WestCentralFisher

Fair, I suppose 😆. I tend to be of the opinion that any halfway decent fishing story needs room to breathe and is best not rushed. If this qualifies as one of those is an entirely open question, however.

Yup.

I don't have much to add to this discussion, but a number of years ago, I went on a long, winding trip out west, largely on the border of Montana and Wyoming. Montana's access laws are quite permissive. While I'm sure there's places where following the law to the letter might get you in a tight spot, it's fairly well acknowledged, and I never ran into any issues. But when I crossed into Wyoming, I had to actively remind myself of where I was. Their access laws are quite restrictive. And the landowners seem to on average be pretty serious about it. This came into focus one time on a pretty brook trout stream in the north-central part of the state. A lot of the stream was on forest service ground, but the campground host had warned us not to wade too far down, because the adjacent landowners did not like people fishing on their property. OK, fine. It was marked well enough, there was plenty to fish upstream, no problem. I had no intention of going past the marker. It only got weird once. I was fishing the last good pool above the property line. I sort of sensed some movement downstream on the hill above the creek, which you're on guard for, because this place is filled to the brim with large animals that can hurt you. But I never made out what it was, if anything. Then I got out of the water and started heading towards camp. As soon as I get out, there's a guy standing on the bank, startling the living hell out of me. He said "Some good fish you caught there. That last one was especially nice." I'd been releasing the fish, so that was strange. After talking a bit, he basically admitted he'd been perched on the hillside watching me the whole time to see if I'd cross the line. I sort of got the sense he was disappointed that I had not.

Awesome. I think Westslope cutties are my favorite fish. They're exactly as gorgeous as the places in which they live.

Honestly, not all that different than what the vet did. He gave him a steroid, some cream that is usually used on cattle to draw toxins from wounds, and told us he had no idea if any if that would work or if the dog eould survive, but that was the best he could do. Anti-venom is generally not real available and you wouldn't use it on a dog anyway. He did pull through, though he never seemed 100% the same after, had a lifelong limp, and he died 5 years later at only 7 years old. I always wonder if the experience did kill him, just really slowly. He was a real good dog, though.

I hike a lot in a place where timber rattlers are pretty common. FWIW, I've come real close to accidentally stepping on them a few times, and I've not been struck at. Definitely been rattled at, but then that's probably why I didn't actually step on them. I view them similarly to black bears. When they're around in any significant numbers, you should take precautions (I always wear my tall leather boots there) but they'll try at least as hard to avoid any aggressive interaction as you will most times. I really think the rattle is a non-aggressive action intended to prevent a situation where a strike is necessary. Now, if you have dogs with you, look out. They'll sometimes ignore the rattle and try to catch the snake, and get bitten in the process. And then sometimes you have to carry your large dog 4 miles out to the truck, call a rural emergency vet, pay a whole lot of money, and your dog will be in a leg cast for awhile. Don't ask me how I know this.

I'm not an administrator, but this site isn't gonna ask you for a credit card number. This is 100% some kind of scam. Do not give whoever it is your credit card info

Yeah, now that I think about it, one of the stream systems I was thinking of does feed in below the dam. I do know one other (indirect) LOZ feeder with a good population, but I was only given one-off permission to fish there, and to my knowledge there is no public access. Nice little creek, though.

I have a bit of a thing for goggle-eye, not because they're especially fun to catch (at least after the first couple seconds where they try to make you think you hooked a 15 pound flathead catfish) or because I like to eat them, but because in almost all cases in my experience, the presence of a decent population of them in Missouri indicates a relatively high quality Ozark stream. I've caught lots of smallmouth bass in some streams that had some serious water quality issues, or were muddy most of the year, etc, but I've never really caught goggle-eye in those streams, or if I did, there weren't very many. Their distribution is also weirdly random even outside of that. For example, the Big Niangua is one of the better fisheries for them I've encountered, but I've never caught one just one watershed over in the Little Niangua, which otherwise seems to have excellent habitat. There are goggle eye below Tunnel Dam on Big Niangua (the lowest barrier to fish migration) and a number of other LOZ tributaries in reasonable proximity. So they have the habitat and the means to get there, but they just don't live there for some unknown reason. Or at least if they do, I haven't found them. These are the sort of little things that fascinate me more than they should as a fisherman.

Last couple photos

Some photos of the upper Big Piney.

Finally got back home. In the final accounting, we ended up fishing two wild trout creeks, the Current River in about 5 different places, and the upper Big Piney. The creeks had the easiest fishing. The most impressive looking stretch of water we fished was the white ribbon section of the Current (and technically a bit below, but the trout do not seem to have any respect at all for such boundaries, the scoundrels). I wouldn't say this area was loaded with trout by any means, but there were a few in there, and its a big, broad shouldered river that isn't easy to wade. It's much more similar to the Eleven Point than the Current around Baptist Camp. I know it's ironic, because that's the stock truck section, but the trout there just seem to fight harder and there aren't trout absolutely everywhere, so there's some mystery. But not too much mystery. Most of the really fishy looking runs yielded trout. I did try to fish for smallmouth, but no dice. I did see one good one around Akers. Yesterday evening, my Dad wanted to hit the Big Piney. We went to a couple accesses on the upper portion near Houston/Licking thinking it might be small and wadeable. We found it much too high to wade and somewhere between murky and outright muddy. That said, fishing off the bank, we did well enough. The smallmouth fought so hard. I had an honest break off on 8 pound test. The smallie was maybe 3 pounds at the most, but between its bulldog style of fighting, the strong current, and a minor blunder on my part, it was enough. But the smallmouth and (lone) largemouth we did catch were fun, hard fighting, and pretty. While the water was muddy this time, both places we fished had big, imposing bluffs and were otherwise gorgeous. Floating that stretch in the near future is now a major priority.

Thanks. We had a great time together today. No regrets. The trip ended up awesome anyway. Fished three great rivers, caught loads of trout and a few smallmouth bass, and spent a lot of great time together. I don't imagine I will forget it. Today's highlight was losing my footing at Akers Ferry while fighting a fat 16 inch rainbow. I ended up full on swimming, but after I regained my footing, I still landed the fish. A kid working for one of the canoe rentals was observing on the bank and laughing hysterically the whole time, which I suppose is pretty fair.

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For the better part of 20 years, my dad and I have been planning to float and fish a certain famous trout river in southern Missouri, and it just hasn't worked out each time for various reasons. This was going to be the year. We planned a multi-day float trip in minute detail, made the arrangements, and while weather forecasts and water flow weren't perfect, they seemed just good enough that it wasn't totally reckless to proceed. Yesterday, I packed all my gear, got in the car, and started the long drive down. I said to myself, this is finally going to happen. And then the phone rang. It was my Dad. A doctor's appointment he badly needed for an ongoing knee issue unexpectedly became available on Friday morning, right in the middle of the trip. A small, selfish part of me wanted to be annoyed, but no. It was the sort of thing that can possibly keep him as my fishing buddy a lot longer. You don't pass on that. He was sick about it, though. I quickly suggested we cancel the float, but not the trip. There is a little campground on a little creek that has some trout in it only an hour and a half away. If we went there instead, we could fish to our heart's content for a couple days, he could go back for his appointment, and then he could rejoin me at camp after he was done for another day of fishing and/or camp sitting. A bit hectic, but he was relieved I didn't want to cancel. For various reasons we both really needed to go fishing. In truth, it was hard to be upset. This creek is an old friend, and while I didn't know how it would fish in July, I was eager to spend a few days on it. The worst that could happen is a bad skunk in a pretty, familiar place. It would take a lot more than that to upset me more than momentarily. And the creek greeted me like the old friend it was. My second cast with a little Panther Martin spinner yielded the first trout. About 10 minutes later, I caught the first good one. One thing I quickly remembered is that while smallmouth are probably the hardest fighting fish in the Ozarks, no fish makes all hell break loss faster than any wild rainbow trout over about 5 inches. A half dozen acrobatic jumps and close calls later, I brought an 11 inch rainbow to hand. I swear, the wild ones might as well just be a different species. A 2 pounder at Montauk wouldn't put up the same fight. I can say that with some authority, because this morning, after catching a few more pre-breakfast wild rainbows, we made our way to the Current River valley. We caught a few much larger, much paler fish with ease at Montauk, then went down to the blue ribbon area. I always joke that the best way to catch trout on a spinning rod down there is to just pretend they're smallmouth bass. Just cast a Rebel Craw to all the usual haunts and you'll hook fish. Today was no different, though losing the best one right the net did cast a pall. I am pretty sure an errant stroke with the net actually popped the lure out, which didn't help. But that's OK, because the universe got me back this evening on the little creek near camp. After a slow evening, I finally hooked a real good one, by which I mean a real, honest to goodness footlong wild rainbow. After a chaotic fight, I netted this one successfully. The hook of the spinner popped out, but this time the fish was inside the net. It feels like a very important distinction, though since both fish would have been released anyway, it's probably fair to ask why. Now I'm sitting around camp by myself, until my dad returns tomorrow afternoon. In the morning, I may just fish the creek, or go explore in the national forest. It's hard to say, but I'm absolutely certain I'm glad we didn't cancel the trip.

Well, bags are packed, tackle boxes are filled out, and at around 1200 CFS based on what I can gather, flows are a bit high but runnable. Hopefully that will turn out to be correct. We settled on Hammond Camp to just slightly above Dawt Mill in a couple days. Slightly more distance and slightly less time than we'd prefer, but so it goes. After some recent weather forecasts, it really looked like the North Fork trip was going to get postponed AGAIN, but things seem to have settled out. To say the least, I'm pretty excited to give this river a shot. I expect to be able to report something interesting. We will see if that includes any of the famously challenging wild rainbows.

There are plenty of smallmouth in Missouri places you'd absolutely never expect. If there is a cool, clear stream with some semi-consistent spring flow (and yes, those exist north of the Missouri River), it's at least worth checking into. They may be concentrated in short stretches, and the best water amounts to a few bluff holes, but such places exist. Those fisheries tend to be really vulnerable due to generally pretty limited habitat. The types of places that you should think twice before telling even family about. In finding these places, think about source populations. If a stream is a MO trib on the north side, think about what other streams flow in relatively nearby from the south. If any of those are smallmouth streams, and the stream you're looking at appears to have decent habitat, there is a good chance they're in there somewhere. In NE MO, your source is gonna be the upper Mississippi. It's not all that far north of Missouri that the Mississippi has fishable smallmouth populations. There aren't really any such source populations in NW Missouri. If smallmouth exist up that way, I've yet to find them.

I don't have any real informed opinion on these systems, but it definitely goes to show how different people's mindsets are about fishing and what the point of it is. I'm pretty dead serious about fishing, to the point where I start to get restless this time of year if 4-5 days go by without doing it. But it's always been clear to me that at it's core, it's just a really excellent excuse to spend lots of time outside in pretty places and to decompress from all the usual silliness of life. I don't really see how I'd do that looking at a screen all day. Of course, we all have our things. The other day, I went for a long hike in a really pretty place, and it occurred to me when I was done that I was not anywhere near as relaxed or calm as I ought to be. Why? Because I was looking at a mapping app (OnX) on my phone half the time. It was a new place, and it's not the worst idea to have a decent idea where I'm going, but it occurred to me that a product that was supposed to enhance my ability to enjoy myself in the outdoors was actively hindering my ability to do so. Next time, I'm looking at the map once before I leave, marking my vehicle, and then only looking again if things start to really go sideways. It's really none of my business, but I do have to wonder how often people using all this stuff come back from a day of fishing just as wound up as when they started, and wonder why that is. I also wonder how much worse a bad skunk would feel if you could see all the fish you weren't catching on your TV. I imagine it would be kinda like a bad day trout fishing on a really glassy spring creek. But at least in that situation, you're looking at a pretty creek while not catching fish, rather than the TV.

Thanks. I am surprised truthfully. I have been fishing in Missouri for a long time and hadn't even been aware of any of my new home waters as smallmouth streams. Lots of people wade and play in them, but I really do think they're almost completely under the radar as places to fish, period. I am sure they get fished, but I have yet to actually see anyone else with a fishing pole. Hence the extreme vagueness on where they are😆

That's a good point. I think the reason why I'm noticing/complaining about it now is because I recently moved, and suddenly the nearest decent smallmouth stream is 12 miles down the road instead of like 80. And there are a couple more pretty good ones within 20 or so miles. So I've been on the water at least for an hour or two after work ~4 days a week. In the last month, I've probably caught more smallmouth bass than I did in all of 2024. Which is an excellent problem to have! But naturally, I'm going through a lot more tackle.

I caught the best smallie of the day yesterday 6 feet in front of my boots right by a bridge where any fisherman who drove past the creek would cast first. I also spooked an even bigger one from like 40 feet away in more secluded and presumably less pressured water. It swam off like it was being actively chased by a shark. No one wants to admit that there is a high degree of only loosely explainable randomness in this stuff, but there just is. Maybe the hole where the second smallie was has a heron or snapping turtle that frequents it, so it's extra cautious. You can't really know these things unless it's a creek you fish a ton. And even then it can be fuzzy.

Incredibly tragic and so many heartbreaking stories. And as someone who camps along rivers a lot, really scary. With gravel bar camping especially, flash flooding has always been on mind, but I don't think my current protocols would have been sufficient to save our lives in this scenario. My plan whenever I set up camp is to evaluate the terrain, make sure I am not in a super wide bottomland or even worse below bluffs. I identify a route to high ground and am ready to execute. And make sure I know exactly where my headlamp is when I turn in for the night. This has come up a few times in heavy rain and minor flash flood events. In all but one, it was a better safe than sorry type deal. Once, the river did overtake our camp, and we lost some gear. We were long gone by then, and got our canoes and kayaks out as well, but it was spooky enough to leave an impression. I know many on here likely have a similar or worse story. This type of plan will be enough to keep you alive more often than not in a typical or even relatively major event. But the Guadalupe came up an incomprehensible 25-30 feet in an hour. It was essentially an inland tsunami. If we were on a gravel bar, and waited until we detected water, I find it unlikely that we would have gotten out alive. Further, while increasingly urgent warnings did issue around 1 am, it sounds like earlier in the day, forecasts were only minimally concerning, the types of conditions so many times all of us have looked at and said "eh, it'll probably be fine." If you're lucky, maybe you hear the rain pouring and run up the hill just in case. But maybe the worst of it is up the watershed, and you either don't wake up until it's too late, or the rain you do hear isn't enough to concern you. So what would have probably saved me? A portable, battery operated emergency weather radio, is about all I can think of. With hours of lead up, I could have almost definitely evacuated in time, most likely with most of my gear. I can't really think of anything else that would be reliably life-saving in this scenario. I will be purchasing one and bringing it with me on all future overnight trips. The geography in Texas hill country is obviously different, but the very narrow river valleys and steep slopes in many of our most popular float streams make these risks very real. If you float or camp this needs to be an incredibly tragic wake up call, because I fear a similar tragedy could happen here.

I would try further down on the Little Piney. Milldam hollow on down. The Bourbeuse can be rewarding, but the smallies are scattered and sometimes relatively hard to locate, so it would be low on my list until you get more in the hang of things. Water clarity is also an added challenge. Lots of spotted bass, though.

The lures you described are fine starting points, and I'm surprised you're not having at least occasional success. Are you fishing bigger rivers like the middle Meramec regularly? Those can be tough from a walk and wade perspective, especially in a high water year like this one. Any place you can wade easily probably gets hammered. Smaller streams are usually easier in terms of catching at least a few fish. The far upper parts of the Meramec (above Maramec Spring), the upper Huzzah and Courtois above where most of the canoe rentals put in, the far upper Big Piney, and lower Little Piney are all decent wade streams. Or a million others. Just find a stretch of river where you can't find any rentals operating. You won't find nearly as many in the riffles as you would trout fishing on the streams you describe, but the oxygenated water just below them is good. Any cut banks, logs, boulders, or cover with any amount of current is likely to be good. The frog water, less so, but most smallie streams have a few largemouth too, and they'll often be in those areas. I grew up trout fishing on rivers, and lake fishing for largemouth. I only became a halfway decent smallmouth fisherman when I realized your techniques need to be halfway between the two. You generally want good or at least perceptible current, and you still want to target the foam lines, but fishing around cover is still really important. And there is a giant brush pile in a deep, slow hole, you still want to take some casts there, even if there isn't much current to speak of. Finally, sight fishing is not usually the most productive method. It can certainly work, but quite often by the time I am close enough to see them well enough to target them, they see me too, and the jig is up. I'm usually trying to work upstream and target fish before they have a good opportunity to see me, or I them.

Hmm, really good idea. Never would have thought of that. I mostly use the Teeny Craws if trout are among the species targeted, but I have used pretty much all sizes available, situation dependant.