jdmidwest

I want to go back in the dead of winter just to see what snow is really like sometime. I think I could have enjoyed my 2 trips just on the scenery and experience alone. It is a wonderful area.

Sunday TV is usually pretty lame, so tonight I decided to watch a little T Rex Autopsy on Nat Geo. Part of Dino Weekend, this is the grand finale. Smelling BS when they delivered it to the top secret facility under heavy armed guard. Assembled a team that actually scrubbed up to go in. Then they attack the fake mess of a fake dinosaur. How many people will start thinking that the government has actually found an intact dinosaur that looks like it died yesterday? I know that alot of what is being filmed was actually gleaned from a fossilized find, hard rock version. But what they are depicting makes it look like its a fresh, still warm corpse.

Some of the streams in the eastern part are actually working there way down to hard rock. The solid limestone beds will not eroded much further, so you get long expanses of flat, shallow stream bed. Until some flood event comes along to rip thru it, that is what we will have. But with most streams, as you float along you will notice bluffs. Many many years ago, water started eroding them, cutting thru them to form what we have today. Most streams carried much more water than they do today. I imagine, there was a time where Missouri was flooded with ice water from glaciers and rains like we have never known. Those carved and scoured what we see today. And they created all of those old gravel beds too. During the age of the dinosaurs and long before, we were just a shallow sea. We had volcanic activity. We had great marshy areas. The St. Francois granites are evidence of the volcanic activity. The limestone bluffs are uplifts of a great seabed deposit. Coal fields are the ancient marshy area. Missouri has changed alot over time, I assume it will continue until the sun goes red giant and devours us.

That could be some fun on a fly rod with a purple woolie. I will tell my buddy that lives around the block. He is looking for something to do this weekend.

I always use a weed bed, log, or a rock to anchor to when fishing out of a yak. I usually fish out of a sit on top, so I can hang a foot over pretty easy. Weed beds, or moss works good to slow you down or even stop if the current is not strong. Many times, I will get out and wade runs before I blast thru with the boat. Not much difference from fishing from a canoe for the most part. Like Al says, let the water work for you. Eddies are good, as long as you take a shot at them before you park in them. They will hold fish. So will the weed beds. Watch for snakes in weeds.

What were they stocking?

For best results, run a dedicated grounded white wire to each light, don't rely on the ball of the trailer to ground the lights for you.

I always put the oil in at the house where I can measure it and put the gas in at the pump. The remaining drive to the water does a good job mixing it up. About the trolling motor, I doubt you will notice a difference in 2 lbs of thrust. But the upgraded newer motor and electronics will probably be better on your batteries.

Thanks guys. It has been a tough few weeks. I got the news he was failing while camping at Spring River 2 weeks ago. I went to see him for the last time on the way home and visited with him a while. He knew who I was, but was pretty confused. I was there when they told the doctor not to do anything out of the ordinary to try and save him. He had a stroke over a year ago that weakened him, and had a few more during that time. That was what finally did him in. He was 85. We shared alot of things in common, he was a fly tyer, a hunter, a reloader, gun collector, knife maker, and loved fishing the rivers. Even though he was some 30 years my senior, we were as close as any of my other good friends. I have lost many of my family in my life, aunts and uncles, grandparents, but this is the first really good friend.

Odd combination of colors. White is usually ground on trailer lights. Play with the lights and see what you can get. Brown is common for tail lights, yellow and green is for signal, white is for ground on the wires if I remember right.

Many moons ago, my cousin introduced me to one of his classmates. We later became room mates in college years and fished together every chance we got. He was the one that introduced me to trout and the 11 Pt. River. He taught me the fine art of topwater and more about bass fishing than I had known before. He had a fine teacher. When he left off to Med School, he asked me to take his Dad fishing some. All the sons were away from town and Richard needed someone to fish with. We hit it off too and spent many summers fishing the waters and streams of SE MO. Almost all of the time was spent in a canoe, in which he was a master. Thousands of miles were logged without a tipover, Richard in the back all of the time. You could not get him to give up control of the boat or the back, it was his spot, and he knew it well. The sons returned in a few years, and many trips were spent as a group. I got to know his other two brothers pretty good, as well as the families. We became a close knit group. Then Richard's health started failing, and the boys said to stop taking him on long trips. We still had a few deer hunts together, but the fishing time alone came to an end. I got the text Wed, Dad died, was all it said. I carried Richard to his final resting place in the woods yesterday on a ridge overlooking the Black River. The final words at the gravesite from the preacher. Richard and God are in a canoe. God says to Richard, "So That is How to Catch a Fish". Richard says to God, "Whatever you do, Don't Cast Behind The Boat". Everything will be fine.

Large shiner on a 3 ought hook.

They are buzzing good here in SE MO. For some reason, they were strong on Sat., but quiet on Sun and Mon. The noise picked up here today.

It's a good thing your family sucks about babysitting, your little girl looks like she had a great time. Enjoy them, they don't stay around long.

Surely there is a better way to control than kill off the ash. Spray, natural predator, something. If we kill off the ash instead of the bugs, the trees are still gone. What if the bug adapts to a new tree species?

I just read an article in STL Today regarding the Emeral Ash Borer Beetle and Ash Trees. Seems like the way some feel to stop the problem is to kill of the food supply, ash trees. Morels love ash trees. What will happen if ash trees become extinct? I saw it a few years ago near Greenville, they found a bug and killed every ash tree on public property to try to stop the spread. They quarantined the wood, but they still spread. Don't they realize they can fly? http://www.stltoday.com/news/state-and-regional/missouri/destructive-ash-borer-beetle-advancing-in-st-louis-area/article_c1398f2b-e173-5a4f-9c1a-d3e4ea5bd0cc.html

Which weather station is that?

Cabelas has a good combo on sale right now for a decent price.

Feed it well and it will grow. Hope you have lots of room for the vines, they can grow about 20'.

While fishing for a brown trout on a Current River, Norfork, or Meramec stream does gain my interest, I long for other things. I dream about the time of Schoolcraft, but with all of my modern tech, roaming the Ozarks in them early days. I dream about duck hunting the swamps that were drained in SE Mo around the time this country was founded. I think it would be neat to fish the shallow sea that we currently call home in the early days of development of the earth. But I am not a time traveller, I have to deal with the cards I have been dealt. I really enjoy what I have now, and I don't want to try something different. After all, we are the original "invasive species"

It is not the mortality, it is the lack of nutrition or digestability in the corn that is the issue. They gorge themselves on it and starve. Why trout are attracted to corn amazes me. The only thing I can figure is it "may" look like a egg to them. They will gorge themselves on an egg, but it is loaded with protein. Trout are meat eaters, not veggie tarians.

Yep. I used to pass the time on the farm during the day shooting blackbirds picking the corn out of the turds of the above with an ole Crosman pellet gun. I always laugh when someone chooses chicken over other types of meat. I pass along the fact that our free range chickens on the farm picked corn out of the hog turds, along with the flies that land on them. Chickens are just nasty animals.

Great idea. But my favorite panfish lure is a fly. Or a fly of many type. Some dry, some nymphs, some wet, and all time favorite is a popper. Second is crickets, third is a wax worm.

I am just thinking the original op does not have a kayak, otherwise, why would he need a cranking battery? Or 2 batteries for that matter. But that has not been brought out in the open. I run a cranking battery on the bass boat and another deep cycle AGM for the electronics and trolling motor. That way, if I suck the life out of the trolling battery, I can still start the gas motor without having to dig the pull rope out of the emergency box. I have a portable fish finder that has 8 AA battery pack that gives it 12 volts. It will run for at least a day or more on that system. B/W fishfinders are low voltage consumers. Bigger ones that have down scan have more draw.

Bush beans usually depend on the weather. As long as it does not turn dry they keep blooming. I plant Blue Lake and Jade. The Jades seem to be more one and done where the Blue lakes keep producing longer all season. I will see this year, I have mine enclosed in chicken wire to keep the rabbits out. In the past, at the first dry spell when grass gets skimpy, they attack the bean plants and clean them up in a few days. They are looking good now, pole beans are starting to climb the poles about a foot high now. No blooms yet.