eric1978

Okay, let me try a few... Abortion, gay marriage, medical marijuana...am I on the right track?

Tyranny? I thought majority rule was called democracy?

There are no fish at Busch! Well, there are a few, but it's been a little slow for freshly stocked morons it seems. Evenings have been best. Woolies, olive leeches and jigs have been most productive so far for me, and people always catch them on black and yellow jigs. This one was caught on Sunday, and I've heard reports that there are some beasts in there this year, up to 8 pounds or more.

Well, then let's play a couple games of deductive reasoning, shall we? I hated this class in college, but I'll make an exception just for you, Terry, and do one more set. Wiki states that "commerce is the exchange of goods and services from the point of production to the point of consumption to satisfy human wants," and we'll use trapping as our example of commerce. A canoe is used for trapping. Trapping is commerce. ---------------------------------------------- Therefore, a canoe is used for commerce. The MO Supreme Court states that a navigable stream is "one that as a matter of fact is susceptible of being used in its ordinary condition, as a highway for commerce over which trade and travel are or may be conducted in customary fashion." A stream used for commerce is navigable. A canoe is used for commerce. ------------------------------------------------------------ Therefore, a stream on which a canoe is used is navigable. In the Elder v. Delcour case, the Missouri Supreme Court concluded that a public fishing right exists upon Missouri's small, floatable streams. The court ruled that since the ownership of the fish in the stream is vested in the public, the public has a right to fish and to take fish from the streams in a legal manner. The court ruling held that persons floating or wading in the upper Meramec River, following legal entry into that stream, were not trespassing. The Elder case has been accepted as precedent throughout the state and represents the controlling authority concerning public use of Missouri rivers and streams. Continued lawful and ethical use of Missouri's waterways will help ensure that right for future Missourians. The public has a right to fish a navigable stream. A stream on which a canoe is used is navigable. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Therefore, the public has a right to fish a stream on which a canoe is used. The argument is sound and valid. You might not like the conclusion, but it necessarily follows the premises based on simple logic.

Oops...you're making the wrong person's point. The two ecosystems you just named are PUBLIC, at least the portions of them that still remain in their original state (Redwood National Park and Tallgrass Prarie National Preserve). The parts of those regions that are private have been in large part logged and deforested, or turned to farmland in the case of the Flint Hills. So your argument leads us to the conclusion that if a small creek in Missouri is as special as the Redwoods in California and the sprawling Kansas Prarie, we should make the creek public as well to guarantee its survival. The prosecution would love you for that mistake. I know you can get a canoe down Crane or Hickory, so do you tell the trapper that his furs are not commerce? The law doesn't state that a stream has to have been used for commerce, it states that a stream must be susceptible for being used for commerce. Define commerce...if it can be done with a canoe, it's a navigable stream, and therefore public.

I'll return momentarily to make this concession... If your creek is usually dry, I see no reason to open it for public use. If your creek is usually dry, it is without a doubt non-navigable. If your creek is usually dry, I would have no desire to access it, with permission or without. And if your creek is usually dry, it's not your creek this thread is about. I wouldn't worry about your creek if I were you...I think we're all talking about streams that have at least some flow year round, which is when the navigability question comes into play.

If it's gonna help you sleep at night, go for it. I just think MDC probably gets crazy calls all the time about wildlife sightings that are nonsense (not saying yours is), and they probably take most of those calls with a grain of salt unless it's verifiable somehow. Y'naw da mean? You don't bug me, by the way. You're not in the same galaxy of annoying as...well, you know who you are.

That would fall in the "who cares" category in my book. Giant wild brown on a small spring creek in Montana on a 70 degree day in November? Don't get no better.

Wrench has a phobia about "agencies." Just ignore him. (But he's right, they won't care...don't waste your time.)

Exactly. I've asked landowners for access to streams many times before...usually it's granted, sometimes it's not. But I don't usually seek permission from landowners of adjacent properties to public accesses for the above reasons...unless their house is right there on the stream, or it is visible from the road and the gate's not locked. I don't have a problem with asking for permission, but if I can't see a house from where I'm fishing, then they can't see me, and they'll never know I was there. Plus, frankly, I don't have the time to drive all over the planet trying to lock up permission from every landowner in the county so I can quietly slip through a creek. I rarely get the time to fish, and I'm not gonna waste those precious moments on fruitless door-knocking expeditions. And I'm not changing your mind, Terry, and you're not changing mine, so I'm not wasting any more time with this argument either. Good luck with your little personal manifest destiny dystopia.

Why would someone float or wade from a public access through private property if they weren't fishing or just floating? The partiers need liveries, and most of the local drunks and poachers do not currently, nor would they ever (for any reason I can think of), stray far from the accesses. The majority of (the few) people you would see passing through your property would be devoted floaters and fishermen, who stereotypically don't pose many problems to landowners. As Al pointed out, the essence of this question is boiled down to the interpretation of "floatable." Between a trickle of a creek, and the mighty Mississippi, streams come in a million different sizes, depending on CFS, gradient, and other geological factors. So the problem is where do we draw the line between floatable and not floatable? This stream is floatable but this one is not...by which standards do we decide? "Floatability" remains vulnerable to subjectivity within the decision in Elder v. Delcour, so by whose standards do we decide? The landowner's or the angler's? It is still debatable, because the precedent left a gray area open to interpretation. Until a court labels every stream on the map public or private, there is going to be bickering among landowners and anglers, and I will continue to interpret the law liberally, and roll the dice if the "floatability" question seems reasonably ambiguous.

Neil Young and the Eagles? You're gonna have to fill me in...that'd be news to me.

Nice buck man! You shot old dude in Kirkwood?!? LOL

I gotta say I'm pretty impressed with this chick's lung capacity. Here's my must-have Neil albums list: Neil Young (self-titled first solo album) Everybody Knows this is Nowhere After the Gold Rush Harvest Time Fades Away (good luck finding it) Hawks & Doves Stars & Bars On the Beach Tonight's the Night Comes a Time Old Ways Life Zuma Rust Never Sleeps Live Rust Harvest Moon Unplugged Massey Hall Live in Berlin (DVD) Decade Silver & Gold Looking Forward (what'd I forget?) Plus there's Buffalo Springfield, CSNY, Stills/Young and a bunch more B-grade solo albums.

My canoe floats in a few inches of water...so I would say most streams are floatable. A navigable, and therefore public, stream in Missouri is defined by law as "one that as a matter of fact is susceptible of being used in its ordinary condition, as a highway for commerce over which trade and travel are or may be conducted in customary fashion." Now that's some fancy legal jibberish, but a simpleton like me translates it as "if you can get your canoe down it, it's public." If I've got two public accesses five miles separated by private property, and there's a single pool too deep to wade through, I'll put my canoe in and drag the riffles. I personally feel the law is ambiguous enough to take the chance. Go ahead and shoot me...I'm not hurting you or your property.

I printed it out and gave it to my wife so she can pin it up in her classroom. Something tells me her students won't get the joke...or her co-workers for that matter. Classic.

See me for all your jelly needs...sweetie.

Talk about face down, butt up! Don't forget the jelly y'all, or that's gonna be one long, painful weekend. Relax Scott, I was half kidding.

Seriously? Dude, wow. I thought we were gaining some ground there for a second...guess we're back to square one. Just messin'...but you'll never make it through law school on that crack. This is what rap sounds like to me:

Talk about sad. I've got some taste for sale if y'all are interested. No wonder they figured Nelly had a shot at Branson.

Do they speak English in Wut?

Got it. Came with that ridiculously expensive Archive set that I was thoroughly disappointed with. He actually broke that song down and made at least two others out of it...parts of the lyrics went to Broken Arrow and others went to Country Girl on CSNY's Déjà Vu. Yeah, you already gave me that one Wheat. Pretty dang good!

Holy cow, TF. I'd say only about another ten guys on the planet know that album. It's a great one, indeed! Think Neil mighta been a little high that day? The whole thing is great, and there's even a couple I'd never heard, including Dance, Dance, Dance, which puts me in a good mood every time I hear it. Let me know if you're missing any NY albums...I've got his complete discography, from beginning to end. As soon as it hits me that I'm finally out of St. Louis and in the Ozarks on my way to a stream, I always seem to get the hankering for the Byrds "Sweetheart of the Rodeo." I also like Johnny Cash when I'm in the country.

Like a fickle woman. LMAO! That's a great find Gavin. I feel like I just took a nice float with the Cleaver family. Cool video.

Then I'll continue to not take offense and remain confused...