tjm

It's generally accepted that trout start being stressed at about 68F, but rainbow trout have survived up to 77F. Somewhere in the 68-70F area would be a don't fish cutoff for catch and release, because the released fish would be dangerously stressed. It doesn't seem that Beaver has been scheduled to generate, but has maintained the minimum 20CFS flow. It does not appear that they are scheduled to generate in the coming week either. I don't know why they aren't generating, but as you say they aren't reporting any problems. And I find the lake temperature reported as 59.9F which is still within trout comfort zone of <65F, if they dumped water over the top. Strangely, no one seems to track and report on the tailwater conditions.

Pass laws that smokers can't get medical treatment, or that they have to prepay, that sill allows them free will. Pass laws that prevent hospitals and pharma from any any payment that includes tax. money. I would vote for laws to restrict hair dye and plastic bottles as both those have gagging odors. And the stinking new shoes at department stores. We are exposed to so many hundreds of unnatural aromatics today that no one has any idea what is the cause of lung disease or cancer. Microfibers (plastic, aren't they?) have become a part of most peoples diet and I'm sure they are in the air of any big store. The studies that tie a thing to a disease start out with result wanted and fit all "facts" and "evidence" to the desired result. Fact is about 10% of all water drinkers in the USA get cancer. The CDC ought to investigate water. Smoke from organic material is a natural part of the environment that we are adapted to live with, I'd be a lot less worried about you smoking in front of me than I would be if you wore synthetic clothing and hair dye.

This. And it's not even like the people making the decisions and laws will be affected by them. They are imposing their wants on other people that have no vote nor power nor other options. It reeks of slavery. And these same people will raise a fuss over "Human Rights" in other countries.

'76, married with two kids, another on the way, USN veteran working full time and going to night school. Guess rps and I are about the same age. I have never owned nor wanted an "adult reel"; went from spinning to fly about '76, with no detours. I do recall the "casting" reels my dad owned, they were best used as paper weights or ballast. I discovered as boy that faking the line out on the ground and wrapping a bit of it around a good sized rock then throwing the rock was by far the best way to get the bait where you wanted it. They all had the cranks on the wrong side too, so that you had to swap hands to crank. Nope I never wanted one of those. I know they are better now, but I still don't want one.

Funny that I never heard of Herter until probably ten years after he bankrupted. Ward's and Sears catalogs, local hardware or the Western Auto were where any new sporting goods came from, and not much from those places. Dad"s fishing was mostly grabbing or gigging and for the trout in Idaho, a willow patch was usually handy. After reading about the man on the internet in several of these nostalgic threads on various sites, I did buy a like new Herter's fiberglass fly rod that I thought was selling cheap. Mostly from curiosity. Nicer to look at than to fish with. IIRC it came with two tips like a bamboo rod might, I should dig that out and sell it to someone. I would like to collect some of his books, as a curiosity, rather than a reference; because I doubt he had experiance in all that he wrote about as an expert. @fishinwrench is that a gopher trap?

I consider all Mo. trout, all brown trout in the USA, and all rainbow trout outside the Pacific Northwest, to be stocked, the alternative is invasive species. Seriously, how can you know without doing DNA studies? Does it really matter if the fish was stocked as fingerling or as a 15 pounder? or it's great-grandmother was the actual hatchery raised stocker? One is just as wild as the other, if you don't think so, call the tame one up and pet it. The difference in color and fight depends on time in the stream more than where it lived as an egg. If you caught and landed the fish, regardless of it's origins, it had to first take your bait/lure/fly- which means your skill at finding the feeding station and presenting the "bait" has been demonstrated, and if you land the fish, your skill at line management and fish fighting has been demonstrated. Keeping records and setting up events like this are all about encouraging new anglers, or anglers that aren't just "fishing to be fishing", to keep at it and buy more permits and tackle. Give the kid (and yourself) full credit for a job well done. I have no more than a general idea what my largest fish of any species has been and I put just as much value on the catching of stream hatched fingerling brown trout, ugly sculpin (I do wish I could say the sculpin were deliberate) , or the exceptional chub, as I do the 4+ pound game fishes that have snagged my flies. I generally only measure fish that I intend to eat, and then only for legal size, although I did weigh a really good LMB about 1980. Ate it too.

Didn't they start in prehistory by furnishing the dead guy with weapons, food and supplies that he would need in the next part of the journey? I've read that graves 100,000 years old show evidence of ritual funerals, and that the quantities of pollen in Neanderthal graves suggest they used a lot flowers at their funerals.

We have lots of herons here and I've seen one eat a bass that size a couple times. But they don't seem to reduce the numbers of bass over all. My thoughts are that the herons feed only in shallow water and that only occasionally will trout or bass be in proximity to them, their necks are only so long. At RRSP a couple years ago I saw a crow kill a trout, at a riffle, and eat it, two days in a row, and have to assume that in a small stream like that the trout would be more vulnerable. It's why wild trout are so shadow shy and movement shy.

Or someone who hates fish. Their actions did nothing to MDC, just harmed the fish.

That's how it works for real anglers. " Any species taken into actual possession, unless released unharmed immediately after being caught, shall continue to be included in the daily limit of the taker for the day when taken"

current USGS page shows no data for the 18th when the anomaly occurred with level of 709.32 https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/USGS-06922440/#dataTypeId=continuous-00065-0&period=P7D&showFieldMeasurements=true

Has to be a screwed up gage, because the USGS shows about 18' of instantaneous drop yesterday for a few hours and then jumping back up 47' in another instant. It's also always noted on those reports that the information is 'provisional'.

I did have to look that up, I knew what it was and how they can be irritating, but could not recall the nomenclature. I did spend a lot of time reading dictionaries and encyclopedias as a child and remember odd words or bits of information at times, but it's been a couple of decades since my total recall slipped away. I have always thought that those benzenes were likely more of a cancer hazard when smoking tobacco than the nicotine was, but that was just an uneducated guess, and as far as I know hasn't been studied. I've thought for a long time that my brother's lung cancer and that of his wife, was caused by the smoky old wood stoves that they always kept.

Leaves don't burn completely and the smoke carries a lot of tiny solid particles, so that one good whiff could be enough to trigger an asthma attack or worse. They also, like burning any organic matter give off lots of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. It's also possible that poison ivy or other toxic leaves were collected there and of course the leaves had some mold on them and that is what I suspect you inhaled from the symptoms described. Although raccoons are pretty nasty critters, I'm not sure they are any more of a problem than the leaves themselves. I don't know if 'coons mess in their dens or not, but I have observed den trees having six or more of them in the same hollow, and I have seen in the snow that over a four week time span that in one den only a single coon came out after the third week, went about three feet from the tree, pooped and returned to the tree; so they must either pee in the dens or be capable of holding it in for weeks. They will poop in the feed storage bin that they are eating out of. Anyone who has ever mucked out a barn knows that horses, cows, pigs, sheep, chickens ect. all poop where they sleep and I think the "most critters don't poop where they sleep" wisdom is a Disneyism to support anthropomorphism. I can't recall ever seeing a nest or den that wasn't nasty.

Most Americans would not eat meat if they ever spent a week in a kill plant and would not eat in a restaurant if they had ever seen the kitchens up close. I worked in a poultry plant for a few months mid '60s and over the years have remodeled several cafes and restaurants, my opinion, the kill plants are cleaner than the cafes, but as gross as both are , millions of people eat the stuff out them and few get sick as a result.

In the Ozarks, they are (or were) washed, then scalded and the scalding releases the skin so that it can be easily be peeled off and the nails removed. Once cleaned, the feet are boiled with the necks and then simmered until all meat is released from the bones. After meat and bones are separated, the broth can be used as very rich stock, very yellow too, or made into soup using the separated meat and whatever else you like in your chicken soup. I think there is more "chicken flavor" in a pair of feet than in two or three whole chickens without the feet. I had always assumed that the feet were used in commercially produced soups and stocks. I am surprised that they are now an export, I guess that means the "chicken flavor" broth, stock, and soups that we see in the supermarkets must be artificial.

That depends a lot on the individual agent. Some of the wildlife biologists would jump on it but the contact people for nuisance animal problems is usually the local law enforcement Agent.

Yes and no, animals not subject to that rule are migratory birds, white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk, turkeys, black bears, mountain lions, and any endangered species. Also they don't seem to consider bees as livestock, or domestic animals; so you'd have to have the Agent's permission unless it attacks people or domestic animals. If the agent won't help you with trapping and removal, electric fence is about the only legal option. An empty hive with a bait of honey surrounded by electric fence might train the bear to leave hives alone, but my hogs could smell when the wire was hot and when it wasn't and I bet a bear can too, so the hives would have to all be fenced and the fence kept hot all the time. What a PIA. I'd rather trap the critter and be done with it, but an authorization from MDC is required, perhaps someone in the regional office or Jefferson City could override the local Agent. A large cubby baited with stale pastries, pies and such guarded by foot snares (special made for bear trapping) seems the most effective means of capture.

Need a foot snare anchored to a bucket sized tree. Or a culvert trap. I'd contact MDC, because I think it'll be back until you run out of bees.

There is a Facebook group that should have reports, as people post there every day, Grand Fishing Report

Reminds me of the air injected night crawlers of the 1970s. I bet it will catch fish anywhere that fish eat of the bottom. Did you try your erection system of jig hook and inverting bead with standard mop material? I've not used mops other than those found in the park, but they seem to float.

I was thinking more along the lines of giggers taking a boat load of over 15" Neoshos because they aren't named nor regulated as a gamefish. Or spin/bait/fly fishermen keeping 6 Neosho bass because they aren't smallmouth. And since they are no longer a subspecies they can not be listed as "including", so my take on it is still that MDC simply does not recognize the change. Elk River is managed as a special regulation area but only for Smallmouth Bass, which if the species division is recognized by the state should not even exist there. But yeah, past stockings were pretty ill advised and indiscriminate. I believe Ar put several species into the Elk drainage from the White way back when.

@Al AgnewDo you think a citation would stand up in court if the fish is misidentified by species? I got the impression a few years ago that regulation was left as is because the state employees didn't know the difference, but that wasn't said in so many words. I also recall some past discussion indicating both existing in some streams, and if true that must be polluting the streams with hybrids? If a stream is hybridized, at what point is the species extinct?

They underestimated, 5 miles north of BV the shady north side of house shows just a smidge over 94F right now. But then I've seen it this hot in December too, and almost this hot in January. I recall a Christmas eve that was 90 back in the '60s and a day on a Rogers, Ar, job site that had an 87* drop from 7AM to 6PM. The weather here is always about to change.

I was remembering an older study, but when I found it, it does refer to them as a subspecies, which I think dates back to the 1940s? It wasn't until 2022 that Kim et al. elevated Micropterus dolomieu velox to species status and 2023 when that was accepted by the American Fisheries Society. My apologies for my bad memory. 4 years. However if the state recognizes them as a species, even if as recently as last week, and does not list them as game fish nor regulate them as such, don't they fall into the non-game fish status? How are they protected if not as smallmouth?