eric1978

Nah, should be at least fishable on a Monday. Tuesday thru Thursday would be better.

I agree with RS...for wading just take one rod, but if those are the lures you plan to use, then I'd take your most versatile BC rod. When I go wading I hit the skinniest possible water that will hold fish...one deep pool and you're either blocked off from moving further up or down or you have to bushwack through poison ivy and thorns...no thanks. So since I'll be up in the smallest part of a stream, I like downsizing my lures a bit. Plopping big lures in tiny water are more likely to spook fish than trigger them to eat, so I'll take mostly plastics and flukes, a couple small cranks and some topwaters, and leave the spinnerbaits and other bigger lures in the canoe...which means I'll be taking my most versatile spinning rod. I'd suggest a med or med/light 6 foot rod with light line...probably less than 8#. The general rule is the farther upriver you go, the fewer big fish you'll find, but there are still some in there, and plenty of smaller fish. It's a good time to break out the fly rod to keep things a little more interesting. Take your Paddlers Guide and a Delorme Atlas, and find some accesses ABOVE the first accesses listed in the Paddler's Guide. Plan to do a LOT of driving and exploring. Some accesses work for wading, others not so much. Spend the morning going a mile or two down from the access, head back to the truck for a sammich, then go the other direction in the afternoon...that way you don't wander miles away from your vehicle and have to run a marathon back when the sun starts to go down. If you hit the right access on the right day, wading can be fun, but a canoe or kayak is truly the most efficient and enjoyable way to smallie fish the streams...but it does take an investment and you'll need to work out shuttles. It's worth it, though. In the meantime, since you're in STL, focus on the Meramec and its tribs...Bourb, Big, Huzzah, Courtois. They're the shortest drive for us unfortunate east-siders, and there's enough wading in those five streams to keep you busy for five years. Please release ALL smallmouth, and please KEEP all the spots you catch out of those rivers. Good luck.

How cold is the NFoW water when you go swimming for that one in February? Sweet meat.

Dick's occasionally has some good deals on canoes and kayaks and other floating accessories (I bought my canoe there), but aside from that they're pretty mediocre IMO, especially in the fishing department...it's mostly junk. It's good to hear they corrected their mistake, though.

It goes with me on most trips. We did an overnighter a couple weeks ago at the beginning of this heat wave drought, and I was comfortable enough not putting it up, although I did have it with me. The tent stays much cooler without the fly. I bring a lot more stuff when I'm "camping." When we have a basecamp and all my stuff will just go from the truck to the campsite back to the truck I don't worry about it and bring all the comforts and conveniences that exist. But I take a lot less when overnighting on the river, mostly because I not only lack the room in my solo canoe (I can get it in there, but then my system of storing and easily accessing my rods no longer works, and convenience all day while fishing is more important to me than comfort at night...wish I didn't have to choose), but also I really just don't wanna mess with all that stuff. I've even thrown down the air mattress and sleeping bag right on the gravel bar and slept under the stars. It's really nice, but those were the perfect bug-free nights and perfect temperatures with zero chance of rain. I'll admit that the older I get and the stiffer my joints become, the less desirable it is to "rough it."

You take all that stuff on an overnight, Al? Geez, I gotta teach you about minimalism. I take a tent and a 3/4 length Thermarest and a small Thermarest pillow. If I know positively it's not gonna rain, I'll leave the rainfly at home. If it's miserably hot like it is now, I'll leave the sleeping bag at home, too, and just bring a sweatshirt. Not comfortable enough? That's what beer and tequila is for. After a long day in the heat pounding the water, I sleep like a rock on the rocks. I'm planning to upgrade to a full length Thermarest...then I'll be perfectly happy.

Funny how you're okay with some invasive species, but vehemently opposed to others. So let me get it straight...invasives are fine as long as they're not dumped directly into the river by a truck or through hatchery gates? Invasions caused by indirect or unintentional human intervention don't count? Or is it a matter of geography? Invasives are okay if they naturally occupy streams a hundred miles away but not a thousand miles away? Native is native and non-native is non-native. You can't be against one and not another, unless you have a good reason...like I do. And here's that reason... Trout are far less "invasive" than spotted bass, considering trout can't reproduce in the vast majority of river miles in MO...especially browns. The spots spread like Bubonic Plague and occupy river habitat that is already in use by other game species. Trout populations pose far less of a threat to native species than spotted bass, since in most cases they occupy generally gamefish-vacant sections of river, and additionally, if we ever see they're causing a problem, we can just stop stocking them and they'll all but disappear over time. I'm happy we have the trout. They give us something to do during the winter and they don't substantially compete with native gamefish. Win win. Let these guys have their debate. We know the trout aren't going anywhere, the question is how do we manage them to maximize the fun we get out of it, same as the smallmouth debate.

Implementing new regs would be the only way to actually do that research. If the regs are changed and enforced and there is no difference in fish populations after, say, ten years or so, then we will have conclusive data and we can go back to raping the rivers. We gotta try it first before we'll know whether or not it works.

Sorry Rob, they're long gone. You can find a good deal on a used pair on ebay from time to time.

Yeah Jeremy, it's a bummer. I'm not as lucky as you SWMO boys with your backyard rivers...I gotta DRIVE to go fishin'. Which means money and time, both of which my wife and one year old have a strangle hold upon. Chief, pay attention bro. I've been talking about a slot limit the whole time. Release all fish 12-18 inches. Keep 4 per day, only 1 over 18. What's your beef with that? The meat eaters can get their dinner, and the trophy hunters can take home their pig. Leave the rest for you and me and everyone else who likes to watch them swim away. Oh, and I'm a one eared fat man from the east, remember? I'm half deaf, not half blind.

Purely boredom-driven, Brother. I'm not allowed to go fishing every weekend and I can only tinker in the garage so much. Figgered it'd be fun to pick a fight with Chief and Drew, the usual suspects, over the usual topic. It's kept me busy 13 times today...now 14. LOL We'll be too busy bean wrestling in September...no worries.

Great, then there is no need to harvest smallmouth because there has been nothing found stating that rivers are overpopulated...and now we can move on to better regulations.

Oh, please. You're gonna sit there with a straight face and say the Native Americans harvested as many fish from MO rivers as we currently do now? That's silliness. But fine, in that case, who regulated the fisheries and kept the populations in check before the Native Americans crossed the Bering Strait? The smallmouth have been here for tens of thousands of years...they don't need us to do anything but put them back after we catch them. The "overpopulation" (which is a figment of your imagination) is regulated enough by pollution and habitat degradation. Any more "help" from humans only makes things worse. No one is saying they're being decimated, only that the fishing could be better with different regs. Better.

More big fish...that's what we're talking about. Who was removing the fish 400 years ago? I suppose all the smallies were stunted before we got here.

If the limit is 15 instead of 18, you can keep more fish...duh! If they implemented a statewide 12-18 inch slot limit for smallmouth, I would be okay with them doing away with the special spotted bass regs.

Problem is the huge number of people in our state without brains and teeth. So while I do appreciate the value of having specific regulations for each individual river, that's not going to be practical to implement, enforce, or even to expect most people to know about or understand. So a statewide reg would be most favorable IMO, and if that would ever be the case, a 12-18" slot sounds to me like a good umbrella formula.

Sounds like a Neanderthal. In that case, I have caught a Neosho. Okay, so it sounds like maybe you could tell the difference...I'd still like to find a way to put you to the Pepsi challenge one day. It'd be a fun experiment. Don't see how that'll ever happen, though. It's weird that you're so passionate about them, yet you don't care that the biggest ones can legally be taken home for supper. I still don't understand why you would care if the limit was bumped to 18". What's the advantage of a 15" limit? None, except people could keep more fish. That's an advantage for a meat hunter, not a sport fisherman. Let them fight their own fight. Get a replica if you wanna show off your catch. Or a picture. A picture is better anyway. I just think a statewide limit would be easier to get passed and to implement, and easier to understand for the moron public. There are so many different regulations on different rivers that people just start to say forget it and not even bother learning them, if they ever thought about it to begin with. Why not err on the high side instead of the low? I have a hunch that the Neoshos are about as pure a strain of fish as the McClouds in Crane. Maybe I'm wrong, but with all the tinkering we do, they must have been screwed up by now. But I thought you were all against the spotted bass regs in the Meramec system? If an invasive species is okay for one stream, why not another?

Well, whatever works for you is the right way to do it. I was using PP on my spinnerbait rod until I realized I was tearing hooks out of fishes' mouths. I switched to 10# copoly and problem solved. I only use braid on my spinning reels for plastics anymore, and if the fish are turned off by the line, I haven't been able to tell. I did break off PP in a fish's mouth last weekend for the first time. I thought for sure it had to be that the knot slipped out of the eye of the hook, but nope, it broke. I couldn't believe it...musta been a really abraded spot on the line. Of course I was using the broomstick Ham sold me...you could pull a truck out of the river with that thing. I backed the drag off a little and was good the rest of the weekend. My one and only complaint about braid is the impossibility of getting knots out of it...I like everything else.

See new thread: http://ozarkanglers.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29552&view=getnewpost&hl=&fromsearch=1 I'm not gonna hijack this one.

How do you know what laws would or wouldn't enhance the "fisheries you frequent" if you've never had anything but uber-liberal creel limits? It's all just speculation by all of us, and I speculate that a statewide slot of 12-18 would help all MO streams. I know you think you have this totally unique species of smallmouth down there, but seriously, it's not that different. I bet I could hold a Neosho and a "regular" smallmouth side by side, and you couldn't tell me with certainty which was which unless you knew what rivers they came from. Either way, a slot limit would help the "overpopulation problem" you say you have, and also help protect the more mature fish. If you catch an 18" Neosho, then take her home and hang her on your wall...according to you she's not got long to go at that point anyway, so I don't really have a problem with harvesting that fish. But a 15 incher has a few years and inches to go, lots of spawning left to do, and should be kept in the river until maturity. We also saw thousands of <12" smallmouth on Big Piney last weekend...that isn't unique to SWMO streams...that's par for the course for most healthy MO streams. And we also caught some fish better than 17", so I guess it's not that overpopulated. Most streams in MO can handle harvest of a few smaller fish per day per angler. It's the bigger fish we need and should want to keep in the streams. I just don't understand why you would have a problem with that. Let the fish mature before they're harvested. There's a big difference between a 15" fish and an 18" fish, and as a fisherman I don't know why you'd rather see them in a skillet than in the river.

MSA is an activist group...so is Greenpeace, but whaling still goes on. Their purpose is to draw attention to a cause and slowly chip away towards progress. Nothing happens overnight, and no one activist group is going to have absolute power. I appreciate what they do. I see their signs at almost every MDC access, and they surely don't hurt. I guess we'll talk about it in September after we all catch limits of 18" fish down there. Then you'll have me convinced the regs are fine.

I hear people say all the time that they use mono, fluoro or copoly leaders on braided line...and I just don't understand that. The benefit of braid is its incredible strength, and since most abrasions and break-offs happen on the last few feet of line, doesn't it completely defeat the purpose of using the braid in the first place? I don't get it. I was actually thinking about trying it the other way around...spooling up with copoly or fluoro and using a braided leader. That makes more sense to me. After all, unless you're fishing super slow in super cold and super clear water, invisible line isn't all that critical IMO...bass aren't really that line shy. They see a morsel they fancy and they'll eat it. The biggest problem I have with braid is how difficult it is to pick out a wind knot. I use flukes a lot, and if you don't have that thing rigged absolutely perfectly straight, you get twist and then you get spool nightmare...with braid often times that means you have to cut out a large section of line, and we all know how much it costs and how much time you waste re-spooling when you could be fishing. So my theory is if you're spooled up with a traditional line with a braided leader, you don't have to deal with the negatives of braid, but you get the strength of braid where you need it. I do like braid for plastics because with its lack of stretch, it really drives a hook home through the material...so that's another consideration, but adding a leader negates the hook-setting power because it weakens the line at the knots. All the stretch would be coming out of a few feet of leader, and I'm not sure it could handle that kind of shock. They need to invent some clear braid that you can pick knots out of. That oughta be pricey. And yeah, Ham's right about underfilling with braid. You overfill and you're just asking for trouble...you're gonna end up losing that extra line in the first 15 minutes anyway, so heed his warning and save yourself a headache on the river!

Well I'm bored enought to throw in my pair o' pennies... Who cares about park regs? 4 fish per day is hard enough for morons to remember, so just leave it at that. Outside of the parks should be C&R only for browns, 2 rainbows per day, statewide, just to eliminate confusion. Smallmouth should be slot limit statewide...release all fish 12-18 inches, 4 per day, 1 over 18. Lots of other fish to eat. Lots. There's my dream. Now step all over it.

Actually, I never throw one bigger than 3/8 oz, and I prefer 1/4 or 3/16. I see no need to go heavier than that on a river, unless you wanna slow roll one in a deep hole for some reason I couldn't fathom. Also like Gavin said, flukes are magic, but I like the 4 inchers. Plastics, jigs, Sammies, Pointers, buzzbaits, cranks the size of warts...you don't have to use "big" baits, just something big enough that a bigger fish will have interest in and big enough that you won't have to pick dinks off of it all day. Nothing worse than casting in the perfect spot, catching an 8 inch fish and watching the 18 inch fish follow him to your boat. They'll eat tiny stuff and huge stuff, too, but I tend to use "medium" sized baits.