ozark trout fisher

Missouri rebounded nicely over VCU though. A very good game for Pressey, along with Negus Webster Chan, Laurence Bowers, and Keion Bell. Just a really solid overall effort. VCU is a good, well-coached team. This team is about what I expected...gritty, tough, good defensively. But not quite enough explosiveness on offense to be elite just yet. Still, Stanford and VCU should be quality wins at the end of the season and even a loss to Louisville will help the RPI, no matter how ugly it was. Right now, this looks like a solid, most likely tournament team. I'm not sure how much further I want to go than that...Jabari Brown should help. Don't know what to think about what's going on with Michael Dixon though, with no real information available. I hope whatever it is is relatively minor, but we will see.

Missouri looked decent last night against Stanford. Our shooting wasn't good at all, but if anything it's good if you can beat a decent team while shooting under 40% from the field. Missouri will have a really tough game today though against Louisville. Another rough shooting day probably won't get it done. I do like this team though. I particularly love the defense, something that we could have used in the past. Great three point shooting is nice, but good defense and rebounding is a lot more reliable. Between Oriakhi and Bowers inside and the big athletic wings (Bell and Ross) we appear have an ability to stifle opposing offenses to a greater degree than at any point I can remember. On top of that, Phil Pressey has been playing well so far. It's too early to say anything definitive, but I think the team as currently composed is capable of top 3-4 finish in the SEC and making the tournament, barring injuries or something else unforeseen. Get Dixon and Jabari Brown in the line-up, who should both be much needed offensive threats, and Missouri can be so much more than that. I'll be interested to see how competitive we can be against Louisville, and whether we can beat either Duke or VCU tomorrow.

This is a rough season without a doubt. I don't buy into the talk though that this means Missouri will be a bottom feeder in the SEC. Missouri has struggled mightily with injuries, and generally, things haven't conspired to make this a very auspicious first season. It's a disappointment but not a reason for alarm-yet. If Missouri struggles again next year, then it might be time to consider the possibility that something has to change to be a top-half team in the SEC. For now I'll call this year an aberration. And as bad as its been, you couldn't even call Missouri one of the worst teams in the SEC this year, not with Auburn, Kentucky, and Tennessee all still fighting for a conference win headed into the last week. And that brings to mind on thing that I have to admit I was wrong about...this is a tough, tough conference. I anticipated a slight bump up in competition moving to the Big 12, but not for what I've seen. I knew Alabama and Georgia and South Carolina would be very tough. But even the so called bottom feeders like Tennessee, Auburn, and Kentucky have talent. The "middle of the road" teams like Mississippi State and Vanderbilt are really, really good teams. I expected this team to win 5 or 6 conference games this season. Now I can see that even if everything had gone right on the injury front, that might well have been unrealistic. I still think that Missouri's recruiting is picking up though, and we should return enough good players that we should be somewhat improved next season...hopefully enough to get this team back to a bowl game, if not more. For now, I'll be cheering like crazy for them in the last regular season game. Texas A&M is very good to say the least, and obviously it would take a mammoth effort. There may not be a bowl game this year, but I would love to see this team show some fight and give the Aggies all they can handle. And hopefully, if the stars align perfectly, win their sixth and qualify for a bowl. But as I said, I'd just be happy with giving them a good fight at this point. It would be nice for the seniors to have something positive going out. I will say one good thing...Our quarterback situation has really improved. Both Franklin and Berkstresser looked really good when called upon against Syracuse. It's a little bit harder to notice that when it still results in a loss, but it's good that we have a couple of quarterbacks that we should be able to rely on Saturday (and while I hate to talk about this with a chance at a bowl still remaining, it's a promising sign for next season.) Finally, I'll be awfully sorry to see this group of seniors go. Really tough for them with this season not going as planned.

Should be fun...The upcoming Stanford game and whoever we play in the next round (if we beat Stanford it could very well be #2 Louisville) will be a great measuring stick for this team. I don't expect Missouri to win that tournament because to do so they would have to beat Louisville and probably Duke in the finals...but getting two wins in three tries would probably mean this is a very good team, considering how strong the Bahamas tournament appears this year. It would also more than likely get this team a couple of good RPI wins. I'll say it again though, this team needs to be infinitely more consistent or we will struggle in those kind of tough early games. The first half they had yesterday will absolutely not cut it-if we did that against Stanford we'd be down 20 or 25 at the half. But the second half was near flawless, which told me that this was probably more of a lack of focus issue than anything else. On a more positive note, Laurence Bowers is 6' 8" and he can hit threes like a shooting guard. If he keeps that up, how in the world will opposing teams defend him? And Stefan Jankovic is a stud. I kind of thought he'd take awhile to develop into a good player for us, but as it stands he looks deserving of major minutes right of the bat.

It will be interesting to watch. Between the two exhibition games and the game against SIU-Edwardsville, they've had stretches where they've looked great, and plenty of stretches where they've looked very average. I'm expecting this team to improve as the season goes on. Another 30 wins or anything close to that is a major stretch, but this definitely should be a solid NCAA tournament team, barring major chemistry or injury issues. I do need to see a bit more consistence before I believe that this team can be much more than a 7-9 seed. Denmon, English, Matt Pressey Rattliffe, and Steve Moore are heavy losses. There are examples of good teams being built primarily via transfer (last year's Iowa State.) Not many great teams put together like that though. That would be a first if Missouri can get there. Phil Pressey will need to have a great year for this to be more than another early exit. We'll see how it goes, and it should be exciting regardless.

I'm hoping for a Kansas State-Notre Dame title game...always been an Irish fan, and how can you not like Bill Snyder? But I know that Oregon would have to lose for that to happen. Plenty of time for that though with Stanford, Oregon State, and probably UCLA in the Pac 12 title game.

Should be a very interesting game on Saturday against Tennessee...Missouri has the 15th rated passing defense, with legitimate playmakers in E.J. Gaines and Kenronte Walker, among others. Tennessee's offense will likely struggle to put up the 40-50 points that they have almost always needed to stay in games this year. And Tennessee's defense should make even Missouri's struggling offense look pretty potent. It won't matter if four interceptions are thrown...but Franklin has never done that before last week, and what are the chances he does that again? Could be wrong, but I think Franklin gets back to his old self a bit against what is one of the lower tier defenses in the SEC. It will likely be a wild game, with a final score something like 42-35. I don't have the slightest clue who wins though. I do know that which ever team loses will probably miss a bowl (short of a furious late season push), so it should be a hard fought and exciting game.

Gary Pinkel needs time to succeed in the SEC before we make a decision. This season has been a disappointment, but certainly it hasn't been disaster. This team has been as injury plagued as any Missouri team in recent memory...and yet with three games to go a bowl looks very realistic. Some other teams that have been similarly injury plagued include Kentucky, Colorado, and Illinois...and none of those teams are above 2 wins right now. We aren't Alabama or Florida and won't be anytime soon. So you have to ask, is 7-8 wins a year, with an occasional really good season (and an occasional 5 or 6 win setback like this year) good enough? Maybe not, but I don't think anyone has a better chance to get us above that mark than Pinkel. We don't have the facilities or the athletics budget of the SEC titans, and we don't have the built in recruiting advantages. Anyway, who could we bring in? It seems like half the SEC will be looking for a new coach this year...Kentucky and Arkansas (for sure), and most likely Auburn and Tennessee. So we get in line behind Auburn, Tennessee, and probably Arkansas, and we don't land any of the really great gets like Charlie Strong or Dana Holgorsen...We end up with some coach of a hot mid-major program that may or may not work out. I'd rather have Pinkel..

The good news is that by losing to the Raiders, the Chiefs have put themselves in a great position to win the Geno Smith Bowl...

I agree that a bowl game will be a real challenge, but we were in essentially this same position last year at 4-4 with tough opponents left on the schedule. Of course the switch to the SEC makes it more difficult this time to finish strong. Syracuse is .500 Big East team, and at home Missouri should in theory win with little difficulty. Not to say it will be that easy in reality. They have a good quarterback that is capable of giving us trouble. Tennessee is the other game we'd probably have to win. Tennessee only 3-5 and 0-5 in the SEC. They are pretty much the exact opposite of us-they've got a great offense, and a defense that regularly gives up 30-50 points to teams ranging from Akron to Georgia. Essentially a Big 12 style team playing in the SEC. And the end result for them has been a season about identical to what we've gone through. It's on the road, but it should still be a winnable game if our own defense can step up a little. I still don't know if our own offense will be improved enough to take advantage of their defense. James Franklin will have to get near 100%, and the line will have to play better for us to have chance of matching points with a team like that. I don't have supreme confidence in either, but anything's possible. That game will decide whether we reach bowl eligibility, in my mind. Lose and the chances of doing so are very slight. Texas A&M and Florida aren't likely to be too kind to us.

Mizzou finally rights the ship with a nice win. Granted it's Kentucky, but honestly I was expecting another game that came down to the wire. It was good to be able to relax a bit and enjoy a big win for once.Very pleased with the defensive effort, as well as the run game. Sheldon Richardson carried us today, and Kendial Lawrence also had his best game of the year. Still, at certain times, it looked like we were ready to give the game away to UK, but they were never able to make us pay. They are just as injury riddled as Missouri, probably worse. I feel for that team. There were plenty of mistakes made, but in the end, this win keeps Missouri's bowl hopes alive. The game against Tennessee in two weeks probably decides whether we get there, assuming we're able to get past Syracuse (which probably won't be a cakewalk.) I feel just a bit better about our chances after today. It was good to see Franklin play in the second half, even if he handed it off just about every time. Berkstresser has really done well in an impossible situation for a redshirt freshman, but Franklin's experience is so important right now.

I did get down there this weekend, and it was enjoyable, though not from a fishing standpoint... I won't bother with a full report, because I can summarize it in one sentence-big crowds and poor fishing. I spent the vast majority of my time hiking the trails around Parker Hollow, which given the fall colors and the crowd levels on the river really seemed the thing to do. It was like Montauk Park around Parker Hollow, where there are usually relatively few people this time of year. The cause of the crowds was apparently a benefit event, so I'm not complaining...it's purely my own poor planning. I hope everyone who was part of it had a good time and caught plenty of fish. So long story short, I spent about 2 1/2 hours fishing over the entire weekend. An eleven inch brown trout saved me from drawing my first blank on the Current in quite awhile. I intend to get back for a real fishing trip as soon as possible.

Thanks. Interesting to hear that the trikes are still out...I thought they'd be about done by now. I'm not too worried about dragging. In a lightly loaded kayak it just takes an exceptionally low volume of flow for it to be a problem.

Thanks all. Looking forward to getting down there.

I'll be headed down to the Current for three days (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) for the first time in awhile. The plan is to take the kayak and float Tan Vat to Parker a couple times, and wade fish the other day. I know some dragging will be involved, but I don't really mind. Since I've been almost exclusively chasing smallies since about June, I don't have too much of an idea what's going on down on the Current right at the moment. So namely, if anyone has been down there, what has been hatching? I know the caddis can be coming off pretty good this time of year so I was hoping that was on.

Franklin is not only a D-1 quarterback, but a very good one. He's been bitten by the injury bug this year. So many have already forgotten his breakout season last year. This is a physical league, and players will get injured. That is not Franklin's fault. Just like it's not Elvis Fisher or Marcus Murphy's fault. He is an excellent QB and Pinkel deserves praise rather than blame for bringing him to MU. Franklin should be our starting quarterback (when he's healthy) until he graduates. Maty Mauk will be a good quarterback in the future but he won't be ready this year or probably next. Experienced quarterback play is necessary to win games in this league. We've seen what happens to a pretty darned good redshirt freshman QB (Berkstresser) in this league. He does just fine against a middle of the road Pac 12 opponent and then can't get anything done against a lower-rung SEC team. It would be worse for a true freshman. Franklin has plenty of experience playing (and beating) good teams. He did well against Georgia, and was playing very well against Vandy until he got the strained MCL. We need him under center. Lastly, Missouri has a great coach. Forget all those ten win seasons? Forget how bad Missouri used to be before Pinkel built a very good program essentially out of nothing? Missouri isn't an easy place to recruit, it's not an easy place to win. We have decent talent within our borders, but not to the degree of most of the other Big 12 schools, let alone those in the SEC. Pinkel still carved out quite the niche for us in that conference. I'd be shocked if he doesn't do the same in the SEC. Ultimately, under Pinkel Missouri will almost certainly become at least a middle of the pack SEC school, far from a doormat. They just happen to be awfully injury plagued this year, especially along the O-line. It was the worst possible timing for the move, but in the future they will be fine. Every piece of history suggests that. Missouri will always have a tough time being true SEC title contenders, but there is no reason in the world with the current staff that 7-9 wins a year shouldn't be expected, after the first couple of seasons. That would be acceptable to me.

Rocky Falls near Eminence is well worth checking out, though it may be a bit further than you're looking to go. The Ozark trail runs through that area. Beautiful, remote country. It's a great place to be during the fall, or any other time for that matter. If you hike atop the falls you can see for a good ways and there are plenty of excellent opportunities for photos. The stream wouldn't have a great deal of volume now, but Rocky Creek is a permanent stream and there is enough flow for it to be pretty impressive year-round. I stop by there and spend a few minutes every year on the way back from deer camp. It certainly has a special place in my heart.

We will see. I think this team will be pretty good if/when our injured players start to make their way back into the line-up.

Maty Mauk. I wouldn't put a true freshman in against Alabama. I don't care if he's the next Peyton Manning-he wouldn't make it through three snaps before he got knocked out of the game by that defense. We're in trouble against Alabama no matter what we do, but that game doesn't really matter, beyond what injuries we may incur. Kentucky, Tennessee, 'Cuse, and A&M do. And hopefully James Franklin will be in the line up for most or all of these games. If so we might squeak into a bowl. If not....I don't want to think about it. I don't really get the talk about making either Berkstresser or Mauk our starter beyond the point where Franklin can come back. When he's been playing he's been our best quarterback option this season. And we know how he played at the end of last year. We haven't seen much of that this season, but that has more to do with the injuries on the offensive line than anything else. He earned a lot of ridicule for his decision not to accept the pain shot before the ASU game, but he gained my respect for making the only smart decision. Imagine a football player considering his own health a few years down the line when football is a distant memory. I guess that's not considered acceptable anymore. It seems like a good number of Mizzou fans are ready to throw in the towel on this team, which is pretty lame. Get all excited about the move to the SEC and jump off the bandwagon at the first resistance. Missouri is 3-3, it's well within the realm of possibility they could make a bowl, and if not we still have an excellent head coach. Missouri will be fine long term, if not this season. This is a young and injury plagued team. South Carolina didn't tear it up right away in the SEC. But they elevated their program and they have been challenging for the SEC title the past few years. I think they will win it (and the national title) this season. Pinkel has built Missouri into a 10 win machine in a good conference. Last year we were a bit off that and this season we may only get half that. But given his enormous success over his career at Missouri, I feel very good about his chances to turn this around. MIZ!

Two conference wins should get them into a bowl. Our final non-conference opponent, Syracuse, is no cupcake, but they're not a good team either. At worst its a toss up. I think a lot of people would care if they could get into a bowl...Even if it's a low end affair like last years Independence Bowl, which at this point is the best case scenario. It would give them some momentum going into next year at least. This is never going to be a season worth bragging about but it doesn't have to be disaster either. The DGB Franklin combo was just starting to get some of the explosiveness back in that offense vs. UCF. For completely different reasons, neither was in the line-up last week. But when/if they're both back things could probably only go up from here.

I think I can agree with everyone on here that this is not the start to SEC play that we'd been hoping for. Sure, the Georgia and South Carolina losses hurt, but those were expected (even if agaist South Carolina we weren't quite as competitive as I'd hoped.) But now we've lost to Vanderbilt, a game we really needed, and more importantly we've lost our starting quarterback for "a few weeks" along with a whole host of other key players. Our backup QB (Berkstresser) has been put in a very difficult situation, and he's doing about as well as any redshirt freshman could against SEC defenses behind our banged up offensive line. Honestly. But that said, it clearly just isn't enough right now. So can Missouri get into a bowl this year of any sort? It doesn't look great. Alabama is up next, which (barring the same kind of inspired performance that lifts Louisiana Monroe over Arkansas or Youngstown State over Pittsburgh) will be a loss, and very likely a blow-out loss. Next we have a bye week, which is fortunate. Maybe Franklin will be back for Kentucky. If so, Missouri would probably roll. If not, they will likely struggle, but Vandy is a much stronger team than Kentucky. I think Missouri wins that game regardless of who is under center. Syracuse, our final home game, is much the same. Franklin will likely be back then, and if so, Missouri is the better team and should probably win. But few things have gone easily this year. So that would be five wins. With Florida almost a certain loss, that leaves Tennessee and Texas A&M, both on the road, for Missouri to get that sixth win and a most likely, a bowl game. Can they beat either one of those teams? Honestly, I don't have the slightest idea. But for the short time he was in the game before being injured, Franklin looked like his old self Saturday, the guy that led us on the win streak to end last season on a high note. Remember last year when we were equally worried about even getting to six wins? If Franklin can get healthy, I say Missouri snags one upset to reach bowl eligibility. Am I too optimistic?

I think some of us have been wondering why the MDC hasn't done exactly that. I think it goes without saying that I'm not a biologist-so I'm not going to sit here and tell you that in river sections like the lower Bourbeuse that smallmouth are actually on the brink of extinction. I'm just a fisherman, so all I can tell you with any certainty is that their numbers are seriously, seriously depressed. It's a great question why largemouth haven't been affected as drastically. Hard to know the answer...That said, it does seem that spotted bass and smallmouth tend to share the same habitat to a much larger degree than spots and largemouth. Largemouth on these rivers are mostly found in the "frog water" (of which there is plenty.) Spots are sometimes found in that same type of habitat but more often where there is some good, steady current...the same places where smallmouth would normally be. Of course you can say this is all very unscientific, and you'd be right. But you asked...

To me the spotted bass/smallmouth situation on the Meramec and Bourbeuse rivers is very sad...and it would be worse for me if I'd fished them back in the good old days before spots. There's just so much excellent smallmouth habitat on stream stretches like the middle Bourbeuse that just can't come close to reaching their potential because of this. I know you read our reports on these streams and see that we're still catching smallmouth, sometimes some pretty good ones. That's true, and it's why I keep coming back despite them being in a diminished state. But smallmouth numbers in the affected stream stretches (right now I'm primarily referring to the Bourbeuse, because that's where I do a great deal of my smallie fishing these days) are perhaps 1/2 to 1/3 of what you'd expect for the sort of habitat you're fishing. Honestly I know the Bourbeuse pretty well and comparing it to other similar streams I can say with a fair amount of certainty that hte smallmouth numbers are just not close to what they "should" be, given the available habitat. And this is on the rivers middle section, above the town of Union, which as Al mentioned is where things really get grim. Smallmouth bass seem to be entirely absent below there. Maybe there a few scattered here and there but I've never had any success finding them. Once again, this all used to be really good smallmouth water. They're a non-native species, and they are certainly causing damage. So I don't like them in the places where they don't belong. It's nothing against spotted bass...Brook trout are my favorite fish to catch by a mile, and will always release whenever I can-but when they're harming native cutthroat on a Rocky Mountain stream I'll keep them as much as I don't like doing it. Same with rainbows...I'd never keep them in their native range but don't really have to think twice about it when I'm at Montauk Park. So like you I enjoy spotted bass, I love how they sometimes liven up slow days, but I just don't like that they're non-native in the streams I fish and causing a whole bunch of problems for those that are.

I admit that when the fishing is slow I do enjoy catching the spots-even when they are in places they don't belong. Not to say that I'll hesitate to keep them on the Meramec or Bourbeuse in the least, but they're fun enough and seemingly easier to catch than the rest. Kind of like the black bass version of brook trout in that way. I don't think they fight anywhere near as hard as smallies but definitely they're no worse than largemouth. I've had the misfortune of pretty much only catching them in places they don't belong, so that does color my perception a bit unfairly.

It was a somewhat promising performance @UCF. UCF is a Conference USA team but probably the best team in that conference and one that gave Ohio State some trouble. So it's a win that's a bit more impressive than it looks at first. Franklin was solid, in my opinion definitely good enough that he should get the nod next week against Vanderbilt. DGB caught his first TD as well (which also happened to be Franklin's longest career touchdown pass.) I know he's a freshman, but given our inability of late to get a spark going on offense, I think he needs to be involved whenever possible. The defense really struggled against the run. That will be bad news against pretty much any SEC opponent...they almost all have 3-4 really good backs. But on the bright side, Missouri's D has shown to be really tough in goal-line situations. That stop at the end of the first half may have helped to turn the game. In my opinion, UCF is pretty close in overall talent to a couple SEC teams we will play this year (Kentucky and Vanderbilt.) I think Missouri will have a battle on their hands in both games, but I do think Missouri can get those wins. That would make the final home game against Syracuse a must win for getting into a bowl. I'm not sure Missouri can beat any of their other opponents (Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, or Texas A&M.) 6 wins, including 2 in the SEC, in my mind is the most likely scenario this year. The difficulty of the SEC is part of it, but I think the chemistry on this team is lacking a bit when compared to previous years when we cracked 10 wins. Pinkel should in no way be on the hot seat after this season no matter what, but going forward, he does have to find a way to get that back, or Missouri will continue to struggle in the SEC.