White Ribbon Conservation Issue

[Chief Grey Bear]

They don't man, trust me. They don't. But the smallmouth that were there before they invaded would have, but now they're gone.

I don't know how to simplify the argument any more than this...

Trout are stocked in marginal smallmouth habitat. Non-native spots have taken over prime smallmouth habitat.

Trout generally eat food that smallmouth ignore. Spots eat exactly the same food that smallmouth eat.

Trout are biologically confined to relatively limited sections of streams. Spots will spread from delta to headwaters, stopping only where the trout are stocked, just like the smallmouth.

The analogy does not work. The two species you are trying to compare are simply too dissimilar. It would be like trying to make an argument against stocking trout in the Current based on studies of stripers in Table Rock. It's apples and oranges.

If that is what you believe, then I now understand why you are not catching any. I know you know better than what you just posted. That post reeks of someone desperate. I am all for a good debate but that was as weak as that crap Outside Bend has been posting.

1. Trout are stocked in what was good smallmouth waters.

2. Spots have not taken over smallmouth habitat. They are co-existing.

3. Trout eat the same food smallmouth do. Smallmouth do not ignore minnows, crawdads, and other forage.

4. All bass eat the same type food.

5. Trout are not biologically confined to any part of any stream. They can and do alot of roaming.

6. I have never caught a spot and any head water of any stream. I don't think you have either.

[drew03cmc]

Drew, you're making my point for me again. I understood your stipulation as MDC shouldn't be spending a disproportionate amount of money studying trout at the expense of smallmouth and other native fishes. I get that, and I agree with that.

Fisheries surveys don't take too long to do, a population estimate for a trout stream taking 3-4 days at the most. Data entry takes maybe a day. So it may take a week for a biologist to go from sampling a trout stream to completing the population survey. Most regions would have their trout field monitoring completed in a month, leaving another 11 months of the year to allocate towards other projects. The Southwest region would have to spend a little more time, but still- the bulk of the calendar year would be spent working on other projects.

And you're right, MDC doesn't produce smallmouth- because smallmouth don't need produced. They're self-sustaining in most streams, and there's relatively few streams which were once good smallmouth waters, where the fish died out, and which again have adequate habitat smallmouth populations. It's not the same situation as, say, paddlefish, in which 90+% of the spawning habitat is under impounded water. And if there were a situation where MDC needed to repopulate a smallmout stream, there are plenty of wild smallmouth populations in the Ozarks from which to re-stock.

I've become pretty bored spoon-feeding data folks data on here- believe it or not, I have better things to do. You have Google Scholar available to you (www.scholar.google.com), but you can plug in names like CF Rabeni, RJ DiStefano, M Roell, J Koppelman, A Allert, C Riggert, V Travnichek, and find a pile of peer-reviewed literature funded by MDC which these folks put out. Better yet, you can pick up the phone and call these guys, and ask them what they do for a living. Tour Blind Pony or Lost Valley hatcheries, or even Neosho, and see the changes that have been made to produce native species like paddlefish and sturgeon. Even Shepherd of the Hills is now in the game of artificially propagating trout AS WELL as Eastern and Ozark hellbenders, and native freshwater mussels.

The point is, you want to say trout take money from native fish programs, but there's no evidence for that. You want to say trout take the spotlight off smallmouth, and I'd be willing to concede that to a point. But there are A TON of programs MDC's involved in which benefit not only smallmouth, but other native species. Boat ramps. Habitat restoration. Research. Water quality monitoring. Just because you don't agree with SMA's doesn't mean the state isn't doing something to protect smallmouth. Just because you don't agree with liberalized spot creels doesn't mean the state isn't doing something to protect smallmouth. You even mentioned the Niangua darter as a reason MDC didn't install an SMA on the Niangua and Little Niangua- to me that's valid, it's a hard sell managing a predatory sport fishery on top of a federally threatened species.

I guess to me, the idea that MDC is focusing on trout at the expense of other, native species is just a farce. Trout are funded through trout sales, everything else gets funded through sales tax and other license sales. It's one of the best models in the nation, and MDC is able to balance the needs of sportfish and non-game species far better than most fish and game agencies in the US. And for all their faults, they produce a ton of high-caliber work.

I understand your thinking about the trout program being self sustaining, but with tag sales down and fewer and fewer people fishing there is less money to go around. I am curious what the trout production numbers were last year compared to the number of trout tag sales in reference to, say, the last fifteen or twenty years.

I think on the matter of what the state is or isn't doing right, you and I are just going to have to agree to disagree. Neither of us can make headway with the other, but you have shown me a new site to use. Thanks!

[Outside Bend]

I am all for a good debate but that was as weak as that crap Outside Bend has been posting.

I like ya, Chief, so I'm going to generally ignore the "crap" statement. But calling my position crap does nothing to support your own position. If you want to argue that smallmouth do well in poor smallmouth habitat, find the relevant data instead of relying on BS anecdotes and armchair guesswork. If you want to maintain that non-native spotted bass have no impact on the range of native smallmouth, provide the supporting data. By all means, make those ignorant MDC folks aware you have a better grasp of what's going on in streams you've never fished than folks who have been researching and working on those streams for the past several decades. I'm sure they'll default to your wisdom.

If I'm blowing smoke up your #$@ it ought to be easy to disprove, so where's your corroborating evidence?

1. Trout are stocked in what was good smallmouth waters.

All I'm askin' is for you to provide evidence to support this claim. The evidence to the contrary is substantial- namely that smallmouth don't like coldwater, so a coldwater habitat wouldn't be good smallmouth habitat. Just as I don't want to take a bath in 45 degree water, smallmouth would rather not hang out in a spring branch.

2. Spots have not taken over smallmouth habitat. They are co-existing.

All I'm askin' is for you to provide evidence to support this claim. They coexist in south-flowing streams, absolutely. But in a stream that went from a majority of smallmouth to a majority of spotted bass, it's hard to make that argument. The observations made by Al, Eric, myself and others are corroborated by MDC data.

3. Trout eat the same food smallmouth do. Smallmouth do not ignore minnows, crawdads, and other forage.

All I'm askin' is for you to provide evidence to support this claim. Yes, trout eat crayfish, minnows, etc, when they're available- any self respecting organism would go for the steak over the salad. But the primary food of trout are small invertebrates, while the primary food of smallmouth is crayfish and minnows. You have a valid argument that an adult trout would be competing with juvenile smallmouth, but smallmouth populations in coldwater streams are so negligible, and the prey base so large, my guess would be there's very little competition between the two. And your argument ignores the fact that, even in the best coldwater habitat, Missouri trout still don't do all that hot. We're talking somewhere around 500 fish per mile, which is pretty low compared to most waters, even in trout's native range.

4. All bass eat the same type food.

You're right- so do rock bass, longears, bluegill, channel catfish, flathead catfish, white bass, great blue herons, night herons, mink, otters, turtles, and myriad other species. That's why the species partition among different habitats, in order to reduce competition. Largemouth stick to backwaters, smallmouth stick to flowing waters- there's some overlap of course, but that situation reduces competion. Trout are also habitat limited- they can't persist in water much warmer than 70 degrees, whereas smallmouth thrive in those temperatures. So the overlap between habitats isn't that large, ergo competition isn't that great.

5. Trout are not biologically confined to any part of any stream. They can and do alot of roaming.

Trout are biologically confined to a part of a stream- the coldwater part. In winter, when water temperatures are low and the coldwater portion of streams is thereby larger, they can and do a lot of roaming. Conversely, smallmouth do a lot of roaming when water temperatures are high and during drought years. It's about exploiting the habitat that's available to you.

[Al Agnew]

Just to add to what Outside Bend said...the lower portion of Big River, from about where the original smallmouth special management area ended at Browns Ford bridge to the mouth of the river--I don't have my mileage books here with me but that's something like 40 miles of river--now has a ratio of 95% spotted bass to 5% smallmouth, and in reality there are only three places where you can find ANY smallmouth in the last 30 miles of that stretch. In 1980 that whole stretch was ONE HUNDRED PERCENT smallmouth.

The Bourbeuse River below Union, a 2 day float stretch that used to be 100% smallmouth now ranges from 80% spotted bass in the upper end to 100% spotted bass in the lower few miles.

That's not co-existing.

Spotted bass outnumber smallmouth in the Bourbeuse from Noser Mill to Union, ratio something like 60/40 in the upper part, to 80/20 in the lower portion. That's more than 40 miles.

Spotted bass are at least as numerous as smallmouth in the entire rest of the floatable portion of Big River, to well above where the MDC float book says is the highest possible put-in--that's nearly 50 miles. This has happened since 1990. And in the upper portion, about 15 miles, the spotted bass are still increasing year by year.

Co-existing? Not exactly. Maybe they've reached some kind of equilibrium in some stretches, although some years the spots seem to gain a bit more.

In the Meramec, the situation is fluid, but below the mouth of the Bourbeuse spots definitely outnumber smallies. Ratio is probably about 70/30 down to the mouth of Big River, pretty much all spotted bass below. Between Meramec Caverns and the mouth of the Bourbeuse, spots seem to outnumber smallmouth in most stretches. Total mileage we're talking about is something like 80 miles, if I'm not mistaken.

Chances are that in the next 20 years spots will far outnumber smallmouth in the ENTIRE Bourbeuse, given the characteristics of its habitat. They've shown they can thrive in all but about the uppermost 20-25 miles of water capable of supporting any bass at all on Big River. Not quite "headwaters", but pretty darned close. And there's no guarantee that they won't colonize much of that as well, since so far the barrier of a lowwater bridge slab has kept them from getting up into that uppermost stretch. There aren't any other barriers, and the habitat isn't much different.

They have colonized the lower 5 miles or so of Mineral Fork, which is very clear and fast, not typical spotted bass habitat.

And you said that trout have displaced smallmouth in what was "good" smallmouth habitat. Well, the spotted bass have displaced smallmouth to an even greater extent in what was arguably the BEST smallmouth water in Missouri. According to MDC, more Master Angler Award size smallies used to come from Big River and the Meramec than any other stream--Gasconade was third, Bourbeuse fourth. Not any more, except that the Meramec still is near the top because there is a lot of the Meramec above the spotted bass water. But forget about the Bourbeuse and Big River as top notch big smallmouth streams any more.

Which brings me to the trade-off. I think I'm a pretty decent river bass angler, and I've spent a lot of time on these streams. I've NEVER caught a spotted bass out of any of them that made 18 inches. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of 16 inch spotted bass I've caught from these streams. 16 inch smallmouth used to be ho-hum fish--you'd catch several of them every trip. More than half of the smallmouths I caught in the good old days, by my records, were over 12 inches--these days, 75% of the spotted bass I catch are under 12 inches.

Maybe they are co-existing now. But it's been a very poor trade-off.

Trout simply cannot survive, let alone breed and thrive, in more than a tiny percentage of Ozark smallmouth water. Spotted bass in these waters have shown they can thrive and severely depress smallmouth populations in nearly ALL of two of the streams and in nearly half the other major stream.

There is simply no comparison.

[eric1978]

1. Trout are stocked in what was good smallmouth waters.

2. Spots have not taken over smallmouth habitat. They are co-existing.

3. Trout eat the same food smallmouth do. Smallmouth do not ignore minnows, crawdads, and other forage.

5. Trout are not biologically confined to any part of any stream. They can and do alot of roaming.

You're about one beer away from telling me evolution is a myth. You can't change scientific reality to make it fit your argument...you have to adjust your argument according to scientific reality, and you're not doing that...especially numbers 2 and 5. C'mon Chief, those statements are undeniably FALSE.

4. All bass eat the same type food.

Obviously. And that's why, when you get a sudden influx of a new species of bass, it's bad news for the old species of bass.

6. I have never caught a spot and any head water of any stream. I don't think you have either.

Nope...I said...spots stop short of where trout would typically be stocked...near the headwaters, which usually means some kind of spring, which makes the water too cold for spots to survive, which also makes the water too cold for smallmouth to thrive.

...but with tag sales down and fewer and fewer people fishing there is less money to go around.

And that would still affect only the trout programs, nothing else.

[Chief Grey Bear]

I like ya, Chief, so I'm going to generally ignore the "crap" statement. But if it is crap, all you'd need to do is refute it with a sound, informed, evidence-based opinion.

I have been doing that. You just don't happen to agree.

If you want to argue that smallmouth do well in poor smallmouth habitat, find the relevant data instead of relying on BS anecdotes and armchair guesswork. If you want to maintain that non-native spotted bass have no impact on the range of native smallmouth, provide the supporting data. By all means, make those ignorant MDC folks aware you have a better grasp of what's going on in streams you've never fished than folks who have been researching and working on those streams for the past several decades. I'm sure they'll default to your wisdom.

You don't follow along so well do ya? Since you like putting words in my mouth and claiming that I said things that I didn't, I want to see the quote from me that states spotted bass have no impact on the range of native smallmouth? Can you find that for me??? BS anecdotes? Armchair guesswork? I am not seeing any hard evidence to corroborate the numbers your team keeps tossing out.

All I'm askin' is for you to provide evidence to support this claim. The evidence to the contrary is substantial- namely that smallmouth don't like coldwater, so a coldwater habitat wouldn't be good smallmouth habitat. Just as I don't want to take a bath in 45 degree water, smallmouth would rather not hang out in a spring branch.

There are no 45* springs in Missouri.

All I'm askin' is for you to provide evidence to support this claim. They coexist in south-flowing streams, absolutely. But in a stream that went from a majority of smallmouth to a majority of spotted bass, it's hard to make that argument. The observations made by Al, Eric, myself and others are corroborated by MDC data.

All we have seen is during this discussion is numbers that Al proclaimed to be accurate. As I stated in the previous post and you conveniently passed over, was I don't dispute what is happening. I do take exception to some of the number being tossed out like candy at a parade. I wouldn't eagerly eat the candy without inspecting it first.

All I'm askin' is for you to provide evidence to support this claim. Yes, trout eat crayfish, minnows, etc, when they're available- any self respecting organism would go for the steak over the salad. But the primary food of trout are small invertebrates, while the primary food of smallmouth is crayfish and minnows. You have a valid argument that an adult trout would be competing with juvenile smallmouth, but smallmouth populations in coldwater streams are so negligible, and the prey base so large, my guess would be there's very little competition between the two. And your argument ignores the fact that, even in the best coldwater habitat, Missouri trout still don't do all that hot. We're talking somewhere around 500 fish per mile, which is pretty low compared to most waters, even in trout's native range.

So now you want to split hairs between primary and secondary food sources? That was never the arguement. And you are basing you arguement on a guess?

You're right- so do rock bass, longears, bluegill, channel catfish, flathead catfish, white bass, great blue herons, night herons, mink, otters, turtles, and myriad other species. That's why the species partition among different habitats, in order to reduce competition. Largemouth stick to backwaters, smallmouth stick to flowing waters- there's some overlap of course, but that situation reduces competion. Trout are also habitat limited- they can't persist in water much warmer than 70 degrees, whereas smallmouth thrive in those temperatures. So the overlap between habitats isn't that large, ergo competition isn't that great.

Let me tell you in all my years of floating, I have found largemouth and smallmouth in the same waters. Largmouth do not stick to backwaters. You can find them in all areas of the stream as well as smallmouth. And unless we are having a heat wave, good luck on finding water much warmer than 70*.

Trout are biologically confined to a part of a stream- the coldwater part. In winter, when water temperatures are low and the coldwater portion of streams is thereby larger, they can and do a lot of roaming. Conversely, smallmouth do a lot of roaming when water temperatures are high and during drought years. It's about exploiting the habitat that's available to you.

Bingo!

[Chief Grey Bear]

Just to add to what Outside Bend said...

As I asked before, I would like to view some factual numbers on this. I am not disputing what is happening. I just think some of the numbers may be a little exaggerated. And possibly rightly so. We all have a case to make.

Spotted bass appear to be on the move. But even at that, there are thousands of miles of pure smallmouth waters in the Ozarks that will not be touched in our or our childrens life time by the spotted bass.

On a fishing trip last weekend, we caught numerous spots in the 1.5 - 2lb range. I will admit that a 18 incher would be rare for a river but, I caught a handful that went over 3lbs, so that would be right in that area.

[Chief Grey Bear]

I don't know how to simplify the argument any more than this...

Trout are stocked in marginal smallmouth habitat. Non-native spots have taken over prime smallmouth habitat.

Trout generally eat food that smallmouth ignore. Spots eat exactly the same food that smallmouth eat.

Trout are biologically confined to relatively limited sections of streams. Spots will spread from delta to headwaters, stopping only where the trout are stocked, just like the smallmouth.

The analogy does not work. The two species you are trying to compare are simply too dissimilar. It would be like trying to make an argument against stocking trout in the Current based on studies of stripers in Table Rock. It's apples and oranges.

You're about one beer away from telling me evolution is a myth. You can't change scientific reality to make it fit your argument...you have to adjust your argument according to scientific reality, and you're not doing that...especially numbers 2 and 5. C'mon Chief, those statements are undeniably FALSE.

Really? Have you read what you have been saying??? There is ZERO reality in that quote above. That reeks of a true card carrying republican conservitive! No reality, no truth!

Obviously. And that's why, when you get a sudden influx of a new species of bass, it's bad news for the old species of bass.

These are bass and they have been around about the same length of time. You make is sound like the Old and New Testiment.

Nope...I said...spots stop short of where trout would typically be stocked...near the headwaters, which usually means some kind of spring, which makes the water too cold for spots to survive, which also makes the water too cold for smallmouth to thrive.

Spots will spread from delta to headwaters

Uh oh!

[Chief Grey Bear]

The trout aren't going anywhere...they're here to stay, barring some unforeseen government meltdown. So I suggest you embrace them, study the angles, and go after them. They're a cool species to learn and fish for, especially if you go at it with the long stick...it really is gratifying, and I was a hold-out, too.

Isn't it funny that this little piece of advice for a fellow forum angler, when turned around has caused all of this. WOW!

I think I will bow out now. It has been a hoot. But we have drifted far from the original post and hijacked this thread. Well played men. I am more than confident that we will pick it up again at a later date.

[Indiana Trout]