White Ribbon Conservation Issue

[eric1978]

I think I will bow out now. It has been a hoot.

You should, because you were starting to sound ridiculous. Nice cherry-picking on that last quote about the headwaters, BTW. You forgot to add the rest of the sentence...wonder why? That's pretty indicative of your modus operandi throughout most of this debate.

When you gonna come up here so I can show you around the Meramec watershed and you can see how much fun it is to catch 10" spots where there used to be 20" smallmouth? I don't pretend to know your streams down there in SWMO, Chief. You should give us "Easterners" a little credit and realize we probably have a better grasp of what's going on in our backyards than you do. But seriously...you should bring Dylan up here some time and we can float a nice section and you can see what we're talking about. It's too hard for me to travel all the way down to you right now anyway...baby and all.

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!

That's funny...I was going to say almost exactly the same thing to you last night, but thought better of it.

[ozark trout fisher]

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

Yes, coexisting in a way that is devastating to the native species. Asian Carp and native species are also co-existing in the Mississippi River, but I can promise you it's not a good thing for the catfish, paddlefish, and sturgeon.

The fact is, spotted bass are taking over smallmouth habitat. Some smallmouth still manage to eek out a living in the stream stretches that spotted bass have invaded, but their numbers and size are grossly reduced. In other words, the smallmouth population still exists, but it's no longer healthy. As Eric pointed out, trout don't have the capability of pushing smallies out of nearly the same mileage of water as spotted bass. Spotted bass just don't have nearly as specific of habitat requirements as trout, and therefore have potential to cause much more harm in more stream stretches. Trout must have consistently cold water to survive, but the spots can inhabit anything from the lower ends of big rivers to cool water habitat. And they eat exactly the same food as smallies and spawn in the same areas. The competition is direct.

Stream stretches like the middle and lower Bourbeuse and lower Meramec are actually better spotted bass habitat than smallmouth habitat. But smallmouth are the native species, and have always done very well there. But then the non-native spots showed up. The habitat conditions and spawning conditions favor them, so any future "balance" between spotted bass and smallmouth bass is likely to heavily favor the non-native spots. And we are talking about hundreds of miles of water here in the Meramec, Gasconade, and Osage basins. It's a big problem, and I promise you it would be pretty concerning to you if you if these streams were your home waters.

[laker67]

Not trying to start any arguments, but is there scientific proof that spots are taking over smallmouth habit? By taking over I mean are they driving out the smallmouth,as some would suggest, and herding them towards undesirable trout waters. I do not know if this is fact or just concerns and speculation from our stream anglers.

[eric1978]

Not trying to start any arguments, but is there scientific proof that spots are taking over smallmouth habit? By taking over I mean are they driving out the smallmouth,as some would suggest, and herding them towards undesirable trout waters. I do not know if this is fact or just concerns and speculation from our stream anglers.

If you consider MDC surveys and conclusions scientific proof, then yes. Google "MDC spotted bass management."

The spots are not herding away smallmouth like a shepherd would sheep...it's a pound for pound replacement through competition.

[laker67]

If you consider MDC surveys and conclusions scientific proof, then yes. Google "MDC spotted bass management."

The spots are not herding away smallmouth like a shepherd would sheep...it's a pound for pound replacement through competition.

Thanks eric.

[ozark trout fisher]

For those who don't feel like googling that, here's the main point of it, straight from the MDC site.

"Since the mid-1980s, Conservation Department fisheries biologists have noticed that spotted (Kentucky) bass have increased dramatically in portions of the Meramec, Big and Bourbeuse rivers where they were historically absent. In those rivers, spotted bass rarely seem to reach the 12-inch length limit, grow slowly and have been shown to compete and hybridize with native smallmouth bass.

While there is no doubt that smallmouth have been affected by habitat alterations, the continual march of spotted bass further upstream each year concerned biologists. Smallmouth bass numbers appear to have declined in many areas and biologists believe spotted bass may be part of the reason.

In response, the Conservation Department removed the minimum length limit on spotted bass and increased the daily limit to 12. Anglers in these three rivers can help slow the increase of spotted bass by learning spotted bass identification and taking some home."

The MDC seems concerned about spots in the Meramec basin, and they don't have any reason to be causing a false alarm. And everything they say is 100% backed up by my experience on these rivers.

[oneshot]

What is wrong with a put & take trout fishery outside of a trout park? It serves a valid purpose and offers a different outdoor experience...The option of put & take w/o trout park crowds for one thing..

MDC stocks em, people go fishing, take em home & eat them...Folks who keep fish pay for there license, trout stamp, & 1/8 cent sales tax too...Usually fish the blue ribbons, but I venture to the reds & whites occassionally...Usually catch trout there too. Its just stocked trout fishing after all is said & done. Cheers.

Leave it the way it is we like a mess of Trout every so often and I go fishing or hunting its for the Table,I've found most the dinks I turn back go Belly Up anyway no matter how careful I am.

You go to the Regs you propose I will no longer waste my time with a Permit or fishing them waters.

oneshot

[Al Agnew]

By the way, it's not just competition for food. In fact, it is a combination of several factors, some of which are simply not well understood. There is interbreeding, there is apparently serious competition among fry and fingerlings. There is probably competition for spawning grounds. And the scariest thing is, there really isn't a good explanation for EXACTLY why the spotted bass are replacing smallmouth on what appears to be a one to one basis...for every adult spotted bass there is one less adult smallmouth. On the stretches of Big River that I'm most familiar with, according both to my records and to the biologists, it has been a steady decline of smallmouth coupled with a just as steady increase in spotted bass. I don't have all my records with me right now, either, but I can tell you this...

Take one stretch of Big River, the stretch that's just above the uppermost put-in in the MDC float book. It is far enough upstream that the gradient is a little steeper and the water ordinarily clearer than the "better" spotted bass habitat downstream. I first started seeing spotted bass in this stretch about 6 or 7 years ago. By 2006, in my catch based upon an average of three trips per summer on this stretch, the spot/smallmouth ratio was 20/80. By 2008, it was 40/60. This past summer it was 50/50. On average, the total number of bass I caught stayed pretty constant through those years, average of about 50 bass per day of fishing. It's just that more and more were spotted bass and less and less were smallmouth.

On the next stretch upstream, the ratio this past summer had reached 40/60. Five years ago there were no spots in my catch on that stretch.

I'm not exaggerating any of my figures, Chief. And from my conversations with the biologists, my figures are pretty accurate. The only hope we have is that, since the advent of the liberal limits on spots, the ratios on the parts of the streams where they have been established for more than a decade appear to have stabilized, and in some stretches the smallies are doing a little bit better.

[Outside Bend]

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.

Gee Chief, I guess when you make claims that "There is not one waterway in the State of Missouri that has been taken over by spots," and “Spots have not taken over smallmouth habitat. They are co-existing,” it gives me the impression you don’t believe spots are having much impact on native smallmouth. My mistake.

You don’t need Al’s estimates, just the ability to read a map coupled with some basic math skills. According to MDC, spotted bass went from being absent to the most prevalent black bass species on the lower 20 miles of the Big River, part of the Meramec watershed. Spotted bass went from being absent from the Bourbeuse River to being present all the way to Noser Mill. In the Moreau River, the proportion of sites where spots were collected went from 10% in 1960 to 64% in the 1990’s- and at the same time as spotted bass populations have been expanding, smallmouth bass populations have been declining. Hybridization between the two is prevalent in that system. Non-native spotted bass are the third most prevalent sportfish in the lower Osage River, more abundant than both largemouth and smallmouth.

Contrast that with trout, which were once widely stocked throughout the Ozarks, but which only persisted in less than 1% of those streams. You have an introduced species which has displaced smallmouth from prime habitat and had a large impact on its distribution, versus an introduced species which may have possibly displaced smallmouth from some poor smallmouth habitat, although that can’t be substantiated. Those two situations aren’t analogous, period.

There are no 45* springs in Missouri.

And I never said there were, but the fact remains smallmouth don’t do well in coldwater habitats, simply because they fall outside the preferred temperature range. Just because you want to say “Trout are stocked in what was good smallmouth waters,” doesn’t make it so. There’s a lot of information out there to support the idea that those coldwater streams were never good smallmouth habitat, while I haven’t seen anyone provide verifiable evidence smallmouth do well in coldwater streams, or that there were more smallmouth in coldwater streams before trout came on the scene than there are now.

So now you want to split hairs between primary and secondary food sources?

Yes. This may be a revelatory concept, but a primary food source is going to be more important to a species than a secondary food source- otherwise they wouldn’t be a secondary food source. A species which gets 80% of its calories from caddisflies won’t have much direct impact on a species which gets 80% of its calories from crayfish, especially when those two species aren’t occupying the same habitat to any appreciable extent in the first place.

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.

These are the BS anecdotes I was talking about Chief. You’ve caught smallies and largemouth in the same areas. I’ve caught smallmouth and trout in the same areas. It doesn’t mean the habitat is conducive to their growth. It doesn’t mean the species don’t have different optimal habitats. It doesn’t mean the species tend to partition habitat in order to reduce competition. Finding largemouth in good smallmouth habitat doesn’t make it good largemouth habitat, just as finding smallmouth in good trout habitat doesn’t make it good smallmouth habitat.

[Chief Grey Bear]

I'm not exaggerating any of my figures, Chief. And from my conversations with the biologists, my figures are pretty accurate. The only hope we have is that, since the advent of the liberal limits on spots, the ratios on the parts of the streams where they have been established for more than a decade appear to have stabilized, and in some stretches the smallies are doing a little bit better.

OK, fair enough. I don't understand why they are not growing larger than 12" though. They have been there plenty long enough to grow into fairly large, decent size fish. And if they did get into the, say, 2 or even 3 pound range and you caught that size on a somewhat consistant basis, would you enjoy them a little more? I understand catching 12" and down is a pain. It can drive you nuts catching them all day!

Gee Chief, I guess when you make claims that "There is not one waterway in the State of Missouri that has been taken over by spots," and “Spots have not taken over smallmouth habitat. They are co-existing,” it gives me the impression you don’t believe spots are having much impact on native smallmouth. My mistake.

Well, a person has to have a little fun don't they????

You don’t need Al’s estimates, just the ability to read a map coupled with some basic math skills.

And I used those skills. You should try it next time. I think you will find that smallmouth miles far exceed spot miles in this state.

Just as I don't want to take a bath in 45 degree water, smallmouth would rather not hang out in a spring branch.

And I never said there were, but the fact remains smallmouth don’t do well in coldwater habitats, simply because they fall outside the preferred temperature range. Just because you want to say “Trout are stocked in what was good smallmouth waters,” doesn’t make it so. There’s a lot of information out there to support the idea that those coldwater streams were never good smallmouth habitat, while I haven’t seen anyone provide verifiable evidence smallmouth do well in coldwater streams, or that there were more smallmouth in coldwater streams before trout came on the scene than there are now.

Your above quote implied that spring waters in Missouri are 45*. And that is false. We are not talking spring branchs and where trout were once stocked. The vast majority of stocking by the MDC today are in waters that were good smallmouth waters. You show the proof it wasn't.

Yes. This may be a revelatory concept, but a primary food source is going to be more important to a species than a secondary food source- otherwise they wouldn’t be a secondary food source. A species which gets 80% of its calories from caddisflies won’t have much direct impact on a species which gets 80% of its calories from crayfish, especially when those two species aren’t occupying the same habitat to any appreciable extent in the first place.

Where did you pull those numbers from?

These are the BS anecdotes I was talking about Chief. You’ve caught smallies and largemouth in the same areas. I’ve caught smallmouth and trout in the same areas. It doesn’t mean the habitat is conducive to their growth. It doesn’t mean the species don’t have different optimal habitats. It doesn’t mean the species tend to partition habitat in order to reduce competition. Finding largemouth in good smallmouth habitat doesn’t make it good largemouth habitat, just as finding smallmouth in good trout habitat doesn’t make it good smallmouth habitat.

And I too have caught trout and smallmouth from the same waters. The difference there is the trout had no choice in the matter. All other senario's came way by natural choices, not man.