Seth

I think it would be awesome to have a fishing tournament between several of us on this forum. I'm sure we could trust each other enough to weigh and CPR the fish instead of having to lug them around all day. There would definitely be some hurt feelings after the day is over with.

Catching a lot of fish in non jet boatable sections of streams/rivers is an easy as falling off of a log. I fished the Gasconade up near Waynesville last year and it was incredible. It was nothing to catch 100 fish in a day on that trip. However, most of my fishing is done between Jerome and Vienna where the river gets pounded by jet boats and tournaments. Good luck pulling off that same feat in a day of fishing on that stretch. It would be interesting to see how some of you fair fishing both stretches. I'd say that many of you would be in for a reality check fishing down river. My buddy that fishes up river often and absolutely crushes the bass had a major reality check when he started fishing down here with me in the dead sea. I rode the suck bus hard in 2017 as well. The year before was incredible though. It amazes me how the fishing can change in a years time. Several people have mentioned it was due to the flood, but we also had a big flood in the winter of 15/16 as well and fishing was awesome throughout the summer of 16. The Meramec had some tough fishing at certain points as well, but it seemed to improve a lot as the summer went out for many people that I know. The Gasconade was terrible from mid June on.

There was a boat anchored up just above Short Creek on the shallow side earlier this year when I was down at Taneycomo that was slinging corn all over the place. There was five or six people in the boat, all bait fishing, bringing trout in left and right. I left to fish another spot and came back a few hours later and they were still sitting there. Hard telling how many trout they caught that day. Being that they were using bait, I can imagine that a lot of them swallowed the hooks too. I bet a guy could have drowned some crawlers there and caught a few suckers too. Speaking of chumming, my mom and dad went on a guided catfishing trip to Lake of the Ozarks with Chris Jones this past summer. Chris was using the heads of shad for bait and tossing the back of back in to the water. One of the catfish that they caught and cleaned was extra fat and we found out why when it was cleaned later on. It was plum full of those shad tails! It must have sat under the boat gorging on those things for hours before it swam back and found one of the heads with a hook in it.

Can't say I've ever seen anybody go back out after they had their fill of gigging, cleaning fish and frying them. After everybody gets their belly full, screwing with more fish is the last thing they want to do. Those of us that actually gig know this unlike those that just like to pretend and assume the worst.

Must be different on other rivers, but the best wintering holes that I know of are too deep for somebody to effectively gig on the Gasconade. The water near springs would be my biggest concern and I think there should be an off limits area from gigging in those spots. I know that and I was just using it as an example to show the hypocrisy of your statement. Yes, there are those that fit your description, but there are also plenty of us out there stabbing fish out of $30k jet boats as well. Sorry to hear that. Are you still able to fish at all these days? A few smallmouth around 12" have met their demise in my boat as well as some channel cats. A big (18"+) smallmouth has never been stuck in my boat. I've made it very clear to the people I gig with that they will not be invited back if they pull that stunt. Big bass are very identifiable by their movements. I spend most of my time in the swifter riffles since they are typically full of suckers, hog mollies in particular, and you usually don't see many game fish as they are in the slower water. Catfish are the exception to this, but anybody who has gigged much at all will quickly recognize that "slithering" motion of a catfish. Except for that fact that spear fishing on streams is illegal in MO 24/7/365. Gigging on streams is legal between Sept 15 - Jan 31. Not only was this turd bag killing illegal fish, he was also doing it on illegal waters, which compounds how big of a turd he is. All the rules in the world won't prevent humans from be pieces of trash.

The fact that these dickweeds get a slap of the wrist when somebody does report them is a slap in our face. Any serious outdoorsman will agree that the penalties that poachers do receive when busted are a joke. Almost makes it not worth reporting because it will just make a guy even more hacked off when they get away with barely any punishment. Also, @MoCarp, how is this picture possible? There isn't a single gig in sight! Only those scum of the earth giggers would commit such a travesty!

You're kidding? I had no idea! Did you realize that people can also poach with rod and reel as well? I bet more people get busted for over harvesting with rod and reel than those who gig and keep illegal fish. Nope. The people I know who gig don't want other turds ruining what they enjoy. Judging by the appearance of guys that enjoy fishing for carp, I bet they like to pass the bottle around quite a bit as well. Do to your infatuation with buglemouth bass, I am just going to assume you're in the same class as them. That is how you look at things, right? Well for one it is illegal and two, suckers taste better than bass. What prevents somebody from keeping bass caught out of season when they are stacked up in wintering holes? I guarantee I can go sit in a few spots during January and February and catch 50+ fish in a day on a NED rig with ease. Those same spots are far too deep for gigging to be effective. So nobody ever over harvests using other methods? Also, if I wanted wipe out a population of bass, I wouldn't be using a gig to do it. When bass get to their wintering holes, they are typically deeper than you can effectively gig most of the time anyways. I've sat in one spot many a time and caught fish after fish all day long. Because it's illegal and those fish are easily identifiable. Did you miss the part where I said that most of us don't feel like being up all night cleaning fish? It's not that we couldn't kill our limits, it's that we only need 15-20 to make a good mess of fish to fry up that evening and not have to be up half the night cleaning them. When I was younger, we did that a few times where we killed four limits of suckers. Cleaning 80 suckers at once got old REAL fast. How often do you fish? It doesn't appear that you fish often. In that case, why would you bother investing the money in to fishing gear? If somebody deer hunts one weekend out of the year, why would they invest in a deer rifle? To answer your question, it's BECAUSE IT IS NEEDED TO BE ABLE TO DO IT AT ALL! I've seen plenty of carcasses dumped, but never a pile of uncleaned suckers. Stuff like gar and carp I have seen dumped and I don't think that is right. Bowfisherman are more apt to do this type of thing since they are typically after carp and gar. They better just ban fishing all together then. There are far more rod and reel anglers out there so you can bet that more game fish die by their hand than what few that the giggers claim. Far more game fish have met their demise in my boat due to being gut/tongue hooked than gigging and I've been gigging for 20+ years.

It's clearly obvious you are clueless when it comes to gigging. Only a turd would purposely gig game fish and I don't know of a single person who would pass up suckers to do that. If any of the people that I know who gig saw something like that, there would probably be some words exchanged and physical confrontation with the poachers. Giggers want suckers to eat because they are delicious and gigging is far more effective at quickly getting enough for a fish fry that rod and reel fishing. Smaller suckers are the better eating. Most would rather have a limit of foot long suckers over a bunch of big redhorse simply because they are easier to clean and fry up crispier. Very few times does a boat get their full limit. Not to say it isn't possible and it would be easy to go over if you really were trying for a full boat limit, but most tend to go out and kill enough for the evening. Cleaning suckers is the worst part so staying up all night doing that kind of ruins the fun. If you kill just enough to fry up that evening, then you can go back out and do it all over again.

Is this the right post? I didn't see you mention where you actually saw the boat committing the act, just that another boat was putting in who you didn't think was the culprit. Itt was in September and goes along with what you said here for the most part.

I doubt 100 crappie would fit on a 3-4' section of stringer. The most I've dealt with at one time was four limits (60) of 9-13" crappie and 3-4' of stringer wouldn't come close to holding all of those fish. Does this look like 100 crappie to you? It doesn't to me. This picture is from Reelfoot, which has a 30 crappie limit and I'd imagine that's how many is on that stringer.

That's wild! I've been gigging for 20+ years and know many who have done it far longer and I'm not aware of anybody witnessing anything remotely close to that crap. Somebody would be getting their butts kicked if they pulled that in front of most people I know who also enjoy gigging.

I hope I can make it to one of those gigging tourneys one of these days. That looks like a blast! I know you hate on the lowly gigger, but I know many of the guys that were in that video and many are adamant bass fishermen as well. They would be just as whizzed off about somebody killing a nice bass that they could be catching on rod and reel as you are. I'll never be able to wrap my head around why anybody would purposely kill bass when suckers are so plentiful and taste better.

Perfect gigging conditions!

There were several years recently where the white suckers didn't seem to be near as abundant when we were down at Taneycomo. This past summer was the first in a while where we actually caught quite a few. I saw some pretty good schools of them swimming around up around Flat Creek as well and I hadn't been seeing that as much.

Just run faster next time. No need to be in a tree.

Looks like I will miss out this weekend. I have to cover some work for dad Saturday since he will be out of state on a cow elk hunt. On Sunday, I am going with a buddy and his son up to KC for a Chiefs game. I was really looking forward to freezing my caboose off Saturday and laying the smack down on some more slabs.

I'm sure those same states fall behind MO when it comes to other species as well. I think you would be hard pressed to find a state that is as well rounded as Missouri when it comes to outdoor activities. It's kind of the jack of all trades, master at none type of thing. Sure, if you only fish for smallmouth on Ozark streams then that doesn't mean much to you. However, if you're like me and fish for a variety of different species, then it's wonderful. LoZ and TRL offer some great bass fishing for numbers and good sized fish, but you won't catch a 10 pounder like you would downs outh The MO River and Mississippi River are loaded with monster catfish, but you probably stand a better chance at catching one on Wheeler in Alabama LoZ and Truman have fantastic crappie fishing, but you aren't going to catch as many 3+ pounders there as you would in MIssissippi Trout fishing on Taneycomo is fantastic and you have the chance at hooking up with a possible 20+ pound fish. MO is arguably the best paddlefish state in the country. Oklahoma has great numbers, but your chances of catching a giant are better in MO on Truman or Tablerock Our deer hunting is really good, but Iowa, Kansas and Illinois produce more really big deer. MO still sees a lot of boone and crockett class deer each year. MO also has a ton of public land for people to utlize as well. I've spoken to many hunters from other states that don't offer the quality of public grounds that our state does. MO is always ranked towards the top when it comes to turkey hunting. Smallmouth fishing isn't on par with the northern states when it comes to size, but it's just one more thing that MO has to offer. If you want to go catch a bunch of fish, the Ozark streams are full of them I'm sure there are other things. My point is that while one state may be the best at one thing in general, they are terrible at others. Missouri is great at a few things and still offers decent opportunities at nearly anything you can think of. Try opening your eyes and look at the bigger picture. We have it pretty good in my opinion.

@MoCarp since you brought it up about Taneycomo, can you tell me the name of any stream in the US where trout are measured in pounds instead of inches? I've seen some pretty hefty trout caught out of Taney that were still measured in inches versus pounds. These were easily 8# + fish.

Good luck with that. Unless you just flat out make it illegal to harvest nice fish, your average Joe weekend angler drowning night crawlers or minnows that lucks in to those nice bass is most likely taking them home. There are far more of those types than those with our mindset when it comes to managing quality fisheries. Just like when it comes to managing deer for mature bucks. If you do your part to allow the little bucks to grow in age and everybody else around you shoots them on sight, you're just peeing in the wind.

I agree as I have targeted suckers on Taneycomo for years. I'd spend all day long walking around the Lazy Valley dock sight fishing for them. Gigging is far more effective when it comes to harvesting suckers though. Anybody who says otherwise is blowing smoke. We can go out gigging for 30 minutes, get 10-20, scale, fillet, score and be feeding the group of people standing around the campfire in an hour and a half from taking the boat off of the trailer.

If you are comparing a suckers to common carp, it is very obvious you haven’t ever ate fresh deep fried suckers....... one of the best fish dishes MO has to offer IMO. Add in some fried potatoes, onions, hush puppies and some ice cold brewskies and you are living right! I’d give it up in a heartbeat if it 100% meant we would have much better quality smallmouth fishing.

My dad is heading out to Colorado later this week for a cow hunt. I'm hoping they are successful. I've not had elk in many years. Hopefully in a few years, I will go on my own bull hunt. As of now, I believe I have 12 or 13 preference points for Colorado. Not really sure what unit I am going to try and draw for when I do decide to go, but hopefully I can get a good one when I do finally decide to apply for a tag.

I've gigged plenty over the years and I can tell you one thing. There have been far more smallmouth killed in my boat due to being hooked in the gut or in the tongue than there ever has from being gigged. I guess for the sake of the fish, MDC should ban all recreational fishing so we don't wipe the poor things out!

Nice brown! I love ripping jerkbaits when the water is up. Those trout get down right vicious!

If I had to hunt public land and had to resort to hunting a long ways in, I would definitely be utilizing the gutless method. I'm fortunate to hunt areas where I more often than not just drive right up to the deer and load it so I do the skinning, gutting, etc at home and with the deer hung from a tractor.