ozark trout fisher

Hiking in the Ozarks in mid/ late summer is not the activity of a sane man! I say this from personal experience. Last summer I went on a 7 mile hike in the hills around the middle Current on a 90 degree+ summer day. The only redeeming value was a swim in the river halfway through. I love hiking in Missouri, and the Eleven Point country is a wonderful place to do it. But for me it's an late September-early June thing. Nothing better than a good, long hike in the fall when the leaves are turning colors or in the winter when snow is blanketing the mountainsides. But mid-summer hiking around here is more misery than it's worth if you ask me. I think it's a great idea you have and you should do it. But I'd wait till fall. That's just my opinion though.

Post of the year.

I love the underwater pic especially. Looks like a good time.

I won't. It's not really something that is up for debate anyway. It's just the way I feel about hunting and it ain't gonna change.

Deer at the least get to live a normal, natural life up until the time they are harvested. Cattle, not so much

3wt, I see your point. But I will at least speak for myself in saying that I do not get any kind of rush out of killing an animal. To be honest with you it always makes me sad. It is a way of gathering meat, a way that seems more natural and humane than the other way meat is procured-animals raised purely for the slaughterhouse. I could maybe consider fishing to be sport, but not hunting. It's just too serious, too complex. When an animal is dying it isn't a game, and I think a lot of people miss that.

I don't like to share the river with people who scream the f word at the top of their lungs, people who flash you as you paddle past them, etc. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I think rivers should be a place that people of all ages should be able to enjoy, and things have gotten so bad on certain waterways that it isn't even really safe for families to float them on the weekends, and certainly not a good idea on multiple levels. Oneshot hit the nail on the head when he called it the Party Cove Mentality. I don't like that, and if any of the people that I'm envisioning teach kids in classrooms, well I just hope that isn't the case. I'm not talking about your average group of people enjoying a trip down the river, drinking a few beers and having a good time. I'm talking about the folks that gather in huge groups on a gravel bar, get so drunk they absolutely have no self control, and yell and scream every cuss word ever invented at the top of their lungs, and have a boom box with heavy metal turned up all the way. That's just obnoxious, and it gets worse than that too. When people are floating down the river, so drunk that they simply cannot control themselves, they become a danger to themselves and others. Too many people drown because of this every single summer. And that's the biggest problem.

The party floaters can really get to me honestly. For me it's not so much that they are there in numbers and make solitude pretty much impossible ( I don't like that either, but everyone has the right to enjoy the river.) It's the complete and total disrespect for the river and other folks trying to enjoy the river that some show that gets under my skin. If you want to be drunk while you float down the river okay, just don't scream at the top of your lungs, or be profane just for the sake of being profane. And that is what some of these folks are doing. Canoe rentals often advertise float trips as something that's good for the whole family and such. But I'll tell you this much: if I had kids, there is absolutely no way in heck that I would be taking them down the Current, Niangua, Meramec, or even probably the Big Piney on a summer weekend. I simply wouldn't feel okay about doing it with some of the folks that frequent those rivers in the summer. It's really a sad thing that it has gone so far in that direction on so many beautiful Ozark streams. Also, with some of these folks, exactly none of their empty beer cans go off the river with them. They just become part of the river's scenery. I more and more try to float stretches of river that aren't serviced by a canoe rental, especially if I'm going on a weekend. It just makes the experience so much better. And rivers like that are out there, sometimes within just a few miles of streams that are pounded by the party crowds. You just have to look for either really remote or somewhat marginal rivers that just couldn't attract enough of a crowd to keep a canoe rental in business.

Nice fish!

You have to wonder about the people who take part in these hunts. Do they get some kind of sick thrill out of killing a domesticated animal? I don't know what else the appeal could be. It irks me that these folks are classified as hunters in the same way as folks who actually value fair chase and the whole hunting experience. I view the death of the animal as a necessary means to get meat, and it's always a bittersweet feeling, mixed happiness and remorse over the animal's death. Hunting is a complex business, everything is when it involves the taking of another animals life. It's not something to be cheapened in this way.

Drew's right. All the rivers he listed are more conistent. But they all, with the possible exception of the St. Francis, will have far more people on them. The Bourbeuse can be a good smallmouth fishery, but it is spotty and inconsistent, mostly due to the non-native spotted bass that have upset the population balance there. It's a pretty river though. You'll have to decide whether the solitude makes the downsides worth it. I love the Bourbeuse, but if I lived in Cape I'm not sure I'd drive all the way up to fish it. It's a fine river and one of my favorites but objectively I would tell you that it's just not a destination stream. The Bourbeuse is a water that I can drive 35-40 minutes from my house, float, catch a few smallmouth, on a slow and murky but still pretty river, and still come away feeling like it was a great day, something that I'd want to do again. But if I doubled or tripled the driving distance for the same experience, I don't know if I would come away feeling quite so good about it. That's my long way of saying that I think you'd be better off to get to know the rivers nearer to home first. You've got the upper Black and it's three forks, the upper St. Francis, and other Ozark Mountain streams much closer that by all accounts hold plenty of smallmouth. I'd say get out and explore those. If you do go to the Bourbeuse, I like the 11 mile float from Reikers to Mayers for good scenery, solitude, and decent fishing for smallies. That's a long float that will take pretty much all day, but access is spread out on the Bourbeuse and there aren't many shorter floats. Further upriver will require more dragging and a slightly longer drive from Cape, but the smallmouth fishing is probably a little better-still not great by Ozark stream standards, but better. Up there try floating the Mill Rock to Wenkel Ford Stretch.

Sounds like a pretty nice day on the creek all said.

Glad you enjoyed the report. We used Rebel Wee Craws for the most part, but also did pretty well on the larger Rebel Craws.

Yes

The float from Slabtown to Six Crossings would be doable if you got an early start. The access at six crossings is privately owned, so they might charge you a small fee to use it since you're not going through a canoe rental. I don't know for sure. I've never used it before. The float from 6x to Ross would be the easier one day float, but honestly I can't really recommend that due to the crowds at least on the weekends. You might well be the only one on the river between Slabtown and Six Crossings, but below there it really does kind of become your typical party river, even though the scenery is still really good.

I just got home from a two camp day trip on the special smallmouth management area on the Big Piney. I love this float. With massive bluffs towering over the river, fertile but cool water, and excellent smallmouth fishing, it's really one of my favorites. I took a trip with a couple of friends this time, and the ones that were seeing this stretch of the river for the first time they were really impressed. And the fishing was excellent. We put in at 1 o'clock on Saturday after the long drive and putting a car at the take out first. We had Rebel Craws tied on and were ready for business. The first cast produced the first fish of the trip-a longear sunfish, small but colorful and about as pretty as they come. Within five minutes I also had my first smallie. From then on, the fishing was just silly. It wasn't a smallmouth on every cast, but I'm not sure ten minutes ever went by without a hook up. The fish mostly were anywhere from 8 to 15 inches, but there were some smaller and a few larger. The fish of the day was a 17 inch beauty that put up such a fight that I was sure I had a five pounder on. As I was paddling under bluffs that were hundreds of feet tall and catching more smallmouth than any human being has a right to, I thought to myself how happy I was to live with a couple hours of this good of scenery and fishing. On the first day, I saw not one other floater, although there was one other group camped on a gravel bar. We set up camp around 7 PM, and got the steaks and taters grilling. There is nothing quite like sitting around a campfire after a day of floating a beautiful Ozark river, listening to the stream, the frogs, the birds, and eating a great camp dinner. Nothing better. After dinner, it was just about completely dark, but I decided to take a few casts. Just standing in the river, with the moon and the stars reflecting off it, and just knowing that you're on a wild river, and catching the occasional fat goggle-eye that wanted an after dinner snack. Not a bad way to end the day. The next morning my friend, who is a morning person (I'm not) woke me up around 6 AM for a little wade fishing before cooking breakfast and taking down camp. I was a little annoyed not to be able to sleep in, but it turned out to be well worth it. In the relative cool of the early morning, the bass were on. I was just standing in the riffle, casting down and across stream, and basically just keeping a tight line, and letting the current give the crankbait its action. It worked great. We were into one smallmouth after another, and I turned out to be happy I hadn't slept in. Then breakfast (cinnamon roll oatmeal and a couple of some kind of processed pastry thing from walmart that will shorten my life by at least five years), taking down camp, and launching for the second day.The fishing started off really good, and stayed that way until we got down to the access where the outfitters start putting people in in large numbers, about halfway through our float today. Then, as some on here predicted, the before nearly empty river filled up with the party crowd. The ambience and natural feel of the river took a severe downhill turn, and so did the fishing-although this lower part of the float actually has some of the best scenery. The crowds weren't like the Current or the Niangua would be on a weekend like this, but it really wasn't far off. And it was the full spectacle of a section of Ozark river that is serviced by canoe rentals-lots of drunk people who had no clue what they were doing having extreme difficulty in very mild class 1 riffles. I guess they were having fun too, just in kind of a different way, so I shouldn't criticize them. Still it can begin to get a little annoying. The slower fishing on the lower end of the float might not have been as much due to the crowds as the heat. And it was hot today, no mistaking that. There was lots of getting out to the boat to swim, and were very glad multiple times throughout the day that the Big Piney is spring-fed and cool. It was a real life-saver today. We caught some fish right up to the take out though. The fishing didn't stop dead, it just slowed down quite a bit. All things together, it was a great trip on a great stretch of river, and whatever small downsides there may have been were well worth it.

Thanks for the report. Sounds like a good time.

Sounds like a great trip. I haven't spent much time down in that corner of the Ozarks but it sounds like a great area.

I know that's true, but it seems more than a little odd, doesn't it? I mean, Maramec Spring Branch seems at least and probably more prone to high, murky water after rain events than most other Ozark streams of similar size, which is not what I would expect for a spring creek. And it usually stays that way for quite awhile-far longer than any of the other spring branches I know off.I know this is off topic, but does anyone have an explanation? I've heard that it's because the spring's recharge relies heavily on the losing stream sections of Dry Fork-a stream that tends to rise very easily, but I don't know whether that's the real reason.

Sounds like a nice time. Thanks for the report.

Sounds like a great trip. Thanks for the report.

You are right that not many people will care because this didn't happen on the famous trout waters of the upper river. Which is maybe the saddest part. Most of us tend only to care about streams that fit a certain mold: fast, clear, scenic ,good fishing. The rest just don't matter I guess. I know that utility corridors run under most rivers. I am just saying there should be more care used and more money spent to help prevent this kind of thing.

Running an oil pipeline right under the Yellowstone River with apparently no safeguard in place is just pure greed and stupidity. Inexcusable, no matter what your opinion on the green energy debate is.

Thanks. That sounds okay. Most of our favorite fishing water on the stretch is between Slabtown and 6x anyway. Mainly I didn't want to be setting up camp in party central, and our camp will be well upstream from there.

I'll definitely post a report. That is one stretch of river that I like enough that I'm willing to share it with some other folks, but I hope it isn't ridiculous. I guess I'll find out soon enough.