Al Agnew

Everybody is right...just depends upon what kind of water you want to fish for them. They are a fish of still water and very slow current, so in the rivers, concentrate on long, slow pools, and especially in quiet backwaters. There are a lot of them in every backwater you find on Current River between Two Rivers and Van Buren. The slow pools on the Eleven Point are full of them. Jacks Fork is good between Alley Spring and Eminence. If you want a spot where you can drive right up, make a few casts, and have a good chance of encountering one, check out the Alley Spring Access on the Jacks Fork. Unless it's changed in the last year or so, when you drive up to the access, there is a ramp leading off to the right to a quiet, deep backwater off the channel. That backwater usually has several nice ones in it, especially all winter long. Keep in mind that they are in the pike family and they have sharp-edged teeth that can cut monofilament like a razor. I would tell you to use jerkbaits for them, because I've caught a ton of them on Current River in the late fall and winter on jerkbaits...but I've also lost a number of high dollar jerkbaits to them.

Go to Google Earth and go to the lake. Then click on the history feature, and find the imagery from 2-29-2012. The lake in that imagery is about 5 or 6 feet below normal pool, and it shows just about all the structure you need to know. You'll see that at that level there are extensive mud and sand flats over much of the lake, and the channel is fairly well defined over almost all of it. You'll also see that there isn't a whole lot of cover anywhere, just scattered old stumps and a few logs here and there. It's been many years since I've fished the lake myself...it's generally tough fishing unless you know where isolated stumps and brushpiles are, and the guys who win tournaments there often are the locals who place their own brushpiles. I have no idea what to use in October, but at least if you check out the Google Earth imagery you'll get a pretty good sense of what the lake is like.

I've gone on lots of guided trips as well. Not only day trips with fishing guides, but also multi-day river trips. It starts to get expensive when you're with the guide for 5 or more days and the cost of the trip is getting up into several thousand dollar range...then it's kinda tough to give a good tip. On the Salmon River trip I took this summer, 17 days, the total cost was up around $6000, and the guides were pretty good, so we gave them 15% tip, $900...but that was shared among several guides. I think $50 a day tip for a fishing guide is adequate if the guide is okay but doesn't go above and beyond, $100 a day is for the guide that does more than you expected. And I've had a couple of guides over the years that didn't earn a darned thing extra and didn't get it...I don't tip bad service, whether it be in restaurants or on the river.

The fish should be beginning to gather around wintering pools by now with the drop in temps, so if you're fishing long stretches of shallower water there may not be many fish there to catch.

Water temps are important. Under 60 degrees, topwater probably won't be the BEST option, but it can produce fish down through the 50s, and on special occasions even colder.

Don't think grass carp eat lily pads. Bismarck Lake used to be full of pads. I had a blast for a few years there, until some other guys figured out how to fish them. There were so many and so thick that you couldn't use a boat with a trolling motor in them, and everybody else seemed to think that paddling was against the law or something. So I'd take a canoe and paddle way back in them. What I was looking for was something different. Small openings were okay, but if there was a very small opening against a log, or against a clump of some other kind of vegetation, it was magic. I devised a lure I really liked, by taking one of the early weedless hollow frog lures and putting a section of heavy wire on the front of it with a buzzbait blade. Cast it up on the pads, bring it slowly to the opening, and buzz it fairly slowly across the opening. I got some incredible blow-ups that way, and caught a pile of 3-6 pounders. Then it got to where the pads were so thick you could hardly find any openings, and also milfoil started getting thick within the pads, and it became almost impossible to find openings to fish. I really haven't spent hardly any time there since then.

Missed this thread somehow...if you have the guts to do it, if you get a hole and water is coming in quickly, take off going on plane and try taking out the drain plug, assuming you can get to it. The water will drain out the drain plug hole at least as fast as it's coming in the hole you put in the boat. I did that when I put a hole in mine, and although there was a flap of aluminum that was guiding water into the boat even faster than it was coming in sitting still, the drain plug hole almost kept up with the incoming water. I learned that long ago, when my dad had a boat that leaked slowly. By mid-day there would be a couple inches of water in the bottom, so he'd just take off and take out the plug, and all the water would drain out in just a few minutes of running. I'm not sure it works quite that well with a really fast jet outboard because I think you have to have the drain plug hole covered with water so that the water forms a suction as you're moving quickly forward, and maybe a jet hull won't be far enough into the water to suck it out as efficiently. But it would be worth a try. Of course, if you are stopping you put the plug back in before you stop!

I suppose you know that Hull Ford is on the Osage Fork, and if you did that float you'd be on the Osage Fork more than the Gasconade.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I tend to love streams with lots of impressive bluffs, clean gravel bars, and as few signs of human civilization as possible. So my top five in Missouri would be: 1. Upper Jacks Fork 2. Current between Round Spring and Logyard 3. Big Piney between Mason Bridge and Ft. Wood 4. Eleven Point, entire national scenic river stretch 5. St. Francis, Silvermines to Hwy. C-N bridge (just because it's so different from every other floatable stream in Missouri) Honorable mention to the middle Gasconade, lower Niangua, Meramec between Steelville and Meramec State Park, the whole upper Current River above Round Spring and Jacks Fork below Alley Spring. And the Buffalo In Arkansas tops them all.

Smalllmouth--Thomasville to Greer (if there is enough water), and Riverton to Arkansas (there is also a lot of good smallmouth and spotted bass fishing in Arkansas). The Greer to Riverton stretch has smallmouth, too, but not nearly as good a population as the stretches above and below. But from this time of year through the winter, you can find some smallmouth in the bigger pools. Chain pickerel--there are a lot of them in the trout section from Greer to Riverton--more the closer you get to Greer. Scattered throughout the rest of the river. The Eleven Point has fewer gravel bars than most Ozark streams, so if you're looking for gravel bar camping, you are limited and have to start looking for a camp early. There are float camps--cleared campsites up in the bottoms--at decently spaced intervals between Greer and Hwy. 142...go to the Forest Service Eleven Point National Scenic River website--they have a pretty good map of the float camps. Absolute must see before or after you float is Greer Spring. In my opinion the most beautiful setting of all the big Ozark springs, because it's all wild and natural. The river itself has a few other nice springs, but there aren't really many spectacular scenic spots--not a lot of huge, impressive bluffs, etc. It's just ALL really nice because it's wild and there aren't all that many signs of civilization. And the water is gorgeous.

Wrench, the curved one was probably used, just not as a spear point. Possibly a hafted knife, or a hide scraper. I can imagine that a lot of times a point didn't turn out quite the way the knapper had hoped, but it was still sharp, and ended up being used for something else. I found one in the gravel parking lot at Bismarck Lake one time--it was probably in the creek gravel that was hauled in to cover the lot. I still can't pass up bare dirt without automatically looking for points. And one other type of place that is seldom hunted for them is atop bluffs. I've found a few pieces in such places, but know people who have found a lot of good stuff on nearly bare rock atop a bluff, and my grandpa found a couple in his tilled garden, which was just 50 yards back from the edge of a bluff on a smallish creek.

Umpqua River and its forks are not far away to the south--excellent smallmouth fishing!

Or somebody that wants to make sure everybody knows what they think. Nearly all modern cars weren't designed for carrying a boat on top. Used to love my old Quick and Easy racks that attached to rain gutters, which of course are non-existent now. No rack designed for modern vehicles IS that quick and easy, or solid. No bumpers to tie fore and aft to, either. We own a couple of Priuses (Prius's? Priui?). Got Yakima racks that supposedly fit the older one, but they are a pain to attach solidly, and they don't even work on the newer one. So I just use those hard foam blocks that fit onto the gunwales of the canoes. I attached heavy duty straps with grommets to the bolts holding the hinges of the hood for front end tie downs, but still have to crawl in under the car to find tie downs for the rear end. Then throw ropes over the middle of the canoe and through the car doors to tie to the handles in the car ceiling on both sides for getting into and out of the car. Would never trust just tying to the roof of the car, or to factory roof racks alone, because I don't know how good the attachment of those racks is to the car roof. I always tie down fore and aft as my primary safety tie downs.

I agree with almost everything he said. The only thing that I don't quite agree with is that while you CAN use a fly rod for just about any fish that swims anywhere, there are a lot of situations where it's a little like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. I love fly fishing for the things it does best, but have little interest in trying to make it work for things where other forms of angling work far better. I wouldn't care for open ocean fly fishing for giant fish like sailfish or marlin. I don't even think about using it for fishing deep water reservoir bass. Or, for that matter, winter fishing for Ozark stream smallmouth, and I don't use fly tackle for my summer Ozark smallmouth fishing from a canoe because it becomes more of a pain than a pleasure when drifting downriver by myself in the canoe. On the other hand, it's just perfect for most stream trout fishing, or for catching panfish and small bass out of a pond or wading size stream. I can't imagine using anything else to catch big bluegill out of my pond, or to fish the Yellowstone River outside my house in Montana. It's funny that most fly fishing literature has always been somewhat philosophical and lyrical, while most literature on conventional fishing, like bass fishing, is strictly nuts and bolts how to stuff. What is it about fly fishing that brings out navel gazing and mysticism? Why are there no John Geirachs and Thomas McGuanes in bass fishing? I see mysticism in all kinds of angling that I do, and especially in river and stream fishing, no matter what tackle I'm using. Yep, fly fishing is fun, and puts you close to your prey and the ecosystems in which it lives. But so do other forms of angling. There is great satisfaction in achieving some kind of mastery in an activity that is at least mildly challenging and that has plenty of nuances and arcane knowledge. But there's a lot of that in other forms of angling, as well. I think we all get great satisfaction from doing things well, especially things that aren't easy to do well. Fly fishing is one of those things. So is topwater smallmouth fishing with casting tackle. So is handling a solo canoe, or a raft or driftboat, in fast water. And if those things have the reputation, the mystique, of being difficult to master, so much the better--it makes us feel better about ourselves and makes us think we look better in the eyes of others. But in the end, it's not rocket science to get reasonably proficient at it, while at the same time you can spend a lifetime working out all the things you CAN learn from it.

Okay, I get it now! Yes, the sidecutters should be in every angler's tackle, and with most lures today, it's pretty easy to just clip the split ring so that you only have to work on the embedded treble, not the whole lure hanging from you. I never used to carry a net, but now I do in the boat. Still don't carry one in the canoe, but I'm rethinking that as well. I am a little wary of the fish grips, because I think they can do more damage to the fish's lip. I've never had to get a spinnerbait out of anybody, but I think the sidecutters would be very important to getting one of them out, as well, since the spinnerbait arm would be in the way of getting the hook into position to push it in the right direction. I think I would cut off the arm right at the head, so I could push on the head as if it was the eye of the hook.

I think that was your buddy's fault. He almost certainly didn't jerk at the correct angle, and the angle is very important. You have to jerk the hook at the angle that the point and barb is in your skin, which on most hooks is exactly parallel to the shaft of the hook. If you jerk at a more vertical angle, pulling UP on the shaft of the hook, the shaft rotates upward and will probably put one of the other barbs into your finger as happened to you. You want the point of the hook to come STRAIGHT out of the hole. If it's one of those hooks where the point is directed somewhat inward toward the shaft, you have to jerk at an angle that's even flatter than the shaft. Just picture how the point up to the barb is slanted, and jerk in that direction. In all the times I've gotten hooks out of myself and others, I've never had that happen. The hook always pops straight out and usually goes flying off into the sunset away from my finger. It also could be that it was YOUR fault. You don't just press down firmly on the eye of the hook, you press HARD and directly toward the buried barb, not straight down into your skin.

A wader belt is important. Yes, you can swim in waders, but waders full of water will slow you down, not pull you down. And slow you down climbing out of the water. Wrench has a good point in that water pressure keeps the water from pouring into the waders when you first go under, but as you're trying to stay afloat and get to safety, the water starts coming in. A belt slows it down considerably. So does having a waterproof jacket over the waders. But in the winter, you'll probably have a lot of other clothing under the jacket and waders that will wick in water. It won't gush in, but eventually you'll be wet and there will be extra water in the waders. So wearing a good PFD is an absolute must, and being prudent and aware of the dangers. I can remember a couple times when I kinda forgot this and suddenly realized how close I was to probably dying. Both were in my solo canoe in the winter. The first time, I was walleye fishing down at the big, deep gravel pit hole on Black River at the 67 Highway bridge north of Poplar Bluff. I suddenly realized I was out in the middle of the hole, hundreds of yards from either bank, and didn't have my life jacket on. Even with it on, in 38 degree water the chances were I'd never make it to shore if I dumped, so I carefully paddled closer to shore and went around the pool to get to where I was going...and immediately put my life jacket on. Second time was on the Meramec in the winter, floating above Onondaga. There's a very narrow riffle running into some logs...no problem usually, but as I dropped into the riffle, I saw a new log with just the tip sticking up out of the water, and I was headed straight for it. Had to do some really hard draw strokes to clear it, leaning way over the side of the canoe to really put my back into the strokes...and when I did clear it, I realized I wasn't wearing my life jacket. Could have probably gotten out if I'd flipped, but I would have been soaked, four miles from the truck, and no change of clothes, in 40 degree weather. The life jacket would have made getting out a sure thing, but wouldn't have helped with the hypothermia once I got out. So now, if in the canoe, I always carry a change of clothing in a waterproof bag, along with some matches, when I'm out in the winter.

Yeah, I make my own leaders, too...after a few days of use, the store bought leader I started out with is so short that I've spliced about three sections of tippet onto it

Never found a quartzite point, but have two granite points, and two hard limestone points in my modest collection. Can't imagine how they went about shaping a granite point. Also have well done two tone point...kind of inferior chert, but half is dark brown, the other half is white, with separation going diagonally down the middle.

I've found four complete Dalton points over the years, and a half dozen more rear sections. Longest one is about 4 inches and an inch wide, and strongly beveled. Another is much thinner, but a little wider and almost as long. It's such a great find that I remember without looking at my records exactly where I found all four. Two of them were on a high terrace at the intersection of two creeks in Cape Girardeau County. One was along the edge of Wappapello Lake. And the best one of all was lying in the bottom of a sandy wet weather creek in Ste. Genevieve County.

Revisiting this a bit...I researched the diameter of the Rio Fluoroflex tippet I use, compared to Maxima clear line that somebody else mentioned. Rio Fluoroflex: 6X 3.6 lb. test, .005 diameter 5X 5 lb. test, .006 diameter 4X 7 lb. test, .007 diameter 3X 8.5 lb. test, .008 diameter 2X 12 lb. test, .009 diameter Maxima Clear: 1 lb. test, .003 diameter 2 lb. test, .005 diameter 3 lb. test, .006 diameter 4 lb. test, .007 diameter 6 lb. test, .009 diameter 8 lb. test, .01 diameter So the 6X that I very seldom use unless I'm throwing very small flies is the same diameter as 2 lb. test Maxima, but is rated at 3.6 lb. test. The 4X that I probably use the most in very clear water is the same as 4 lb. test Maxima, but is 7 lb. test. The 2X that I often use for streamer fishing and in murky water is the same diameter as 4 lb. test Maxima but is 12 lb. test! Which goes to show that IF you're really concerned about line visibility, don't just look at the lb. test it is, look at the diameter.

I've been out here at our place in Montana for a few weeks now, but haven't had much time to fish. The days that I had some time were usually very windy, and not worth trying it. I did a couple of floats on the Yellowstone that were mediocre fishing, and finally was able to wade the channel next to the house once and caught a few, including a nice 17 inch rainbow. The river blew out the whole upper half of our island during the spring high water, and now more water is going down our channel next to the house than what was the main channel on the other side of the island. But what it left on the upper end of the island was a very long bar with very shallow water running over it, and one narrow, deeper chute at the upper end. So there is one strong chute crashing into the little rock cliff next to our lawn, a small rocky island, then a very wide riffle dropping sharply off into a deep, fast run along the rest of the rock cliff before widening out and slowing a bit. Even though our channel is carrying a bit more water than the far channel, it's become very difficult for the floaters to run. The very wide riffle is too shallow, and the narrow, deeper chute violently crashes into the cliff with very little room to maneuver away from the rock. The far channel is actually easier to run, but most people floating seem to think they have to take our channel. So they go bumping and sometimes dragging over the rocks of the wide riffle. That was what happened when I caught the 17 incher mentioned above. I was right at the downstream, right end of the shallow riffle when a guide and two clients in a driftboat came scraping over the rocks, dropping into the run right where I was drifting nymphs. I was a bit disgruntled...until I hooked that big rainbow almost directly under the boat! They watched me play it in and net it, and I thought that was pretty sweet. So I was watching the weather forecast for this week, and it looked so good. Yesterday was supposed to be warm, upper 70s, sunny, and not much wind. And then today was supposed to be cloudy but warm, in the low 70s. The weather will deteriorate the rest of the week, and by next week the highs will be in the low 40s and rain and snow is called for. So I was really planning on fishing yesterday and today. Until I got a horrific cold, nose running like a sugar tree, coughing like crazy, a bit of fever, the whole works. Yesterday I was miserable, so needless to say I didn't go fishing. Today was only slightly better. I messed around cleaning up the garage between rest periods. I walked out of the house at 6 PM. Cloudy, 70 degrees, no wind. Walked over to look at the river. Saw a trout rising. 45 minutes until dusk. I came back to the house and told Mary I was going to fish for 45 minutes. She said, yeah, you can fish, or you can rest and get well quicker. But this is the last warm day, I told her, and I had to try it for just a bit. I waded across the upper end of the narrow chute. No other fish rising. Already fairly low light. I decided to toss a streamer, one of my rabbit fur concoctions, on the 5 weight rod. Fished it across the riffle, letting it swing in the current. Halfway across the shallow riffle, I hooked a heavy fish. It shot out into the strongest current and took me nearly to the backing. I waded the rest of the way across the riffle to get the fish into the slack water on the downstream end. Fought it for quite a while before finally netting it. Slightly under 20 inches. I made a few more casts, got one more bump, and then it was getting dark. One good fish in a half hour of fishing. I was happy.

Love talking about flint artifacts. One thing that always strikes me is the apparent similarity between points made over wide areas at a given period of time. In other words, you can find Dalton points, all looking like they were made by the same person, all over the Ozarks and surrounding areas. What was the deal? Were there just a few knappers who traded points widely? Why did everybody seem to use the exact same design at a given period in history? You'd think there would be more than one way to make points and a lot more individual variation. On the other hand, there WERE valid reasons for the design of Clovis points compared to the next time period when Dalton points were typical. Both have somewhat the same general shape, somewhat like a willow leaf with one end cut off. But the Clovis point edges kept narrowing until it reached that blunt end, while the Dalton point has a slightly flared base. It's theorized that the Clovis points were used in hunting very large animals like mammoth and mastodon, and the technique used was to surround these slow-moving creatures and repeately stab them until they weakened from blood loss and damage to organs. So you needed a point that you could repeatedly stab and withdraw, hence the streamlined shape of the point. But by the time Dalton points were being made, the really big stuff was gone and the main prey was smaller, faster animals. At that point the atlatl become common, and you threw your spear at the animal, and having the spear stay in the animal as it ran off was more advantageous. So the flared sides acted as barbs of a sort, keeping the point in the animal. It's also interesting that in general, those very early points were so much more carefully made and aesthetically beautiful than most later points, which were designed for much the same thing. Maybe it showed that there really was more than one way to skin a cat, and later people were more into utilitarian manufacture than perfection and beauty.

I seldom read the lakes section, so didn't see this until now. Eels are one of my favorite subjects, and I did a long treatise on the in one of the other message boards. It's really a mystery how an eel could have gotten into Bull Shoals, due to their life cycle, in which they are born in the Sargasso Sea, gradually make their way to land in both North America and Europe from that same area, and aren't adults until they do some growing in freshwater. They move all the way up into fairly small streams as adults, but by the time they get into the Ozarks (think about it...from the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, across the ocean and into the Gulf of Mexico, across the Gulf to the mouth of the Mississippi, then up the Mississippi to tributaries draining the Ozarks, up those tributaries into the Ozarks) they should all be adults. So the bait bucket thing doesn't make much sense...the guy would have had to get them somewhere near the Gulf of Mexico and drag them up to Bull Shoals just to use for bait? They can travel for short distances overland, but not up the face of Bull Shoals dam or up the hillsides surrounding it, I don't think. Since they would be adults before getting anywhere in the vicinity, it's doubtful that a bird could have transported it. The story just doesn't make a lot of sense, and it would really be interesting to know how that eel got there. I caught them on upper Big River when I was a kid. Not often, but there were a couple of pools that we camped on in the stretch below Bonne Terre that had them. We were fishing for catfish with dead minnows and caught several, all of them at least 2.5-3 feet long. One of the "worst" tricks I ever played on one of my buddies was one night when he'd already gone to sleep, in his sleeping bag out in the open on the gravel bar. I got a bite and reeled in a big eel. It was dangling from my rod tip, and I carried it up and let its writhing tail brush across his face. He woke up screaming, and I thought he was going to kill me.

Welcome to the forum! I think you've come to the very best place to get your questions answered. However, I also think your question is far too broad, too much to cover. My advice is this: There are 20 pages in this particular forum, Smallmouth Talk, dating back to 2012. Click on page 20 and start reading, and read every post that looks like it might be useful. It might take you a day or so to get through all 20 pages, but by the time you do, you'll have gotten a LOT of info. Then if you're not tired of reading, go to the General Angling forum and do pretty much the same thing, skimming through the lists of posts until you find those that look like they cover stream smallmouth angling. And at some point, do the same thing with the individual river forums. Anytime you have a specific question, ask it here and I'm sure you'll get answers. But we don't know how much you already know, what kind of lures and tackle you already have, etc. so it's tough to give you a lot of advice at this point. As for streams, we don't know if you have a canoe or kayak, or even a jetboat, and we don't know how far you're willing to drive. Central Missouri covers quite a bit of territory. With a few exceptions, nearly all the smallmouth fishing in Missouri is south of the Missouri River, and there's a lot of it, some of it not FAR south of the Missouri. If you can find it anywhere, Chuck Tryon's old book, "200 Missouri Smallmouth Adventures", will give you a pretty good list of streams with smallies, even though the access information in it may be out of date. Much easier to obtain is "A Paddler's Guide to Missouri", put out by the Conservation Department. Even if you don't paddle, it will give you quite a few places to access streams and wade. Don't expect people on here to give you their favorite spots, but it's actually pretty easy to find your own. Hope this helps.