LarrySTL

Its great that these guys got prosecuted. In a perfect world I'd be fine with some prison or jail time for guys like these, but we're in a very imperfect world. The financial reality is that prisoners cost about $ 20,000 - $30,000 per year when you factor in corrections officer salaries, food, medical, security, and all the other costs. We can say "make them pay it" but most prisoners are financially zeros; they cant pay it. Also, virtually every state, certainly including MO, has overcrowded prisons. Capacity is designed in according to federal regulations at the time they are built. Missouri runs about 120 - 130 % of theoretical capacity and federal court judges have orders in place on most Mo prisons that require the wardens to stay within their facility's specific cap. The combined reality is that prisons are a large pipe. If we push Person A in the intake end today, one result is that Person B is pushed out the other end of the pipe. Generally Person B is going to be more problems for society if released than a wildlife code violator will be. Ask any Mo parole officer what a person has to do to be revoked back to prison as opposed to found to have violated their conditions of parole but continued on some type of parole; the answer is often "I can't roll him back ( to prison), there's no place to put him."

More prayers sent.

I realize that LM in reservoirs and SM in streams are different and that what works for one is not guaranteed to work for the other. But.... great big BUT kinda like this ---> (_i_) tho that would be butt. Owell..onward... Everything I read in this and similar threads here says the same things that were said 40 (?) years ago about the 15 " minimum on bass in the reservoirs, namely "people won't obey it, they will break the law, they will eat all the bass, it won't help a bit, give up its hopeless". However, it worked pretty well. If these rules result in some improvement, that would be.....ummm...duhhhh... improvement. Any side bets ( I'll take the Under on 15 minutes) before somebody posts "but that was different, and this is now, give up, its hopeless."

Ditto about the fish and skis. One thing you might do if you havent already is sit down and figure out realistically how often you are going to have more than one other in it, and also how often you will make a top speed run of say 10 miles or more. Running 5 miles at 40 or 45 mph sometimes unless the weather is truely horrid there are a lot of boats that would be ok. Above 50 mph it gets different. Above 60 is lots lots different. I've been in big Skeeters and I think they are strong boats but my experience is that even at 21 feet, I find them a much harder ride than Ranger or Triton. Nitros seem to be getting better, but I personally would not bet gobs of my money on that. I hear good things about Phoenix but dont know them firsthand. Part of this is also where you plan to use it. LoZ is murder on boats and backs and I'd get the biggest well made fiberglass boat I could afford or I'd get a big aluminum deep deep V. Bull Shoals except from the dam up to about Oakland tends to be a bit narrower and therefore less bad wind than some other places ( he says about the place where he was in a tornado on the water in a bass boat). Miss River....see LoZ, then multiply it. Table Rock from about point 9 to the dam is pretty big open water and the huge goof boats and wake boats are getting bad in lots of places on TR. Up the James or way up the White, not so much. Pomme de Terre, pick what you like best, its a gentler lake than many others. Rend and Carlyle see Miss River. Around 19 feet of fiberglass and a 175 or 200 hp, a dual axle trailer with brakes is really helpful. If you are going to 18 ft and a 150, check your vehicles tow capacity, and consider a transmission cooler and/or oil cooler on your vehicle. Also pay lots of attention to what the gas mileage will be at $ 4 per and how often you plan to tow it how far. I would lean strongly to Ranger, perhaps Triton for fiberglass; your mileage may vary. I dont know enough about aluminums of any size to have an intelligent opinion. Resale value I would say Ranger. Most bassboat dealers around here, if you are looking seriously at a good size, boat will take you out for a test run in what you may want or find a happy customer of theirs to do that for them. This can be a good idea even if you are considering buying used; 20 minutes at Winter Park wont really teach you anything except perhaps whether there is a serious problem with that particular boat. I have never owned aluminum bigger than a johnboat for a pond, so I dont have any specific knowledge about them. Remember to enjoy the process, and to buy what *you* want rather than what we collectively want.

I hear the florescent yellow bobbers are better.

A few months ago I bumped into a bunch of Smithwick Rogues, some gently used, some new still in the boxes. Some of the used ones have been DIY modified with suspender strips or dots. Also a decent number of rapala jerkbaits used but in excellent shape, all in various sizes. I hope to have them listed on OAF by about a week from now if anyone is looking for bargain prices on Rogues or Rapalas. Watch the For Sale thread soon.

Great fish, way to go guys !

I agree with Wrench that the interior design looks difficult. The rod storage areas look cramped, those two dinky storage compartments in the rear look like they might be so small as to be functionless, and that front livewell/baitwell/whatever it is looks like it will be super shallow and quite possibly splashing and bouncing the snot out of any fish, large or bait size, that are in it. The first fullsize bassboat I ever owned was an 18 foot 150 hp in a brand that isn't made anymore although it was a pretty wellmade boat. However, it had a front livewell at the rear edge of the front platform, centered to use as much of the hull depth as possible. I in a hard run it still sloshed around a lot splashed water everywhere and banged your fish up badly enough that I just stopped using it and put everything in the huge deep well thought out rear livewell. Ranger at least historically paid a lot of attention to the suggestions from its tournament guys, both those in memo boats and those spending all their own money; if they still do that I suspect that the walleye guys will correct a lot of things about the interior layout by next model year. Cosmetically, I agree its not a pretty boat, although having almost all of both the exterior and interior in battleship grey isn't helping the appearance a bit.

For you topwater guys fishing straight braid, I can understand that on frogs, but if you dont use a leader, WTF do you do to get the trebles out of the braid on regular hardbodied surface lures, particularly walking lures ?

Very cool pics...thanks and yes, please post more. I'll take a wild guess that those could be pics at Morse Mill near Desoto. Having grown up with grandparents in Desoto I actually am amazed that there would have been so many folks back then actually using the river. Or maybe those first two are "summers before air conditioning came along."

Thats the real shame of all this, that they didnt really deal with anything beyond kicking the can a few months farther down the road.

The Netherlands women can match up fine with the Swedes and Iceland has some very fine looking females, though they talk really wierd there. Canada at least used to make some really fine beer, probably still does, and, having seen it with my very own grossed out eyes, those Vienna sausages at least the ones in cans, mostly come from a factory in Ft. Madison Iowa. I am told by knowledgeble folks that the sausages do, however, make good bait for monster catfish on the Ohio and Miss rivers.

A concrete bridge still has an awful lot of metal in it; the rebar if nothing else. I've been caught out a few times, once on Truman a million years ago, and once on the Ohio River just above Smithland Lock. On Truman there was no real good place to go, so I picked the nearest gentle sloped cove, got way in the back of it, threw out an anchor, turned on both bilge pumps and hopped out of the boat and hunkered down on shore maybe 25 feet from some small trees, and not close to any tall ones. Right or wrong, my theory was that I wanted to give the lightning something other than me to hit. Beyond that, nothing dramatic happened. On the Ohio, I was maybe a mile back in a swampy looking shallow creek with lots of tall dead trees. The wind kicked up a little, I looked around, and saw that there were two sets of dark low clouds, moving fast and about to come together at a 90 degree angle. I got, fast, to the mouth of the creek by which time it was raining way hard, I was in a rip rap chute maybe 50 feet wide in about 10 feet of water, watching two tall trees, the first 100 yards or so from me getting hit by lightning. The second tree was closer, 2 or 3 feet thick and it just dissappeared into toothpicks when it got hit. I was near the main river, but at a spot where it is a mile or more wide, the channel in the middle of the river, and real big stump fields outside the channel for a mile or so above the lock. 18 miles from the ramp, rough wind, big lightning, tall dead trees. Too much wind for an anchor to hold the boat, nothing on the back to tie it to, no trees except those tall dead isolated ones. I ended up laying down in the bottom of the boat, both bilge pumps going, watching the water swirl into the floor drains, reaching up every minute or so and touching the button on the trolling motor as briefly as I could to keep the boat off the rocks. Bout 20 or 30 minutes of that fun til it blew through. I bought a decent weather radio as soon as I got back to StL and dont think I have been in a bass boat without it since then. Skeery stuff.

Hojo, you might call BASS itself. They used to keep track of all local bassclubs that were affiliated with BASS. They may still do so.

When I was a kid we lived in Kirkwood. Not the part that was then almost rural, but the part near Glendale and near Webster and what few creeks were around were more like drainage ditches. Usually five feet wide, eight inches deep, lots of mud bottoms, lots of glop in them, occasional foul smells. There were crawdads in there. One summer I went to camp way way out in the boonies.....Baldwin...it was rural then, corn and horses werent everywhere, but were not unusual. The camp was slightly north of Manchester and, from memory, maybe 1/2 mile west of 141. There was a drainage ditch through it and if its still visible, its the one that goes under Manchester around there. It had LOTS of crawdads, including a decent number of big ones. I suspect that other than removing all the water, a crawdad population tends to be quite resilient.

Oops..make that 5...6..7....darn cut and paste.

A few miscellaneous comments and then I think I am out of this thread. 1) Generally: what Al said. 2) I dont know if it was on this thread or a similar one but recently a few folks said they had read the ACA. Maybe so, but I am skeptical since its 906 pages long. Yes, I just looked that up. 3) Extra credit points to those who can name ( no fair Googling) the most recent President to actually have balanced budgets. 4) What ended the Vietnam War ? The convergence of a whole bunch of things including in no particular order: the draft and the big reduction in the number of ways to be deferred after the draft lottery began, the Kent State shootings ( Four Dead In Ohio for those musically inclined), Nixon getting caught by the international media lying about bombing and sending ground troops into Cambodia after Congress said he couldnt, the modern media showing what 50+ thousand US military deaths looks like on the evening news, mayor Daley's police riot at the 1968 Democratic convention, Khe Sahn, the 1969 March, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the 1973 passage of the bipartisan Case Church amendment, with veto-proof majorities, prohibiting further military action in VN, Laos or Cambodia without specific advance Congressional approval, Arc Light bombing, and a whole bunch of other things. To say X ended it is inaccurately simplistic just as it would be to say that Eisenhower cancelling the UN elections after the defeat of the French caused it. 5) Shutting down everything but the military means shutting down, among other things: the DEA, the Post Office, immigration enforcement and the rest of ICE, the Federal Court system ( which can't be done constitutionally), VA benefits from medical care to the GI Bill and disability benefits, billions of dollars of medical research, air traffic controllers, lock operators and dredging crews on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers among others, a great deal of the funding for K - 12 education. Etc Etc. 6) In the early 1900s ( 1906-07 I believe) Congress didnt want T Roosevelt, as Pres, sending his newer bigger better navy warship fleet to the Pacific. The Senate Appropriations Committee basically announced they would not fund such an excursion. Roosevelt said a) he's the Commander in Chief and he's sending the Navy there and c) theres enough money to send them there though it may be up to Congress whether to eventually fund their return from the Pacific. 5) Bumper stickers are great for slogans. However, both are really poor substitutes for thoughful policies.

Thanks F&F, thats about what I figured was that its a scarey label slapped on something that, at least as to the ramps, campgrounds, etc, doesnt really change much.

Yessss, Light of the World was great. So were almost all of his earlier ones.

Today's electronic version of RHT: "Ozark National Scenic Riverways Superintendent Bill Black, and Superintendent Black stated that the rivers are OPEN for floating and boating"....but that improved campgrounds are closed due to lack of services. This was specifically about the Current and JF.

While we were fixing the world's problems, I see the feds unclosed the Current and Jacks Forks today at least to the extent of saying you can use the rivers. Answer me this. I have been on tons of Corp campgrounds, launch ramps, etc and other than the person at the little booth from 9 to 5, I think I have seen a fed employee doing something twice. if the feds just said "you can use it if you want, but due to the shutdown, we are not providing services" why wouldnt that suffice ? Its not like the feds send people out to watch me back a boat trailer down a ramp. So they dont empty the trashcans or maybe provide more TP for a while....how does just not servicing the area cost the fed gov a dime ? Even at Corp lakes, I have seen the Water Patrol, MDC and others a lot more than I have seen feds.

WTG, great fish !

House Odds by Mike Larson. Your basic "cops and crooks and politicians" detective-type novel. Thats mostly the type of stuff I read, with occasional forays into Civil War or WW II American history.

I hope you all know how happy you are making me that I have an Android 4G that had been out about a year when I got it, and that I paid an entire $ 1 for it on an online Black Friday sale last year. Still took me 2 mos to feel like I could use it without cussing though.

I looked at the USGS stuff this afternoon on two different rivers. Yes I saw the disclaimer, but the info I wanted was still there and said it was updated to 4 pm today. The disclaimer was something about lack of hands-on maintaince could make the gauges inaccurate after heavy rains or something.