Few Old Meramec And Huzzah Smallies

[huz001]

The old days produced some great fish. They can still be had today too.

These smallies (1974 - 21 1/2" (5 pound 2 oz), 1979 - 20 1/2" (4 pound 10 oz), 1982 - 19" (around 4 pounds)); also a 4 pound 2 oz 18" Kentucky from Meramec (1982). Strictly "Catch and Release for 26 years now". Even then, it was trophy fish only that were mounted. In the lodge by the river we also have 12 or 13 smallies from 1921 to 1962. Everyone of them is over 4 pounds. One is 23 1/2" 6 lbs 4 Oz (1940); the largest anyone ever caught (that we know of) on the upper section of the Meramec (1 mile below Birdsnest).

I also have the float log books from the 1920's and the 1930's; which are really unbelievable but completely honest.

[Al Agnew]

I'd really love to read those old log books!

Back when I first started fishing the Meramec in the 1970s (I grew up on Big River and didn't fish much anywhere else until I graduated from college), I'm convinced it was the best big smallmouth stream in the Ozarks. I spent a lot less time up in the Steelville area than I did farther downstream. The stretch from Onondaga to Meramec State Park was a terrific big fish producer, and the lower river, below St. Clair, was even better. As I mentioned in other threads, the Meramec produced one of my two all-time biggest river smallies, a 21.5 inch 5 pounder that came from a spot above Meramec State Park that is no longer there (the river totally changed its course a few years ago), and my all-time best big fish day--I and my partner caught 8 smallmouths over 19 inches in one afternoon below where the River Round access is now near St. Clair. The biggest I ever caught back then above Onondaga was a 21 incher somewhere around Saranac, although I've caught 19 inch plus fish all the way up to Cook Station.

Spotted bass were the worst thing that ever happened to the Meramec in the St. Clair area, but the much greater fishing pressure much of the river gets these days doesn't help. Like you say, there are still big ones in the Meramec...I've caught 20 inch plus fish every year in the last few years from it. But the fishing is a lot tougher than it used to be.

[huz001]

I'd really love to read those old log books!

Back when I first started fishing the Meramec in the 1970s (I grew up on Big River and didn't fish much anywhere else until I graduated from college), I'm convinced it was the best big smallmouth stream in the Ozarks. I spent a lot less time up in the Steelville area than I did farther downstream. The stretch from Onondaga to Meramec State Park was a terrific big fish producer, and the lower river, below St. Clair, was even better. As I mentioned in other threads, the Meramec produced one of my two all-time biggest river smallies, a 21.5 inch 5 pounder that came from a spot above Meramec State Park that is no longer there (the river totally changed its course a few years ago), and my all-time best big fish day--I and my partner caught 8 smallmouths over 19 inches in one afternoon below where the River Round access is now near St. Clair. The biggest I ever caught back then above Onondaga was a 21 incher somewhere around Saranac, although I've caught 19 inch plus fish all the way up to Cook Station.

Spotted bass were the worst thing that ever happened to the Meramec in the St. Clair area, but the much greater fishing pressure much of the river gets these days doesn't help. Like you say, there are still big ones in the Meramec...I've caught 20 inch plus fish every year in the last few years from it. But the fishing is a lot tougher than it used to be.

Ya know, I never heard of one being caught in the upper Meramec prior to the mid-1970's; maybe we just though they were LM bass then. Anyone know ? One day a caught and released a nice Rainbow and a Spot in the same eddy.

[huz001]

I'd really love to read those old log books!

I will scan and post the logs along with the plans for the Current River jon boat (1927) next week;

in the mean time here is an excerpt;

Jun 7, 1933 5:45 AM to 9 PM (75 years ago)

Float - Walkers Ford to Ranch (our place a the junction)

water slightly cloudy

Pat; 36 smallmouths up to 4 pounds 2 oz (2 doubles) flies and spinners (red); Leonard 8 1/2' Fly Rod; Heddon bait rod with Charmer Minnow

Ernie; 23 smallmouths (biggest 3 pounds 10 oz.) - Heddon 150's (red), 1 Largemouth of about 3 pounds; Heddon Bait rod

Floyd; 30 smallmouths up to about 3 pounds - flies and spinners, Divine Fly Rod 9'

also,

200+ goggle-eyes (4 were 12") or about 1 1/2 pound

50 big green sunfish (known then as Black Perch)

7 walleyes, largest (6 pounds 6 oz.)

2 channel cats on a fly (both small)

Kept 12 total fish for fry

more later .......

[Al Agnew]

Great! Really looking forward to reading them.

The reason you never saw spotted bass before the 1970s was because there weren't any! In fact, I don't think there were hardly any until the early 80s. I first started seeing spotted bass in the St. Clair area in the early 1980s. They started colonizing the river from the mouth upstream around then, although on Big River (which runs into the Meramec around Eureka) I caught a few hybrids in the mid 1970s in the area around Morse Mill and Browns Ford.

I've gone into the history of spotted bass in the Meramec river system in an earlier thread. But I fished the lower end of Big River in the late 1970s and never caught a single spotted bass (and plenty of smallmouths). But I fished it again about 1985 and it was practically nothing but spotted bass. I also fished the lower Meramec in the Pacific area around 1979 and there were no spotted bass. By the mid-1980s, they had become common in the river up to St. Clair. There were none in the Bourbeuse River when I fished the lower end in the late 1970s, but by the late 1980s they had become common up past Union.

I didn't fish the Bourbeuse or the lower Meramec enough to document their spread exactly, but I did Big River. They started becoming common in Big River in what is now the special management area, between Mammoth Bridge and Browns Ford, around 1990. The mill dams on the lower river were a barrier to their spread, but by then they had made past the barriers. By the late 1990s they were starting to show up above Washington State Park. Between 1999 and the present, they continued to spread until now they make up more than half the bass population below St. Francois Park, and nearly half the population for 17 miles above the park. There are two lowwater bridges on upper Big River that slowed their spread, but they have a strong foothold now above the first bridge, and it is only above the second bridge, at the Leadwood MDC access, that they are still rare.

Apparently, the stronger flows and cooler, more heavily spring-fed water of the Meramec compared to Big River and the Bourbeuse is poor enough habitat for them that they have never gotten real common on the Meramec above Meramec State Park, and I hope that continues. But given the habitat on the other two streams, I fully expect them to colonize ALL of Big River and the Bourbeuse in the next few years.

They are evil critters on streams like these where they are not native. PLEASE kill every one you legally can. It truly appears that, for every spotted bass in these rivers, there will be one less smallmouth.