ozark trout fisher

lol

Headed to SW Colorado tomorrow, and over the course of the next week. I'm planning on spending some time in Mesa Verde before dropping down into the Gunnison drainage to fish the Uncompahgre and some other nearby waters. Planning on doing a half-day guide trip the first fishing day to get the hang of things and then figuring out things for myself from there. Anyway, I plan to post a report when I get back and hopefully it will go well.......

Eh, I'll always take camp (with all of its pleasures and displeasures) over a hotel room. This applies for both fishing and most hunting trips (ie regular Firearms deer season.) The exception I make: during the early winter, in Northern Missouri, during Antlerless Deer Season, I book a room. In only those conditions does that Sleep Inn in Macon sound pretty fantastic:)

Beautiful fish. A 20" ozark smallie is a really nice feat. I bet the fight was epic, might as well have a Great White Shark on as a smallmouth that size.......

My personal favorite is the camp along the Upper Current where some drunken hillbillies decided the best course of action was to shine a massive spotlight into our tent at midnight and give us some high quality rebel yells. Though that wouldn't necessarily qualify as "reckless indifference" as much as attempted (and entirely unsuccessful) intimidation. It was during the heat of the whole ONSR management debate and some of the locals were a bit hot and bothered.

Try a rebel teeny craw when you are stream fishing. They'll get you into plenty of bass, along with any type of panfish wherever you're fishing. Just cast it out, twitch it a little bit and let it drift a few seconds, and then crank it in at a medium pace. You will catch fish, not always big ones or a lot, but you'll catch some. One thing to keep in mind: this has been a weird, weird summer, in terms of weather. It has the fishing in most streams anywhere from a bit off-kilter to downright bad. Don't assume that every poor trip is on you.

Well, he was the one calling the Captive Deer thread "politics based" because it involved the governor. So yeah, this one is pretty easy to read.

Didn't mean to come off as confrontational, got no desire for that. It's just.....as much as anyone, I've had people walk between me and the water I'm fishing, or set up their deer stand within plain view of mine on a parcel of public land that is 20000 acres, most of it lightly hunted. I've had people come out on the small fishing dock I'm using and dump a bag full of fish guts right where I'm casting. Those people have tended to be both young and old, in almost equal measure. It just comes down to whether you care enough to pay attention to what is going on around you. Sure, upbringing matters, but it's mostly just a state of mind at the end of the day. You have it or you don't.

Sorry, not letting this slide........I encounter as many old jerks as young ones, and I'd imagine if you open your eyes, you would too. Ignorance knows no age limit.

Yep. Rivers are sounding better all the time.

I would second the use of a Teeny Craw for pure numbers of smallmouth (along with most everything else in what ever river you are fishing.) On very few streams will you struggle to catch a good number of fish on those. It's the closest there is to a sure thing.

Great fish! If that were me, I'd consider that a bass fishing lease that just happened to have some deer on it...........

The snarky tone in some of the responses you got is uncalled for, though pretty much par for the course I'm sad to say. That said, it'd help if you'd say which part of the state you were looking to fish and otherwise narrowed it down a bit. This state has hundreds and if not thousands of miles of smallmouth streams, most of them chock full of fish, and I could point you to dang near any of them without going wrong.

Honestly, in terms of numbers, pick a clear, spring-fed stream and you'll probably be fine. Gasconade, Big Piney, Jacks Fork, Current, James, I'm just getting started. It can be hard to find streams with good numbers of big smallmouth, but finding numbers of fish isn't a challenge in the Ozarks. If you narrow it down a little I could help, but I can think of about 500 miles of stream in Missouri off the top of my head that would fit with what you are asking. Anywhere in southern Missouri, would be the short answer.

I'm not opposed to those who use minnows and other live bait for bass, even in a catch and release setting. I don't do it anymore, but it can be done ethically. You just have to know what you're doing enough to set the hook quickly and prevent them taking it deep. Now that I fish a lot with Rebel craws and other crankbaits and almost never use live bait (except for catfish), I have considerably more issues injuring bass than in the years when I used nightcrawlers and minnows. That's a bit of a painful truth. It's because I knew enough not to let them take it deep when fishing bait, which is preventable most of the time if you are fishing a tight line. But when you are using artificials with multiple treble hooks, there's often nothing you can do to prevent trouble. So as an ethical issue, I would maintain that it's a pretty muddy one.

Yeah, I think both of your posts sum this up fairly well, SpoonDog. Even if you could argue that captive deer are livestock, they are capable of escaping and interacting (in terms of diseases) with wild deer, so there's your problem. We don't have wild cattle or chickens to worry about if those escape, and that's a key difference. Frankly, if these types of operations had less issues in the past holding onto their animals and causing the potential for the spread of CWD, there might be less pushback against them now. For all the effort to tie it into the fair chase vs. canned hunts debate, that's just beside the point. If the disease issue wasn't there, I don't care if some rich dude wants to pay big money to "hunt" deer. It's just not what this is about.

Fishing was awfully odd this evening. I hit a pond that is ultra-reliable (usually.) Started out fly fishing with a little olive marabou jig around 7:30, went through about everything in the box, and ended up back at the olive marabou about 8:20 with the skunk still intact. After tying the same thing back on, I proceeded to haul in bass and 'gills like a commercial fisherman for 10 minutes. Hook up on nearly every cast. Then it went completely dead until I left a half hour later. That kind of behavior just sort of happens with bass, but when even the panfish get that moody in mid-summer, things are getting weird.

If you aren't already, make sure to hesitate a brief, fraction of a second before you set up. Oftentimes fish take the fly on the way back down and you'll miss them if you set right away.

Honestly, I don't mind getting skunked in this weather. At least from a fly fishing perspective, the topwater bite is about off, but I'm getting plenty of nice bass and 'gills dredging with woollies and anything with marabou. Fishing isn't dead at least where I'm at, but you do have to work somewhat harder than you'd expect this time of year. I hate the heat though, so overall this is a blessing. At least I can fish in the middle of the day this summer, even if I'm just having to dredge for the occasional bass.

Honestly, snakes do scare me. I've got a borderline-phobia of the things, especially when I'm wading in a river and I can't see what's around me. But I still know their benefits and I can respect their existence. I don't have to like them, but I know they need to be there.

Yep. This line of reasoning is so obviously incorrect (and yet used so much) that it seems not worth pointing out anymore.

Doesn't matter in the least if its private land. As long as you stay below the high water mark (including almost all gravel bars, where most everyone camps along rivers) you're not trespassing and completely within the law. It doesn't excuse you of the occasional awkward encounter with a landowner unfamiliar with state law (though it's pretty rare) but it does mean you'll be in the right, if that happens to be worth anything. Of course if you are above the high water mark you put yourself in danger of either the law or an angry landowner, whichever you find more pressing. .

I am planning to leave for Colorado in a bit over a week, and there is a legitimate (even probable) chance the weather out there (about 7000 ft above sea level) is going to be warmer than it is here in Mid-mo. In other words, this is a weird summer we're having here. The fishing has been pretty good, though, so it's hard to complain.

Yep. Their benefits defintely outweigh the minute danger they pose to humans. It's on us to do the little bit that's necessary to keep ourselves safe- which often just entails not pissing them off on purpose.

This is a sad situation, and you hate to read about something like this happening. That said, it's an extremely rare and odd set of circumstances at play here. First of all, most of us would not pick up a poisonous snake. Secondly, it's extremely rare for anyone ever to die from a copperhead bite (or from the bite of any other poisionous snake in Missouri) even if bit. This shows that it can occur, in the perfect storm of terrible circumstances, and that it's important to be careful and get the right medical care ASAP. But this type of unfortunate death probably won't happen to anyone else in this state for quite a number of years, based on many decades of evidence. The point is, this is a heartbreaking story. But it's not an excuse to start killing poisounous snakes (or more likely, snakes improperly identified as poisonous) willy nilly as I fear may happen with some. It sure doesn't mean "the only good snake is a dead snake." It's just an incredibly rare tragedy, like someone dying of rabies after walking into a bat infested barn after dark. Doesn't mean it makes sense to kill all the bats we see flying through the air for the next few years.