenly coming undone. As I worked my way down the flat to the cabin in the growing darkness, I had two more awesome strikes but came up empty both times, and when I got finished I checked my fly and found the hook had broken off! The last day. We were scheduled to fly out at 4 PM, so I only had the morning. I had one more of my homemade smallie streamers, this one a darker olive with a double squirrel hair tail that made it look a bit like a jig and pig. I started back up the flat toward the riffle at the head of the island, and soon got a hard strike. This fish at first dogged it and wouldn't move, and I thought I had hooked a sockeye. But then it took off and leaped and I saw it was the biggest fish I'd yet hooked. It ran far downstream, and then escaped. I was disappointed figuring I'd lost my last chance at a big fish. But on the very next cast I got another strike. This one stayed on, and after a long battle I beached my biggest fish of the trip, a heavy-bodied 29 incher. I fished a couple more hours, but caught nothing else but grayling and small trout (small being 12-18 inchers...how soon one's sights get set higher). By mid-afternoon the wind was blowing at gale force. Kent took us back up to Igiugig, but I had my doubts that small planes could even fly in the face of 35 MPH winds with gusts to 50. But here came a very tiny-looking four seat plane, buffeted by the gusts, to take us to Illiamna, where we'd catch a flight on the bigger Pilatus to Anchorage. That was the scariest plane fight I've ever experienced, by far. We skirted the edge of the great lake, looking down at huge whitecaps, while the plane skittered sideways, bucked up and down, tilted far over to one side or the other, quartering into the wind the 40 miles or so to Illiamna, a flight that took us WELL over 40 minutes, so we weren't making a lot of headway against that wind. Mary was petrified--and suffering from motion sickness--and I wasn't much better in the fright department. One time the plane took such a sudden radical downwards dip that all of us hit our heads on the ceiling, even the pilot, even though we were strapped in tight. The landing at Illiamna was just as scary, with the plane wobbling from one side of the appproaching runway to the other, crabbing sideways, wings tilting radically. When we were within four feet or so of the runway, barely crawling against the wind, a gust tilted the wings downward to the right and the right wing couldn't have been more than inches above the asphalt. At that point, the pilot somehow righted the wings and then simply shut the thing down, and we dropped the last couple of feet to the runway instantly. I saw him take a big sigh of relief. The Pilatus was no problem taking off, and we made it to Anchorage with no more adventures. We caught a 10 PM plane to Dallas, got there at 7 AM this morning, caught the St. Louis flight at 10 AM, and finally got home at 1:30 PM today. Serious nap time was in order this afternoon!

Declining numbers of hunters and anglers is a symptom of our society. I look at how I grew up in a small Ozark town, and how my nieces and nephews grew up, and how their children are growing up...all in the same type of small town. No comparison. VERY few children are exposed to nature anymore, whether it be because of the popularity of video games, organized sports, growing urban and suburban populations, "poor" parenting, Disneyesque stupidity, fear of letting kids explore on their own, or rampant consumerism. I don't know the answer. Yeah, you can take a kid hunting or fishing if you can pry them away from the video games and malls. Maybe it will pay off in the future. But unless they are exposed to the outdoors and outdoor pursuits on a continuing and regular basis, I doubt the value. All MDC can do is provide the places to go and the educational opportunities. They are trying, yet a lot of you probably question the money they've spent on urban conservation centers, which may be the only places a lot of urban kids have a chance to be exposed to nature. I don't have any answers, but I certainly fear for the future of hunting and angling, not so much from the animal rights idiots as from apathy in the general population.

Problem is, Mother Nature wasn't circumvented by biologists making mistakes in identifying cutthroat trout subspecies. It was circumvented by anglers and biologists stocking cutthroat trout streams with non-native species (like rainbows and browns). You can certainly make the argument that the rainbows and browns make for "better" fishing opportunities, since they usually grow bigger and fight a bit harder. But in most of the streams where the native cutthroats were supplanted by non-native trout, the only feasible stretches to re-establish the cutthroats are in headwater areas above natural barriers like waterfalls that the invasive non-natives can't penetrate, and in those headwater streams the growth rates of browns and rainbows are so slow that they aren't much, if any, "better" than the cutthroats. I've caught Colorado river cuts, Snake River fine-spotted cuts, Yellowstone cuts, and westslope cuts. I found them all to be beautiful, interesting fish in gorgeous settings. The Snake River through Grand Teton National Park is one of the most spectacular fishing destinations anywhere (even with the crowds) and catching native fish from it just puts icing on the cake. The little creek in Idaho where I caught my first westslope cuts was remote and probably had not been fished by a dozen anglers in the last ten years. The big Yellowstone cuts I caught on Slough Creek 20 miles from the nearest parking lot were something special, and the 21 inch Yellowstone cut survivor I caught on the Yellowstone in Paradise Valley was one of my most memorable catches. We've got enough rivers full of transplanted browns and rainbows and brookies...surely we can afford to restore a few creeks to the trout that Mother Nature put there, even if mistakes are occasionally made.

Not only America, but the whole civilized world was brought together on that day. Problem is that America and the whole civilized world has lost focus since then, thanks to the questionable linkage of Iraq with Al Qaeda, the mistakes most assuredly made in Iraq, and the sheer magnitude of the problem. After all, if radical Islam is the true face of the religion, we're talking about many many millions of people that are, to all intents and purposes, our enemies. And even if it is NOT the true face but just an extremely dangerous offshoot, it isn't weakening but growing. Not many people other than the radical Islamists want to think of this as a religious war, but on their part it certainly is, and that makes Americans uncomfortable. We had an ememy after 9/11, and that enemy had a face. Well, the face is still at large, and a lot of people are wondering why we haven't eliminated it yet. But the true enemy is not Osama but an ideology straight out of the worst of the Dark Ages, constantly fomenting hatred for America and indeed anybody who believes differently than they do. I fear the fact is that we are NOT capable of retaining focus when facing an enemy like this, an enemy without territory and unwilling or incapable of facing us in a stand-up fight, unless that enemy continues to attack ALL of us, and not just the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan while the rest of us go on with our merry little lives. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure we haven't seen the last major terrorist attack on American soil, and when it happens again we'll band together just like we did after 9/11. But that's an awfully steep price to pay for unity.

I read a LOT, and have been interested for a long time in just about everything to do with the Ozarks--geology, history, fiction, rivers, fishing and hunting, you name it. Here's a partial list of my favorite Ozark books...some are out of print, others not easy to find: The Buffalo River Country--Ken Smith This was the book that first got me really interested in Ozark streams as more than just places to fish. I ordered it from the Ozark Society on a whim, many years ago (I was still in high school at the time) and was blown away by the photography and the interesting if not particularly polished writing. Stars Upstream--Leonard Hall Like The Buffalo River Country did for helping to establish the Buffalo National River, this book did the same for the Current and Jacks Fork. Better writing, but the photography was lacking. The Battle for the Buffalo River--Neil Compton This one chronicles the fight to save the Buffalo from the several high dams originally planned for it, and to make it a national river. Compton was head of the Ozark Society and probably the single most influential person in the whole thing. We Always Lie to Strangers--Vance Randolph Randolph was a chronicler of Ozark folklore, and this is his book of Ozark tall tales, gathered from all over southern Missouri and northern Arkansas. I can't read it without busting out laughing. One of my favorite passages, talking about razorback hogs: "Marion Hughes repeats many ancient razorback stories. Most Arkansas hogs are very small, he says, and some varieties roost in trees, but they do not lay eggs. Hughes saw one very large hazel-splitter "that dressed fourteen pounds with its head on, and six and a half with its head cut off." In judging a hog the catch it and hold it up by the ears; if the head goes down and the tail flies up, they turn it loose to fatten another year. Some of these hogs have such large heads that the owners tie stones to their tails, to keep them from pitching forward on their snouts. The smaller fish-hogs, says Hughes, are usually shot and dressed like bullfrogs; the Arkansawyers just eat the hind legs and throw the rest away. The so-called tryo hog, which is no bigger than a cat, lives mostly on bugs and flies. It requires a whole hog to season an ordinary pot of beans. At butchering time the boys bring in hogs by the sackful, and the women just gut 'em like rabbits and scrape 'em in a pan of hot water. These little hogs are generally salted down for the winter in cracker boxes; just put in a good layer of salt, then about six hogs, then another layer of salt, then more hogs, and so on until the box is full." Down in the Holler, a Gallery of Ozark Folk Speech--Vance Randolph This is a study of old Ozark speech patterns, and their origins. Words, pronunciations, sayings...many of them I remember my grandpa using, and some I still use today. Geologic Wonders and Curiosities of Missouri--Tom Beveridge Very interesting and entertaining discussion of everything from bald knobs to shut-ins to natural arches, and where to find them. I've used this book to find a lot of really neat places in the Missouri Ozarks. The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks--Donald Harrington This isn't what the title suggests...it's a novel set in the fictional town of Staymore, in Newton County, Arkansas, from the first settlers through the Civil War and on. Lots of humor and lots of real old time Ozark flavor. The White River Chronicles of S. C. Turnbo--James Keefe and Lynn Morrow Turnbo collected stories of the White River country in the late 1800s, and these are mostly hunting and wildlife tales, giving a great perspective on what the country was like back then. Anybody else read this sort of stuff?

The only tournament I fish is a once a year affair amongst a bunch of guys who are all friends (not a bass club, just a bunch of guys who have made this tournament a tradition. We hold it on Pomme. There are no more than 16 boats, and it's a 3 day competition held in the middle of the week. I agree that Pomme is not an ideal place to hold a tournament that's any bigger than that...even with just 15-16 boats, we are often fishing the same water. And a couple of times, on the last day (a Friday) we've had to compete with guys prefishing for a tournament that weekend, often 30 or more boats. One year there was both a 50 boat bass tournament that started that weekend, and a muskie tournament. Sure, it would be nice if people were sensible and agreed that they didn't need a huge outboard. But it ain't gonna happen. The more people participating in something, the more idiots there are, or at least the more people who don't care about anything other than themselves. Since people obviously can't regulate themselves, somebody has to step in and do it. Tournament organizers do have to get a permit to hold a tourney on lakes like Pomme, but it's a rubber stamp deal. It would be relatively easy to regulate it so that only one tournament a week was held on the lake, and to limit the number of boats. But the businesses around the lake would scream bloody murder if that happened, and so would the bass clubs. And maybe it ain't so much the tournaments, but just the simple numbers of people fishing these days. It isn't like Pomme is overcrowded and other lakes are "undercrowded" on a given weekend. They all have multiple club and regional tournaments going on just about every weekend.

Actually, about 80-90% of my stream smallmouth fishing is done with light baitcasting tackle. By light, I mean short, medium-light or light action rods (difficult to find these days--everything is medium or heavier) small, lightweight reels, and 8 pound test mono. The rest is done with light (not ultralight--don't believe in using it because I don't think it's good for the fish) spinning tackle and 2 pound diameter/10 pound test Power Pro braided line. I occasionally flyfish for smallies, but mostly reserve my flyfishing for salmonids.

Jim, I think Brownieman is right...also, look at the background of your photo. Notice that the smallie is about the same color as the river bottom? Smallies can change color VERY quickly to match their surroundings. Over a mottled gravel river bottom, they could very easily be colored with stronger markings to match that bottom. The dark edges to dorsal fin and tail are pretty common. A lot of times, you see smallies in the water that match the bottom so closely that you can ONLY see the dark edges to the fins until you look closely. The dark markings are also a sign of stress. Catch a smallie and (horrors!) put it on a stringer, and it will soon get those strong dark stripes. Also, spawning smallies have the dark stripes. So bottom line, it might be their surroundings, or it might be any of the factors brownieman mentioned.

JD, I've worked with Mike as well, and we've discussed the whole problem with Big River quite a bit. I don't think the malnourished look is because of heat stress, as the river, even as low as it is, was surprisingly cool, around 80 degrees at the warmest. Smallies don't get seriously stressed until the temps get up into the mid 80s. However, the spotted bass are ALWAYS a lot fatter than the smallmouths in this stretch, so like I said before, I think they must be outcompeting the smallies for the available food. Yep, the one was colored something like a redear, but with the large mouth and fin coloration of a green sunfish. Bill, nope, insect hatches are exceedingly rare on this stretch of Big River. Crayfish are present, but in nothing like the numbers they are on most Ozark streams. I believe that minnows, especially stonerollers, make up the bulk of the forage for adult bass on this stretch. Stonerollers, unlike some minnow species, don't depend upon invertebrates for their food but utilize the algae, and they are fairly abundant. However, they aren't easy for a bass to catch. Of other species of fish, hogsuckers are very common in this stretch, and there are a lot of quillback carpsuckers, but redhorse suckers are less abundant than on most streams. There are very few topminnows (northern studfish), which are very common on most streams. Not many carp or gar, not many catfish other than bullheads. Goggle-eye are present but not abundant. The bass don't have much competition for the available food, and I suppose they eat a lot of young hogsuckers as well as minnows. Fishing pressure isn't light, but is probably less than it is on sections of the river that are better looking.

The tailings problem in Big River has been studied extensively. The problem is one of scale. There are about 20 miles of river that are very badly affected by the tailings, and below there the tailings are present and causing heavy metal contamination--but not so much habitat impairment--all the way to the Meramec, a distance of close to 100 miles. "Fixing" the problem can only be done by removing the tailings from the river channel--the mines have been Superfund sites for a long time and are pretty well stabilized by now, so the amount of tailings getting into the river is MUCH less than what it once was, but the tailings that are already in the river will be there for a LONG time. MDC has some ideas on habitat improvement, but getting the tailings out would entail dredging the entire channel for 20 miles. And that wouldn't fix the river's other ills. I don't expect to see really significant improvement in the river in my lifetime, although if we would just get out of this lingering drought and get a series of really rip-roaring floods, it would help move some tailings. The smaller floods we've been having occasionally move the tailings just enough to continue filling in pools and smoothing out the river channel, but a big flood (the last one was in 1994!) shoves tailings and gravel all the way out into the bottom fields and scours out pools. The river was in better shape 10 years ago than it is now. And since the amount of tailings ENTERING the river with heavy rains is MUCH less than what it was 10-15 years ago, some big floods would really do some good.

Nope, not a warmouth, though I don't blame you for thinking so, because it is superficially similar. I've caught quite a few warmouth, but none on Big River. There are several characteristics of the above sunfish that are not diagnostic of warmouth. First, warmouth have a patch of teeth on their tongue. This fish didn't (I checked). Second, warmouth have dark bars on a lighter background radiating back from their eyes. This fish obviously doesn't. Third, warmouth have fairly bright red eyes. This fish doesn't. Fourth, warmouth do not have light orange edges to any of their fins, like the anal fin on this fish. Green sunfish do. I'm sure this fish has green sunfish genes, but I'm not sure about the other species in the cross. I'm guessing redear--redear were exceedingly uncommon in Big River until they were stocked in Council Bluff reservoir on the upper end. Since then they show up in the river once in a while. But actually, the colors look closer to pumkinseed coloration, and pumpkinseeds have only been reported at once place in the whole river system, and that was on the upper Meramec. The only other species it could possibly be is orangespotted sunfish or longear. Coloration doesn't look much like orangespotted, which are rare in Big River, and I don't know whether longear ever hybridize with other sunfish. Guess it's a mystery fish.

I grew up on Big River is southeast MO. I've been fishing the upper river for more than 45 years, and have spent a lot of time studying its evironmental problems. It is by far the most impaired Ozark stream in MO, due to lead mining, overdevelopment, tiff mining, and poor land use practices in the watershed. Even with all those problems, it was once a terrific smallmouth stream, but now spotted bass are providing the latest and worst assault on smallmouth populations. Yesterday, I did my first float this year on the section of river that is arguably the worst in its whole 130 plus miles. It's a ten mile float, in the section that has received (by the end of the float) the erosion from all 6 major mine complexes. It suffers as well from clearing of the trees along the river, from digging topsoil from the bottom fields, from housing developments, and from the treated sewage of a population of well over 30,000 people, along with the runoff from the streets, lawns, and parking lots of that urban complex. Why do I float this stretch? Well, for all its ills, it is still an interesting piece of river, with some high bluffs and some surprisingly pretty reaches. And although the fishing is nothing compared to some of the better Ozark streams, I grew up fishing it and I know its secrets--most of them. And besides, it's close to home. The river was extremely low, somewhat murky from algal bloom, lots of algal mats on the bottom and floating on the surface in some places. The fishing...well, I keep track of the numbers of bass I catch on this river partly to see how much the spotted bass are taking over. They first showed up on this upstream stretch about 5 years ago. Yesterday I caught 42 spotted bass, 35 smallmouths, and 8 largemouths. So the spots are more numerous than ever. The mine tailings fill in the pools, so the river is very shallow in this stretch, with only one pool in the whole 10 miles where there is fairly extensive deep water. Other than that pool, there is probably NO place on this stretch that is more than 5 feet deep, and most of the pools are 2-3 feet at the deepest. The tailings do something even worse...the fine gravel to sand-sized tailings cover the cobble and chunk rock bottoms and fill in the spaces between the coarse gravel you find on other Ozark streams, and as a result, the habitat for the bottom organisms that form the base of the food chain is horrible. There just isn't as much for a fish to eat in this stretch. But the spotted bass are fat and healthy, so they are apparently outcompeting the smallies for food. Here are the two biggest smallmouths I caught yesterday, both around 18 inches: Note that both are fairly skinny fish, and the one has a very big head and tail compared to its body. One of the smallies I caught was obviously an old or sick fish: And it isn't extremely unusual to catch smallmouths here with a deformity that gives them a crooked backbone. Here are two from yesterday, one heavily deformed, the other slightly deformed: Here's a typical small spotted bass: Spotted bass also hybidize with smallmouths on this river. Here's an interesting spotted bass, without a dark horizontal band down its side. It's probably a hybrid with some smallmouth genes: One interesting thing about smallie coloration on this part of the river...the tailings are, when clean, a light grayish color, so the bottom is lighter and grayer than the typical Ozark stream. Smallmouths can and do change color to match their surroundings. On the light, smooth stream bottoms common on this stretch, the smallies are often light grayish with no darker markings. Here are some good examples: Here's a big largemouth from yesterday. Largemouths aren't common in this stretch, but you find the occasional good fish. Note the big head and "shoulders", but thinner belly: Here's an interesting hybrid sunfish...I believe it's a green sunfish/redear sunfish hybrid. Green sunnies are common on Big River, redears are fairly rare: And here's something else interesting and disquieting. I've always caught fish on this stretch that have black tails. Mainly green sunfish, but also goggle-eye and once in a while a smallmouth. I read somewhere that the black tails are a sign of heavy metal contamination. Here's a typical green sunfish: And here's an excellent example from yesterday of a black-tailed green sunfish: I think I'm fishing a Superfund site!

I use the same knots as most everybody else. But when using a two fly system--two nymphs, or a nymph under a dry--I tie the upper fly onto the tippet with a palomar knot and leave a long tag end, long enough to tie the other fly onto the end of it. Easy to tie the palomar, and saves having to tie another piece of tippet onto the bend of the hook like most of the guys I fish with do. They say they want the upper fly to stay straight, but I don't see any difference in catch rates or anything else doing it this way. The only two fly system on which I don't use this is if tying a nymph on a dropper from a streamer.

Worst flash flood I was ever in was on Beaver Creek. Luckily, it was the last day of the three day float, and we were about 6 miles above Kissee Mills when the rain hit us. It had come up from the south, so the creek was no affected for a while. But it was the hardest rain I've ever been in...we kept fishing through it, but it was raining so hard you literally couldn't see where your lure hit the water on an average cast. The fishing throughout was excellent. After 15 minutes of rain like this, the little ravines coming off the hillsides were gushing torrents of water, and it rained nearly that hard for over an hour. The storm, which had almost no lightning, moved on up the river, but by that time the stream was getting muddy, so we started paddling. In an hour we reached Kissee Mills, and the creek had come up a foot or two. But we parked the canoe, and in the time it took to walk the 100 yards or so to the vehicle and bring it back to the water, the creek came up 6 feet and nearly floated the canoe away! We barely got it loaded before the parking lot went under.

Skeeter, as I wrote in the thread I mentioned above, the lead tailings sites ARE Superfund sites, and are in the process of being stabilized. Work has been going on for 15 years or more, and is complete on some of them, while on a couple it is only getting started. It consists of lowering and smoothing the chat dumps and covering them with larger rock to end wind and water erosion on them, and smoothing the tailings deposits, shoring up the dams holding the fines back, covering them with topsoil and planting them to grasses. The goal is to stop further erosion into Big River. The tremendous amount of mine tailings that is already in the river from 100 years of erosion is a problem without any real solution, given that it covers more than 100 miles of river. The biologists at MDC are considering some rather innovative ways to improve things up in the part of the river that is the worst affected, such as finding old abandoned channels that aren't filled with the mine waste like the present channel is, and diverting the river into them wherever possible. But among the many problems with this is that the entire upper river is in private ownership and you'd have to have the owners' cooperation. As for the spotted bass, nothing keeps me from KILLING the legal limit of them every time...they often end up as raccoon food out behind the house, or on the river bank. For those of you who are still not familiar with the spotted bass problem in the Meramec river system, including Big River, suffice it to say that the smallmouth fishery, which was once the best in MO for BIG smallmouths, has been totally ruined in over 200 miles of streams. While I admire and value spotted bass in the south flowing streams in which they are native, I absolutely hate the evil little critters in Big River.

Phil, Big River is my home river, and I've fished it all my life. I did a long description of its environmental problems that you can find on page 2 of "Big Ozark River Smallmouths" in the General Bass Fishing forum. Big River gets a lot of use, given its proximity to the St. Louis area.

Nope, I don't use a leader. A lot of guys who use Power Pro and other braids all the time swear by the 6 pound diameter 20 pound test size, and also swear that the fish don't care about its visibility underwater. But I'm like you, braids DO look pretty thick and obvious to me, which is why I don't use anything bigger than the 2/10 Power Pro. It takes a little getting used to, however. For one thing, on a straight pull, it's a LOT stronger than 10 pound mono...no way you can break it, you have to cut it. But it IS susceptible to abrasion, and when you're talking diameters that thin, it doesn't take much abrasion to weaken it considerably. Also, it SOMETIMES breaks on a hard shock, like a sudden hard hook set when you've got a little slack line to begin with. I've learned to be a bit smoother with my hook sets, and also like to use a medium light action rod to make hooksets a little more forgiving. The other problem with most braids is that they flatten out when you tie a knot. The line gets flat enough to slip through the gap in the eye of most worm and soft plastic hooks when you are using the smaller diameters. I've mostly solved this problem by tying what I call a double palomar knot, which results in FOUR loops of line running through the eye of the hook. I've also heard you can solve it by putting a small drop of superglue/fishing glue in the gap. But even with those problems, the almost total lack of trouble with line twist has made me use braid exclusively on spinning reels.

Used it for a couple of years. It was okay, but I didn't much like the fraying problem...after a day of fishing the last ten feet or so was fuzzed out so much it looked twice as thick as it had before. That didn't seem to affect the strength much, just looked thick and ugly. I switched to Power Pro braid, and am much happier with it. For those of you having trouble with line twist with spinning tackle, a good braided line pretty much solves the problem. The line still twists, but the twist doesn't affect braided line like it does mono. I've got to where I use nothing but 2 pound diameter/10 pound test Power Pro on all my spinning reels.

Actually, the couple of times I've fished it specifically for smallmouth, I've done okay--not great--between Cedargrove and Akers, at least until you get down to Welch Spring. Personally, I think there are more smallies between Cedargrove and Welch Spring than there are downstream until you get below Round Spring, where the smallie fishing gets good. The water warms up a bit by the time you get to Cedargrove, and is warm enough for some smallies until it gets another big shot of cold water from Welch.

I'm out here in Emigrant, close to Livingston, and although I'm not a member I stopped by the Conclave and viewed the exhibits, talked to a few exhibitors, watched some flies being tied and some casting being done. Didn't have time to stay for any of the programs. Last night was the "fish walk" in town, but Mary and I were on a hike and didn't get back in time to attend. The exhibitors were complaining that it gets so hot in the gym where the exhibits are in the afternoon that nobody can stand to be in there. Lots of people were there yesterday morning, however. I have to say I was somewhat disappointed in the exhibits. The only rod company, other than a few hand-made cane guys, that was there was St. Croix. There just didn't seem to be all that much there. Stopped to talk to Dave Whitlock but he was busy talking to others and I didn't have time to hang around. So what did I miss?