ozark trout fisher

I don't know enough about Asian Carp to know if they can tolerate the cooler, spring-fed sections of our rivers effectively.....but if so my goodness. Catastrophic wouldn't even begin to describe that nightmare. Does anyone have a link to the article? Having trouble finding it anywhere.

Oh crap. That is.......not good.

A lot of teams would be ecstatic to have Smith. He isn't the guy you lean on to carry your team, but he gets the job done. If that doesn't sound good, look at Tampa Bay, STL, Buffalo, Cleveland, Jacksonville, New York (Jets), Tennessee, or Washington. Having a guy you can consistently win with is a luxury at least half of the NFL doesn't have. Only a precious few have a QB you can win because of. It would appear that even Tom Brady isn't in that category. The last two superbowl champs have had good, but definitely not great (in Russell Wilson's case, at least yet) QBs.

Where was that all season long????? Don't know what to think of the Chiefs, but they definitely are better than I thought based on their early performance. If you took Oakland out of the division (which really, I wish we could do) the AFC West is loaded this year. Three teams with legit playoff hopes. Really, the Chiefs are the NFL equivalent of Mizzou. Lose to a crap team at home and then a few weeks later beat up a team that is supposed to be one of the top 5-10 in the league and a (supposedly) sure playoff team. Hard to get a read on them.

Try the Big Piney from Slabtown to 6 crossings if you can get a shuttle. Very nice scenery, good fishing, and not much in the way of crowds. It's probably getting late enough in the year that Six Crossings to Ross would be good too.....it gets awfully crowded in summer, but it should be better now. Also, anywhere on the 11 Point would be a slam dunk in terms of scenery and fishing. Just can't really go wrong there.

Yep, he specializes in yards after contact. Dang near impossible to bring him down and once he gets into the secondary one missed tackle and it's all over. He's not "shifty", but he doesn't need to be. He's the kind of back that will make the transition to the NFL without skipping a beat.

Yeah, I see that game as a total coin-flip right now. It just depends on whether we can get the receiving corps healthy over the bye week and if Mauk can get his level of play back to where it was against Toledo and UCF. Also, we'll need to at least slow down Gurley. I feel better about that after at least slowing down Mike Davis, who is one of the premier non-Gurley backs in the league. He still got 100+ yards but he didn't shred us like I was expecting. Having Golden back in the lineup helped a lot there.

I bet any amount of money that the 4 teams in the playoff will be, at worst, 7-8th in the polls. They might deviate a bit from conventional wisdom, but college football is so steeped in "tradition" and so resistant to change that I bet everything stays the same except 4 teams instead of 2.

I'm pretty optimistic about Mizzou's shot at winning the east. I'm still betting it's Georgia, but we're probably the second most likely team at this point. I guess my question is how much that means in this year's SEC east. Getting to Atlanta would be awesome, but wouldn't necessarily be indicative of a great season this year. It reminds me of some of those years in the Big 12 North, especially while Nebraska was down. Some tough opponents but no marquee teams at all. Georgia is close, but not there. Too inconsistent on defense and their QB play has taken a hit. Anyway, we'll probably have a pretty good clue if we're going to Atlanta after the UGA game. The winner of that will have all kinds of margin for error the rest of the way, especially if Florida doesn't get it together. But the way things are going, would it shock anyone if a team like Tennessee or even (gasp) Kentucky went on a run and stole the division from everybody? I could see it happening. I think every single SEC west team is better than every single east team. I think Arkansas or Ole Miss (the so-called "bottom feeders, I guess?) would win the east division, perhaps easily.

Speaking of (hopefully) fired coaches, anyone see how Brady Hoke kept putting Michigan's QB back in the game after he had an obvious concussion? Awful. He needs to get fired ASAP (though given how terrible Michigan is that shouldn't be a problem.)

Dang. And he was doing such a good job of making us Mizzou fans happy!

Mizzou isn't very good this year. But somehow they are they are a real contender to win the east at this point. The division is just that bad. Could see a 9-3 or even 8-4 team in Atlanta this year. Georgia has Todd Gurley, but a mediocre QB, and an inconsistent defense. South Carolina already has two losses, and they look like they will have a couple more before it's said and done. Florida is hot garbage, Kentucky is okay I guess, Vanderbilt is terrible. Tennessee might end up being pretty good, but they'll still probably top off in 8-win territory. And Mizzou lost to a terrible Indiana team and will have a hard time beating either of their west division opponents. They have only played well once this year, against UCF (yes, they beat a top 25 team on the road last night, but I can't ignore how terrible the offense was for 3.5 quarters just because SC gave it away at the end.) Maty Mauk will have to get better fast or this win won't mean anything. It's just such a mess, but I'm glad they won.

At least they played well today. They are in a scary tough division, otherwise they'd be 5-0 and top 15. They will crush Mizzou this Thanksgiving. Mizzou looks like hot garbage. How we're only down 3 now is unbelievable but this will get out of hand quickly unless Maty remembers how to throw a football. Might end up with another 2012 if things don't change quickly.

If you think science can "prove" much of anything, beyond the existence of gravity, we don't have a great basis for a discussion here. It's about making a hypothesis and gathering enough evidence to infer whether there is very likely a causal relationship. The vast majority of scientists claim that there is. But if you won't even accept that C02 is a greenhouse gas (which is one of the few things here that is an undeniable, concrete fact) then we can't possibly hope to get anywhere here. Since this is unclear, CO2 (along with other greenhouse gases, particularly methane) traps solar energy as it's "trying" to radiate to outer space. This holds the heat in the atmosphere and it eventually finds its way back to the surface. This is not conjecture. You can argue that our current, unprecedented rise in CO2 is not the primary driver of climate change (though you would probably be wrong) but to claim that CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas and doesn't effect earth's temperature is simply to be factually incorrect. And if you don't think that, on the whole, the global temperature has been rising ever since the industrial revolution, I have some prime oceanfront property here in Boone County with your name on it.

This is a world with 6 billion people. Pretty much everything within the law of physics that can happen already has happened to someone, so you can find an example to post here. Doesn't mean that the likelihood of it happening to me is great enough to be in a constant (and what has to be exhausting, right?) state of preparedness for something that, statistically, has an almost infinitely tiny chance of ever occurring. If you think about it, by taking your family on a float/camp trip you are probably putting them in more danger due to flash floods/weather/car accidents on windy, shoulderless, generally terrible Ozark roads if you go your entire life without "self defense". The bottom line is we can't account for every danger. That can be tough to deal with but it's a reality we might as well face. We just have to decide which ones are worth worrying about, and ideally, one should do that based on statistical knowledge of what actually has a decent chance of occuring. That double cheeseburger is way more dangerous to me than the possibility of an "armed gunman."

I'm sorry, I can't be the one to teach you about the basics of atmospheric science.

I always hope for a real cold, snowy one just because that tends to drive everyone else nuts. And I couldn't really care less. I'll be out there hunting and fishing regardless.....only question is how I dress.

Ok, here goes. Literally no one denies that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that increasing levels would generally lead to increasing temperature. You can argue (I guess) that it's not the primary driving force behind climate change, but if you're trying to make the case that CO2 has no impact on temperature, you've even lost most climate change deniers. Further, if you don't understand that a small percentage of a substance in the atmosphere can have a major impact, there's not a lot I can do for you. These are basic tenets for any discussion about climate change. One more thing. In another post you stated that we're always in a warming or cooling trend. You're right. But do you know how long of a period that occurs over, or how slowly that occurs? What we're seeing now is something entirely different, and it's happening over decades (we're talking entirely different time scales at play.) It's just not comparable to past flucuations in temperature.

Yep. Very, very sad. Just too much money on the side of either "climate change deniers" or those who don't attribute it to humans. For all the talk about money from government grants inspiring pro-climate change ideas, it pales in comparison to the cash in fossil fuels. They don't mind (literally) ruining the world for future generations so they can keep making their billions.

Here's my thought..... Just live your life, try not to put yourself in unnecessarily dangerous positions, and hope that you are not one of the tiny percentage of people that will ever be affected by any of the crimes ya'll are spending so much time talking about. There are so many things in the world we cannot control. At it's best, concealed carry (or whatever else we're talking about) can only account for the tiniest percentage of them. There are plenty of other things we can do that will do more to keep us safer. Heck, many of the people with concealed carry permits for "self defense" are probably driving around without a seatbelt on. That kind of thing. We worry about things that are "scary" (like violent crime or a bear attack), while our true fears should be of things that feel much more benign (like driving to work.) I'm not saying it's necessarily bad for some people to chose to have a firearm in case of self-defense, just that such things often give people a false sense of control. It's also not that I don't think some sort of violent crime could happen to me. It's just that I don't tend to put myself in dangerous scenarios, and I know that statistically it's not something that's worth "being prepared" for. I'll never get into packing heat, unless I'm hunting.

This thread kinda creeps me out.

I had no problem with the message of the post......just the choice of metaphor. Not really cool for this forum IMO. JoeD, just edit you're post man and there's no problem here. Really. Also I think he figures out every stretch of river that I like so he can post about how much it sucks. At a certain point that does begin to annoy me, though maybe I should be grateful because he's scaring people away from my fishing holes..

I wouldn't say that stretch of the Meramec sucks. It's a fine stretch of river (especially in the cool months when the alluminum hatch isn't coming off), just not real good for trout fishing. Also JoeD...time to start thinking "should I really post this?" You might find the answer is a resounding "no."

I tend to agree. I'd be okay if they gave up on it and focused resources in places where fish could have a better chance to thrive. Rainbows would still be coming down from Maramec Spring so there would still be some trout in the river. This year has been an exception for obvious reasons, but mostly all you catch is rainbows anyway. So it would be no great loss.

Thank goodness for Tim Smith. I ran out of patience months ago on this (people willfully burying their heads into the sand will do that) but somehow he just keeps chugging along here. Impressive. Keep fighting the good fight, but on here, it's in vain I'm afraid.