River And Stream Bass Anglers: Do You Catch And Release

[Buzz]

Thanks Matt. I've been wondering about that and your explaination makes sense.

Buzz

[Chief Grey Bear]

I'm not sure I subscribe to that theory Matt. I certainly do not mean any disrespect but, it appears to me that some want to change the natural evolution of the waterways of Missouri for personal gratification.

I read this on your site:

"Encouraging anglers to kill as many spotted bass as possible while protecting smallmouths as much as possible is the only sensible answer to this problem."

This from your post:

" I don't have any ethical qualms about harvesting spots when they're in season."

I questioned to myself as to how ethical this sounded. My personal experience in fishing the waterways of my little corner of the world has been that there are days I catch mostly one of the three, and other days I have caught a good mix from the same water.

I read a post from Al that stated that he believed that the brownie came from the Ohio river system (I hope that is the correct system) an migrated its way to the waterways of Missouri. If indeed that is the case, what species then, might have been displaced? The Spot? Is it just rebounding? Who knows. I certainly don't.

I would tend to think it may be kind of boring to just catch one species of bass. That is not to say I don't enjoy catching brownies, not at all. I just also like to catch a big ol' bucket mouth or a Kentucky too out of the creeks and rivers.

All I know is I enjoy catching whatever type of bass is at the end of my line. And again, I mean no disrespect to you. Just thought I would weigh in with my opinion. For whatever it is worth.

[Guest]

deleted

[msamatt]

I'm not sure I subscribe to that theory Matt. I certainly do not mean any disrespect but, it appears to me that some want to change the natural evolution of the waterways of Missouri for personal gratification.

I read this on your site:

"Encouraging anglers to kill as many spotted bass as possible while protecting smallmouths as much as possible is the only sensible answer to this problem."

This from your post:

" I don't have any ethical qualms about harvesting spots when they're in season."

I questioned to myself as to how ethical this sounded. My personal experience in fishing the waterways of my little corner of the world has been that there are days I catch mostly one of the three, and other days I have caught a good mix from the same water.

I read a post from Al that stated that he believed that the brownie came from the Ohio river system (I hope that is the correct system) an migrated its way to the waterways of Missouri. If indeed that is the case, what species then, might have been displaced? The Spot? Is it just rebounding? Who knows. I certainly don't.

I would tend to think it may be kind of boring to just catch one species of bass. That is not to say I don't enjoy catching brownies, not at all. I just also like to catch a big ol' bucket mouth or a Kentucky too out of the creeks and rivers.

All I know is I enjoy catching whatever type of bass is at the end of my line. And again, I mean no disrespect to you. Just thought I would weigh in with my opinion. For whatever it is worth.

Chief:

Nothing you wrote offended me so no worries there. Believe me I'm always thinking at how ethical my type of fishing is and I try to harm the resource as little as possible. Like you, depending on where and how I fish I enjoy catching a mixed bag, which I really enjoy. I'm not advocating elminating any species in favor of another and that's not the MSA's position either. What we advocate is, in areas where we know that spots and smallmouth have to compete for the same and often diminishing habitat, say the Big River, we, and in the case of the Big River, the MDC, encourage people to keep spots if they catch them and when its legal to keep them. We're not going to stop the spread of the spots by doing this but maybe we can give some smallies a break.

As far as changing "...the natural evolution of Missouri waterways..." for my own personal gratification is concerned maybe I am trying to do that a little bit. I do; however take expception to your use of the phrase "...natural evolution..." The spread of the spotted bass hasn't been entirely a result of natural processes. I happen to believe that man has had some influence over what we refer to as global warming and, accoring to MDC fisheries biologists, our Ozark border streams are becoming slightly warmer over time and that favors the spread of the spotted bass. In watersheds where they haven't been introduced they spread during periods of high water. We don't determine when or how often it rains but our land use practices definitely influence flooding. So, in summary. Do I just flat out enjoy fishing period, yes. Do I enjoy catching all three types of black bass along with whatever fish I happen to catch, you betcha. Do I really enjoy catching smallmouth above and beyond other species, absolutely. To that end I believe in advocating practices and regs which promote the overall health of our smallmouth population and increase the likelyhood that everyone is able to catch more big smallmouth whenever they fish in our Missouri Ozark streams and rivers.

[Kayser]

The only river I fish for bass is the Bourbuese, where the spots are an introduced species. The last time I fished it, spots were the main bass species present. Most of the better spots in the river gave up spots, with a few smallies in historic smallie spots (big boulders). Let all of the smallies go. I personally would like to see a 15" minimum on everything but the spots, and think it would increase the overall number of natives.

Rob

[hank franklin]

I've been killing spots on the Meramec and tribs since 1998 or so. They are very good eating.

Anyone who knows the Bourbeuse well can attest to how spotteds have overrun the river and how the smallmouth is in decline. Sad.

For the Bourbeuse, I would like a no kill reg on smallmouth and a kill all you want reg on spotted. That's how I fish it. I haven't taken a smallmouth off the Bourbeuse since I was a kid.

[Al Agnew]

Okay, guys, I've probably gone through this before, but here's the story on spotted bass in Missouri Ozark streams.

Spotted bass were not native to any of the streams flowing north out of the Ozarks, including the Niangua, Pomme de Terre, Osage, Gasconade, and Meramec and all their tributaries. Nor were they native to the small creeks in eastern Missouri that flow directly into the Mississippi south of St. Louis, like Joachim, Establishment, Saline, and Apple creeks. They WERE native to all the south flowing streams, including anything flowing into the Elk, Spring, White, Black, St. Francis, and Castor rivers.

However, in the streams where they are native, they historically made up only a small portion of the bass population compared to smallmouths, because most of those streams were too cool, clear, and fast to be good spotted bass habitat. In fact, it was only in the slower, murkier downstream sections of most of these rivers that you could find spotted bass. The only real exception is the St. Francis, which has always had spotted bass throughout its length. I don't know for sure, but suspect that the Spring in southwest MO also had spotted bass over much of its length as well, due to the habitat. But until the big dams were built, they were practically non-existent in the James River, as well as in Bryant Creek. And over on Black River, they were rare until you got down pretty close to Poplar Bluff. The dams changed that. Spotted bass became well-established in Norfork and Table Rock, and the spotted bass population in those lakes became a "reservoir" of spotted bass that continually replenished the streams above that were decent spotted bass habitat. If the stream WASN'T decent spotted bass habitat, like the North Fork (too cold), they never moved up into it. On Black River, the flood control reservoir (Clearwater Lake) was built in the midsection of the river, and warmer, murkier water coming off the top of the lake made the river below it perfect spotted bass habitat, so now smallmouth are rare below Clearwater. Getting back to the James for a minute, it probably didn't help that Springfield's sewage effluent and storm water run-off made the river murkier and more fertile and better spotted bass habitat.

So that's pretty much where it stands in the southern Ozark streams--spotted bass were native, but greatly expanded their populations due to the lakes. Not much you can do about that except put longer length limits on the smallmouth and largemouth, since spotted bass don't grow big enough fast enough, and if the length limits are equal on all three species it favors the spotted bass.

Now, the northern Ozark streams are different. They tend to be a little slower, a little murkier, and a little warmer (less spring-fed) than the southern Ozark rivers. So they actually were always decent spotted bass habitat. But spotted bass simply never made it to them, so the smallmouth had no competition from spotted bass and thrived in these rivers.

But at some point fairly soon after Lake of the Ozarks was built, spotted bass somehow got into it. Nobody knows where they came from. They thrived in the lake and the Osage River system, colonizing the Sac, lower Pomme de Terre, and the lower sections of streams flowing into the lower Osage like the Moreau and Tavern. Once they got into those streams, they pretty much took over from smallmouths where the habitat was good for spotted bass. They never did well in the Niangua, partly because Tunnel Dam has always formed a barrier to their spread, and also because Bennett Spring makes the lower Niangua too cool for them. If they ever get into the upper Niangua, above Bennett, in any real numbers, it could really be bad because the upper Niangua would be excellent spotted bass habitat.

However, they apparently never made it any farther than the Osage tributaries from Lake of the Ozarks. You have to realize that the Missouri River has historically been just too muddy to allow them to survive well in it, so once they got to the lower end of the Osage they probably couldn't go any farther...except that they DID go upstream just a few miles to get into the Moreau.

But back in the 1960s, MDC decided it would be a good idea to stock them in some northern Missouri streams, including the Loutre River, which flows into the Missouri just a few miles downstream from the Gasconade. Spotted bass probably made it into the Gasconade from the Loutre River stocking.

As for the other northern Ozark streams, they could possibly have made it into them from the Loutre stocking as well by going on down the Missouri and Mississippi, but the timing argues against it. That's my part of the Ozarks, and I've fished all those streams--Meramec, Bourbeuse, Big, Joachim, Establishment, Saline, and Apple--for nearly 50 years. The FIRST stream that spotted bass showed up in was Apple Creek, which is the southernmost large tributary creek of the Mississippi, down in Cape Girardeau County. I fished Apple Creek extensively in the mid-1970s, and spotted bass were common in it below the Appleton mill dam, non-existent above the dam. At that point, I was also fishing lower Saline Creek, the next major creek to the north (upstream on the Mississippi), and there were no spotted bass in it. But by the late 1970s spotted bass had taken over the lower South Fork of Saline Creek, and the creek below the forks. By the early 1980s they had taken over the lower parts of Establishment and Joachim creeks, the next upstream tribs of the Mississippi, but the didn't start showing up in the lower Meramec, the final Mississippi tributary just south of St. Louis, until the early 80s.

Once they got into the Meramec, it took them about 6 or 7 years to pretty much take over the lower ends of the Bourbeuse and Big, the two Meramec tribs that run into the lower river, as well as the Meramec up to about St. Clair. But the Guths Mill dam on the Bourbeuse, and the several mill dams on Big River, stopped their spread for quite a while. They made it past Guths Mill on the Bourbeuse by the early 1990s, and the dams on Big River by about the same time. There were no further barriers on Big River, and by 2000 they were colonizing the upper river all the way up to Desloge. Noser Mill dam on the Bourbeuse slowed their spread up the Bourbeuse, but they are now above it.

So where did they come from originally, and why? The MDC biologists have theories involving simple habitat changes that made those streams more friendly to spotted bass, but that neither explains how they got there in the first place, nor do I think it's really very valid. Big River and especially the Bourbeuse have ALWAYS been relatively slow, not heavily spring fed, and somewhat murky--excellent spotted bass habitat. The lower Meramec is the same way. I haven't really seen habitat changes on these streams that would be significant enough to change them from smallmouth to spotted bass streams. The persistent drought we had up until this past year, and the warmer than normal weather conditions of the last decade or so up until last year, made some possible changes, but the spotted bass were very well established before any of that happened.

Nope, you can't blame it on habitat changes, in my opinion. You simply have to accept that fact that the smallmouth were doing fine in these rivers, even though they were good spotted bass habitat, SIMPLY BECAUSE they didn't have to compete with spotted bass.

So, how did the spots get there where they didn't belong?

Here's my theory, and it's a little convoluted but it's the only thing that fits the facts of WHEN they got to all those streams. First, you have to think about WHY spotted bass may never have made it into those streams before. Although they are native to the St. Francis and Castor, just a few miles across the divide from the Meramec system and the Mississippi tributaries, in order for them to actually reach those streams they would have had to go down the Castor and St. Francis far down into Arkansas before getting to the lower Mississippi, then a long way up the Mississippi. They are native to the Ohio, so they could have come up from it, but obviously they didn't. The reason was probably because, until the dams were built on the upper MISSOURI river, up in the Dakotas and Montana, the Missouri was EXTREMELY silty, and kept the Mississippi quite silty until the Ohio came in and diluted the silt a bit. So the silty water probably kept spotted bass from colonizing the northern Ozark streams originally.

But near the beginning of the Twentieth Century, the Diversion Channel was constructed. It was a big ditch that diverted the waters of the Castor and Whitewater rivers, which used to run pretty far down into Arkansas. The Channel was built to drain the swamps of southeast MO, and it took the Castor and Whitewater, streams that had native spotted bass, and ran them into the Mississippi just south of Cape Girardeau. Now the spots had a MUCH shorter distance to travel up the Mississippi, only about 20 miles or so to the first trib, Apple Creek. But they still didn't make it for more than 50 years. Why? Two things. The Mississippi was still extremely silty from the Missouri until the big Missouri dams were built in mid-century. And, it was also extremely polluted until the Clean Water Act in the late 1960s started cleaning it up.

But once the silt and pollution was reduced by the early 1970s, the spots had a clear path to the northern Ozark streams. So, it would seem to be an unforeseen combination of three seemingly unrelated happenings--the Diversion Channel, big dams in the Dakotas, and the Clean Water Act, that brought spotted bass to the Meramec and its tributaries!

However they got there, they have been an unmitigated disaster. Those three rivers were probably the best big smallmouth streams in the Ozarks before the spotted bass showed up. I was catching big smallmouths on the Meramec in the Pacific area, and in the lower end of Big River, when there were no spotted bass to be found. But once the spots appeared, the smallmouths began to disappear. They interbreed with smallmouths, diluting the gene pool. They out-compete and out-reproduce smallies on these streams, and it almost seems like for every spotted bass, there will be one less smallmouth, the correlation is that clear. The Meramec below St. Clair, the Bourbeuse below Noser Mill, and Big River all the way up past St. Francois State Park, are all mere shadows of the great smallmouth streams they used to be. Apparently, the upper Meramec, fed by Maramec Spring and other good-sized springs, is just a bit too fast and cool to make good spotted bass habitat, because they have never become real common on it above Meramec State Park. But Big River proved to be good spot habitat throughout almost its entire length, and it's only a matter of time before they take over nearly all the Bourbeuse, given character of that river.

So, now the regs are that you can kill up to 12 spotted bass, no length limit, over the entire Meramec river system, and much of Big River also has a one fish, 15 inch length limit on smallmouths, entirely to protect the smallmouths from spotted bass. And the good news is, either the regs or something else seems to be working, because although the spotted bass still outnumber smallmouths over large portions of these streams, the smallies that are left seem to be holding their own and even in some cases making a bit of a comeback.

So please, anybody who fishes the Meramec and tributaries, if you love smallmouths, KILL SPOTTED BASS!

[ozark trout fisher]

I generally only keep spotted bass, due to the fact that they reduce the number of smallies a stream can carry. I may keep a largemouth occasionally, but not often. I feel that largemouth are distributed wide enough that keeping one here and there hurts anything too much. But smallmouths population tend to be a bit more fragile, so I'll rarely if ever keep one. Plus they just fight too hard to only be caught once.

[Chief Grey Bear]

Matt,Al

First let me thank the both of you for clearing up some murky areas that I had. I can see and appreciate your cause. It must be the deep rooted outdoors man in me, but as with Al's very informative post, I was taking it hook, line and sinker until I got to the last three words. Something about that term turns me the other way. I am not being sissy or liberal about it but you may get more help with the term "encouraging others maximize their harvest of Spotted Bass." ........um......boy that does sound awful sissy, liberalistic. Well anyway....

I got to thinking about this today and wondered, now I'm just tossing this out there, but, what if we have like a OAF group float and either have a huge fish fry at the end or donate the meat or even both? Heck even if only, say, 10 people showed up, like we had on Shoal creek down here earlier this year, that would a possibility of 10 people X 12 Spots = 120 eradicated, I mean KILLED in a 3 or 4 mile section of river.

OK, OK, so its a crazy thought but, hopefully it will get some ideas percolating. (But just incase you do want to this, I'm in dude!)

[fishinwrench]

Matt,Al

First let me thank the both of you for clearing up some murky areas that I had. I can see and appreciate your cause. It must be the deep rooted outdoors man in me, but as with Al's very informative post, I was taking it hook, line and sinker until I got to the last three words. Some about that term turns me the other way. I am not being sissy or liberal about it but you may get more help with the term "encouraging others maximize their harvest of Spotted Bass." ........um......boy that does sound awful sissy, liberalistic. Well anyway....

I got to thinking about this today and wondered, now I'm just tossing this out there, but, what if we have like a OAF group float and either have a huge fish fry at the end or donate the meat or even both? Heck even if only, say, 10 people showed up, like we had on Shoal creek down here earlier this year, that would a possibility of 10 people X 12 Spots = 120 eradicated, I mean KILLED in a 3 or 4 mile section of river.

OK, OK, so its a crazy thought but, hopefully it will get some ideas percolating. (But just incase you do want to this, I'm in dude!)

Aren't there a few bass clubs that hit the Meramec several times during the year ? Get some side pots going (put a bounty on 'em) and thin them out real good this spring, say in April or early May. And Again in October. Is it legal to keep river spots right before memorial day ?