tjm

So if any kid can catch spotted bass off any boat dock using worms, why do real fishermen need boats and electronics to catch them? Why do people pay guides to help them catch these worm hungry boat dock fish?

Doesn't Ar. already have a 12" limit?

I just have difficulty believing that any one wants to eat them. I might get interested in killing them for the bounty that you talk about, where does one sign up for that?

Seriously, are they paying a bounty? have they said don't release any spotted bass? How so? if the guides are currently taking 30-40 >15" spotted bass per day and the clients release those, why would the same clients want to keep the small ones? I did not get that message from the MDC report. Why don't you and the other guides gather evidence of the large spotted bass numbers there, time dated photos of those 30+ over 15"ers on consecutive days for as many days as you can and petition the Commission for a restoration of the 15" limit? perhaps organize a few tourneys where only spotted bass over 15" count and report the totals to the Commission? If you can show scientific/real evidence that they have made a mistake, and accompany it with a petition having a hundred or a thousand signatures asserting the numbers of over 15" spotted bass taken, I'd bet they will reinstate the 15" limit. You obviously have evidence that they missed, so show it them.

@kjackson when I get around to tying again, I'll modify Marty's pattern by using a 3366 hook and bead chain to invert it, I think both are available at Walmart, and while I don't have any zonker strips, I do have a partial pine squirrel skin or two and a razor blade. Probably try a yellow marker to give that an olive tint. The shine in the Needloft yarn is the 100% nylon same as the shine in Antron was and I sometimes use Dazzle Aire yarn (60% Creslan 40% nylon); I'm not sure color matters much when blending into a dubbing for a subtle shine, white, yellow or pastel shades seem to have more shine, and I only worry about color when using it as a shuck. Nylon mixed into the dubbing as I intend won't have the show and hide effect that he gets with the sparkly stuff hidden and revealed by the pectorals when stripped. I won't be copying his pattern so much as copying his idea and adapting it to materials that I have.

can you explain that? Is it because people are currently eating lots of the over 15"ers and with length lowered they will not only eat all the existing big fish but also eat all the ones that are between 12" and 15"?

I use a coffee grinder for blending and add pieces of Needloft Plastic Canvas Yarn for extra sparkle. all my dubbing furs and squirrel are undyed natural though so when I get around to copying your fly it will be in shades of gray.

It was your swap post on this forum that I was looking for and there you said " The head/pectoral fin area and body behind is olive chartreuse UV (?) dyed." but not what was dyed, however after rereading it, I think that was answered earlier as " pine squirrel strips and peeled the face and substandard strips for the dubbing used." In the pictures it looks almost like a synthetic. I did think it funny that others had already used the "Grinch" name. Been a long time since I read Dr. Seuss and I wasn't aware that his works were still popular.

videos didn't work for me. Those are nice little sculpins. One day in trying to find where you tied those for the swap, I searched "grinch fly pattern" and found these https://www.johnkreft.com/streamer-fly-patterns/the-grinch/?sfw=pass1771709325 and https://coloradoflysupply.co/products/grinch-bugger Neither of which was what I wanted, https://forums.ozarkanglers.com/topic/79023-anyone-bored/?page=3#findComment-726262 and that didn't answer my question, of what is the material used for the pectorals?

It seems 50 years of leaning on MDC's part and more recent surveys have disproved it at this point. Misidentifaction is always a valid concern. Some people can't tell carp from suckers, nor brown trout from rainbows. Some giggers can't tell bass from suckers. But those who practice deliberate ignorance for the sake of eating a small bass probably already practice some means poaching. Unenforced laws and regulations are in the end just suggestions. If the regulations are enforced, the wardens won't have a problem with identification and if the regulations are not enforced, they don't matter, do they?

Many other forums have had bots or AI attacks over the past several months, some to the point of server overload, and now require verification that I am human before allowing access, most often by/through Cloudflare, one explanation was that AI was stealing all the posted information for their own use. IDK

No lazy person keeps fish that have to toted around, then cleaned, and the resulting mess cleaned up and disposed of, then the fish has to made table ready; trust me a lazy person simply turns the fish loose. As to the tourneys, they do not practice C&R, for the most part, they take, possess, haul, weigh and dump. If the fish survives, it will be lost and disoriented in a strange place. Catch and release means released immediately, no possession and therefore no limits. I believe that tourneys probably do more damage to the bass population than the meat eaters do, but since the the tourneys are usually size oriented and the spots apparently don't get so big there, the tourneys probably don't hurt the spotted bass population as much as they do the other bass. Take away the money competitions and all fisheries would do better. That won't happen, even if the bass fishery becomes so bad that the contests have to be supported by stocking. I have released a lot of sunfish, rock bass and crappie over the years, even a catfish or two, and a few suckers, as well as trout and bass. It's how I know what a lazy fisherman does.

Fishermen seem to fall into two or three categories and I have no idea of what percentage of each, there are the C&R type, the kill and eat them all poacher type, and the follow the rules and limits type, maybe other types too. The laws are pretty much useless if unenforced and I don't often see them being enforced, but they do provide some guidance for the law abiding, and of course laws never have applied to the poachers.

No personal experience, but I am not surprised at that.

Perhaps. All the meat fishermen that I have known went for goggle eye, crappie, cats and suckers except a couple that liked white bass and some back east that liked carp. I've only known a few people that ate black bass. But I don't know many fishermen, the ones I see on the creeks seem to be all C&R.

What percentage of TR bass anglers actually keep the fish? My first reaction was that the change will make very little difference, only those anglers that specifically want to eat spotted bass will be affected, and they are still limited by number in possession. It's been years since I kept a bass, but like any other fish, I'd prefer to eat the smaller, younger fish in hope/belief that they have accumulated less poisons. If the length was 11" I might be more interested in eating bass, but that growth from 11 to 12 seems to take longer time than the growth from 6 to 11.

I think this is the only forum that I've been on that didn't have a counter showing numbers of visitors online currently and total for the past 24 hours. I just did a bit of web search and one of the site watcher websites has this in the FAQ As to ads, my version of Firefox doesn't show ads on most websites, I've never seen any here. It must contain an ad blocker.

It seems that is what the fisheries people believe, it seems to be their reasoning for lowering the length limits.

It does not change the laws if you think we have too many deer, just like it does not change the laws if those people thought we had too many bass. But it does illustrate the mindset of most poachers. "plenty of bass in the creek, we 'll just take about twenty" "nobody will miss just one illegal deer"

I read something years ago, when researching the black duck, that indicated mallards mix with many other wild duck species at much higher rates than than one in a million. Also read that all domestic ducks are mallard descendants, largely because of this tendency. Wood ducks would be less prone to such interbreeding only because of the nesting habits, but when feeding on the same pond, a male mallard will do his best to overcome that hindrance.

But like the Reduced Speed in small towns, you'd need to be at that minimum speed before entering the no wake zone?

Was that before so many tournaments were held?

Over the past seven decades I've seen hundreds of white Americans abusing game and fish laws and I've seen dozens of immigrants abusing fish laws. The immigrants are more likely to be in groups (most of the world is more social than USA) while the Americans will be alone or in pairs and the Americans are more likely to abuse game laws as well fish laws, I don't think that I've ever known of immigrants poaching deer. Even members of this forum have talked about breaking rules themselves, for example culling fish when not in a legal tournament. I see real Ozarkians culling trout almost every time I go to the Park and so many Ozarkians that can not tell a rainbow trout from a brown trout on the streams where they have different regulations. During all those deer seasons, I've seen hundreds of partially butchered deer carcasses where good old boys took the best cuts for "camp meat" and didn't "waste" a tag on it. How many "native Missourians" have killed a snake? Facts are poachers poach, don't matter where their family came from. And it doesn't matter what language they speak, they all aware that not only are the agents too few, but that the game fish laws carry no real punishment. If a single violation carried an automatic jail term, billybob might be more apt to comply.

I have the kindle app on my note8 phone, prior I had it on a tablet, along with some other reader apps. The phone is easier to hold while reading for hours and it is easier to carry in a pocket when going to and fro. If I fall asleep reading, the phone doesn't smack my nose as hard as the tablet did. Tablet sized devices are more like hardback books and phone sized devices are more like paperbacks.

The campground would be a DNR project.