One More Poll On Smallmouth Management Areas

[Wayne SW/MO]

some he labeled largemouth, others smallmouth. His notebooks show he dithered back and forth on the proper identification of many spotted bass specimens.

Perhaps he ran across a few Meanmouths.

[Chief Grey Bear]

There was nothing in my post aimed at your post, what I am saying is if they did bring some by rail they well could have been here anyway.

There are probably only two options to address the problem, stop mans assault on the stream environment and eat more spots.

Whoop's my bad there then Wayne. I guess I read it the wrong way.

There is a third option. Eat more brownies!

Just out of curiosity, why would spotted bass suddenly be moving up the Meramec or Gasconade River in the 20th century when they have already had thousands of years to do so? If spotted bass were meant to be in north flowing Ozark streams, one would think that they would have been here long ago.

I don't know what the correct answer would be. I can't answer why the armadillo has had many thousands of years to get here but, didn't make a showing until the early 1980's.

Chief, I'm not trying to twist your words. I think our argument is more about language than anything.

Spotted bass were "officially recognized" by Rafinesque, in 1819. That doesn't mean, though, that spotted bass were first identified by scientists in 1927.

I don't know how to explain it to you. I'll try this and see what happens. It was not officially recongized by the scientific community as a seperate species until 1927.

[Wayne SW/MO]

There is a third option. Eat more brownies!

That would certainly increase their numbers on the table, but not in the water where most want them. I suppose you're referring to the overpopulated streams and you have another option, post them on here and maybe you can gets some help.

[Chief Grey Bear]

No, I was really just kinda making a funny about this whole brownie discussion.

[Gary Lange]

Brownies, I like Brownies and that reminds me that the wife hasn't made her famous and very tasty Brownies lately. :rolleyes:

[fishgypsy]

I don't know how to explain it to you. I'll try this and see what happens. It was not officially recongized by the scientific community as a seperate species until 1927.

I'm not arguing that some fisheries workers weren't recording spotted bass as a species for much of the 19th and early 20th century. Some fisheries workers can't identify spotted bass as a unique species even now. But to say the species was not "officially recognized" by the scientific community until 1927 is untrue, plain and simple.

I found some info which may shed light on this. Way more than I wanted to know about the taxonomy and systematics of spotted bass.

In taxonomy, the first published description of a species takes precedence. The same is true for the scientific name- the.

I haven't found access to Hubbs' 1927 paper, but he apparently posed a new scientific name for spotted bass, Micropterus pseudaplites, based on specimens he collected in Kentucky. In a 1940 paper, he lists that name as nomen nudum, a failed scientific name. Here's why:

Hubbs collected specimens which were sufficiently different from smallmouth and largemouth bass to warrant describing them as a new species. He did so, and it was called into question whether the animal described by Hubbs had already been described by Rafinesque, in 1819. Hubbs compared Rafinesque's description with the specimens he (Hubbs) had found, and determined they were the same species. Hubb's proposed scientific name for spotted bass was thus invalid, because the species had already been described and affixed a scientific name by Rafinesque. Here:

"It seems sufficiently clear that the name Micropterus punctulatus (Rafinesque) belongs with the spotted bass, replacing

M. pseudaplites Hubbs."

Because Hubbs was not the first person in the literature to describe the spotted bass, you can't use the year 1927 as the "official" year the spotted bass was recognized. Because Rafinesque was the first person in the literature to describe the spotted bsas, you can use 1819 as the "official" year spotted bass were recognized, by the scientific community, as a species.

[fishgypsy]

Brownies, I like Brownies and that reminds me that the wife hasn't made her famous and very tasty Brownies lately. :rolleyes:

Special Christmas brownies?

[Al Agnew]

Guys, I'm in the process of making some maps that I think will show most clearly the three possible ways in which spotted bass got into the northern Ozark streams, hopefully I'll have it done in the next few days and will post it under a separate thread. A few points, however.

The similarity in superficial appearance between spotted bass and largemouth make angler records from the early years of floatfishing suspect. They simply divided bass into smallmouth and "line-sides", which most people take to mean largemouth. But certainly spotted bass could have fallen into the line-side description. You have to wonder how many of those early records on the White River were talking of spotted bass and not largemouth. Certainly there were enough spotted bass in the stretches of the White, North Fork, St. Francis, and Black rivers that were dammed to allow the spotted bass to thrive once the reservoirs were there, because I don't think spotted bass were ever stocked in those reservoirs. Nor were they stocked in Stockton and Pomme de Terre reservoirs, but according to our best knowledge, they WERE stocked at some undocumented point in Lake of the Ozarks, from which they spread up into the upper Osage, Sac, and Pomme de Terre rivers to be available when the reservoirs on those rivers were built. It's all about time lines and early records AFTER they were recognized as a separate species. In "Fishes of Missouri", which I keep referring to because it's the best layman's reference I know of, the range maps for each species show all the spots where that species has been collected. Little black dots show the locations where it has been collected after 1945 (up until 1975 when the book was published), small open circles show the spots where it was collected between 1905 and 1945, and large open circles show the locations prior to 1905. These are obviously not just MDC collections but ALL scientific collections, many from university groups or other scientific organizations, and there are over 2500 collections available.

In the case of spotted bass, there were no collections prior to 1905, of course, because the species wasn't recognized back then. But there are plenty of collections in that 1905 to 1945 period. They were collected in every south-flowing stream system in the MO Ozarks during that time period except the Eleven Point. AND, they were collected during that time period in the Lake of the Ozarks (which had been in existence by then) and in tributaries upstream of the lake. They were collected in no other streams of the MO Ozarks during that time--not the lower Osage, not the Moreau or Tavern Creek or Maries River, and certainly not in the Gasconade and Meramec river systems nor in the small tributaries of the Mississippi between St. Louis and the mouth of the Ohio River. So, to the best of our knowledge, they simply were not present in any of those streams. And since those streams are between the section of the Osage that was under LOZ and the streams where spotted bass definitely existed back then, if they had gotten to the middle Osage "naturally", it could only have been after they passed those other streams. For that reason, they are believed to have gotten into LOZ and tribs upstream "unnaturally", otherwise they would have also been in those other streams, and in the lower Osage. Can we say for absolute certain they weren't in those other streams in some small numbers, overlooked by the collections? Nope. But I think we can say so with a pretty fair degree of scientific accuracy. In the Mississippi during that time, there is one collection that includes spotted bass, and it was well below the mouth of the Ohio, near the southern edge of the MO bootheel.

So what kept them from spreading up into those streams naturally? Obviously something did, because otherwise they would have been there, given that the lower portions of all those streams are perfect spotted bass habitat and have been for a long, long time, no matter what changes have been wrought in recent years on the upper parts of those streams. The clue is that single collection. It's below the mouth of the Ohio. What many people don't realize is that of the two major Mississippi tributaries, both of which enter the river in it's stretch along the state of Missouri, the Missouri River carried one of the highest silt loads of any river in North America, while the Ohio, which often flowed as much or more water than the Mississippi at their confluence during some parts of the year, drained the well-watered and wooded eastern part of North America, so it was often relatively clear. So the Missouri probably wouldn't have been usable as a travel corridor for spotted bass migration, and it would have made the Mississippi between the mouth of the Missouri and the mouth of the Ohio quite silty as well. And then the Ohio would have come in and greatly diluted the silt load. So the theory is that neither the Missouri nor the Mississippi below the Missouri was spotted bass friendly until you got below the Ohio, and that's why there were no native spotted bass in streams entering the two rivers in that stretch.

So how did smallmouth, which have much the same range throughout the Ohio river system, get there if the spotted bass didn't? The smallies also are native to the upper Mississippi. And, smallmouth can obviously tolerate cooler water and colder climes than spotted bass. And...there's the fact that there is a native subspecies of smallmouth in the Ozarks, the Neosho. To have a native subspecies, it means that species has to have been there for a long time, but isolated from the main species--it takes a relatively long time to differentiate into a subspecies, and if you still have the original species present, subspecies just don't happen.

Given those facts, and one other--while the last few ice ages didn't cover the Ozarks in glacial ice like they did north Missouri, they did have a profound effect on drainage patterns in the big rivers. When that ice started to melt, there was a lot of water, and a lot of opportunity for species that could tolerate colder water to move around. Back then, the Missouri and Mississippi were big enough and diluted enough in silt to allow smallmouth to move through them. But they were probably too cold for spotted bass. So you had smallies moving into Ozarks tributaries (if they weren't already there--we can't know much about what was there before the last ice ages). But the cold water was then a barrier for spotted bass, so if they weren't already in the northern Ozarks, they weren't going to get there back then. And if they HAD been there before those last ice ages, they probably died out in the colder climate of the ice ages. So when the climate settled down into something like the present, you have smallmouth in all the Ozark streams, but spotted bass only in the lower parts of the south-flowing streams, maybe even just down in Arkansas in the lower White and St. Francis, where it had been warm enough for them to survive the ice age. From there the spotted bass moved up into all the south-flowing tributaries of the White and St. Francis, and probably up from the Arkansas River into the SW MO streams. But by the time the climate was warm enough that they could spread up into the north-flowing streams, the Missouri was in its present drainage and producing all that silt that it's been producing since that last ice age, so there's your barrier to their spread up into the north-flowing streams.

Now, about stocking of smallies...I think I've mentioned before that some scientists believe that rock bass (any of the three species) may not have been native to the Gasconade and Osage river systems. There are NO pre-1905 collections of rock bass in those streams. Could it be that rock bass just weren't there? Possibly. They could very well have been stocked after 1905 by railroad into streams where they weren't native. But there ARE pre-1905 collections of smallmouth in the Osage and Gasconade systems, and we know that most of the railroad stockings occurred during the time period between about 1880 and 1930, when fishing as a sport became popular--there was little reason for subsistence "fishermen" to want to stock gamefish all over the place. So the timeline doesn't work very well if smallmouth were not native to those streams.

However, we know from records that there WAS widespread stocking of smallmouth throughout the Ozarks during that time period, mainly to supposedly supplement existing stocks. Instead of limiting harvest, it was thought that you just hatched more fish and added them. That's probably what happened to the Neosho smallmouth in most streams, too much stocking of northern smallies, swamping their gene pool. There's absolutely no doubt that smallies were stocked by rail in the north-flowing streams, but best knowledge is there were already smallies there, and the stockings were just to make the fishing for them better.

What about those Neoshos? Again, it's a matter of connections and barriers. The Neosho strain is believed to be only in tributaries that eventually reach the Arkansas River. Again, you must have isolation for a period of time from the parent species to get a subspecies. Apparently, at some point the Arkansas River became a barrier. If you look at the map, the SW MO streams eventually reach the Arkansas well up in Oklahoma, then you have the Illinois entering it still in OK, then the Mulberry, Big Piney, and other streams entering off the south slope of the Boston Mountains, and finally the White River enters at its mouth at the Mississippi. So, the SW MO streams are the farthest from the White in isolation, and even farther from the north-flowing MO streams (even though those SW MO streams are very close in proximity to the Osage, for instance, those two river systems are actually the farthest of all Ozark drainages in connections). So it stands to reason that the SW MO streams would be the most likely drainages to have an isolated subspecies of smallmouth, with the Boston Mountain streams a little less likely, the White River system less unlikely yet, and the north-flowing streams in Missouri the least likely. So, although the indiscriminate stocking that we know has taken place for more than a century has muddled things up completely, we know the Neoshos were in those SW MO streams originally, we can guess that the Boston Mountain streams had smallies with genes pretty similar, the White river system is a lot more questionable, and the north-flowing Ozark streams were the least likely to have had Neoshos and the most likely to have fish with genetics similar to either the Ohio River system smallmouth or the upper Mississippi smallmouth.

Whew! I'm sitting here watching it rain and typing all this with occasional checks of my reference, and it's been fun, but my fingers are getting tired! Sorry if it bored anybody...I've written most of it before and you might be tired of hearing (reading) it.

[Gary Lange]

Interesting Read Al! I thought I was long winded sometimes but you give a great account of the Smallies movement and the influx of the Spotted Bass also. Thank you for your contribution to our knowledge base.

[Wayne SW/MO]

I do have a couple of things for you to consider Al, just things that raise questions that I have no opinion on. The first would be the affect the Little Ice Age might have had on any migrations. I believe it ended sometime in the mid 1800's, but I don't know the affect it had on SO MO. The second question is how hard is it to document the number of fish by species in a river with the volume of the Mississippi? How accurate would it be if the numbers were a small percentage, but significant in numbers?