fiveweight

How I learned to cast, and have been with a couple friends when they learned, was always at bluegill ponds. No trees or obstructions around or behind you, no currents to mess with, short leaders and small, simple floating flies. The actual act of casting is tricky enough at first without having to worry about other things like fly selection, river currents and presentation. Of course, if you take a class on a stream you will learn the basics of a lot more things, but still look for some open area with a small pond for practice - it will save you a lot of frustration and can be a good bet for an early reward. When I've gotten friends into fly fishing, I don't even take them to moving water until they're comfortable casting in ponds.

I usually consider it a wash whether to drive a few hours and rent a canoe for a single day or get a shuttle. Just to avoid the hassle I usually just rent - it's true while a float might cost you 40 bucks a shuttle might only save you 10 or 20 bucks which is nearly what the extra gas costs. If you live near where you float and go with a friend, it's different but there is certainly no sense in driving 2 cars multiple hours so you can have one at the take out. If I'm going somewhere for more than one day I bring my own. Where I've found the biggest advantage to owning your own canoe is on flat water where shuttling is not an issue. I bought mine to spend 2 weeks in northern Minnesota after college, and on that trip with a friend we were nearly able to pay for the canoe (that is, if there had been anywhere on those lakes to rent in the first place). Having your own canoe will open up a lot of smaller ponds where you can't rent one and often even where there is no boat launch so you might be able to find quite a bit of water that doesn't get much pressure. I've even come across situations where an outfitter may be willing to shuttle you somewhere they don't offer regular float trips. For example, if you want to have them drop you off way up the river and still park well above their location - otherwise they would have to pick you up if you rented one from them, which costs extra plus you have to arrange a meeting place and be there on time. I also love leaving my car somewhere and not have to worry about getting to the take out point before some place closes. This may give you a couple extra hours on the water in the summer on a single day trip and can significantly save costs on multi-day trips.

I've had an Old Town 16'9 that has been getting regular, heavy use since 2001. I know some canoe rental places use these as their standard fleet boats, and it's probably because they are relatively cheap and durable. The downside is their weight, hard to put on top of your car alone but it can be done through some creative means. I also sit in the front seat backwards on solo trips, and if you're ever on a lake in windy conditions turning it around can be a pain, but for having one canoe I wouldn't want anything smaller because it can hold a LOT of weight. Two years ago a friend and I did a 5 day trip on the upper Buffalo and did not pack light. We're both big guys and we figure we had about 750 pounds of us, beer and gear. That was certainly pushing it, but it just shows what a work horse such a big canoe can be. I don't think we could have packed light enough to do the trip on a smaller craft through that water. As a bonus, it's wide enough we can both stand up and cast through calm water. It's also nice having a cheap, durable canoe because I never worry about rocks and some times am not so kind to it when dragging it over asphalt or gravel but it has held up remarkably well despite the abuse. FYI, I paid about 550 for it new so a used fleet craft with many years left shouldn't burn a hole in your pocket. Again, my biggest complaint is the weight but if you have to bang it around a bit on land you at least know you aren't damaging a more delicate, expensive boat.

John Berry is right on about the Norfork. It's where to go if you want a grand slam. Seems to me the cuts are sporadic and never a sure thing but the brookies are either non existent or everywhere, probably tied directly to stocking schedules. Most you find are just stockers but I once got into three or four 14-16" brookies around McClelland's which just made my trip. Nothing is more colorful than a spawning phase male Norfork brookie, not even the most colorful brown you'd find. The last couple times I ran into bunches of brookies have been within a mile of the dam, but I've seen them stacked up in the C&R area as well. Sometimes you can float the entire river and never see one. On the white, I have caught very few of either.

Smallmouth, just over 5 lbs, white 1/8 oz rooster tail. Seems like a dwarf compared to most of you guys.

Interesting question. It sounds loaded, but as a lot of responses indicate there are some valid answers. Here's my take: Fishing has its share of C&R supporters because it is possible to do, and those who appreciate C&R believe it leads to more opportunities for people to catch fish, and when certain waters mandate C&R they feel like the whole rule makes a bigger difference than a few fish they voluntarially release on their own - guaranteeing more catching opportunities for them and others on that water. That's why some favor rules, not just a self-imposed code. On the other hand, there is no such thing as catch and release hunting, so first off there is nobody to advocate it. Second, if hunting season was open as long as fishing season (year round in many states) there would be fewer shooting opportunities because the deer population would be much lower. So one of the reasons the DNR sets the deer season to be so short is to prevent overharvesting. It's kind of a silly thought, but for argument's sake if there was such a thing as catch and release deer hunting my guess would be that it would have an extended season because it does not affect population, and the people who like to hunt more for the sport than the meat would form a significant movement to support their way of increasing sporting opportunities.

11pt has great camping, you need to rent a canoe to really experience the fishing though. Brian Sloss can set you up with a great overnight trip where you can camp in designated float camps. Spring River is only 3 hours from Memphis and has better wading opportunities and several private campgrounds on the river, but it's much more developed. A place called Riverside camp ground is open year round (or at least it used to be).

Thanks for checking on that Lilly. Now if you could only tell me how much the owner of China 1 Buffet pays per pound of crab legs I'd know how much I need to eat to get my money's worth Seriously though, it's great to hear the program is typically self sustaining.

Here's something else I came across: A paper called "Budgets for trout production" (in the south). Average cost per pound in a large fish farm (example was 150,000 pounds - still much smaller than SOTH) 82 cents. Note that the paper is from 1990, so double that but since each Missouri rainbow is stocked a little over half a half pound you're still looking at something like a buck a fish. Not saying that's what it actually costs, government isn't going to be as efficient as an identical private operation but it should give a ballpark. http://www.ustfa.org/Trout%20production/Bu...srac%201990.pdf

$7 per fish sounds way high. Fifteen years ago I helped my uncle run an outdoor catering business in Nashville. They had a small stocked stream as an option for people to catch and grill their own lunch. The price we paid was fifty cents per trout, and they were 12" long. That included delivery and we were ordering maybe 500 a month. I can remember him always ordering about 20 extras that went straight into his own freezer from the stocking truck. Yes, inflation means that's probably about a buck or more per fish in modern currency but this was a tiny, private operation so that comprehensively includes the price of all their overhead and whatever profit they made. Here is a link to the first private fish farm I could find: http://www.stockrainbow.com/ Their price per fish is $2.00 per pound on orders as small as 100 pounds with volume discounts available, and this looks like another small private operation. Shepherd of the Hills dwarfs an operation like this in scale, isn't for profit, doesn't pay corporate income tax, and is located within a few feet of where most are stocked. If it costs anywhere near $7 per fish from egg collection to delivery then this just screams out as a program that needs to be privatized, and let the DNR purchase those fish for a fraction of the cost.

Well crap.

Thanks for posting that. It may even be low. The only objective way to quantify that figure is to compare the revenue of trout stamps sold to the total revenue of all licenses. But since a standard fishing license is a prerequisite for a trout stamp, it would be low because it doesn't count revenue from standard licenses sold to people who only fish for trout.

Nobody is asking the question: is money generated from the trout program supplementing or siphoning off funding to protect and provide access to native species? When you have a program as big as it is, it can obviously both take in and spend huge resources. If there was no trout stocking program, would there be more purchasing of public land and providing of access to rivers like the Gasconade, Black, Current, etc. or less? I cannot guess what the answer is, but the high concentration of fishermen in trout parks and Taney is an enormous source of revenue. Is all that and more spent directly where it is generated, or does some of it go back into the general budget to supplement funding for other waterways? Currently living back in a state with a much smaller and less significant trout program (Indiana) our warm water streams do not have nearly the amount of managed access and publicly owned stream side property that warm water Ozark streams get even on the few decent streams we do have here. You would think that in Indiana, with only a handful of quality streams worth caring for it shouldn't be hard to do more per stream mile but that doesn't seem to be the case. If having a huge trout program to increase DNR revenue is indeed the factor making the difference in Missouri, even the warm water streams are in a better situation because of it. Perhaps the same could be said of the giant Army Corps lakes as massive fishing destinations which we also lack here.

fishinwrench, I think that seems like a pretty far suggestion but I have a hard time disagreeing with your logic.

Agree ness, butt ugly. I got pretty excited the first time I heard of these things which was recently in North Carolina. A Cherokee reservation we were driving by advertised trophy catch and release "golden trout" on a billboard. Curious, I picked up a brochure and saw these ugly pale rainbows, nothing like a real golden trout. It wreaked of tourist trap gimmickry. Glad I passed.