ozark trout fisher

If you simply view the river as a place that you come to catch smallmouth bass, then yeah, the otter is your enemy. If you actually view it as an ecosystem that's supposed to support a wide variety of native species (otters included) then they're just a necessary part of the picture. And look at it this way: assuming your assertion is correct, that an otter can eat 2 pounds of fish per day. On an average legal stringer of a limit catch of smallies, you're looking at almost a bare minimum of 5-6 pounds, and often close to double that. Also figure in that otters are probably eating a lot more suckers, chubs, sunfish, and crayfish than smallies, and your problem isn't near as pervasive as it seems (at least in comparison to the threat of a good minnow fisherman with a big bucket, who probably only wants the smallies.)

That's got to be the biggest I've seen. That said, at Montauk in the "social hole" and surrounding water is full of very, very big crayfish similar to the one pictured above (if slightly smaller.) One day, while I was teaching a relative of mine to trout fish there, a bunch of kids decided to wade into the river a ways upstream of us with a net and try to catch a few of these big crawfish for dinner. They were splashing around in the water doing this for the better part of an hour. It was a bit of a comical sight, naturally ending with a conservation agent gently asking them to trade in their nets for fishing poles.

I don't think I'd have a hard time finding data to support the base assumption that there are more fisherman. As if that actually leads to more fisherman keeping fish, that's a bit more muddy. It does seem logical to extrapolate that, but I suppose it's not a certainty. As for anecdotal evidence, I see plenty on the majority of fishing trips on any Ozark float stream (aka the streams where I'm actually seeing other anglers when I fish)......a striking number of people have stringers full of everything big enough to eat, and that certainly spans both sides of legal size and number limits in a significant number of cases. It's possible that some data could be gleaned from angler surveys one way or another. But that would only cover the legal side of harvest on our rivers, and the unfortunate reality is that gives you a skewed perception of what is actually coming out of the water and onto the dinner table.

Let's just say I think there's a good deal of both going on, and leave it at that.

The change you could point to is that there are a lot more fisherman out there keeping large numbers of fish. Very possibly a lower percentage, as more people get into catch and release (or at least not keeping more than you need for dinner) but a larger number total since there are so many more people overall fishing our streams now than at almost any point in the past. As population increases and many of those fisherman keep doing things the way they always have, there will be a higher level of harvest. And more strain on the populations of all sorts of gamefish in our rivers. I don't discount the effect of habitat degradation in the least. As I said, it just means we need to be more careful with the bass that our rivers still can support.

Yeah, I think the otters could potentially have some impact on smaller streams. But on the larger rivers I have a hard time buying that as more than the smallest trace part of the issue. Even on the smaller streams the fish have to be a lot more worried about the predators on two legs........

I really wasn't referring to your post, Mic. What you brought up was more than valid. Though I would attribute a bit more of the decline to people just like the one in this photo. I've seen too many people keeping everything they catch (legal and sublegal) to doubt that this has an impact. Ultimately, habitat is always going to be incredibly important, but a decline in quality habitat only means we need to be more careful about what we're taking out of the river.

I guess I don't get the point of view that wants to let people (like the person who posted this photo) off the hook. At best, they kept a few short fish, and broke some laws in regard to keeping everybody's limit seperate, etc. But more than that, the days of holding up a massive string of dead game fish as a monument to your own ego should probably be at an end. Legal or not, there are too many of us fishing Ozark streams for that to be sustainable. If you must keep a couple for the table, fine, it's none of my business, but this type of blood-fest doesn't fit with our present resource at this point.

If it was a prank it was a dumb one. They set themself up for this speculation, so there's no sympathy here even if by some wild chance they were on the right side of the law.

Well, we certainly know it's in very poor taste to post a picture online that sure as hell looks like a blatant violation. And it's a pretty small leap in logic that some form of poaching occurred here, even if it's as small as combining a few guys limits onto one stringer.

I don't think "possession limits" refer to what you have on your stringer alongside a river. It's basically saying that you can't have more than (usually about twice the daily limit) in your freezer or in your cooler at camp. Pooling limits and stringers remains illegal to the best of my understanding. To be within the law you would each need to have a seperate stringer with no more than the daily limit of any species on it. That's my interpretation of the law, anyway. Unless there were two seperate stringers (or maybe even more than that), and they were all combined into one after they all left the river (a most unlikely scenario, I'd think, though technically possible) it's hard to come to any conclusion that doesn't lead to this guy breaking some laws.

What an idiot that guy is. Not only has no regard for the regs but the arrogance to take pictures and post them online. Hope (at the bare minimum) a hearty fine is headed his way. As for whether there may have been others in the group.....barely matters. If it's all on one stringer, it's assumed under the law (I believe, anyway) that it's one person's limit of fish. Anyway, "pooling limits" isn't within the law.

What a loss that is. I wonder how long we as a species will continue to tolerate this kind of crap. Mine degradation (on an only slightly less dramatic scale) is fresh on the mind right now. Where I fished in the San Juan Mountains of Southwest Colorado, mining is a historic and still active industry. The river I spent most of my time fishing (the Uncompahgre) was essentially devoid of trout until a dam was built a couple decades ago that filters out most of the toxin in the now-productive tailwaters. Still, in many places above the lake what should be a heartbreakingly beautiful, lively mountain stream is still essentially devoid of all life, and certainly of trout. It's the same story on so many streams in those mountains. The fact that mining so often tends to occur in such wild, beautiful, fish-filled places only heightens the importance of this issue and the tragedy of these types of occurences when they inevitably happen.

Definitely jealous! Hope you have a good time out there.

Option #1 Hire a guide for a day, fishing the same type of Ozark stream that you typically fish, for the same species (smallmouth, it sounds like.) They can diagnose whatever issues you have relatively quickly and get you on the right track. Option #2, and the one I followed, is fish like crazy until you figure out what works and you start catching them. There was a time when Ozark smallie streams perplexed me, just like you're talking about. Then something clicked after an embarassingly long time. Unless you take the obvious shortcut of hiring a guide (or otherwise getting a good fisherman to take you out and show you the ropes) it might take awhile and a lot of mistakes before you start having consistent success. That can either be really frustrating, or part of a fun, lifelong process. It will realistically be a good deal of both. So in otherwords, just keep trying stuff until you find whatever works for you. For the type of angling you do, a rebel teeny craw and an ultra-light rod is what works for me, and I catch more fish than I know what to do with 95% of the time on Ozark smallmouth/panfish streams. But maybe you don't have confidence in that method or it just doesn't work for you or maybe you just haven't attained the basic skills you need yet. The only thing I can absolutely promise you is that if you stick with it long enough and keep an open mind you'll figure it out. There's no one that can't learn how to be a good fisherman, just a lot of people that don't have enough patience to fail a lot and keep trying.

The only way I can successfully comfort myself is to think that if the fight had gone on much longer, and I'd landed him, there would be a better chance the fish wouldn't have survived the affair upon release. Just earlier in the trip, I saw another angler fight a large brown to exhaustion, then release him, and watched that fish float down the river dead moments after. If nothing else, I can speak to the fact that this fish had plenty of life left in him when the fight was over. So that's the line of thinking I'm sticking with for now...........

Ridgway State Park

The drive from Mesa Verde to Ridgway State Park (taken from car, so forgive the lack of quality in a couple)

Wolf Creek Pass, looking out across the San Juan River Valley Scenes from Mesa Verde

Just got back from SW Colorado. The full fishing report is in the General Angling discussion forum, but I thought I'd include some (mostly) non-fishing related photos here. This is a mix of pictures from Mesa Verde, various high mountain passes around western Colorado, and some scenery shots at Ridgway State park.

Cliffs rising above a trout-filled pond in Ridgway State Park The scene along the tailwater stretch of the Unc. Look close in the streamside pond, and you can see the rise-forms. A small rainbow from the pond pictured above A typical Uncompahgre rainbow

The Uncompahgre looking up at the dam The public reach of the Unc below Ridgway Lake is catch and release only Looking up from the river valley into the high country

Well, the (hopefully) annual late summer fly-fishing/camping vacation is over for another year, and this one was a highlight. The first three days of the trip were spent in Mesa Verde NP, a beautiful, stunning, historic national park with exactly zero relevance to fishing. So I'll start a photography thread for that portion of the adventure, but for now we'll skip straight to the fishing. And what a fishing trip this was. July 30th saw us headed over a couple of high mountain passes on a beautiful (to say the least) stretch of highway 145 (and a quick jog on highway 62) betwen Cortez and Ridgway. Stunning, stunning country that got us fully in the mood to chase after some trout. I arrived at Rigs Fly Shop in Ridgway to get some last minute tackle (lots of splitshot and heavy tippet as it happened) and to talk over the half-day guided trip I'd be taking the next day on the Uncompahgre River. Then camp was set up in the Pa-Co-Chu-Puk campground in Ridgway State Park. Afterwards, I set out to get a feel for the river (and get back into the rhythm of fly-fishing) before the half day of guided fishing the next morning. As soon as I got to the stream, I saw how different it was than I had expected. I'd been expecting a small, delicate tailwater fishery, the type of "highly technical" water that you read about in the outdoor magazines. Dead wrong. A tailwater it was (you could easily see the dam looming upstream) but it was a big, brawling western stream, complete with man-made rock dams and never-ending pocket water. Massive sandstone cliffs towered above on one side, with a lush river valley extended far in the other direction. The high peaks of the San Juans towered up above the dam, with Cimarrons looming as well. Postcard scenery. I tied on a Hare's Ear nymph, #14, because if you don't have a clue, that's just kind of what you start with. The fourth or fifth cast produced a little rainbow of maybe 10 inches, the skunk having been broken almost too easy. The fishing was solid, if unspecatacular, the rest of the night. I met my guide a bit before 8 AM the next morning for a few hours of learning how to fish this western stream. Before I go any further, I have to say that I recommend Rigs very highly to anyone finding their way into SW Colorado. Very professional bunch there, pretty darned good rates, the whole package. Anyway, there wasn't anything rising at first so we started off dredging with tiny midge imitations. I was told about the minor, but important details you can find on any river, but that might take longer than you have alloted to your trip. Stuff like that's invaluable on a tricky tailwater like the Unc. Nymphing produced, but we agreed we should try the dry fly before our time was up. A little light cahill with an elk hair caddis as a second fly drew plenty of strikes, though I only netted one on the dry fly. The action may not have been non-stop, but the valuable info I'd need for the rest of the trip had been successfully gleaned. I felt ready to go out on my own and have a good chance at success. That afternoon, I put that info to good use. The main takeaway was the need to get deep when fishing this river. As in, so much lead that even a twenty foot cast feels like a bit of a stretch. While fishing on my own, I finally setttled on a Beadhead olive woolly bugger with a tiny pheasant as a dropper, with a BB splitshot or two in between. 3 pound tippet. Unwieldy stuff, but the little rainbows liked the PT while the bigger ones went after the woolly. The ideal balance. But I wasn't counting on what happened that evening. While fishing a pool in a gentle, braided part of the river, I had a strike just like any other. The indicator goes down, my rod goes up, and I prepare to drag the fish in quickly with my (relatively) heavy tippet. Nope. I feel a big head shake, the kind of vibration and pull that fly fisherman dream of, but rarely get to experience. I fight this fish awhile, not moving him, not seeing him in the depths. Then I decide to make a move, to try to bring him in before he really knows what hit him. It works. A brown of not less than 10 pounds allows himself, more or less placidly, to be pulled within a couple feet of my outstretched net. Then he goes nuts. Heads down the river to a small rock dam, jumps it. I follow him along the bank to the next pool, also held back by a small rock dam. He heads for that one, goes over it too. By now, this fight is in its third pool, we're a few minutes in, and this is getting serious. He heads for the next rock dam. The river is deep below. I won't be able to follow, so a stand must be made here. He swims for the middle of the river, so close to that rock dam, and stops. I follow to the middle of the river, forgetting about my own safety in the process. Waders overtop. Fish jumps rock dam. I'm holding myself against the rock dam (which to avoid being overdramatic, is not more frightening than those at, say Maramec Spring, but still wouldn't be fun to go over in full waders.) I'm momentarily stable here, standing still against a boulder, not knowing whether I cared more about this massive trout or just getting out of the river. Then the line went slack. Didn't break, just came loose. I don't know happened, or even which fly I hooked him on. I pushed myself off the boulder, into a slack eddy along the bank, and then up onto dry land where a couple of folks were laughing heartily at the whole incident. The next morning I picked up the pieces, went out, and caught a few more rainbows, both out of the river and out of a couple of little ponds alongside the stream. But it's that brown I won't be able to get out of my head. Not now, probably not ever. I doubt I'll ever catch anything that large, perhaps, never will have the opportunity for a sustained fight with something like that again. But it was kinda cool just to have the chance. Pictures coming.

Well I made it back. Fish were caught and I managed to make it home in one piece, so we'll call it a win. Full report coming tonight or tomorrow morning.

Alright, fellas, taking off. If a bear or mountain lion doesn't get me, I'll post a report when I get back.