Al Agnew

Weather out here in our part of Montana (Livingston, Yellowstone River) has been incredible. Usually we get a bit of cold weather and a decent snow sometime in September. Not this year. We've only had two nights that put a bit of frost on the ground, and days have been sunny and in the 70s and 80s, though very smoky the last week from fires a hundred miles away. River is low and clear. Sunny days make for tough fishing, but I wandered down to the river from the house a couple evenings ago and caught two very nice rainbows.

I've struggled with all kinds of glasses for all kinds of distances. For many years I wore glasses for nearsightedness. Didn't need anything else. They worked just fine for close-up work as well, not affecting my closeup vision, which was always excellent. I tried contact lenses, but honestly, I stopped wearing them mainly because of fishing; I liked the eye protection from flying hooks that wearing glasses gave me. Then age set in, and suddenly I couldn't see up close through my glasses for distance vision. I could still take them off and see perfectly from about 12 inches on in, but the eye doctor told me that wouldn't last and that I should just start wearing bifocals. I tried progressive lenses and never could get used to them; I found I was looking through the transition half the time and couldn't see anything. But as good as I could see at 12-18 inches through the bifocals, I could STILL see better without any glasses from 12 inches or less. But...the biggest problem was that in painting, I often kept my head about 2 feet from the canvas, and that was in the blind range for bifocals. I had to get a special pair of glasses that allowed me to see at that range, but then I couldn't see closer or farther with them on. I eventually just got used to wearing the bifocals and keeping my head closer to the canvas...and STILL taking them off for really close, detailed work. And that's where I still am, 25 years after I started wearing bifocals. I also have prescription bifocal sunglasses...but STILL take them off to tie on tiny hooks.

I think I have every one of his books, and always looked forward to the next one. Fly fishing themed books are a dime a dozen, and many are more navel gazing than anything else, trying to put some deep, philosophical meaning to what is essentially "standing in the water waving a stick". Gierach was entertaining and unpretentious. I would have loved to spend a day on the river with him. Funny how fly fishing lends itself to such books, while bass fishing doesn't. Two different cultures. I've written a lot now and then of the kind of stuff I'd like to see in books on stream bass fishing, a mixture of how it's done and why I love it so much, and Gierach was always an inspiration.

I'm old enough that I've seen the evolution of rods since the early 1960s. My first "favorite" bass rod was one my dad gave me for Christmas sometime around 1960. It was a Shakespeare solid fiberglass casting rod, 4.5 feet long, short, straight cork handle, steel reel seat. He paired it with a Shakespeare direct drive (not free spool, the handle spun backwards on the cast) casting reel. It wasn't quite state of the art for the time, but close. I got good enough to cast 1/4th ounce lures with it. The first upgrade from it was a Heddon tubular fiberglass, 6 foot rod. Dad had one that he had used for years, and used so hard and so much that the cork handle had been compressed from his fingers to the point where it had finger grooves that fit his left hand perfectly (Dad was left-handed, so never had to switch hands to reel.) With the advent of bass tournaments in the late 1960s, all kinds of somewhat cool things came along in tubular glass rods. The pistol grip handle was a big one. I had a couple rods that had solid wood pistol grips. Most rods were still short, 6 feet and under. Then graphite came onto the scene. By that time I was making rods. Graphite rods were expensive, but I made myself one for a lot less money. I quickly found out that a fast action, medium heavy power, 5.5 foot graphite rod did NOT work for the crankbaits I was fond of using. I couldn't get a hook set. So it got relegated to fishing spinnerbaits, where it did a lot better. I loved the savings in weight. And then there was the movement to ceramic guides. The first ones were pretty clunky, but so much more durable than the previous state of the art carbide guides. Graphite rods got lighter. Shimano made my favorites at that point in the late 1970s, early 1980s. Still short, 5.5 feet. It wasn't until the 1990s that longer rods started to become the standard. I had a telescoping 7 foot heavy power rod for worm fishing about then. Handles got a lot longer and split grip handles appeared. And although rods continued to get lighter and supposedly more sensitive, I kinda stopped following the fads about then. I STILL use 5.2 to 6 foot rods exclusively when canoe fishing, and my longest rod that I use a lot in the jetboat is 6' 8".

We have stayed at lodges on the Kenai Peninsula that had guides who took us out on several local rivers. We also stayed one time for three days at a cabin on Lake Creek. But I have to admit, those experiences were mixed. The cabin was...VERY rustic, as in filthy, though the fishing was pretty good and Lake Creek was somewhat wadeable. The one lodge we stayed at was pretty expensive, and as my parents' neighbor used to say, "ritzy-titzy", not really our cup of tea; and their guides were a mixed bag. But we fished for king salmon on one river that I forget the name, and for sockeye salmon on the upper Kenai (also catching a bunch of dolly varden). Do your research and check out all the possibilities.

The drive from Anchorage to Fairbanks is well worth it. But it's not easy to get a lot of good fishing doing it yourself. You'll pass a few really nice small streams that should have grayling and dolly varden, but the rivers that might have rainbows (and salmon) are mostly just too big and brawling to get much fishing done from the bank anyplace you can reach from the highway. And there aren't many places to fish that you CAN reach from the highway. Alaska is mainly for the angler who can afford to do fly-in trips and guided rafting trips. There are a few businesses that will rent you a raft and even shuttle you for a float, but I know people who have had some really bad experiences doing that, including flipping rafts on rivers where they weren't warned about the difficulty, and run-ins with bears. The drive from Anchorage down the Kenai Peninsula will put you on a few good streams. The Russian River gets pounded, but has a lot of nice rainbows.

The stripes usually show up more prominently during spawning season, and it's a little late for that. I agree the background color is somewhat lighter than normal. Maybe it's because I'm a fish artist, or maybe just because I've seen so many of them and knew what I was looking at, but I can tell pretty much all the common fish in the Ozarks at a glance. But the toughest ones to ID are the hybrid sunfish, and several different sunfish, including green sunfish, hybridize readily with others.

You're kidding, right?

Definitely aberrant markings, but definitely a pure green sunfish. I caught one like that one time on Big River that also had a totally black tail from the rear of the dorsal fin on back. Black tailed ones aren't uncommon on Big River, and some biologists suggest it might be related to heavy metal contamination from the old lead mine tailings in the river. But that's the only one I ever caught that also had the black stripes on the rest of its body.

Was that the only cottonmouth you saw? My last time there, I saw a half dozen. It has one of the largest populations of cottonmouths in the Ozarks.

Not at all true. The key to a reliable solar system is the batteries. Lithium ion batteries, and a properly sized system, and you won't lose electricity unless it's wintertime and there is a week or more of nothing but cloudy weather. And that's assuming an off-grid system where you are using only the solar (along with a backup generator). If you use a grid-tied system you'll never lack for electricity. We have an off-grid system on the cabin we have on the Meramec. The original installation was not perfect, and the tie-in between solar and generator had glitches. We finally upgraded the system last year. Now we have adequate battery capacity (and the lithium batteries can be drained to less than 10% while the old lead-acid batteries we had could not be drained less than 50%), and remote monitoring. It's worked beautifully since the upgrade.

Still way too lax with regulations on horse facilities down there...the locals make money off all the horse people. I do kinda like that lower section, though...seems like it doesn't get a lot of fishing pressure from people who know what they're doing. Sometimes I drive down the afternoon before I do a multi-day trip on the upper river and do the short float from Shawnee Creek to Two Rivers.

We are being played. We are being radicalized just as surely as some Middle Eastern young man being radicalized by his religious leader. We have gotten to the point where we don't actually listen to the viewpoints of those we disagree with, we only listen to what OUR side is telling us about them. So we believe the worst about the opposition, to the point where, instead of looking upon them simply as people with ideas we don't like, we begin to look upon them as evil and the enemy. How are we being radicalized like this? We are able, and willing, to only listen to the "news" channels and talking heads and internet sites that reinforce what we already want to believe; we either never SEE the other side, or we have been conditioned to believe the other side is lying and any evidence that they might be right on something is "fake news". And yet...when we deal with people of the other political persuasion in person in settings where politics isn't discussed, we always find we have plenty of common interests and beliefs, and we don't look upon each other as enemies...until politics gets brought up. Consider racism, for instance. I'd bet that a lot of people who can be accused of having racist attitudes have an acquaintance or two that are of the race they "don't like", and they like those that they know. But somehow, the nice guy they know is not like those OTHER people of that race. I know of several people in the county where I used to live who adamantly deny they are racist, and to prove it they always say they are friends with a couple black guys that live in that county. Yup. Those black guys are part of a tiny minority in that county, and they do all they can to fit in with the vast majority. In other words, they keep their heads down and their mouths shut to get along. But the guys who are "friends" with them do not equate them with all the inner city black people that they consider to all be lazy, drug-addicted criminals and welfare queens. A friend of mine who is of the opposite political bent sometimes asks me what I think about some egregious behavior that "my side" has done. Invariably, it's something that only the radical fringe would ever think about doing. Like, he might ask, "what do you think about liberals burning the flag and shouting "death to America"? He is taking the behavior or actions of a tiny minority on the radical fringe, and equating them with everybody on "my side", even though he knows that I would never think about burning a flag or hating America. Or what my wife just said the other day, after we had spent a pleasant evening with good friends..."They are such wonderful people. I just can't understand how they could vote Republican." Somehow, we have to get past this radicalization, and get back to looking upon those we disagree with as Americans, too; not enemies of America.

The old timers ran Current River with prop boats with a lift mechanism so that when they came to riffles they could, as I remember, step down on a lever and raise the prop until it was barely underwater enough to retain some power. Mostly the motors were 10-15 HP, and they ran them on johnboats. And they carried a lot of spare shear pins. Also, in my remembrance and that of the guys older than me, the riffles were narrower and thus deeper back then than they are now. You can thank the incessant wakes from jetboat traffic for that, to a large extent. I think you'd have to wait until the river was a foot or two above normal, and then your motor probably wouldn't have enough power to get up some of the faster riffles. My dad was a lake fisherman and had a big, heavy 16 ft. johnboat with a 15 HP motor on it. He took me and my mom down to Current River at Bay Nothing (well below Big Spring) one time, and ran the river a few miles upstream without a problem. But although I was a kid, I remember the riffles being quite deep, like at least 3 feet deep in the deeper channels. It's not like that anymore.

I can honestly say that I "found" every one of my favorite wading size creek accesses, and every favorite small stream float stretch, on my own except one. That one was a creek I already knew about but didn't know that it had developed a pretty decent bass population until my brother told me about catching a bunch of fish on it. But I'm a map freak and love to explore back roads, and I like to float boney streams in the dead of summer when few other people know that they are more or less floatable and wouldn't want to put in the work even if they did. I've worn out quite a few canoe bottoms over the years. Yes, it's still possible to find solitude, but it's definitely more difficult. The internet, and the mind set of some that they are doing people a favor by publicizing lesser known places (when probably in actuality most of them just want to make themselves look good by acting like they "found" this terrific little known spot and want everybody to know they did) have most certainly brought a lot of people to many of the places that were once uncrowded. My favorite hiking spots are completely overrun since Covid hit. So many people descended on a couple of my go-to wading creeks that the landowners got fed up and shut them off completely. And I was fishing the lower middle Meramec the other day. I started floating this stretch pre-jetboat days, back well over 45 years ago. At that time, I could depend upon 50-75 fish days, with almost always a 19-20 incher or two in the mix, and the fish were everywhere; you just drifted down the river casting to everything you came to and catching fish consistently. And I knew a fraction about how to catch good smallmouth that I do now. Now, you do that and you catch a few bass mostly under 12 inches; you have to know the scattered spots that hold bigger fish and you have to fish them very carefully and efficiently to catch a few. I used to float this river on weekends, and as long as I put in a little earlier than the 8-9 AM canoe renters, I'd seldom see anybody all day long. Now weekends are an absolute zoo, with literally dozens to hundreds of jet boats roaring up and down, up and down, up and down all day long, interspersed with the river dorks in kayaks and rafts drinking themselves unconscious. I've learned to live with the crowds, and still know a few tricks to avoid the worst of them. But the sweet spots in the Ozarks are a shadow of what they once were. I'm old. I don't have too many more years of enjoying it all. But I'm glad I got to see it all when it was a whole lot better than it is now.

To most people, the Ozark bass is just a goggle-eye. But there are three different "goggle-eye" species in the Ozarks, and there ARE differences in them. Northern rock bass, shadow bass, and Ozark bass. Northern rock bass are in the Gasconade and Meramec river systems, and in the creeks running into the Mississippi south of St. Louis. Shadow bass are in the Castor, St. Francis, and Black river systems (including Current, Eleven Point, and Spring). Ozark bass are found only the upper White River system, including North Fork, Buffalo, and James...nowhere else on earth. Here is my article on them with my illustrations of the three: https://riversandart.blogspot.com/2020/04/growing-up-in-missouri-ozarks-and-being.html

Nope. Almost never found in MO or AR, and wrong colors.

Could very well be. I always tend to not think of broad-wings because they are woodland hawks that aren't all that common and I almost never see one. A good idea of the size of the bird would help.

Wish we could see the tail better, but the legs look heavy for a Cooper's hawk. Immature Cooper's look something like that, though. But I'm tentatively calling this one an immature red-shouldered hawk.

Yup, Mississippi kite. They seem to be getting more common in the St. Louis area.

"Chicken snake" is not a real name, but a colloquial one for a bunch of different species. This snake is a juvenile western rat snake, what used to be named a black rat snake. The biologists got together and decided to change the name a few years ago. The juvies have those badge-shaped blotches; they turn mostly black as they get older. Everybody in Missouri just calls them black snakes, but they also call speckled king snakes black snakes sometimes, too. And many people don't realize the young ones aren't black! Prairie king snakes look slightly similar, but the dark blotches on their backs are a lot narrower front to back than they are side to side. The blotches look a little like peanuts in the shell rather than badges.

In the Meramec River system book I wrote and have never bothered to try to get published, I was originally going to do maps and mile by mile descriptions of the floatable rivers in the system. I completed a few of them. Here is one of the map pages I finished. I drew the map by compiling topo lines from the USGS National Map sections, then drawing in the shape of the river and the shape of forested areas (green) as well as roads from Google Earth Pro.

I've found two glaring mistakes in the book over the years when it comes to mileages. In the stretch of Big River from Blackwell to Washington State Park, the book has always before said that Blackwell to Highway 21 was 4.1 miles. It is actually 5.2 miles (probably was 5.1 miles in Oz Hawksley's original measurements but he made a one mile mistake in the math). The other was somewhere on the Meramec, a mistake of exactly 2 miles (again, probably a math mistake and not a measuring one). The Meramec is actually two miles longer than it shows in the book. I don't know whether those two mistakes have ever been addressed.

It was a drive by because I do all my posting on sites like this from my laptop (hate making long posts on a cell phone), and my laptop died and it took til now to get the new one up and running. You are right that many sections of the book are sadly out of date. They've made minor revisions over the years, but I think this new edition is the first one that has actually added stream sections that weren't in the previous editions. I started out using topographic maps on float trips back around 1970. I spent a decade or so collecting every single topographic map covering all the Ozark float streams. I'd pick out the map or maps that covered the section I was going to float (assuming it was a section I wasn't already very familiar with), and carried them (still do) in a waterproof envelope. If you know how to read the maps and pay attention as you progress down the river, you can easily match the landscape where you are to the landscape shown on the map and know exactly where you are. Mainly you pay attention to every spot where the river comes up against a steep hill or bluff. It swings back and forth across its valley from a bluff on one side to a bluff on the other, and you just keep track of those bluffs. If you get good at reading the topo maps, you can even tell a bluff by its height and shape on the map and in "real life". You also keep track of when you pass a flowing creek coming in and see it on the map. But I'm a map freak and always have been. I've actually drawn a lot of topo maps of float stretches myself; years ago I did it by hand from the actual topo maps. Now I assemble the map from the USGS National Map on the computer, adding notations and mileages, print it out, and laminate it to make it waterproof.

Bootleg is the uppermost public access, but there is seldom enough water from there until you reach Cedar Creek about 4 miles downstream. That's why they didn't want to go up that far for mile 0.0. And since the access at the mouth of Cedar Creek is not all that great, they didn't want to start there, either.