Floating An Old, Old Favorite

[Al Agnew]

My brother Don called me yesterday and suggested we get up at the crack of way before dawn this morning and get in a float before the afternoon heat. Somewhere not too far away, and where we wouldn't have to do a lot of dragging. Since the nearest river that fits that bill for us is Big River, we needed a good stretch with enough water and the right length.

Understand, I grew up on Big River, and have floated it countless times. Well, if I had to estimate the number of times, let's see...figure 45 years or so of avid floating on it, figure say 15 days a year on it...somewhere between 600 and 700 days spent floating it.

Big River is a mere shadow of what it once was, due to spotted bass encroachment, heavier fishing pressure, and various ills of civilization, since it has a complex of towns with a total of maybe 30,000 total population on the upper portion, and lots and lots of cabins and such on the lower parts. When I float any section of it these days, I'm living in the past, where every rock, every pool, every riffle holds memories of fish once hooked and caught. And more often than not, the spot doesn't produce like it once--or often--did.

I'm not going to exactly name the stretch we floated today, but those who know the river will recognize it from my description. Since it was a little farther from home when I was a kid, I didn't start fishing it a lot until the 1970s, when I was out of high school and had a car and a canoe. Back then it became my second most favorite stretch, and a great stretch for big smallmouth. Then, in 1975, it was almost totally wiped out when a tiff dam gave way in a heavy thunderstorm and dumped massive amounts of red silt into the river just above the put-in. Nearly all aquatic life was choked from a ten mile section of the river. Ironically, a buddy and I had planned to float it the morning after the dam burst. When we crossed the river well upstream and saw that it was green and clear, we were happy that the storm hadn't been enough to get the river muddy. And then we got to the put-in, a bridge we had to cross to get to the take-out and leave a vehicle, we looked down and it was pure red mud, so thick it looked like you could walk on it. We floated a different stretch that day, and didn't find out until that evening what had happened.

It took ten years for the river to recover. I floated it as the second day of a two day trip the year after the disaster took place; I caught over 100 bass the first day, and one lonely largemouth in the affected section the second day. I didn't float it again for nine years, and finally did it, and found the fish were back. Indeed, between 1985 and 1995 it was probably the best section of the whole river, with great numbers and size of smallies and largemouth.

Then the spotted bass moved in, and the fishing declined.

When Don called, I thought of that stretch. The put-in isn't easy, with a long hill to carry stuff to the river and very marginal parking. In fact, one reason I hadn't floated it in a long time was because of the parking situation. But mainly, the last few times I'd floated it, perhaps 8 or 9 years ago, the fishing had been pretty bad, with few smallies and lots of dinky spotted bass. But in the stretch above, the smallmouth/spot situation seems to have stabilized in the last few years, and I wondered if the same was true on this section.

So daylight found us sliding the canoe down that long hill to the river. We'd dropped off Don's truck at the take-out, a nice access, and I'd decided there was a small place to pull my rig barely off the road, and hopefully it would be alright there.

There had been rain yesterday, and the river seemed to be a little higher than I expected, and a little murkier. The hole at the put-in is a good one, so we first paddled up to the head of it, where Don caught the first fish, a nice 15 inch smallie. Well, that was encouraging. A minute later I caught a dinky spotted bass. Not so encouraging.

The fishing was rather slow through the first mile or so. Then we came to a place where the river split at a riffle, with a big water willow island in the middle and two narrow chutes going around it. We went down the larger of the two chutes without catching anything, but at the bottom I made a long cast to the lower end of the other chute, and a 16 inch smallmouth took my spinnerbait. So we paddled over and up into the chute, where we caught two small spots and a 12 inch largemouth. Things were beginning to look up.

The next section has lots of moving water, shallow but deep enough, studded with logs and rocks. I'd caught several big fish in the distant past through here. Today we took another 15 inch smallmouth along with several small smallies and a couple of spots. Then Don switched lures to a popper (Lucky Craft G-Splash), and immediately got a strike that was a huge boil. We knew it was a big fish, and it was in a smallmouth type spot with rocks and current. And did that fish ever fight, staying deep enough in the murky water that for a long time we couldn't see it. It was a largemouth, though, a hair over 20 inches and pushing five pounds.

The sun was getting higher and starting to get onto the water, but surprisingly, the fish really started to turn on. We began to steadily catch fish on topwaters. Not really fast action, but good looking spots produced fish.

Next it was my turn to get into a big one, which took my Gunfish on a long cast up against a steep clay bank. This one turned out to be a largemouth that was a twin of Don's earlier one.

The sun kept getting higher and hotter. The fishing began to slow. There was a big submerged log off a water willow bed in gentle current. I made a cast over the log, and got a huge swirl but didn't feel the fish. I made another cast. Nothing. Don had a jig on one of his rods, and I told him to try that fish. Sure enough, he set the hook into a heavy bass. Another largemouth, the triplet of the other two...but there was a smallmouth following it around as he fought it that was about the same length. We couldn't get the smallie to hit, though we tried with jigs and tubes after he landed the green bass.

I had one more big smallmouth take a swipe at a smaller fish I'd hooked on a Sammy. Maybe 18 inches, and it actually grabbed the lure and was hooked as well for a few seconds. Don caught a very fat 16 inch spotted bass. I caught one more 16 inch smallmouth. And then it was noon and we were at the take-out, where Don realized he'd left his keys in my vehicle, sitting 6 miles up the river and 8 miles away by road! No cell phone reception. Neither of our wives were home anyway. There was a guy at the access, but he refused to take us back to the put-in to get my car, but he did consent to take Don to a convenience store a mile away. Just after he and Don left, another guy drove into the access and struck up a conversation with me, and I soon asked him if he would go to the store and find my brother and take him to the put-in to get my car. He said he was happy to do it, and left. Soon Don showed up in my car, and we loaded up and headed for home.

Final tally was 17 smallmouth, 16 spotted bass, and 16 largemouth for the two of us. Not quite like the old days, but not bad. It was encouraging to see the smallie population seemed to have stabilized in relation to the spots here too. And those big largemouth were something really special.

[eric1978]

Another great report, Al. 3 20" LM? I'll take that any day. Guess you're having spots with a side of tailings for dinner tonight, eh?

[Mitch f]

Al,

I'm curious about the Gunfish, you caught a 22" largemouth a few weeks ago on it and it seems to be your "go to" topwater bait. How does it differ in action to the Sammy?

[joeD]

Funny you should mention Big River, Al. Last Sunday I floated from 21 down to the park, a float I used to do all the time in the late 90's and early 2000's. Back then, for me,it was close to home, easy to fish, and had a lot of big smallies in it. I caught my first 20 incher there in 1998, on the Blackwell to 21 float (I think). But after 2000 though, it seemed the Big didn't fish well where I wanted to float. It stayed too murky for too long, and the spots seemed to overtake everything. So I avoided it. A month or so ago, I drove to the Mineral for grins to mess around with my fly rod. Passing over the Big on 21, I noticed how good it looked (hmm). So, with a rare open Sunday afternoon, I decided to go to the Big for old times sake. Washington State Park could shuttle me to 21, even at 3 pm. I launched in a steady rain, which then turned into an hour-long thunderstorm(but I knew that was coming). I was all alone on stretch that I hadn't done in years. The pleasantly surprising thing was, I caught only one spot, while catching a bunch of smallies in the 14-16 inch range. I missed two others that were definitely bigger. In all, a worthwhile trip, one that I'll again keep in mind when I want a quick fix of smallmouth action.

[RSBreth]

Great report, as usual Al. That kind of story gives us hope nature can recover from our mistakes, but it still takes time.

But back to the fishing. I like finding big "Green Fish" like that too, but you always think it's a massive Smallie at first, then feel a touch of disappointment when you see it's "only" a Largemouth. Our differing attitudes towards fish so closely related as Black Bass is probably confusing to other fishermen, let alone non-fishing folks!

Al,

I'm curious about the Gunfish, you caught a 22" largemouth a few weeks ago on it and it seems to be your "go to" topwater bait. How does it differ in action to the Sammy?

The LC Gunfish is a cool bait I was turned on to by B.A.S.S. veteran Joe Thomas half a dozen years ago when that tour was on Table Rock, he said it was really great for times where you weren't sure if a popper or walk-the-dog topwater was the ticket, because you can work it both ways.

I had never seen one before then, but bought one and never regretted it. It's a cool bait, but I think the price is a little prohibitive for most folks. It really shouldn't be, at least for river Bass guys - if you snag it you just paddle over and get it back.

Anyway, I think Al will probably be able to answer why he likes it better than I can!

I just wanted to put in my experience with it. I also add a feathered treble on the back, sort of more like a popper. But I do that to walk-the-dog lures, too.

[Al Agnew]

Yep, I also add the feathered treble to the back. In fact, Gunfish used to come with feathers. I've tried adding feathers to Sammies but it kills their action. On the Gunfish it doesn't. That, and the size I use, which is about halfway between a Sammy 85 and a Sammy 100, is the main reason I like them. I find them to actually be more of a walk the dog lure than a popper, but they have a different sound with more commotion for their size that the normal walk the dog lures.

Another thing I've found is that there is kind of a continuum from Sammies to Gunfish to G-Splashes. The Sammy, of course, is a straight walk the dog lure. The Gunfish is a walk the dog lure with pretensions of being a popper. The G-Splash is a popper that will still walk the dog after a fashion. Three different baits but related. And if the fish are whacking at Sammies without getting hooked (a common problem), they will often hit Gunfish a little more positively, more hook-ups per number of strikes. And if they are still not getting hooked on the Gunfish, they will often strike the G-Splash with a lot more precision.

Since the state park put in that wonderful boat ramp at Hwy. 21, that stretch from 21 to the park gets a LOT of fishing pressure...maybe people are actually keeping the spotted bass like they should through there. It's a three mile float with a VERY easy shuttle. I've done it by putting the canoe in, driving the vehicle with a bicycle to the take-out while my wife stayed with the canoe, left the vehicle at the take-out, and rode the bicycle back to the put in...although the big hill coming up out of the park campground is no fun on a bike!

The spots didn't survive the experience, although I had to discard some of them because they were so full of yellow grub parasites.

I'm actually beginning to see a glimmer of hope with the spotted bass situation on Big River. Either the regs (12 spots, no length limit/1 smallmouth 15 inch limit over almost the whole river) are working, or something else is beginning to limit the population of spots. There was a while when, in the long section from St. Francois State Park to Browns Ford, it looked like spotted bass were outnumbering smallmouth by a considerable margin. But in the last two or three years the smallies seem to have made a comeback of sorts, and now on just about every trip I make, I catch roughly equal numbers of both species. In my limited experience on the lower Meramec below the mouth of the Bourbeuse, the same thing seems to be happening, smallies making a bit of recovery in relation to spots. It's still not anything like it used to be, because for every pound of biomass of spotted bass there is still one less pound of biomass of smallmouth. But there are enough smallies that some still have a chance to grow to the kind of large sizes that used to be common on Big River.

I know what you mean about being a bit disappointed when the big fish turns out to be a largemouth. I guess it's because five pound largemouth are easy enough to catch in the lakes and ponds, but five pound smallies are exceedingly rare in the streams. But in reality, a five pound largemouth from a stream is a tremendous fish. A 20 inch green bass is almost as rare as a 20 inch brown bass in most Ozark streams. And those fish yesterday were pretty close to being as powerful as a smallmouth of the same length...not to mention the two struck topwaters pretty spectacularly. More and more I'm appreciating the big largies that I'm catching on these rivers.

[RSBreth]

"But in reality, a five pound largemouth from a stream is a tremendous fish."

Exactly. We just get hyper-focused on the Smallmouths sometimes, and forget the Largemouths are natives, too. Really, ANY Bass in the 20"+ size is an event to me, whether on the rivers or Table Rock. I'm not that jaded, and hopefully, I never will be. God only knows what kind of pompous snot I would have turned out to be if Lake Fork or Okeechobee were my home waters!

[eric1978]

Okeechobee

Oh, son!

Like that pompous snot? I agree totally. Who needs big fish when you have Ozark fish?

[RSBreth]

Hey, don't be all hatefull to Mr. Martin - I met him at a sport show eons ago and he was just the nicest man to me, even though I was a like 12-year old scrub asking him about rigging for big 12" plastic worms.

When I met his son Scott he was just super-nice, too. Called people "Sir". You don't get that much these days.

I will admit, his various "marketing" endeavors have been kind of, um, "full of fail".

Although Spiderwire did turn out to "revolutionize fishing", as promised, for once.

He should stick to T.V. shows, like Bill Dance, Hank Parker, and Jimmy Houston do. Better.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand.