River And Stream Bass Anglers: Do You Catch And Release

[tippett7]

You're not using enough butter!! Just kidding. As many largemouth that exist in this great country, why do we need to eat smallmouth???

[Al Agnew]

I dont think its fishing pressure.

I thin the gravel not being mined from the streams is the problem. I know Crooked Creek is not near the deep holes it had below Pyatt when McClinton was mining gravel there.

Water is warmer too., I remember 40 years ago when the creeks were cool and with removal of the trees and the gravel providing shallower water and filling in the good holes. Smallies are doomed. Released or not.

Taxi, that's so wrong it's scary. Gravel mining does NOT make pools upstream or downstream deeper. To believe so is to have no idea of stream dynamics. The effects of gravel mining are nearly all bad, and last for many years AFTER the mining stops. It could very well be that the filling in of the pools that you may have seen since the mining stopped is due to after-effects of the mining. Or it could be due to other factors. But I'd be willing to bet a large amount of money that if mining was resumed, you'd see the stream get worse, not better.

It might seem simple...get gravel out of the stream and there will be less gravel available to fill in the pools. But in order to get enough gravel out to make any kind of difference, you'd have to dig up most, if not all, the stream. The effects of gravel mining depends upon what kind of mining is done. If you dig deeply into the channel, it causes head-cutting upstream with the channel being eroded deeper and deeper within the banks...not making deeper holes, just higher and more unstable banks. It also makes gravel downstream move, and making the gravel move is what makes it fill in deep pools. The upstream gravel that is being scoured out continually fills in the hole that's been dug, while the downstream gravel moves on downstream filling in the pools below, as the river tries to eliminate the sudden drop and rise of the dug hole. This continues for many years after the hole is dug, and makes long stretches of stream both upstream and downstream unstable.

Shallow pits and bar-skimming (taking just off the gravel bars down to the waterline) is less destructive, but still makes the bars more unstable, making gravel move. It's the movement of gravel that fills in the holes. Some streams have relatively stable gravel bars with plenty of plants holding the gravel down, and the natural "cementing" of the gravel surface also holding it. These streams don't change much in normal flooding. But once the gravel gets unstable and starts to move, it's hard to stop. Gravel mining often STARTS the gravel moving.

And...nobody could think that the areas that are actually dug out are better fish habitat, even if they might be deep water, and most are not deep or quickly fill in. Widening of the stream channel during the excavation and removal of stream-side vegetation is the major culprit in your warming water...the more shallow water exposed to the sun, the more it heats up.

I've watched gravel mining on many streams for many years. I have yet to see a lasting benefit to smallmouth bass or fish habitat from it, but I've seen PLENTY of detrimental effects.

[Chief Grey Bear]

I started to address the same issue Al. But I decided why bother. This is not Taxi's first post advocating gravel mining in the creeks. And that is just mining. There are many other land management practices that affect our waterways.

Great post none the less.

[ozark trout fisher]

I started to address the same issue Al. But I decided why bother. This is not Taxi's first post advocating gravel mining in the creeks. And that is just mining. There are many other land management practices that affect our waterways.

Great post none the less.

There is no doubt that gravel mining has worsened some of my favorite smallmouth and trout streams. It does much more harm than good to the bass, and other stream life.

[ducksbit]

Went to the Meramec above the state park on Friday and removed 8 more spotted bass.

[shadman]

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.

heres a radical thought which i like,,, make new law where there is NO harvesting of bass on any missouri stream not deemed commercial. catch and release only. and lets take it a step further if ya want, follow other states example and impose barbless hook restrictions on fish in streams(except catfish!) well i dunno bout the barbless hooks, but if any of you have ever used barbless circle hooks for cats u know what i mean, they come right out and do very little harm to the fish, compared to regular barbed hooks. just another thought i figured i'd throw out there