tjm

Seriously, do some real and reasoned presentation illustrating your goals and a fully reasoned and supported defense of your position and take it to the universities that pass out those Biology Masters degrees and sell it to a couple of them.

We don't need to have more regulations, we don't need to fund a study of carp; let the grad students get grants and do thesis studies. Buffalo ain't carp, buffalo are native, buffalo and redhorse may be worthy of tax dollars spent on studies. Our crawdads definitely deserve money/study/fixing more and sooner than invasives of any color. Are some species of crawdads already lost? Are many of them endangered? Probably. What they do in germany or Japan or Minnesota does not have any application or bearing on what is good in Ozark waters. Carp rooting the bottom of high gradient streams may well be the primary factor in loss of crustaceans and the movement of gravel into the deep 'holes'.

Good news is that yesterday I saw a large crawdad, maybe 9" wing span. First in a long time.

I have one of the many dry waterways on my place, lots of run off after 6"+ rain of course, but dry looking most all the time; thing is there is water moving under the gravel on most of these ditches and streams all the time. There is some substrate that holds water from going deeper into the earth and it moves the gravel ever so slightly all the time, I know a branch that flows at both ends and has a half mile of dry gravel between. Creeks I'm familiar with seem to all be underlayed with stone with the gravel over it; often the gravel is almost floating on water that moves through it. In effect the gravel flows. Digging/dredging accelerates the flow, as an example, a neighbor excavated a 1/4 mile of the dry ditch and straightened it some what many years ago; over the next several months my portion of the ditch became noticeably deeper even with no rains that caused runoff. I saw a mining operation set in one spot for about 40 years that never ran short of new gravel. I'm sure it would still be there if the divorce had not ended in selling off the equipment and land. Dams tend to stabilize the stream of gravel above them, I think, by stopping or slowing the flow of gravel as well as by slowing the runoff during floods. An observation on the erosion of the hills causing the gravel in the creek, My hill gravel is all sharp and is mostly chert of some sort and all most creek gravel is well rounded soft rock. I have never found a sea shell fossil in any of the hill rock, but, see many "scallop" fossils in the ditch rocks. All the dry ditches hereabouts are several feet deeper than they were even 30 years ago. The one at my house is no wider than it was 50 years ago but is at least 4' deeper than it was then. These bottoms are also loaded with 'sharp gravel' to the extent that some fields would look like solid gravel after being plowed, back in the days when they still farmed it.

Didn't I read that carp eat their own eggs and larvae to the point of being self regulating? I have wondered if they consumed all the mussels and crayfish babies, maybe? Rainbow trout are just as non native as the carp ain't they? Do carp successfully spawn in the Ozark streams with the fast flow and little vegetation?

Whatever happened to this great idea?

I'm not sure that the gravel infill either helps or harms over the long term, it has been happening a long long time, that's part of the karst geology as I understand it; most of the gravel is sucked into the streams from hilltop sink holes, isn't it? There are sink holes where there were none fifty years ago and more numerous holes where they were back when, do the hundreds of earth tremors that we experience each year have something to do with this? I own about a quarter mile of limestone bluff and the leaching of minerals/formation of stalactites etc. is visually obvious over time, how does this chemically affect the streams? When I look at a creek and see no mounds of mussel shells, no hellgrammites , no numbers of crayfish I don't expect to see numbers of large fish and I don't believe catch and release will improve the food base. I suspect that over a long period the catch and release and the size limits won't make a real difference. During the last sixty, or perhaps the last thirty, years (or maybe this is a thousand year trend) there has been some change in the water chemistry that is harming the life forms? Frogs, there are more in my yard and field than on the creek and I've not heard a bull frog in decades. So is it unnatural that selection that predators are adapting to a less bountiful prey base?

Not enough access for new Americans to do any harm, city parks and the few MDC access points don't have much effect on the streams as whole, mostly they only benefit the folks wealthy enough to go boating. No public access on Little Sugar. But golf grass isn't the only source of nutrient, there is a zillion acres of fescue that was not here at all before 1970. In your search for bait did you see many madtoms or sculpin? I don't do as much as I once did but my limited searches show them scarce also.

I believe the crawdad loss is for reasons other than rocks and gravel, saw some odd looking crayfish in the '90s for a few years and then near none since. I suspect exotics took over then eventually died out, no proof. Think Indian Creek still holds good numbers of crawdads, it did a few years ago. It doesn't flow from Ar or a golf course either and that may make a difference. My point was, is there evidence that those streams can support a great number of larger fish? Won't the predators outnumber the prey at some point? I have fished, waded, swam in the two sugar creeks since the mid '50s and I see probably ten times fewer fishermen on the whole drainage than there were back when. More floaters on the Elk/Cowskin, but really few fishers and they mostly go back where they came from after the weekend, imo, any loss of fish quality/size / quantity is unrelated to the consumption. I grew up with stories of seining those streams with hog wire and two teams of horses, hauling a wagon load of fish at a time; the old ones didn't fish for sport. Heard anecdotes of hand catching cats over fifty pounds out of those creeks too. It may be our modern methods keep us from seeing the real big fish or that mans desire for green grass is killing the streams' historic character.

Did anyone keep records of the prey species available to stream predators in the 19th or 20th centuries, when the fish reportedly grew so large? My mind tells me that there were lots more crawdads in the Elk River tributaries in the '50s than there are now, I believe there were lots more crawdads in the '80s than there are now. Where as a small boy I caught scads of crawdads and even my kids caught some, I don't recall seeing any in several years. I'm sure there are still some there, but so few that they aren't usually seen.

See, they kept turning the little ones loose and ate (or mounted) all the big gene pool. It's easy to see why all we got now is fiddlers, that is all our predecessors let go. Blame Mark Twain and his buddies for all the small fish left nowadays. Never read about the guy guy that caught 100# plus fish and turned it loose to reproduce, nope they mounted all them genetics.

I've always said that limits should be set to a maximum size to keep. Say no keeper small mouth over 15" or whatever. The keeping of the biggest fish hurts in a couple ways. We are removing both the eligible brood stock and the genetics required to grow that big. Keeping only small fish removes the runt genes and utilizes fish that would normally be eaten by the lunkers that some one now has mounted on a wall, releasing small fish only increases the probability that the small fish genes will be passed on. Once was a 4 1/4# brown in my little creek that over a three year time I caught and released over fifty times, one day I watched as a fellow caught her and and kept her on a stringer in hot sunshine where she was looking unfit to eat by the time he left the area a few hours later. The same group threw back several of those 11 1/2" fish that will never get any bigger than 11 1/2" due to genetics. All according to law, but she will never spawn again. My thoughts are that trophy fishermen deserve to ruin our fisheries, they spend the big bucks to so, and that the agencies involved in setting size limits want smaller fish.

I thought walleye were nonnative, I have read that some place in the past?

And the gravel guards really work? I've looked at those in the last couple years and been skeptical that they would stay down when the gravel runs over shoe top deep. I never liked having to deal with all the hassle of putting on and taking off multiple pieces two or three times a day either when jumping from one spot to another, either. Cabelas lists a lot of different options in the catalog but the store near me sure don't stock much. How do those booty foots go by shoe size are the feet stretchy or do you wad the extra up? Guess I need to make a point to look closer at them, mostly been just looking for a boot foot that would fit me half way. Currently in pvc and oversized sneakers, but that is meant to be temporary.

So, how do you keep the sand and pea stone out of those separate boots? I haven't bought new chest waders since about the time Simms started in business, but back in my younger days I surely preferred boot foots and canvass. Opened this thread because I'm getting tired of wet wading and thought I'd look at what there is out there these days.