WestCentralFisher

I have been fishing or going along on trips since I was 3, so my memory is pretty foggy. I remember a few fish I caught that would have to be quite close to the beginning, but it's unclear which is actually the first. I can tell you the exact moment I got hopelessly hooked on fishing. It wasn't even a fish I caught. My brother had been watching a fishing show, and told my dad that the weeds along the bank are where the pike lived. My dad said that this was a trout lake, and he'd do better casting out deeper past the drop-off. My brother cast his spinner along the weedline anyway and caught what was probably a tiny pike, but looked huge to us. Something about the big scary teeth and the fish not being where the Grown Ups said they would be captured my imagination. The sense of mystery that moment left me with has stayed with me more or less ever since.

Yeah, for me to the sense I quantify this, 15-16 inches and I'll really want to put the fish in the net and will spend a minute or two being bummed out about it if I don't, even if it would have been my 20th fish that day. 17-18 inches and it's something of an event, and if I land it, unless I'm close to the beginning of the day, or saw a bigger one chase after it during the fight (which does occasionally happen), I'm liable to stop fishing afterwards and go for a hike or just paddle and enjoy the scenery if I'm floating. I'm probably not going to top that, and what else am I trying to prove? Anything even marginally over 18 inches is a big, big deal and likely to be the highlight of not only the trip, but maybe the season. I've caught a few over the years in the 19-20 inch size class (none larger), and I remember every one well. There is not a single one of those where there wasn't a moment I was absolutely certain I was going to lose the fish.

Got out on the upper Current today. Location will be obvious to those familiar with the area. River was just drop dead gorgeous. It felt nice, but way too hot for October. Catching was just okay. Just a few stocker rainbows and little smallmouth. A lot more great looking holding water than feeding fish. That's fine, of course. I still couldn't have asked for a nicer day. My embarrassingly low clearance car didn't much like the road in, and there may or may not be some aftermath for me on that tomorrow. Zero regrets. Just the cost of doing business.

Yeah, at this point unless it's a true giant, which I'll let you all know when it happens, it just call any notable fish "a real good one". It describes what I'm thinking well enough, and has the benefit of being impossible to actually disprove.

Today I ran into a guy on the middle Current River with a big baitcasting rod spooled with what looked like 20 pound test. He asked if I'd caught any big ones. I said no, not really, most of my smallies were in the 8-12 inch range, but I'd seen one that looked real nice, maybe about 20 inches. He said "Oh, no, I meant real big ones." Either he's a really good fisherman or he didn't know what a danged fine smallmouth bass was.

I get it. Been there. When I was in college the only smallie stream I had access to regularly during the semester was the insanely polluted one in town that in retrospect I'm very surprised had any fish, let alone the few snallies it had. I worked in the Ozarks most summers and made the absolute most of it. Good memories

Good stuff. It's always fun looking back on the season when its done, or as close as it'll get. Looks like you had some good times. There might be something to calling it a season while the fish are still readily biting, though I've never been able to pull that off. There is always that one, sad trip, usually in late October where I realize the smallmouth fishing has finally gone off for the year. Every year I know it's coming, and yet every year it still comes as kind of a shock when the fish suddenly aren't where they're supposed to be, or if they are, I can't catch them. It can sometimes literally happen overnight. Last year, it happened to me on the Gasconade. It was a beautiful fall day, but the fishing had just turned off like someone shut off the faucet. Although, by way of a counterpoint, my best day of smallmouth bass fishing last year was on the winter solstice. It was just one of those beautiful, warm winter days where I got on the water because it was too nice not to, with zero expectation of success. And then I stumbled right into what must have been an epic wintering hole. One of those days where you stop fishing after an hour because even with careful C&R you worry if you keep going, you might actually catch so many fish any level of accidental mortality might have a real effect. I'm basically incapable of calling it a year and not fishing for more than a few weeks at a time, so it's always a search for those sorts of rare days.

There are gravel bars all along the Current and Jacks. The answer to that question amounts to what kind of experience you want. A NPS/private campground will allow you relative ease and convenience but more people and noise. A gravel bar especially in October will give you all the solitude and quiet you could want, but you better have everything you need and if you tip the canoe and lose something life gets hard. I greatly prefer gravel bar camping, and usually do that if I'm with people who are at least somewhat experienced outdoorsmen, but it depends on the situation. I'm planning to go down to that area this weekend and we're staying in a campground with lots of amenities, but that's because we'll have people in our party that aren't very experienced paddlers, and I don't want to deal with the fallout if they flip a canoe and lose a water filter on day 1, or what have you. If you want a site at a NPS campground next weekend, reserve it now, and even then you're going to have to take what you can get. Since those are weekdays you ought to be able to find something

After about 6 weeks of conditions decidedly not suited to chasing wild trout, a little rain earlier in the week, a cool morning, and a day off led to me getting on a couple spring creeks today. The first creek I fished is one of the larger ones of its kind in Missouri. It has both wild trout and stocked trout in various sections, and is generally my old reliable. I started the day off in the wild trout water, and after one glance at the creek, I put away my spinning rod and got out my 3 weight. One of the more impressive mayfly hatches I've seen in Missouri was coming off, and the fish were rising like crazy. I'd love to tell you I caught trout hand over fist, but that wasn't quite true. I didn't have the right fly pattern in the box, I experienced some of what you'd have to call operational challenges, and generally did not get mixed up with Brad Pitt in A River Runs Through It. Still, small, stupid trout exist, and I caught a few of them. My own struggles aside, it was lovely. I then went a few miles downstream to another access. This isn't really wild trout water, and doesn't have blue ribbon protections, but the stocked trout were still fun to catch. It still looked awfully trouty down there (see above), but naturally there were far fewer fish. I finally left when I went back to the car to get a drink of water, and an unmarked white van pulled up. We were pretty far down a real secluded Forest Service road, and it might have been just fine (people are allowed to go fishing in unmarked white vans) but it still felt like my cue to move on. Next up was a smaller creek a few miles away. As soon as I found the creek and spring that fed it (and that took some doing, as it turned out; always a great sign), I caught little rainbows more or less effortlessly on a little Panther Martin spinner. I called it a day when I caught a "good one" which on this creek was an 8 incher. Wild trout and spring fed creeks are good for the soul.

This rainbow was seriously unhappy about being in a net. 😆 🤣

Fair enough. The difference in viewpoint just boils down to exact location. The streams in my area (north-central Missouri Ozarks) have technically risen, but in the sense that the streams that had been flowing at like 70-80 CFS are now 100-120. We got quite a bit of rain too, but it was steady rather than downpours, and the dry soil mostly just sucked it all up. Obviously very different over your way.

The rain is much needed and will be a good thing for our rivers and creeks. It also may mess with my Friday trout fishing plans, but if I'm lucky I may also catch the creek while it's on the drop but still the cloudy green color that tends to make the fish go nuts there.

The Greer gauge is useful in a very specific way, but not so much as a direct indicator. I've noticed the following pattern on the Eleven Point (Bardley) gauge after a big rain: 1. The initial rise, which hits the Bardley gauge some number of hours after the rain hits, depending on where exactly the highest rain concentration is. This rise is the result of runoff 2. The initial fall, which can take place over hours or days following the rise 3. A second, smaller, but often still pretty significant rise after the initial decline. Depending on the situation, this can be enough to turn the stream back to being muddy and blown out, or it can be barely noticeable except for maybe turning the water a darker shade of green. This can be as delayed as a few days later, and is the result of the event impacting the spring system. This is where the Greer gauge can be an advanced indicator of the river being blown out. Obviously it will eventually show on the Bardley gauge, but later. It's not unique for springs to be lagging indicators of precipitation events, but the Eleven Point is somewhat unusual in that it is so very reliant on one specific, very large spring. Rivers like the Current have similar trends, but it's muddied (some pun intended) because they are affected by many different spring systems that may behave differently. My source for this is that this concept once buggered up a would-be float trip for us on the Eleven Point. The initial crest and decline occurred, flows were fine, it was bright sunny in the whole aftermath, and then when we got there the river was muddy and blown out anyway. We ended up on the upper Jack's, which was a great outcome, but I still remember the initial disappointment keenly. I also really like looking at and analyzing river flow graphs, for some reason that I'd struggle to adequately explain.

The fishing is definitely weird right now. My home creek hasn't really been fishable for over a month now. I've been over there a few times without a fishing pole to look around, and the bass are stacked up in the few places with enough water, food, and oxygen. It's mildly concerning. They're pretty vulnerable. So I've been driving to streams with good, consistent spring flow, because with our wet spring and early summer, they seem to have decent flow. Even that has yielded pretty mixed results, and I've had a lot of slow days recently. This trip wasn't what you'd call planned. I had a few hours and really needed to get out of the house. This creek is just about an hour from home, so it's definitely worth more exploration. Just when the weather finally cools down.