405z06

Not when it comes to fishing stories, but I've got a couple of friends that are very competitive when we float together. They like to keep track of First/Most/Biggest. I'll sometimes talk smack just for fun, but I don't really care who "wins", haha. I usually just tell them that I would rather lose cacthing my 30 fish to your 35, than win 10-8.

https://www.facebook.com/james.crocker.900 Here is the shooter's Facebook page. A handfull of pictures, and bunch of anti-religion posts, but nothing of great interest. I thought I would throw it out there.

Ditto that. I'm not much on swimming, but I'll just jump in the river when I get hot. I actually enjoy that part of it.

i agree, I downloaded this app last week. And it's free.

I'd love to hear stories about the quantities and quality of smallmouth you see while gigging suckers. There is some cool videos on YouTube of guys on the Jacks Fork with underwater cameras taking the camera under shallow log jams & downed tree roots. Even in shallow-ish water, tons of fish hanging in there, often deep, deep inside the cover.

Reminds of an average little Big River smallie I caught and took a pic of last Summer. When I got home I did a little doctoring to it and sent it to another fisherman friend. I'm not very good at Photoshop, but I knew it would be viewed on a phone, so it would probably work. Of course, I would never pass this off as real, and I let him in on my little joke

I understand where you are coming from, but I really don't know it any other way than the way it is today. On summer weekends it is a zoo. Those people are enjoying the river, but in a quite different way than I enjoy it. But those people allow Ozark Outdoors and other camps to stay open almost all year, so when I go down there off-season, or even in-season but on a weekday, then I can enjoy the river the way I like to, and do so mostly in peace and solitude. When you get as many people as that river does on summer weekends, there is going to be a footprint left behind. But I honesty don't see much of it. I don't see trash, I don't see many beer cans, i don't see cigarette butts. I love that stretch of the Meramec and hopefully always will.

Hmmm, that's interesting. I hadn't even noticed that somehow, i feel pretty stupid. I guess because I was told it was caught above a certain place, I never realized that the pic looks like it might have actually taken immediately below and at said place. I was given so much misinformation about this whole thing, I don't really care to go back and edit the spot out of the pic

On the river I don't need 5. 1) 1/4 oz Booyah tandem spinnerbait in white or chart 2) 4" Senko-style bait in a dark color with 3/0 offset red hook and 1/8 oz weight 3) Strike King Bitsy Tube in crawfish/earthtone colors Every once in a while I'll throw a Wiggle Wart or a jerkbait, but the 3 above constitute about 95% of my fishing.

quick follow-up: the fish was never measured, the 24 was an "estimate".

The more I look at it, the more I agree with you.

My best fishing buddy called this morning to tell me that a friend of his caught a 24" smallie on the Big River this morning. Of course, I was highly skeptical and asked if there were any pics. He said there was one, but it was supposedly a poor phone pic and the fish was caught right before dawn with poor lighting. He hadn't seen the pic yet, but I asked him to forward it to me if he ever received it. Well, here it is. I don’t know the guy, or even what his name is. I didn’t feel right posting his face on here, so I made an adjustment to the pic. I’m not going to divulge his location for obvious reasons, but I will say that I caught my personal best less than 2 miles from this location last year. It’s an area that isn’t considered to be a great smallmouth area, and you don’t catch the numbers you will on other streams, but the area obviously can produce big fish. If it's legit. Does this fish look 24" to y'all? It's a trophy fish regardless, I guess. Take it for what it’s worth. I can’t verify anything. Edit: The coloration on that fish leads me to believe that it spent some time in a livewell, no?

I'm-not (much) of a. Fly Fisherman,,,,BUT! I would (guess)...that you. Would do. Good with (those) flies.... (Dam-n Blackberry) fishing- for 10-12". Smallmouth. On our- Ozark. Streams. (.....and also) Catch the. Occasional- Google...eye (Apologies for not grammar/spell checking my post, as apparently it is a requirement) ....Dam-n Blackberry - ....

Honestly? Yeah. This isn't the place. I disagree with Obama specifically, and liberals in general, probably as much, or more so than you. But I come here to read about fishing. I usually avoid political discussion at all cost. I have my political sites bookmarked when I want to engage in that type of discussion. My best and most frequent fishing buddy is a big liberal. We more or less disagree about everything when it comes to politics. But we love fishing. Every once in a great while we get into a heated discussion that doesn’t change anyone’s mind, but for the most part we are thinking and talking about fishing when we are together. It works out fine. Political differences does not = personal enemy. Lastly, you are very vocal about your politics, but you type in a manner that makes you look uneducated, to be honest. I’m not talking about getting all school-teacher on you, or criticizing spelling, or diagramming paragraphs. It’s things like adding hyphens unnecessarily, or overusing parentheses, doing a lot of this “….” mid-sentence. Whatever these things are, they are really unorthodox and it just makes it super difficult to read. It’s like a speech impediment, but when typing. I’ve seen a handful of other similar examples on other forums. It’s honestly find it fascinating, how the human mind works. But it tends to make things difficult to read and undermines whatever “serious” point you may be trying to make. If you keep it to fishing, well, it will still be hard to read, but it won’t look so silly and you won’t open yourself up to so much flack.

this - is. Nearly impossible (to read), bro.

Haha, I've never caught a walleye on the Meramec. I've never actually caught an 'eye on any river (outside of the Susquehanna in PA). My limited walleye experiences are on Lake of the Ozarks as byproduct while fishing for something else. If it were good habitat on the 'mec, wouldn't there already be a thriving population? It would be nice, though, because I love to eat them

I buddy and I floated from Round Spring to Two Rivers starting on Friday morning and taking out around Noon on Saturday. Neither of us had ever been on the Current and we were both very excited, and didn’t really know what to expect. We arrived at Eminence Canoes, Cottages & Camp at 7:30 on Saturday morning. We loaded up on the short-bus (ha!) and waited for some of the others that were going on the same trip. Besides me and my friend, there were 6 other people on the bus. I looked for fishing equipment and there were two rods loaded that weren’t ours. It appeared to be low-end equipment and rigged for catfishing, which was good to see. We got to Round Spring and got unloaded. The other 3 canoes, we found out, were all doing the 18 miles in a single day (!). It took a little longer for us to get loaded up, so we waited for the other people to get going and ahead of us a ways. We cracked a celebratory morning Busch Bavarian beer to celebrate our first trip on the Current (We had been up since 3, so it felt later, right?) The first ½ mile or so of the river simply looked like smallmouth heaven and we started catching fish immediately on ¼ oz white spinnerbaits. I have never seen a stretch so long, that was filled with so much bassy goodness. Infinite rocks and boulders with good depth. This was truly a fishemans’s paradise. We were giddy. We didn’t see much of anybody for quite a while aside from passing one other canoe we put in with. But we knew it was a Holiday weekend, and we knew it would get busy at some point. The fog wore off, the sun came out, and it warmed up quickly, and there was no shortage of good swimming areas to cool off. We were still catching fish, but not quite at the pace of the morning. At some point around noon the Jets started roaring. Whoever makes the BlazerSS is doing very well selling them in this area. Due to my job, I don’t get to fish during the week, so I can’t be too picky about when I go, and that includes summer weekends, and Holiday weekend like this trip. I’ve been on the Meramec around Onondaga and St Claire when the Jets are out, but I have never seen anything like this. The funny thing was, we must have seen 40 jets and only 2 of them had trolling motors on them. These were all party boats. As mentioned, we had never floated the Current, but looking at the map we knew that Big Creek came in on the left somewhere about ½ way, so that was our cue to look for a camping spot. We also wanted to make sure that our camping spot had good access to wade fishing, as we would fish as long as we could take it. We ended up on a bluff that we later found out was called Bee Bluff. There were other tents set-up close by, but every sandbar had campers on it and we were getting hungry and tired. A little after setting up camp, the owners of the other tents landed ashore via jet. There were 3 boats and about 12 people total. We had kinda infringed on their area, honestly, but they were nice about it, and invited us over for a beer. They were all really young, from 16-23. They were locals that had set-up camp on Wednesday, and they were partying hard. We fished the area in front of the bluff off and on until about sunset when we decided to crash for the night. We probably caught about 15 smallies on this bluff, one measured at 16.5”, but nothing really to brag about. I had one come unbuttoned on a texas-rigged senko about sunset. It pulled like a freight train. If it was a bass, it def. would have been pitcure worthy. I never saw it, so it could have been a big drum for all I know. Saturday morning we got up about 6:00 and made some coffee, packed up and hit the home stretch of the river. Again, there was definitely a morning bite that cooled off as the temperature warmed. We tried to find a spot or two where we could get out, kill some time and catch some fish, but that never really materialized and before we knew it we were at the confluence of the Jack’s Fork and it wasn’t even noon. Overall, we caught a ton of fish, but that picture-worthy pig never bit. We each missed a few that may have qualified, but isn’t that how it always goes? The river was spectacular, the scenery and habitat were first-class. The weather could not have been better for early July. The jets were a pain in the butt, but I’m not gonna fight that battle Overall, I was very happy with this trip and look forward to maybe hitting it again when it isn’t so busy. Here are a couple pics of our campsite and one of my buddy with a fish from there

y'all just a bunch of creepy azz crackers

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Yes, we parked one vehicle on the west side of Harper's and the other vehicle at the take-out at Scotia. The fishing was very good, at least compared to my prior experiences on the Huzzah/Courtois. Nothing over 17, but almost every fish was between 13-15, and quite a few over 15, too. Very few dinks for whatever reason. Caught mostly on 1/4 oz spinnerbaits, but I think they would hit just about anything thrown at them. Up until now I have always thought of the Huzzah and Courtois as option of last resort, if everything else was blown out, but this float on Saturday is going to make me rethink that. Not seeing a jet all day is pretty sweet, too.

Thanks, Jim

I was looking at the map and wondering about a put-in at a low-water bridge about 11 miles above Scotia. On "Canoe the Rivers of Missouri" map it indicates that its a private campground, but is there anyplace there to park a truck for a few hours if we self-shuttle a canoe trip down to Scotia? If that doesn't work, is there a similar put-in if we wanted to start on the Courtois and end up at Scotia? I am aware that there are outfitters who will accomodate access to these waters, but we are looking at shuttling ourselves and getting on the water about daybreak to beat any crowds. Thanks

I usually go down to the Duke, MO area. There are 2 outfitters right next to each other: RIch's Last Resort, and Wilderness Ridge Resort. They each have cabins if that's your thing, and also plenty of tent/camping area. The 14 miles of river that ends at their places is the special smallmouth management area. If you want to camp on a gravel bar, do the 14 miles and split it into 2 days of floating, or if you want to stay at the resorts, do the 7 mile from Six Crossings. My buddy and I floated the 7-mile form Six Crossings on both Sat 5/11 and Sun 5/12 staying at a cabin at Wilderness. There were lots of beds, though most bigger beds (bass) were empty. Tons of google eye on bed everywhere. We were targeting smallies. The numbers weren't what we were used to for this stretch, but we caught a 19.5" inch smallie on Sat, and 3 over 18" on Sunday. That's pretty darn good for us.

Tha't funny about that dog. There are 2 dogs that must live right near Garrison's. The last 3 times (all last summer) that I floated from Garrison's, those same two dogs would come greet us and then follow us down the river. The first time they followed us all the way to "The Bluffs", an Ozark Outdoors put-in, which I would estimate is about 5 river miles. They would swim the deep holes sometimes. Other times they would run up the bank and meet us downstream.

Dude, maybe he just want to save the 1.5 hour drive if it's unfloatable. I have the USGS guages bookmarked, and I look at them often during the week if I am planning on going floating over the weekend, but I don't know truly know how to read them and I look at them all the time.