ozark trout fisher

I guess you have a point about Mill at Bohigian. I hate to admit being incorrect, but I just hadn't thought of that. I can't think of any way the Little Piney has benefited from the funds though, at least in the Blue Ribbon portion, but that may be beside the point.

I don't think a fly fisherman who releases nearly 100% of his trout unharmed can really be called irresponsible or unselfish for not buying a trout tag... I choose to buy one because I like to fish the winter season at the trout parks and I think it goes to a good cause, but I don't begrudge those who chose not to. And Eric, there is no reason in the world someone who mainly fishes Little Piney and Mill Creek's Blue ribbon area should have to pay to help trout stocking-those are wild fish, and the MDC doesn't have to replace them. Nature kindly takes care of that. You said that Little Piney would have far fewer fish without stocking efforts-that may be true in some areas of the stream, but where I do most of my fishing, in the Blue Ribbon area, the vast majority of the trout I catch are smaller than 9 inches, the minimum stocking size for Missouri trout. As for the bait fishing in Blue Ribbon areas- that's a problem that I see a lot, and it annoys me to no end. Just about every time I fish at Lane Spring, I have to pick up a couple empty worm cans, and sometimes jars of powerbait as well. This wild trout creeks really can't handle bait fishing pressure, and those who understand the regulations, and bait fish anyway are truly selfish. To those who don't understand the regs, it's up to us to do what Sharps did, and explain them to those who are violating them accidentally.

I'm honestly a bit confused by the recent turn of the tide towards slot limits. Personally, I don't care very much whether our streams are trophy fisheries. I only care that the smallmouth population, given the character of the stream, is about what it should be. Whenever we harvest a smallmouth bass, we are disrupting a careful balance. So I'll ask you, is this about creating a trophy bass fisheries, or protecting the resource? If your goal is to create trophy fisheries despite what the fishery's original character might have been, I want no part of that. A slot limit, as near as I can tell, would allow the harvest of more fish before they get a chance to breed, not less. This really makes me think that you all are coming at this from a different angle than I am. The only new regulations I would support would include an increased length limit, a lowered daily bag limit, or both. Personally, I want less smallmouth (of any size)taken out of our streams, not more.

The best argument you have against climate change is to simply call those who believe in it idiots. The vast majority of scientists believe it is the case, and we know the greenhouse effect is real. I'll believe scientists, not Rush Limbaugh. Frankly, I can't stand it when fisherman don't want to protect our environment. We use it for our passion, and yet some of us don't care to protect it.

I was talking about the Baptist Camp on the Current, a couple miles below Montauk State Park. Sorry about the confusion there.

I managed to steal three days to stay at Montauk this week- I headed down Monday and was there until today. I arrived about 2:30 P.M on on Monday and after setting up camp, I headed up to the where the headwaters springs flow into Pigeon Creek on the fly only area. I have only previously fished the area for a quarter mile or so above the mill dam, so this was new water to me. I found my way to a long flat that had excellent numbers of fish, but also plenty of fisherman. I finally found a pod that wasn't being fished and got to work. I tied on an orange egg pattern to start with-sort of my default trout park fly. They wouldn't have anything to do with it. I switched to an Olive Woolly, a Mohair Leech, and then a Copper John. Same story. I finally came to the conclusion that the fish were being put off by the heat, but before giving up, I tied on a #16 Gray Scud. That worked. I caught 8 fish by 6:30. I released all but one that I kept for dinner. After dinner, I headed down to Baptist Camp. I kept the Gray Scud tied on and it worked down there too. No big fish, just some nice rainbows and a couple small browns. Still a nice evening on the river. Tuesday morning I got up for the buzzer and headed back to the headwaters. I caught two fish right away on the scud, and then it shut off for me. I fished until noon, but I never caught another fish. Then I didn't fish anymore until the evening. Then I headed to the catch and release area, and the fishing was good. Once again no really big fish, but several solid 15 and 16 inch fish. The gray scud was best there too, although I took a couple on an orange egg pattern as well. This morning I got up early and took down camp. I was thinking I was going to head straight home without any fishing, but about the time I got to Salem I changed my mind. I decided to head up to an access point on the far upper reaches of the Meramec, where it is more of a creek really. I decided to start off with a #10 brown woolly and stuck with it the whole time. The areas where riffles dumped into the pools were good. I caught a pretty decent number of fish, and mixture of smallmouth bass, sunfish, and goggle-eye. And the stream was very nice up there, a pleasant and lonely area that I know I'll return to soon.

Native Americans didn't harvest nearly as many fish as we do know-I imagine it's not even on the same scale.

I don't support the harvest of smallmouth in any manner really, so I wouldn't be at all supportive of a slot limit. I think we should do our best to return the smallmouth population in our streams to the state it was before humans messed things up. That would mean not only catch and release, but also habitat improvement. I don't think we should be managing smallmouth just so we can catch trophy sized fish. Rather, we should be doing this with the motivation of returning our smallmouth streams to what they used to be, whether we would consider that "quality smallmouth angling" or not. Increasing the number of fish that can be harvested (as slot limits would in many smaller streams) doesn't help accomplish that. If a stream naturally is over populated with smallmouth, then that's just the way it was meant to be. One of the best ways to help our streams return to what they once were is through catch and release.Since my personal goal of statewide C&R for smallmouth will not occur for a long time, restrictive length limits (15" or 18"), and small bag limit seem like a reasonable compromise. The exception to what I'm saying occurs in streams where man caused the overpopulation (through channelization, gravel mining and other abuses). In streams where man has degraded the habitat, high populations of small fish tend to be the rule. And in that case, it would be beneficial to harvest some small fish, although habitat improvements would probably do more to help the situation.

I doubt if it will be high and muddy... The red ribbon area might be tough, but it's only running 700 CFS down at Steelville. In my experience, when the river is at that level down at Steelville, the spring branch is usually slightly clouded but pretty fishable.

I was gone for the week, and I can't say I missed the smallmouth debate one bit... No further comments.

No JD, oil is not our best solution. I could go on and on about the environmental damage the oil industry has caused. Even if you don't take the recent oil spill into account, there are countless other environmental debacles. I don't even have the think very hard..... Let's see. Exxon Valdez Oil spill in Alaska. It damaged one of the best salmon fisheries in the world and cost many commercial fisherman their lively-hoods. That one hit my father pretty hard, as he lived near there at the time, and loved to sport fish for salmon in that area. The tar-sands drilling in Alberta and other areas of Northern Canada make vast areas of what was once pristine north woods wilderness into a total wasteland. Oil companies are begging to drill up in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.It is among the last true wilderness on our continent, and they want to litter it with drilling rigs. One small mishap JD? I think not. Oil companies have a long record of proving that their bottom line is the only thing that matters to them. They couldn't care less about the environment. I know the problems that ethanol causes, but it can't be as bad as what the oil industry has done to us.

Last I heard 20 were dead and 40 were missing. It's so incredibly sad. My thoughts and prayers will be with those who were impacted.It's also scary-a slight miscalculation about how a predicted rain will effect stream flows can kill you apparently. It really is something I will think about before I plan my next camping/fishing trip. One day your wading, fishing, and camping without a concern for anything and the next morning you're gone. It's frightening what rivers can do.

There are two parties at fault in this oil disaster. The first, is of course, BP. They didn't do what was necessary to maintain a safe drilling rig, and of course they should be the ones to have to pay every penny to clean this up. I sincerely hope they go out of business in the process. The American people are the other party at fault. We all know the people who run oil companies are without exception good for nothing scumbags. Yet we remain content to get oil from them. We haven't made nearly enough effort to develop alternative energy so we can get away from oil. If this isn't our final wake-up call to get into high gear finding alternative, green energy, then we're hopeless idiots. I'm tired of being dependent on the sleazeballs who run companies like BP, and as a country, we need to find different ways to run our cars so we can cut ties with them. I have little or no sympathy for the folks in the oil industry who would be negatively effected by alternative energy. They have made their livings raping and pillaging the environment, and don't deserve the money they already have.

New regs wouldn't bar anyone from fishing anywhere. It would only mean they would have to release more fish. If they choose to leave, that's totally their problem. All these people are complaining about how new regs chase off half the fisherman from special management areas. Am I the only one who thinks that's a good thing?

I'm glad you had a good time MST Sig Ep. Sounds like you enjoyed the LP For all the folks who are reading this thread,the Little Piney is incredibly precious to myself and others around here, so treat her gently and pinch down your barbs. Every one of those trout is a true treasure, and we need to be really careful with them.

Maybe Al Agnew can chime in on this, because he seems to understand this better than anyone else... But despite whatever the conservation agent may have told you, I am pretty sure you are allowed to wade, camp, and fish below the high water line on navigable streams. I'm just not sure whether the Castor is technically navigable or not. I think that's the question.

I could be wrong, but I think that's actually incorrect. I believe that the stream-bed of a navigable river is considered a public resource up to the high water mark, allowing anglers to wade, fish, and camp on the gravel bars of navigable streams. But the problem lies in the fact that it is extremely unclear which streams are in fact navigable. The larger rivers (the Black, Meramec, Current, Jacks Fork, Gasconade, Osage, and a few I'm not thinking of) are fairly securely in the public domain, which means that you can wade, fish, float, and camp below the high water line. But there is a huge gray area. Smaller streams like Little Piney, the Castor, and Huzzah Creek are floatable much of the time, but it still very unclear whether or not they are navigable waters. As Fishinwrench said, that is probably more up to the county prosecutor than anyone else, unless you have the money to get a lawyer and fight them on it. On a less legal note, I firmly believe that all flowing water should be in the public domain. The property owner didn't create the stream, so what right does he have to tell me that I can't fish it, especially if I enter the stream on a public easement?

The Wenkel Ford Access. The Bourbeuse is a navigable river, so you can camp on gravel bars- I don't believe there are any campgrounds though. http://www.missouricanoe.org/river-maps/bourbeuse.html

I'm treating her very gently- I may try the DT5. Thanks

I'd be all for any method to stop the oil spill that wouldn't be more environmentally disastrous than the oil itself, but according to what I've heard, a nuclear weapon wouldn't work in this case. The oil is coming out from under hundreds of feet of mud (apparently that wasn't the case off the coast of Russia, where they used the method successfully), and the people in charge think that would cause the nuke not to fix the problem, I don't understand all the dynamics of it, but that is what I heard on NPR anyway. They also said if the nuke method failed, that oil would be gushing out of a large area of the ocean floor instead of just one pipe-so maybe that's not as comfortable of a fail-safe as we'd like.

Fishing is pretty much everything to me, except a way to make money. It's my passion, my life, it always has been, and probably it always will be. It's also an excellent way to spend a lot of money when I can't afford to.

I got it in the mail today. It's a beautiful rod, I just can't get over it. It casts very well with a 6 weight line. I couldn't be more happy with it, it really is an awesome fly rod.

I spent the last couple days along a nice little wild trout creek in southern Missouri- and other than that I can't say more about the location. I got to the stream last night around 7:30 P.M, just in time for the evening rise. There were some caddis coming off, and some fish rising in the slower water. I tied on a #14 Elks Hair Caddis and got to work- I got three that evening, two 5 inchers and a 9 incher-small but still fun on a fly rod. This morning I woke about 5 AM. I tied on a Hares Ear Nymph a few feet under a strike indicator. I immediately hooked a decent rainbow, about 11 inches if I had to guess. He jumped up, giving me a chance to see how pretty he was while simultaneously throwing the hook. I fished the same riffle for another two hours and landed four rainbows, all between 4 inches and 8 inches. Finally I worked down to the pool below the riffle. The pool was the whole package- it had fast, oxygenated, food filled riffle water coming in at its head, a fallen tree for cover, and several boulders to slow the current. I knew it would hold large fish. The only problem was getting a clean drift with many conflicting currents. Finally I devised a way to drift a fly down from the riffle down into the pool, and with several correcting mends on each cast it did the job adequately. On the second cast my indicator went down and I was fast to a good fish, which I landed. He was 11" long, colorful, and very wild. Exactly what a rainbow trout should be. A few casts later, my strike indicator took another dive. This time the fish was much larger, and I knew I wouldn't have much control over the fight. He headed for the downed tree, but I managed to hold him off for about 5 minutes. Then he made one more desperate run. I tried to keep him out of the tree, but I tried too hard. Just before he got me tangled up in there, the 6x tippet broke. I don't know how large the fish was, but I can definitively say he was the largest Missouri wild rainbow I have seen in person. It was a privledge just to have a chance to see such a fish in a Missouri stream, but I blew it. That'll happen though. Anyway, after that I'd had it for the day, and headed home. Despite the lost fish, it was still a very nice day of fishing on a very nice creek.

Guides expect a tip. Most guides wouldn't get by if they didn't get tips from folks. It's just part of the price, and if you don't plan on tipping the guide then you shouldn't book the trip, period. Of course if the guide is a half hour late, fishes the whole time, and yells at you when you get tangled, then you shouldn't tip them. But otherwise, you should. Guides don't make a hell of a lot of money as I understand, and if they do a good job I will reward them for it, just like you would a waiter at a restaraunt. Common courtesy. I generally tip 15% if the guide does what is expected, and nothing more. 20% if they do a better than average job, and maybe a little more if they do a great job.

It sounds like they are having a bit more success... They are capturing 50-80% of the oil. I still hope the bastards that run BP are put out of business , after they pay to fix the leak, clean up the oil, and pay restitution to the folks who depend on the Gulf for their pay check. I say every penny the big wigs of BP ever earned should be summarily taken away from them and given to the public fund to solve this problem, not to be radical about it or anything. And if we didn't already know that we need to work harder on alternative energy, we know now.