jdmidwest

I am sorry, but how would you like it for the government to tell you what type of fishing rod to use? Some nutball runs amoke and beats someone to death with a fishing rod, then all of the liberals that don't understand fishing rods start trying to take your rod away.

Stumpy. Was thru Friday, main pool is back up from the drought. It is a shallow lake that is used to flood the timber units of the hunting portion. This year it was too low to draw water from, so no timber hunting. Bass, crappie, bluegill are great at times. Excellent pickerel. I think a few record book fish have come from it, pickerel, gar, and grennel. In summer it is 80 percent covered with duck weed, coontail, and water lily. Average depth 5 to 8 foot. Warms up pretty good in summer, I have seen water temps in the low 90's. It is closed to fishing from Oct thru the end of middle zone duck season for ducks. Upper half is a refuge area. Stanley Creek near by on Mingo offers some good fishing too in one of the last bottomland swampy areas in SE MO.

You bring up a good point about the game cam on public property just happening to catch a mountain lion on an elk carcass. Did the person stake one to the ground or tie it to a tree for bait? Or did they just shoot it and leave it lay for the buzzards and lions? I am not too familiar to lions, do they eat carrion or fresh meat killed by their own claws.

Yes, it may be a chicken little response. But recent elections have proven that people don't always seem to elect the right people. I will not say "It can not happen". And with the new SCOTUS we have lost support their too. And the sky fell in Russia this week, so chicken little was right. Main thing that needs to be done is WRITE your representatives and let them know how you feel. Both Ruger and Smith and Wesson websites have links to your State and Federal representatives to help get our message out.

Good eating

A bill introduced into the State Legislation this week by STL area Democrats. If passed, all "assault weapons and semi auto handguns with more than 10 round capacity and feeding devices that hold more than 10 rounds" will be banned. Owners will have 90 days to dispose of them or be in violation of the law. You can ship them to other states in case you don't wish to destroy them. http://www.stltoday.com/news/state-and-regional/missouri/mo-democrats-propose-assault-weapon-ban/article_a1e7ef85-ae97-57b0-bb85-a1b2bed51f80.html This is the most extreme proposal I have seen to date. It exceeds the Federal proposal. Time to write some more letters. The best part is the one about sending the banned stuff to another state. If it is such a problem, why would you want to give it to someone else?

I just bought a little android Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 that has built in gps and wifi, no phone chip. I use Sundroid, tells you sunrise and sunset for location, draws precise location off the gps. Mapdroyd for road maps, you can cache several states on it. A digital compass app, don't remember the name. Both are free. I am looking at a couple of topo apps that are paid, same thing, you can download the maps and use them off line. I have digital topos that are in adobe pdf format on it and use the adobe app to read them, works good too. You just can't use the gps to fix your location on them like the other programs.

Looks like a little snail darter snuck in and spermed the egg on the nest. Snail darter/smallmouth hybrid.

My neighbor has been trying to hunt the squirrels out of the 10 acre patch of woods behind our property. He has killed 28 this season. I have not been able to plant sweet corn for about 5 years now. They either cut it off at the ground as it is growing or strip it just before the ears ripen. I have a big hickory at the corner of the lot next to the garden. When the leaves dropped this year, there were 7 squirrel nests in it where they were camped out this summer picking off my maters. They have gotten too smart for my traps. When I do catch one, the neighbor dogs tear up the trap trying to get into it.

It used to be like that over here too, but that has changed alot. I see alot more on creeks and streams than I used too.

I did not have the heart to tell him that.

My Mom and Dad used to ski that lake years ago when they were dating. Dam busted one time in a big flood and drained it. Upper end has silted and filled with gravel around the church camp. We used to fish below the Hwy bridge from the shut ins down a way to the upper portion of the lake but never fished the main body of water. I never really thought about smallies in the lake, but it makes since.

And a slight jab to the MDC. I run into my bee mentor yesterday, a fine old man of 89. I have learned alot from him the past few years, he is like my third Grandpa. I notice some red on his fingers that looked like blood and asked him "did you cut your self or something"? He looked down and said "Oh that, its just red paint". He proceed into story mode and explained about all of the troubles he has had with the city squirrels eating his pecans, digging up his garden, and other problems with them. He has been trapping them for years. I had seen a few of them. Some of them ended up in the stew pot, but most he relocated to the Elks Lodge about a mile away. One day after he released a trapped one, he went inside for a beer and sit down next to a retired MDC employee and struck up a conversation. The MDC guy told him he was wasting his time, the squirrel would probably be back home before he got there. So my mentor had an idea. He was going to test that theory and prove him wrong. That is where the red paint on his hand come from. "I paint the little c suckers red to see if they really return, and I have not seen any of the red ones back in my yard". That made my day. So if you are ever in my neck of the and see a red latex painted squirrel, you know where they come from. I hope that 40 years from now I am still going like him.

Changes need to be or we can just all go down the local aquairum and zoo to enjoy what once was. Seen any free roaming bison lately? Just give my neighbors a few more years and I might see one....

How about this one

Why don't I just herd them up in the ole stock trailer and bring them over to your side. Sounds like you have it all figured out.

1: Did the study even survey the giggers??? It is already illegal to illegally gig fish and there are agents to enforce it. 2-4: The report was just the results of the survey. The rest is up to the lawmakers, petition them. I would support the catch and release of all stream bass, but I know that will never fly from both a management and an end user result. Certain people expect to creel a fish or they won't buy a license. That is the moral of the story. Its all about the cash flow.

What can I do with the pig? Kids don't like potbelly pigs do they?

I don't recall any public comment option on the Otters. Somebody decided to bring some back and boom, population explosion. And nobody would have guessed that reintroducing a species that had been extirpated back into the ecology would do such damage. But, you could look at it another way, all of the fish, crawdads, frogs, and snakes that they consume now would have been there for them only before man overpopulated the land. It was theirs in the first place. But, we greedy people, would like to see good fishing, frogging, crawdad eating, and water snake shooting to return to the levels where they were before the otter came back. The special interest groups were just the ones in the area of the initial release. What if they take off like wildfire like the otters? The entire state may and probably will have to deal with the Elk. Missouri has changed since they left. More fences, cars, roads, and general population. Bringing them back may bring up more problems down the road that they did not have in the years before man populated It was kind of like the Casino in Cape, someone wanted the Elk, then decided against it, then it was here they come. The Black Bear and the Mountain Lion, that is a whole different issue. I know that the MDC did not stock them. What burns me is the feeble excuse at each sighting. They are wandering thru, its a chance encounter, there is no established breeding population. Just like the bear, they have come here and are getting established, lets deal with them and manage them like other species. I really don't know what that canned reaction they put out each time is for. Keep people from being scared? Trying to avoid groups of persons assembling to hunt them down? Why can't they just say "Mountain Lions have come to Missouri and are repopulating."

Now the fricking shetland ponies are getting loose and running amok in the neighborhood.

At least there was a semi democratic process with the program. We did not have any say in the Otter Restoration. Or the Black Bear Restoration. Or the Mountain Lion Restoration.

Quoted directly from the MDC website. The Conservation Federation of Missouri, which has more than 90,000 members, supports our elk restoration efforts. The L-A-D Foundation, which owns 27 percent of the land in the restoration zone in southeast Missouri, supports our elk restoration efforts. The Nature Conservancy, which owns about three percent of the land in the restoration zone, also supports our elk restoration efforts. http://mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/wildlife-restoration/elk-restoration/elk-restoration-background/elk-restoration-plan

I beg to differ on that one, the cows were pregnant and calved when they arrived. Either way, I would venture that the cost of the Elk presently residing in MO is pretty high. I do not mean to bash the MDC, it is not really their fault we have them. They caved to the special interest groups that wanted them here.

Thousands of geese have been flying up the east side of the state for over a week now. I first noticed flocks moving north last Friday on the first. Many flocks flew over yesterday after noon and were still going after dark. You could hear them squaking and peeping till I went in the house.

Well, according to the stats on the last line of paragraph 3, the percentages of harvest 31.8 regular to 21.9 organized show the numbers to favor the MSA. It really depends on what numbers you wnat to key in on as to how you read the values. You could also draw from the study that we should be fishing springs in the winter for some excellent smallie fishing as they were worried about overharvest there. What I wonder is why did it take so long for it to come out? Data collected in 2011. Published in Oct 2012. And just now hitting the streets.