eric1978

I always like to start with faster stuff to cover more water and show more fish the bait...spinnerbaits, buzzbaits, flukes, Sammies. If they don't want that stuff I'll slow down and work the bottom with plastics and jigs, but in summer that's rarely necessary. If I had to recommend one bait I'd say pick up a few bags of 4" flukes in colors like white, chartreuse, wht/cht, AR shiner, or pearl. Tough to beat a fluke this time of year.

There are? Whatchu talkin' 'bout Willis?

The point was that the photo was taken long ago, before people were more conservation minded and C&R was not popular or hardly ever even considered.

If you hide Cricket's pink marabous he won't catch a darn thing. Just a tip.

Pretty sure that's a sunfish hybrid of some sort. Possibly crappieXgreenie? Interesting looking. Can you upload the picture again and try to make it bigger? I'd like to get a closer look at that.

Cool report, Al. I've never caught a bass that big in a river. Hope you upload a pic while you're doing the canoe pics.

Hmmm...wish it was a 17 footer. I'd be all over it.

Six to one, half dozen to another. I feel it's my obligation to support the resource, so I tend to err on that side. I'm bowing out now. Gonna go to the hospital and watch my wife have a baby. Guess there are more important things than license revenues.

Someone asked if she needed an additional license on top of her regular license to fish for trout, and I gave a blanket answer "yes." She wasn't asking about Crane specifically and I never said it was illegal to fish for trout without a stamp. I assumed she would be like most anglers and occassionally keep a fish to eat, so I presented a general answer to a general question. I suppose I should have been more specific, but fishinwrench clarified it. You should know that wrench and flysmallie are both friends of mine, so there is some subtle ribbing going on here that could be misconstrued. My "Regulations Nazi" comment was pure joke, but I suppose if people didn't know we were friendly they could take it the wrong way. I didn't advise anyone to keep an illegal fish, but it's certainly a gray area what you're supposed to do with a mortally wounded fish that would be illegal to keep in a ribbon area. I guess that's another one of those judgment calls, and I'm not sure what the answer is, but I think I'd be inclined to keep a fish I knew was going to die, and hope that an agent would understand when I explain to him "I'm aware of the regulations sir, but this is what happened and so on..." You're certainly risking a ticket, but I don't know if that's worse - to me personally - than just letting it go to waste and let it float down the river. I'm not telling anyone what they can or can't do, and I'm not "imposing" my opinion on anyone. I'm stating my opinion, just like you and everyone else.

I had one of those for a while...a Water Skeeter. It was a quality toon and fun on the right water, but a real pain in the neck. They're heavy, you have to inflate/deflate/assemble every time you use it (really a pain if you want to hit more than one access in a day), they aren't great for skinny water because they don't slide through obstructions very well, plus the rocks will wear the toons very quickly (and even the toughest material isn't impervious to puncture), and they are like paddling a barge through slack water. If you get a rack, you can easily cartop a solo canoe or yak by yourself onto most any vehicle, and IMO, they are better than a toon for floating and fishing most of our Ozark streams. With a canoe you can carry more gear than with a toon, too.

We got off on the wrong foot. Welcome aboard. I was in your position for a long time with the boat problem. You should consider getting a canoe or kayak. They can be very cheap with the right deal and will open up a ton of otherwise inaccessible water for you.

I think you do a lot of fishing on the Little Piney. I think you're probably a decent to good fisherman with a relatively low C&R mortality rate. However, most studies I've found show a 4%-8% mortality rate even with flies, so you are killing more fish than you think you are. They can die days after they're caught, and can die from other reasons like stress, not just physical injury or exhaustion. The seven dollars for a trout stamp helps pay to restock the fish that die because of C&R mortality and catch and keep. Those are facts. There is a sustaining population of wild trout in LP, yes, but without the stocking efforts on top of the natural reproduction, there would be far fewer fish in your home stream. Maybe that's okay with you. Some people get a huge kick out of spending the day catching parr-marked babies with the occasional 12 inch trophy. No sarcasm intended, some guys really enjoy it, and maybe you're one of them. You are of course within your legal right to not pay for the trout stamp; I never said otherwise. But just because something isn't illegal, it doesn't necessarily make it justified or ethically correct. It's a judgment call, and it doesn't mean you're a terrible person, just someone who likes to get something for nothing, and I personally find that a bit selfish. Of course, and it's already been noted, I am actually the asshole for pointing it out. I still don't see how it's such a giant faux pas to advocate my position. I'm not trying be nasty or confrontational or holier-than-thou. I'm just baffled at how people will spend untold thousands on gear and tackle and fly-tying materials, yet they refuse to pay a tiny fee that directly helps justify those thousands spent by improving the overall quality of the fishing experience. What would be the point of any of it if there weren't any fish? If everyone took your position, we'd all eventually be relegated to a few crowded trout parks and a few over-fished and dwindling wild populations. So go ahead, call me a prick or whatever you want, but deep down, you know I have a point.

I just got done watching Gasland. Pretty eye-opening stuff. It was a well-made documentary and I have a feeling we'll see more from Josh Fox. One thing is for sure, if hydraulic fracturing is done in the wrong places, we're not gonna have to worry about bickering over smallmouth regulations or license fees anymore. Our rivers and lakes will be ruined, and we'll be killing each other over bottled drinking water. That might sound dramatic, but seriously, what do we do if all our potable water is contaminated? On top of that we get to breathe all the airborne pollutants these wells are spewing. Bad news. It's just another reminder of how important and urgent transitioning to renewable energy is. You see the problems in the Gulf every night on the news, and shake your head and feel sick to your stomach for the people and wildlife down there, but it still doesn't seem quite real since we're way up here. But this fracking crap could be knocking on our door any time, and the next documentary might be on massive fish kills in Ozark streams. I'd like to hear more about where they're doing this in AR. How many more outrageous crimes against nature and humanity do we have to discover Dick Cheney is behind before he's locked up and the key's thrown away? That man is pure evil, I'm sorry.

??? Ya lost me.

That could certainly be a problem with spots and LM, but there's just no confusing a smallmouth. They're totally distinct looking from the other two, and anyone who couldn't distinguish a SM from the other two probably wouldn't know the regs anyway.

Supposedly they don't taste all that bad, and have a firm, white meat unlike our native carp. Unfortunately they do have intramuscular bones. I'd be more hesitant to eat them because of the rivers they live in than an aversion to the meat itself. The thought of chowing down on fish out of the MS and MO rivers just doesn't sit right with me. Apparently those who regularly eat these fish prefer them live or freshly killed, which creates problems for their viability for commercial fishermen. Maybe we should chop them into bits, glue them back together in patty form, label them Seafood Surprise, then ship them back to Asia. They wanted to feed their kids mercury-toxic dolphin for school lunches in Japan...surely they'd eat some MS river nasties with the taste of the homeland. Something tells me they'd be a blast on a cheap 8wt, if we could figure out what flies they would consistently slurp. http://mdc.mo.gov/conmag/2004/07/20.htm

Your personal attacks are getting old, and this will be my last response to you: The word you are trying to type is spelled "definition." I usually refrain from correcting grammar, but the irony in this case is just too glaring (and hilarious) to ignore. Good day, sir.

I like a lot of the ideas thus far, but you could probably guess that I think 6 fish per person per day is plenty. Something else that might need to be addressed is culling fish. I could just see someone tossing back a couple half-dead 13 inch smallmouth that have been dragged around on a stringer all day to make room for a couple of 16 inch largemouth. That would be no good either.

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I suppose I can understand that, given the cost of an out-of-state license. Of course the majority of your tax revenue goes to KS as well, so you're not contributing that way either. The definition of selfish is "concerned chiefly or only with yourself and your advantage to the exclusion of others," and I'd say using a resource without helping pay for it qualifies. As JD said, even if you don't keep the trout, they die eventually. Someone has to put new ones in, and someone has to pay for it. Might as well be the people who want them in there. I'm not as mild mannered as you, ness. I was raised to say what I mean and and not mince words, and if that seems confrontational to you, my apologies.

No you're not. You've listened to lies and believed them for too long, and now your mind is made up. The answers could be laid out in front of you, and I'm sure at several times in your life they have been, and you refused to look. I applaud Al for consistently and methodically laying out logical and rational explanations with facts and sources for the deniers, even though he knows they will always refuse to listen to reason. It's a complete waste of time, and I've spent all I care to on this one. You're a lost cause, and I wash my hands. Keep on blindly fighting for the oil and coal companies, and the polluters and billionaire CEOs. We're all fried eggs in the end.

It does get complicated, but the Meramec system needs special spotted bass regs. It's real simple. Keep 'em all. Normal regs for spots everywhere else (except the Gasconade, which is a river I don't know well). The problem would be (and probably currently is) people not being able to identify them and keeping largemouth as well.

Why? According to your analysis, it doesn't cause any environmental problems. Might as well just keep doing what we're doing, since we don't really have any impact on the planet anyway. And just in case you don't know, scientists were warning us about the effects of greenhouse gases much longer ago than Al Gore made Inconvenient Truth. Scientists. The VAST majority of scientists. You probably argue with your doctor when he diagnoses you when you're sick. Stupid doctor and his worthless medical training. You know better. A little tip for you: Your arguments will always suffer from a lack of credibility when you regurgitate Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck talking points.

Confrontational? I was just pointing out why I believe his refusal to buy a stamp is short sighted and frankly a bit selfish. I doubt my opinion will keep him awake tonight, but I'm sure he appreciates you mediating the thread. I'll go ahead and assume you agree with me, too, since you made no comment on the issue at hand. MDC isn't lining their pockets and laughing all the way to the bank with license revenues. That money goes to creating a better fishing experience for all of us, yourself included. I release trout, too, and when I see an agent writing a poacher a ticket, or I see a habitat improvement project underway, et cetera, I'm happy to know that I contributed to help pay for those important aspects of what MDC does. It's not just about paying to restock a fish you take home to eat. There's much more that goes into sustaining, improving and protecting a fishery. You're supposed to just agree with me Wheat. Thanks for trying, though.

Oh boy, another denier. You might want to pull your head out of the sand...there are tar balls in there. Of course the earth will survive. But it would be nice if we could survive with it. It's going to take lots of innovation and sacrifices...and birth control pills.