tjm

when were "redband" trout invented? I never heard of them until recently.

Didn't they take up donations to help fund the new cleaning station at RRSP? I know that for the year or so the park was without a CS that the dog walkers really got upset with the stream butchers and the great flock of Black Vultures it attracted, I had hoped that eventually the buzzards would drive the dogs away, oh well. I didn't pay much attention as a mostly let-um-go angler but I think I saw signs asking for donations. At any rate if y'all want a CS at BSSP, that might be a way to get it. Get the non fishers involved and let them fund it.

Stress sours the taste of any fish, chemicals in the blood caused by panic. Of course many of us think that is how fish supposed to taste, it's why we add sauce. Fish kept alive on a stinger or in a basket will taste worse than fish killed immediately, unless one likes the taste of hydroperoxides, aldehydes and ketones. They will spoil faster if frozen too, someone has done studies that support what I was taught way back when. Hogs and cows taste better when fully bled too, same reason I suppose, although I've never seen a study on it. One can soak the blood out of red meat in salt water but that doesn't work as well with some fish.

I don't pay attention to that park but I'm pretty sure I had an automated email that the hatchery was being rebuilt, you can't do that when it's full of fish. The weeds won't hinder the excavators at all though, so don't worry about them. The best thing that could happen to any of our fisheries would be reduced catch rate, if reduced numbers of fish in the spring results in fewer anglers, the long term result will be improvement. There are at least three times more people using RRSP than it should have throughout the summer. That heavy usage/wear is reflected in every aspect of park management. an average mall parking lot is more pleasant most days.

Petroleum, petrochemical fibers and the low cost and low maintenance of plastic clothing are the primary reasons there is no fur market. I've been to trapping conventions where 98% of the trappers were dressed head to toe in synthetic fiber and blaming lack of fur market on the anti crowds. Truth is everyone that wears synthetic fiber is anti-fur and anti-agriculture. We don't have the hundreds of thousands of sheep that we had in the '50s because we don't wear wool, we don't have the hundreds of shoe factories that we had in the '60s because we don't insist on leather shoes. The Antis are bad and they will eventually ban sport fishing over catch and release, and they will eventually ban all but subsistence hunting, but it will be because we the anglers, trappers and hunters voted for their candidates and watched their movies. Quick question, how many of us wear felt hats daily? One of the biggest users of fur when I was a child and was going back for centuries. How many have leather house slippers? and all shoes are leather? All rhetorical questions, don't bother to answer. PETA for example only has about 9 million members and supporters in over 8 billion people, they simply can't be that big an influence, but everyone that wears a polyester shirt or nylon ball cap is a contributor to their mindset and agenda.

I guess I'm lucky that I never got attacked when sharing a mill pond with a group of otters and two pairs of swans, my rowed jon boat couldn't have raced either of them, and at the time I didn't have any idea how dangerous they were.

Isn't it unusual for there to have been a single otter? all that I have ever seen here or in the east were in groups.

Salmon and trout don't taste alike, but neither do brooks taste like rainbow. Most people deliberately ruin what little taste a rainbow has though, by not bleeding it immediately and by over cooking. And by filleting them, which almost guarantees overcooking.

Aren't great lakes salmon feral stockers? Naturally anadromous that can't find the salt? Kinda like Crane Creek Steel head? (they'd be steel head in the native waters)

That is why I quit other fishing back in the '70s. I still have a couple spinning rods and until my older brother passed I'd take him fishing a few times each year, but it's been 8-10 years since I last changed the line. Except for those outings and a trotline or two, I've been flyrod only about 47 years. With the fly rod, I stay busy and I never have to reel in between casts. At the end of the drift a flick of the rod starts the drift over again or a couple steps and a flick starts a new drift. I have no patience to do all that reeling just to cast back into that 5' area that has a fish nor can I wait for the fish to find a bait. The only way to bait fish is with limb or trot lines. It may be growing up mostly in the high deserts, but those places don't impress me the same way they do many others. I recall 7 hours of horse backing over the hill in a place wheels had never been to the base of a glacier to find rainbows, only to learn that they were aerial stocked, and car trips into the edge of a wilderness area to hunt similar rainbows. Places that now are probably listed as having native trout. A stream near one place we lived in Oregon that none of the locals fished in the '50s & '60s is now kinda a native trout destination. 3000+ miles and a week or three of eating camp food for one small trout is beyond my desires, and I'm impressed that y'all do it.

So would you go back again and again to those same places if each trip had netted just one fish?

My point is that we do catch trout (and sunfish) wherever we catch them because they are willing to eat artificial flies/lures or in other words they are easy. I don't find trout consistently easy either in the parks or stream bred or Idaho stocked as fingerlings and grew up in alpine environs, but they are easy enough that we go back. Of the places I've fished for trout, the parks rank as difficult as anywhere on some days and as easy as anywhere on other days, but as average I think they run a bit more on the difficult side considering the sheer numbers of fish there and how few I catch. Catfish on fly a bit more difficult (at least for me) carp on fly- never have, never a buffalo either, sucker on fly twice in 47 years. And many of the foods they eat are the same things, trout and sunfish are just easy and as a tribe we the hunters started pursuing them for that reason, over eons of bragging about our prowess, we built myths of their gameness and inteligence. As to complaints about the article it's just an article, we can't expect such to be well researched or well written. As the thread title says though it does contain much truth, though poorly presented.

The carp I've butchered was quite a bit better than catfish. I think any fish will taste better if the dark stuff goes to the cat or fertilizes tomatoes. Got to do what wife says though, right?

But most important for popularity is that we can catch them. Rather easily, 50-100 per day I hear tell. I don't think they count as "game" unless we eat them. "Sport" is a better description of catch and release. And of course if we admit that our quarry is overrated, then we admit to being poorer hunters. what fly and presentation will consistently take redhorse? are they as easy as trout?

No fish that is hard to catch will ever be really popular as a sport fish, because everyone wants actually catch fish not just hunt for them. Trout are only popular with fly fishers because they are easy to catch on flies. Suckers might eat just as many insects as trout but aren't so easy to catch on flies.

Both LDS and JW are Christians, just ask them. Your post would make more sense if you used Islamic and Jewish, they are both Semites.

Add in bus time and deduct sleep time and we will find schools have a big percentage of the child's time during 2/3 of every year. Oh and add in all hours of assigned homework to the school's influence time. Indoctrination by professional teachers is also likely to be more effective than that done by untrained amateur parents stumbling their way through raising kids with no previous experience.

@ollie yeah, I remember that at the time I thought the ordnance would be unenforceable given Court decisions in NY and other states. The equal rights and sex discrimination rulings back then would have required that it apply to men as well as women. I'll bet that there has never been a prosecution under that ordnance and I believe that is the only non-emergency County ordnance we have. Sheriff's wife, I knew it was some politician's wife but couldn't recall which one. I haven't spent much time on the river for a few years, but when I was last at Mt Shira and at Cowskin, both were open latrine areas. You needed gum boots to walk across the parking lots, with clothing used for toilet paper and left there. I thought about that when reading Brian's rant on Taneycomo.

Elk has been overfull of nasty people for at least twenty years, although they do seem to fit more in every year. 10-15 years ago people living on the Elk or Big Sugar one got into it with the topless crowd to the point that law was called, fights erupted, arrests made, and and a County ordinance prohibiting females being topless was passed. I'm not sure that ordinance gets enforced, but I believe it is still in effect. Fact is NWA is overpopulated and Elk River attracts their worst.

Have you got any specific ideas about how to fix the problem? Perhaps get Branson Police Department involved? several times per day? Highway Patrol? Sometimes it's hard to know the difference between what can be changed and what must be accepted, I can't see any way that most of us can change that situation.

and a population of 13,000? that's an average of 24,657 foreigners per day or about twice the population. all wanting to throw something away. I'm only surprised that you can still find the river/lake under all the plastic straws and gum wrappers. I'd help you pick stuff up and cuss the miscreants if I was close enough to be able to fish there, but given the distance and high quality roads of the region I can reach three other states easier than I can get there. Phil says you are lucky to have that kind of fishing every day and he may be right, since he has it too. Was Gordon Proctor a somebody that we should all know? The name rings no bells for me?

RR is a spring and stays about the same ~57F temperature year round, it'd be okay to wet wade in winter. I've wet waded the Elk and it's tribs in Dec. numerous times when coon hunting. On the other hand wading a glacier fed stream (~45F, I think) in Idaho on a hot August day numbed my feet and deep chilled my legs very quickly. I don't know about Taneycomo's wading temperatures (all pond fishermen take surface readings- so that's the only info out there) but, I'd sure bring waders and I'd probably have long johns on too if the dam discharge is as cold as 50F. If you get there and find the water warm, you don't have to wear the waders.

Gross, yes. But it is apparently acceptable, at least in that community; none of those people were either assaulted by the onlookers nor arrested by the police. "Yeah this is the way it is" i s acceptance.

All part of the programing, if we bash (or allow others to bash) the religions that establish the morals, we have to expect the morals to be abandoned with the religion. "Don't Judge" "everyone's okay" "their lives matter more than ours" "ect" ect"

Interesting on the backing thing. In stream fishing I've rarely had a fish take more than say 20-30' of line before it ran out of water and had to turn back. Even in the big millponds I used to fish the runs were seldom longer than that. The line drag against the water seemed to tire them quickly. But my fish have all been <5#, I think, and mostly less than 3#. Never have had the opportunity to take Hybrids or even sand bass. To me the backing has always been a means of increasing arbor size. Many if not most blanks were available as one piece in the fiberglass heyday, as far as I know they were all made as one piece with the exception of the Fenwick Ferralites, and even Fenwick yellow blanks of the time were one piece. The rod builder then had the option to cut the blank into as many sections as wanted and ferrules fitted as needed. Also in one piece blanks many builders cut some off the butt end prior to cutting the sections. So I could buy a 9' 6wt blank and cut the butt to make it a 7' 6wt. then cut and ferrule it to be a 3 piece rod. The modern short mandrel, no ferrule, tip over butt joint blanks take away most options; so that making a home built rod is almost identical to the factory units. I think many of the 1960s blanks industry wide were rolled in the 'natural' almost white fiberglass color and then dip painted to the desired marketing colors, the paint also hid some cosmetic flaws from the rolling process. But some processes allowed coloring of the resins or different resins were used. I never investigated the Lamiglas for paint, but have thought the "Honey" color to be part of the resin, as was the earlier "tobacco brown" or Trevano brown of Hexcel origins. The yellow tone I'm seeing on the Sears rod might be in my monitor settings for all that I know, colors are always hard to define. Given Cream/off white and a closer look at the {decal?) labeling, the rod might likely be a Shakespeare trade rod, in which case I'd guess it to like an 8+wt line better.