Al Agnew

Yep, I'll say it again...any boat is better than no boat. And I totally agree with your last sentence. A good canoe or kayak should last you many years. If you use it 20 times a year, after 5 years you've used it 100 times, and a $1000 boat has ended up costing you $10 a trip at that point, a whole lot cheaper than renting one. Have to say I REALLY can't fathom the paddleboard thing. I've messed around on one and it's fun to mess around on, but for fishing it's gotta be the height of inconvenience to try to carry much of anything, a real pain in the butt to handle the long paddle while standing when you've got your rod in one hand and you're trying to position the craft to make the next cast, and I can't imagine standing on one while fishing fast-moving water. But to each his own, I guess.

I've been in several of those you mentioned. Yes, the seats are reasonably comfortable, but the high seat arrangement made me a little uncomfortable and the lower seat setting was terrible. I do not like the way everything kinda sits on top of the craft rather than inside it. Makes it necessary to strap more stuff down or put it in hatches rather than just have it sitting in front of you. As for getting in and out, I find it a LOT more difficult to get in and out (or off and onto) a SOT in the situations where I'm most likely to want to enter or exit the craft. Like I said before, if you're always mounting and dismounting in more than a foot of water, the SOT is great. But 99% of the time when I get into or out of the canoe, it's at the bank when the canoe is sitting on the gravel. In water that shallow, it's the difference between getting up from a seated position on the floor, as opposed to getting up from a chair. A moving floor! I hate it. As for seating in canoes, the best solution is go go with one of the commercially available seat backs, not stadium seats, that attach to the canoe solidly, and then experiment with various cushions for your rear until you find the right balance of firmness and give. Closest thing commercially available that does it all that I've found is the Sitbacker, but I made my own seat back that has a four position adjustable angle to the back. Like somebody said, different people have different priorities. If standing to fish is important to you, a solo canoe isn't for you. If you like a lot of gee gaws and tricked out boats, a canoe isn't for you. If convenient storage and high capacity is important, a canoe is better. If you get out and wade to fish a lot, kayak might be better. If you're carrying your boat on racks, a canoe is a lot easier to handle--not only lighter in weight to lift, but also easier to grip and handle solo. The canoe may be easier to flip, depending upon the design, so that's another facet of personal preference--if you don't have good balance, you might want to go with the most stable kayak you can find. But keep in mind that regarding performance, everything depends upon the shape of the bottom, and not whether you paddle it with a double blade or single blade. I use both in either craft. When I have fished from a kayak, I use a short single blade for all my maneuvering as I'm fishing, and only use the double blade to get through tricky riffles and cover territory in long, dead pools. In the canoe, I use the single blade exclusively when drifting downstream, but if I want to paddle upstream I use a double blade. I have nothing against kayaks...I now own five of them, though none is strictly a fishing kayak. For me, a canoe is by far the better choice.

Two things I don't get...the assertion that solo canoe seats are less comfortable, and the assertion that it's easier to get on or off or in or out of a SOT kayak. I've paddled quite a bit now in both, and HATE getting off or onto an SOT compared to a canoe. I can paddle the canoe right up onto the bank and just step out. I have to keep the kayak in 18 inches of water and slide off it...maybe that's because I have pretty short legs, but I always feel like I'm about to fall off the SOT when I'm trying to get off it. As for the seat, sure, a nice seat back on the kayak is comfortable compared to the bench seat with no back in a canoe, but you can get a bunch of aftermarket seat backs for canoes, and the fact that you're sitting in the canoe a lot more like you're sitting in a chair, rather than sitting within 6 inches of the floor like you are in a kayak, makes the canoe far more comfortable as long as I have a good seat back. However, I agree with Ham that finding a good solo canoe has gotten more and more difficult, and that's a big problem. The OT Disco 119 is a serviceable solo but there are far better ones out there. 14-15 ft. solos are about ideal in length. You won't find any in Royalex anymore unless you get very lucky with a used one, but actually glass composite canoes are pretty useful, and still come in some excellent designs. As for stowing rods horizontally, that's another big advantage to the canoe. Keep in mind here I'm talking ONLY about solo canoes, which is the only thing you should be comparing kayaks to. A tandem canoe is doable by yourself but it's not FUN. Solo canoes are FUN to paddle.

Ham, you know I'm gonna call you on that one. Comparing a solo kayak to a tandem canoe is apples to oranges. A SOLO canoe will paddle just as easily as any kayak. It's paddling with a double bladed paddle that has the much shorter, gentler learning curve...and you can use a double blade just as well in a solo canoe as a kayak. But I agree with you...longer is usually better for a host of reasons. Get the 12 footer.

Hey, I love for people to go to the trout parks. It means fewer people where I want to fish, so the more that go there the better. If Foghorn decided to concentrate on smallmouth on my creeks instead of trout in the parks, he'd educate every smallmouth in the creek. It's just not my cup of tea. I like my fishing with a little more solitude and a little fewer signs of civilization and a much wilder kind of fish. When I did go to Maramec on opening day, there were some interesting happenings. One kid was running up and down the bank carrying the biggest rock bass I've ever seen before or since, asking everybody he came to what kind of fish it was. The guy he asked before he got to me told him it was a smallmouth. I finally told him it was a goggle-eye, and probably a state record. I don't know if he believed me. The thing had to weight 2 pounds. My buddy Rick was using a Mepps spinner in one of the little pools that were surrounded by fisherpeople, and got snagged with a lady on the opposite bank. She said she'd reel it to her side and get it untangled. She did...she cut his line and threw his spinner out into the middle of the pool. He was so shocked he just stared at her. Two guys on opposite sides of the branch hooked the same fish--well, pretty sure one guy hooked it and then the other guy hooked his line and his lure slid down to the fish. They were both reeling like crazy, until suddenly the fish came out of the water, suspended in midair at the ends of the two very taut lines. Neither guy would relent and they both kept reeling until they established that one guy had stronger line than the other. The other guy's drag was slipping as the top dog guy slowly reeled the fish over to his side! Teenage kid finally hooks a trout after fishing most of the morning with nothing. He gets so excited he forgets to reel and just turns and runs up the bank dragging the fish behind him. The fish comes out of the water and is flopping up the bank when it comes unhooked. The kid looks back, sees the fish flopping toward the water, and runs back to grab it. Fish makes one more flop, and as it's in midair the kid dives for it, ending up with his whole upper body in the water...and no fish. Fun times!

Place the batteries in the right spot and two batteries is no problem at all in how shallow you run. Like others, I have a 1652 Blazer with a 24 volt trolling motor, batteries are under the front deck at the back edge of the deck, maybe a fourth of the way back from the front of the boat overall. Balances the boat well and I have no trouble running shallow.

I haven't done any opening days since I was barely out of high school, and that was back in the Devonian Era, when the limit was 5. Never went anywhere but Maramec Spring. It was probably the most entertaining place to go, since it was closest to St. Louis and got all the citified people that didn't have a clue about what they were doing. And yes, watching the people was definitely better than catching the fish. I haven't fished in a trout park, period, since doing it a couple times in the winter about 20 years ago. I'd far rather fish for more "natural" fish in the trout management areas, and for truly wild trout in Montana, and perhaps the thing I hate worst about the trout parks, other than the crowds, is that stupid horn that tells you when you must start and stop fishing. I don't know why, but that thing always did bug the crap out of me. And having to display your daily tag...that bugs me, too. And trout with worn off fins, that bugs me. And little dams and bridges all over the place, that bugs me. And people using spincast gear, that bugs me.........................yep, I'm a crotchety old dude.

I love good fish, and don't want a lot of other tastes interfering with the taste of the fish, but like fried fish. So...SMALL bass or walleye, or any size of any of the other members of the sunfish family (bluegill, redear, crappie, goggle-eye), I'm going to dip in a mixture of egg and milk, dredge in cornmeal with salt and a little pepper, and deep fry. And for heaven's sake, don't overfry them! I usually split my fillets down the middle lengthwise at the natural slot in the muscle to do so. If we don't want quite so many calories, we grill the fish with a light skim of butter and some green onions, in little fish fillet baskets. If it's not as good tasting fish, like bass over 14 inches or white bass, coat the fillets in melted butter, roll them in crushed potato chips, put them in a casserole pan, dump a bunch more crushed potato chips over them and drizzle the whole thing with about another half stick of butter, and bake them.

We're headed for Montana for a while, plus it looks like cold weather is returning to Missouri, so I wanted to get in one more day of fishing. Today was my only chance. I texted cwc on the way to the river to see if he could join me, and he said he could but only for the morning. We put in and headed for the nearest wintering pool. Stopped in the pool above it, which occasionally holds a few winter fish, and caught a couple. Then into the pool itself. There are eddies in the upper portion that always hold winter fish, but action was slow. We only caught a couple. So we fished down the pool and began to catch fish in the lower portion. The farther downstream we went, the more fish we caught. Cwc ended up catching one good one, 18.5 inches. We fished the next good pool, and again caught all our fish at the lower end, where it begins to shallow. One more marginal pool, and several more at the lower end. Obviously a pattern. But it was time for cwc to call it quits, so I ran him back up to his truck and then headed for another really good wintering pool. This one is always full of fish in the winter, and you can spend a good part of a day fishing all around it. But I went to the lower portion first. Caught a few fish on jerkbaits, and then a few on hair jigs, but not really as many as I expected. Fished rather quickly the rest of the way up the pool, catching a few, mainly in the upper end is slightly stronger current. But I ended up catching only about 12-15 altogether, none larger than 15 inches. Certainly not what I'd hoped for. But... At the lower end of this pool it shallows out but doesn't really go into a riffle, just a shallow flat and then below, a little run about 50 yards long with various logs and rocks, only 5-6 feet deep and with some current, not a classic wintering spot. Well, I think the vast majority of the fish in the wintering pool above had headed down to this spot. In about an hour and a half before I had to leave, I'm pretty sure I at least got a bite on more than 90% of the casts I made, mostly with the hair jig, though I also caught some on the jerkbait. I didn't count the fish I caught, but it had to be at least 60. Most were 11-14 inches long with a few over 15, the largest 17.5. Hooked a couple others that were that big or a little bigger. I guess those fish considered that run the lower end of the big pool above, so the pattern of the fish in the lower end definitely held. Interestingly, it's only been a few days since the river had ice along the edges...but the water temp was 48-50 degrees! Pretty sure it will drop again with the forecast, and those fish will move back to their typical wintering area. This post has been promoted to an article

Yep. And know the string trick for getting hooks out of your hide. Twice in the middle of three day floats, I've had to get hooks out of myself. It would not be much fun to have a hook stuck in you with two days to go to get to civilization!

Good advice by Troutringer. Personally, no matter whether you use a cot or a pad, some kind of pillow is one of my more important pieces of sleeping gear. I have carried a cloth bag empty and put my extra clothes in it for a pillow, but a real pillow is better if you have the room. I don't like the little camp pillows. I've also never been a fan of cots...much prefer a 2 inch thick Thermorest type self-inflating pad--with a folding closed cell foam pad beneath it, or in cool weather a goose down-lined backpacker's air mattress. It will probably be cool that time of year, so a decent sleeping bag is important, but I also carry a soft cotton bag liner that I can use as a sheet if the night is too warm for snuggling down in the bag. As you can tell, sleep is important to me! Tent--don't know who you're going to be sleeping with, but if floating with non-spousal units, I much prefer to have my own tent--and since I'm in a canoe and carrying capacity isn't a big problem, I go with a 4 person tent just for myself. Gives me plenty of room, and more importantly, gets me away from the snorers. Cooking stuff--the propane grill is fine, just don't forget to take something to cook your stuff in! I once did a 4 day backpack hunting trip and forgot to bring any pots and pans. Ended up eating dry ramen noodles and spruce grouse roasted over the campfire. So cooking pots, skillet, and utensils, along with salt, pepper, and any other spices. A small roll of aluminum foil can come in handy--take the roll out of the box and flatten it to save on room. As for water--freeze several containers like half-gallon or gallon milk jugs. Take along a water filter/purifier if you want, but if you have enough jugs full of water frozen, you probably won't need it unless you're doing a lot of freeze-dried food. What I like to do is to have two coolers. One of them has some frozen water jugs and the meals and beverages for your first half of the float, the other has the same for your last half. You keep the second cooler covered with something to protect it from the sun and you don't open it until halfway through the trip, period. That way you're preserving the ice and it will last you the rest of the trip easily. Don't forget to bring enough clothes to layer for warmth, and have a pair of dry socks for each night and some dry camp shoes. It's a tremendous luxury to have dry, warm feet at the end of the day. And don't forget rain gear, even if the forecast doesn't call for rain. It's not a problem to get wet in the summer, but in April it can be. Choosing a campsite. It's already been mentioned to choose your gravel bars with an eye to escaping rising water. As has been said, that section of the Buffalo is a canyon with NO bottomland, just a bluff on one side and a steep hill on the other, the gravel bars, and the river. So it rises FAST, and can get incredibly high (70 feet is not unheard of!) So if there is any chance of rain, pick a high gravel bar (there are plenty of bars at least 6 feet higher than normal river level) that backs up to the hill side and not the bluff side, with no lower ground between the bar and the hill. And keep in mind that a rain the day before somewhere 75 miles upstream will raise the river the next day where you are, even if you don't get rained on. Tent sites--ideally, you want a level spot with fine gravel. NOT sand. Sand gets tracked into your tent and is generally a real pain. Don't get bogged down in fishing. You will be floating the premier "wilderness" river stretch in the Ozarks. If you're into photography, climbing a big bluff or two just to see what the river looks like when your canoes look no bigger than ants down there is well worth the effort and time involved.

The Buffalo is a warm water stream. It gets a few trout occasionally coming up from the White River in the last few miles, but not enough to make it worthwhile to actually fish for them. I agree with Troutringer...post whether you'll be in a canoe or in a kayak, and post a list of what you plan to bring. I've floated that section a bunch of times in several different times of the year, as have others here, so we can definitely steer you in the right direction, but we don't know your experience level with overnight floats.

I bought a Kastking a while back. While they get a lot of good reviews, they also get their share of bad ones. It seems to be a quality control thing with the company...if you're lucky, you get a good one and it is worth more than it costs. But if you're not lucky, you get the same model and it's a lemon. Mine casts light lures better than any other reel I own, including the Tatula SV, and it's an exceedingly smooth reel. BUT...the gap between spool and spool housing is too wide, and 8 or 10 pound test line can slip into the gap. And the magnetic spool control is basically useless. I started out with it cranked back to close to minimum, and really needed good thumb control to avoid backlashes. I gradually dialed it for more and more resistance, and now it's almost at maximum, and I still need to ride the spool with my thumb a lot more than most of my reels. So if you think you can afford a 50-70 dollar gamble, you might get lucky and get a reel that's as good as those twice as expensive, or you might lose the gamble.

Except for Wrench, as we get older we begin to realize we aren't invulnerable. I still don't wear a PFD a lot of times when I probably should, especially in the winter. Never wear one during the summer when I'm in the canoe. But I finally wised up and wear one in the canoe in colder weather. Doesn't take much to get you wet in a canoe on moving water, and often it's a long way to the take-out. It's amazing how easy it is to lose your balance and fall overboard when you're standing up fishing from any kind of watercraft we usually use around here, except for the big boats on LOZ. I don't know how many times I've seen the boat very SLOWLY drifting into a log or rock, and think I've set myself to keep my balance when it hits, and then nearly been knocked out of the boat.

I wear prescription bifocal sunglasses, which goes a long way to solving the problem, but if it's a very small hook eye and light line, I can do better by taking the glasses off. Being near-sighted all my life, I always wore glasses (tried contacts but my eyes seem to be especially sensitive and I couldn't keep the contacts in very long--finally just got tired of fooling with them). But my vision was always very sharp close-up, whether or not I had the glasses on. So when the inevitable change with age occurred, it just meant that I couldn't see close-up with the glasses on anymore. Hence bifocals. But, I still see perfectly with no glasses from 8-12 inches away, better even than with the bifocals. So any close work I do I take the glasses off--I keep them on a strap so that I can just take them off and let them dangle. And I paint my paintings without the glasses--works well for the close-up detail work, and when I back off it all blurs out and I can see the major shapes and colors.

It gets pounded a lot by the locals, who seem to like to eat bass. But it can be pretty decent smallmouth fishing. It is typically very clear, so clear water techniques are necessary. It's floatable from the 49 bridge down in higher spring water levels, but becomes more of a wading creek up that far by summertime. I haven't been on it in a long time, so I don't know the current state of the accesses. There's a very pretty and not TOO difficult to run shut-ins section a good distance downstream from the 49 bridge (though I once broke an "unbreakable" Mohawk paddle while running it in higher water--pretty exciting!).

I'll be there during the Friday cold front. Probably hang around the Tackle HD booth for a while.

My biggest browns (24-25 inches, three of them in that range) all came on streamers about 3 inches long. I've also caught 23 inch browns on jerkbaits, and one on a small crankbait. My biggest rainbows also came on streamers, both several 30-31 inchers in Alaska and a couple 24 inch class ones in Montana. I've done a lot of fly fishing with small nymphs and dry flies, but I don't think I've caught anything over 22 inches on the small stuff. That's not to say it can't happen, though.

My best light line tale of woe story... This was back in the early 1980s. A buddy and I were floating the entire length of Huzzah Creek from Dillard Mill to the Meramec. I'd never fished upper Huzzah before, but knew it was very clear, and back then I was used to fishing the Meramec and Big rivers, which were usually murky. I thought I needed to use ultralight and 4 pound line in that super clear water, and fish small marabou jigs and such. So that was what I was doing the first day, catching lots of very small bass and goggle-eye, when I suddenly hooked a huge smallmouth. This thing was easily 20 inches; I couldn't believe a fish that big was up the creek that far. We were in fairly slow water, lined with a lot of logs, and I knew getting it in wasn't going to be easy. But the fish for whatever reason seemed to just avoid all the logs, and I gradually worked it in as the canoe drifted downstream to the end of the run, where there was a swift riffle, and nothing to get snagged on, or so I thought. The fish was just about done, and I had it about 10 feet from the canoe at the top of the riffle, when it made one more lunge, which took it right into a very small snag sticking up out of the gravel. Line wrapped around the snag and pop. I put the ultralight rod down and picked up my casting rod with 10 pound line and my homemade twin spin, and caught a bunch of fish on it the rest of the trip.

The Major Craft Nanoace 6'6" medium crankbait rod, also from Tackle Warehouse, is pretty sweet, but might be a little too light. It's my jetboat crankbait rod and I really like it for throwing cranks the size of Wiggle Warts.

On Christmas Eve morning, Mary called me out into the yard, and pointed to one of the willow trees alongside the pond. The tree had multiple trunks and one was dead, and there was a big clump of white shrooms on it near the base. Sure enough, oysters, and in good shape. We picked them and took them to Mary's sister's house, where we were having Christmas Eve dinner. Good stuff, and enough of them to give 10 people a smallish helping after sauteeing in butter.

Yeah, cwc and I caught a LOT of fish. Nothing huge but 5 between 17.5 and 18.5 inches. They were hitting everything we threw but spinnerbaits, though we caught the most on jigs.

Kinda off the wall, but you might check out the Bass Pro Tourney Special rods. They changed them a year or two ago, but the old ones, though rated as fast action, were actually moderate-fast, and I used the 5'6" one as my canoe crankbait rod for a while. I don't know if they are using the same blanks as before, but they have 6' and 6'6" medium heavy power ones online. They are cheap, $50, but the old ones were pretty light in weight and had okay materials, and you don't need to get real fancy with sensitivity and such with a crankbait rod. I didn't like the handle on the old ones but the new ones have a nice looking split grip.

The Sullivan gauge is showing a rise of 3-4 inches, Steelville 6-7 inches, which makes sense. I crossed it at Campbell Bridge late this morning and it was up slightly and maybe 3 feet visibility. Fished it yesterday downstream from Steelville and it was beginning to rise and that same visibility.