WestCentralFisher

A few years back, I got suckered into floating from Eminence to Two Rivers on Labor Day weekend. It was one of the most insane river environments I've ever experienced and was kind of dreadful from that standpoint. But from a pure fish catching perspective, it was really quite good, though I am legitimately surprised at no point did I unintentionally hook someone. As someone who is always careful to be extra quiet wading, realizing that the fish in these types of rivers simply do not care at all about hundreds of the loudest canoers in America paddling directly above their head is endlessly strange to me. Strange experience, overall. I'm sure it would be a nice stretch to float on a week day.

Yeah, it wasn't bad at all, given it said the temp was 95 or so.

Checked out a new section of stream to see of it was any good for smallmouth. It was not, at least today, in this specific spot. But it was very pretty, and I managed to stumble upon a school of walleye*, which livened things up a bit. Also found some of the most aggressive bluegill potentially in America (you'd think switching to a rattle-trap would keep the bluegill away, and you'd be wrong) and a few little largemouth. *Yes, I should have done better holding the walleye. I'll admit I was not prepared to catch fish with teeth today that I couldn't lip on this little stream, and it threw me. I'll do better next time.

Thinking about doing that float in late September when the crowds start to thin a bit. Looking forward to your report

None of how t Yeah, and I am aware of all that. This was less a result of not knowing the landscape, and more the way plans sometimes go straight to heck on you. Almost none of how this trip played out according to plan. For one, the trip was supposed to be today, a Monday, I was supposed to be floating, and it was supposed to be an overnighter. Then life intervened, Monday became unavailable, it had to be Saturday or no time at all, and without some really unreasonable logistical finagling, or paying a rod fee, the only places I had time to go to that hold trout in August were Bennett Spring and the white ribbon section of the Niangua. Now I could have bailed on trout and just chased smallmouth, and I kind of end up doing that anyway, but I really felt like trout fishing. I simply overestimated my ability to not be annoyed by crowds. At the end of the day, I ended up on a river, I caught (a) trout and some hard fighting smallmouth bass, and yes, got a little annoyed once or twice. In terms of salvaging a trip that almost didn't and arguably shouldn't have happened, it could have ended worse.

One other thing: I don't want to go too far out on a limb, but I think the word has gotten out on that Bennett Spring place. I kid of course, but though I can't be surprised on the last weekend before many schools start in beautiful weather, the place was POPPING. Barely a parking spot to be had. I will admit my original plan was to catch a few fish in the park and then see where the rest of the day took me, but 5 minutes after the buzzer, someone walked directly in front of the spot I'd staked out 30 minutes before the horn, I mean like 2 feet in front of me, and started casting. I can deal with it if it's a kid or someone who is obviously new to fishing, but that didn't seem to be the case. I could feel my blood pressure starting to rise, and decided that getting in the car and fishing the river before the canoe rental crowds was the correct play. I still had no particular shortage of company, but it was much more manageable.

Generally speaking I agree! In this specific situation, my phone was in a dry box inside my day pack, so accessing it for a quick fish photo wasn't very easy. So it would have been something pretty out of the ordinary for me to do it. Of course, scenery pictures are easier to plan for.

Fished the Niangua this morning for a couple hours before the aluminum hatch. Caught one rainbow and a fair number of smallmouth and goggle eye. None of the fish were picture worthy, but the river sure was.

See, though I'm going fishing this weekend on a popular stretch of trout stream, so I was hoping for nasty weather and maybe a nice pop up thunderstorm or six to scare folks off. There are limits to my generosity toward my fellow man.

The first step is seeing others as humans. There are a heck of a lot of people I disagree with, sometimes to an extent where I don't understand how they believe what they do. But there are really few that I wouldn't sit down with around a campfire and talk to and try to understand where they're coming from. I have three really good friends in the world, and two of them are the exact opposite of me politically. Does it occasionally make a fishing trip go sideways with an argument? I'd be lying if I said no. But at the end of the day we'd still do anything for each other. I feel like that is getting more and more rare, and it troubles me.

When I was on the Eleven Point River a couple weeks ago, there was a gentleman we happened to run into both when we put our canoes in, and when we came back to pick our vehicle up after we were done. He'd done a different float and while he wouldn't outright say he'd caught fish hand over fist, the look on his face when he said "Oh, it was OK I guess" told me otherwise. We talked for awhile about fishing and river birds and how to avoid those sweepers on outside bends, and what in the name of everything that was holy made that horrible screeching (hopefully) bird sound you always heard in the night while camping on the Eleven Point. Conversation drifted a bit further afield, until it hit current events. I liked this guy, so I'll admit I tensed up. What if he said something that caused this nice chance meeting to sour? And he did express a political opinion, a pretty strident one. And it's not anyone's business what it was, or if I agreed, it anything else. But as soon as he was done, he paused for a second and said the following to us: "I can't quite tell if y'all agree or not, and that's OK. The fact that you spent the last two days on this river and we can talk this long about fishing means you're alright." Then we talked a bit more about paddling tactics and parted as friends, only because we were all hungry as heck and heading in separate directions. We need way more interactions like this, in my view.

The goofiest I've had was when I was confronted by a fisherman in the Blue Ribbon section of the Current for fishing with a single hook rooster tail spinner. "It's fly fishing only down here, sir" he confidently informed me. It's not, obviously, but ironically my tackle would have been perfectly legal in every public fly-only section of trout stream in the state.

Just a few pictures from places I've been to in the Ozarks the last few weeks. The last two places are Ha Ha Tonka State Park and the Truman Tailwater. The first three were taken at (/sorry my keyboard just stopped working)

My goal this spring and summer has been to get back where I used to be. It's not as if I ever stopped fishing. I doubt there is a year since I was born where the number of times I'd been on the water has been <10. But it had fallen out of being a regular habit, and I'd gotten really lazy about fishing a few spots around home and not really venturing further. I think I've done a pretty good job getting back into the rhythm. Pretty much every weekend I don't have an ironclad obligation, at least for a few hours I find myself on an Ozark creek or river. I've done a few bigger, multi day trips, but a lot of smaller scale ones to a few little Ozark creeks I've found. I'm still not quite as good at reading water as I used to be, and I haven't even really begun getting back into fly fishing yet, but it's a really good start. The more I get back into it, the more I want to even more. I do hope to pick up the fly rod more often, and that's the next venture. We've got a three day trip on the blue and white ribbon section of the Current planned for October; my plan is to practice enough by then to catch a few half decent browns on that trip.

It's a fun walk and wade stream in the fall when the water is low and the canoe rentals aren't running anymore. I don't even like canoeing it without a fishing pole during the summer. Not that it has anything you'd call a rapid, but the riffles are way too narrow for playing dodge-a-tube to be fun.

I agree with your point about it being potentially damaging to talk up little known places (hence the post), but I'd counter that the impulse is perfectly natural and doesn't necessarily come from a cynical place. When I go fishing, I have the impulse to share how it went, to show pictures, etc. That's because for me, I think I value the story and the memory of a trip to a beautiful place about as much as the experience itself anymore. It really is very rarely about bragging or talking myself up. The lord's truth is that I'm a pretty mediocre fisherman with a fairly middling list of local places to fish. Sure, every once in a blue moon I'll catch an 18 inch smallie or big rainbow that I want to brag on a little, but far more often it's a pretty sunset at a gravel bar camp, or a little longear sunfish that looks like something that should have come out of the Amazon (see above) or a little wild rainbow with parr marks on it. It is, in some small way how I share with the world a little of the peace and joy that comes with the exercise of putting a line in the water. That's not a bad thing. I just don't actually have to name the river unless it's the Current, Eleven Point, or another in a long list that have already saturated the public consciousness enough that it isn't going to matter much.

Visited one of my hidden gems this evening. Good way to cap a week.

It in fact inspired this post, lol.

It's a fair question. I do share these things with a trusted circle consisting of close friends and my dad. But it's a small circle, and I know they have the proper degree of discretion, and won't tell me things like "Thanks for telling me about that spot. Those smallmouth tasted great!" Unless they're trolling me for a reaction, which is often. To answer your question, most of my current local spots I really did just stumble upon by driving around the hills, looking at maps, and seeing what there was to see. But I've certainly also benefited from the kindness of others too many times to count in the past.

Fine, I hate to publicize it, but there's this little spring-fed creek in southern Missouri that has a shockingly high rainbow trout population. Unlike most streams it's size, I've never once gone there and not found a whole bunch of trout. At times between March and October, you'd almost swear it got stocked every single day. There's a mill dam and some concrete pools alongside the creek that have even more trout in them. There is one secluded pool called the Social Hole absolutely no one knows about and most always holds fish. Don't want to tell anyone the name but it's real similar to a famous ocean fishing spot up in New York.

Yeah, when we were on the Eleven Point, I'd struggle to think of anyone particularly being obnoxious or rude or anything. Everyone seemed well behaved, there was just too danged many well behaved people. The only thing I'd nitpick is that it seemed like whenever it would be helpful if someone either sped up or slowed down a bit so we could each go through a tricky shoal one at a time, everyone seemed to feel as if they were legally obligated to do whichever of the two caused more issues for everyone. Of course, if I thought everyone else was wrong, that usually points back in a pretty specific direction.

Also, having just checked it looks like my phone camera doesn't have location enabled anyway. Don't remember if I did that at some previous point for this reason, or if it was the default setting.

Yeah, I almost always take a screenshot of the pictures, crop them, and post that. It makes the file size smaller, and eliminates the location data.

I don't. Or more precisely, I only mention by name the places that are already overrun.

When I started regularly traveling to the Ozark hills with my parents around age 11, Rocky Falls really was a hidden gem. It was this beautiful waterfall at the end of a road in the middle of nowhere with water that was too chilly to be totally comfortable in the summer, but that somehow I never actually wanted to get out of. It wasn't that it was totally unknown, it was still a swimming hole in the middle of a national park, but usually it was just a few friendly locals. A couple weekends back while rambling through the hills after taking out on the Eleven Point a day sooner than expected, I tried to drive down there. There were so many cars along the road I just turned and left. I didn't want to see it like that, really. Nonetheless, I still did. In a Facebook group I'm a member of, several people posted pictures of their beautiful Saturday at the falls. It looked roughly like the parking lot outside the Mizzou football stadium on a fall Saturday. But that's the thing; they were having fun, in a public place, and at least for the most part doing absolutely nothing wrong. Impossible to fault. Yet, you can start to feel like the walls are closing in a bit. Over on the Eleven Point, the "quiet" Scenic Riverway, both the Greer and Riverton parking lots were 90+% full by the time we took out on Saturday afternoon, and those are not small parking lots. Admittedly, there were times and places the river was appropriately quiet and serene, but there were several folks who were visibly disappointed that we had tents set up on our gravel bar already, because all the float camps were full and they were having trouble finding a place to camp. One group came by at 7 pm looking particularly desperate, and we begrudgingly offered to let them share the large gravel bar we set up on. I'll admit I was happy when they turned us down, but I felt a bit guilty when we caught back up to them the next day and they said they'd had to set up camp next to what seemed to them to be a very large river-based frat party. Around home, it's much the same. I don't even go near the rivers with canoe rentals between Friday afternoon and Sunday at noon (one of the few tricks I still have up my sleeve is that most people really want to be off the river by Sunday afternoon.) Even on the small walk and wade streams, some creativity is needed; the areas around the low waters and other visible places are pressured and slow fishing. That said, it's not like there's nothing left to be explored. The night after that busy Saturday on the Eleven Point, we stayed in a well-maintained public campground in one of the most beautiful places in the Ozark hills on a Saturday night, and there was no one else there. This was our original spot, going back decades, and if that had been full of people, it might actually have broken me. No, I'm not telling you where it is, naturally. And on my favorite local river, the visible spots get pressured, but there is a stretch where the only way to legally access it is via a short, but relatively difficult hike, and the trail doesn't quite lead to the river, so you have to do some light exploring. That stretch of river is usually empty, save an occasional kayaker on a multi-day trip. I'm not sure what my point is here, except that if you do have a spot on a small stream that isn't really known yet, maybe the fisherman's impulse to stay a little vague about it is more important than you think. Because I find these places go through a usual progression: initially, it's just known by a few folks who live within a mile or two, and you, the lucky angler (this isn't the Alaskan wilderness, there are no actual secrets). Then you tell a few buddies off the record "hey, keep it low-key but this low water bridge is worth a look." Most will have discretion, but one won't, and they'll post it by name here or on a Facebook group, the 2024 equivalent of telling the guy who runs the bait shop. Then it becomes an open secret. Eventually, you show up and the access is either blocked off, or it might as well be, because all the parking spots are taken, and the fish are skittish and small now anyway. I know, because I've done this to myself before. Anyway, this afternoon/evening, I'm off to fish the stretch of smallmouth stream that requires a little hike in. Maybe I'll post some pictures, but I'm not telling you where it is.