Brian Jones

Depending on your budget, I'd recommend a 1652 or 1752 .100 gauge flat bottom hull (Blazer or Alweld) with mesh flooring, a 60/40 engine of your choice and an 80 plus pound 24 volt trolling motor. That will allow you to run all but the upper sections of the meramec as well as most all of the other Missouri Ozark streams. A lot of people run .080 gauge boats in the 1652 and 1752 models and never have any trouble. But I've also been a little leery of running the lighter gauge. Dents ARE going to happen and I've always felt the extra gauge was worth the weight.

Both. I've had good luck fishing the area just in front of the riffle with a moving bait of some kind as well as stopping the boat at the top of a riffle, walking down the bank or gravel bar and working the riffle itself by casting a bottom bouncing bait upstream and letting it bounce its way back down river.

River crappie are frustrating (for me anyhow) to say the least. We catch enough of them every winter to carry extra rods, spend an extra $100 dollars on crappie "stuff", and waste an hour or two of each trip trying to catch the goofy critters. But in reality, out of a dozen or so trips taken each fall/winter/early spring, only a couple are truly fruitful in that we're bringing home enough to clean. Bottom line IMO; they're there in high enough numbers to justify fishing for them. But they are extremely fickle most of the time and will really test your patience.

We found a corpse on Pelican Island Thanksgiving weekend 2000.

Interesting. I don't think I ever realized just how close the headwaters of the Black and Big River were to each other.

Out of curiosity, who were the club's members?

It sure is nice to know that I am not the only one that struggles this time of year. I generally cannot buy a smallmouth bite when the water temp is in that 50-55 degree range. So where do they go and what are they doing during this time?

NOT EVEN CLOSE to a pro but here's what I like. Buzzbaits: Depends on the river I'm fishing. But my three favorite colors are Black/red, Blue/white/chartreuse, and white/chartreuse. I prefer the 3/8 oz. ones and I like a painted blade on the latter two. I also like the blades that run through the wire the best. I do have a couple with the off set blades that I'll throw sometimes, but they don't seem to track as well. I've also thrown an 1/8 oz. war eagle buzzbait later in the summer with some success. Switched because I figured the fish were getting pressured too much and might be getting tired of seeing the bigger baits. When I throw the smaller bait, I'll throw it on a spinning rod combo with braid. Flukes: I actually prefer the Bass Assassin over the fluke. My favorite way to fish them from a canoe is to make a LONG cast down river and retrieve them back to the boat with a walk the dog retrieve. I have found that the Bass Assassins are the easiest for me to "walk". No experience with the Dog-X Quick walker.

Pretty dismal downstream today as well. Put in at Pacific and the highlight was a 3.76lb largemouth on my fourth cast. Pretty much down hill after that. Ran almost to River Round and caught five more "keepers" and three or four shorts. NOT ONE SMALLIE however. I have officially entered my annual 50-55 degree water temp smallie drought........... No pic of the big fish as I left 8400 without my phone or camera this morning and didn't realize it until I was almost to Hillsboro. Think I'll give Big River a try tomorrow. It's closer to home if the fishing is poor....................

Thanks for sharing some very solid information. That reminds me of how badly I need to get back to keeping a log of all my trips.

Stud for sure; especially for the river.

I've showed the pic to several people for fun today and a lot have mis-identified the fish as a snakehead. It was a bowfin/grinnel and I figured that most on here would ID it correctly right away. The nasty sucker was on a bank that we had caught a whole bunch of largemouths off of throughout the day. I pitched a paca craw into a log and for a moment thought that I had finally hooked a stud largemouth. As it got nearer to the boat, I saw a brown flash and knew it was a rough fish of some kind as we were WAY too far downstream for it to be a smallmouth. First one I have ever caught, though they are pretty common through this section of creek/ditch/canal.

A co-worker shared this with me the other day and I figured several on here would like it as well. http://dceaglecam.eagles.org/

Weighed 5.31lbs. Caught out of a Mississippi feeder creek and hit and fought like a bass all the way to the boat. And.......Go......

That's awesome. But it's gonna kill my fantasy team..............................

A tale of two trips so to speak. Put in this afternoon about 3:40 and only managed three fish (the worst of times). However, one of them was this 20 incher that weighed 4.01 (the best of times). This is my best Big River smallie to date after fishing this creek for more than half my life. Water temp was 54.6 to 55. Wind was pretty aggravating most of the afternoon and the air temp dropped 11 degrees from when I put in until I took out. Water color looks good. Some color but pretty decent visibility.

That is an ABSOLUTE stud 19 incher. Reminds me of some of those northern smallies I've seen from your brother. Praying for strength and peace of mind for both you and Mary.

Why is that? What is in it's drainage that causes all the mud????

In and out in less than five.

Guess we all knew this was coming so I guess it isn't necessarily the end of the world. However it does chap my hide that these fish were already in Saline creek and other tributaries of the Mississippi by the mid 90s; yet NO ONE from any fish and wildlife agency seem to care until several years later when they begin threatening the Great Lakes. http://www.waynecojournalbanner.com/news/article_c48daef6-e167-11e5-96ac-d32f745509be.html

I've been admiring these fish all along. But now I'm starting to get envious............... That's a stud 19 1/2 incher.

Zoom in more. You're leaving too much background..............

great trip and report. Thanks for sharing.

The bite was off from what it had been for us. But we still managed to have a good morning. Highlight was this beauty that my buddy landed. It measured almost 21 inches long and weighed 4.98 lbs. on the rapala digital scale. It is his biggest smallmouth. Water was a little dirtier than the week before but still pretty clean. Water temps were 42.6 when we put in and between 45 and 46 when we took out around 12:30.

I say spot based on the "broken" bars above its lateral line. But as moguy said, it's kind of hard to tell.