I Talked To A Native Of Yellville Today

[Al Agnew]

I think I'd have to go so far as to say I simply don't believe ANY 18.25 inch smallmouth could weigh that much. A normal, healthy, chunky Ozark stream smallmouth will weigh around three pounds at most. The fattest 18 inch bass I ever caught was a real pig of a spotted bass in very early spring on Black River right below Clearwater Dam. The thing was not only full of eggs but had been gorging all winter on temperature-shocked threadfin shad coming through the dam, and it truly was as big around as it was long...and it weighed right at five pounds. I brought it home, weighed it, took pictures (wish I could find them now but I can't) and turned it loose in my pond. It lived in the pond for at least two years, but never got more than a half inch longer and gradually lost weight. (I caught it probably a half dozen times).

But there's no way a smallmouth of that length would weigh much more than five pounds no matter where it was caught. Maybe six pounds on the very outside. That's either a mistake in measuring, a mistake in reporting, or somebody cheated big time.

Since I've started living part time in Montana, I've been researching the Flathead River. It isn't easy to fish because access is limited in the area where the good smallmouth fishing is, but it is apparently the best smallmouth stream in the state.

[Guest]

deleted

[flytyer57]

Did a little research, looks like they 18.5 was the girth--the fish was 23 and 3/8 with a 18.5 inch girth. The record has since been broken by a couple of 8 lb bruisers from lake Eufala BTW.

http://www.oklahomabassfishing.com/recordsmallmouth.html

Now that's sounds more logical.

Thanks for the update.

[Wayne SW/MO]

Now that's sounds more logical.

Thanks for the update.

If I'm not mistaken, Oklahoma stocked lake smallies when they started stocking lakes. Many of the lakes that now produce big smallies didn't have smallies in them until they aged and the department decided smallies would fit.

It's becoming harder and harder to make any comparisons in this part of the country because of the changes to the rivers and creeks. They have filled in so much from construction in their watersheds and then there's the reduction in the water table, all of which reduces the deep holes they need for survival. The gravel alone is more serious then meets the eye do to the fact that much of it doesn't stop water from flowing, it only prevents it from accumulating deep enough to house aquatic animals.

[Al Agnew]

Yeah, that sounds a lot more like it, a 23+ inch fish can easily weigh that much.

I've posted this before, but many years ago I weighed quite a few stream smallmouth at local tournaments, and got a real good idea of what they generally weigh...and most people overestimate. Here is what a chunky Ozark stream smallmouth should weigh for its length:

15 inches--1 pound 10 ounces

16 inches--2 pounds

17 inches--2 pounds 7 ounces

18 inches--2 pounds 14 ounces

19 inches--3 pounds 6 ounces

20 inches--3 pounds 14 ounces

21 inches--4 pounds 7 ounces

I only ever weighed two that were longer than that, but if you follow the progression...

22 inches--5 pounds

23 inches--5 pounds 10 ounces

24 inches--6 pounds 4 ounces

I've caught two that weighed 5 pounds, give or take a couple of ounces. One was 22 inches, the other was 21.5.

But a lot of stream smallies, especially those caught from the smaller streams, will weigh less than those weights, and very seldom will you catch one that weighs appreciably more for its length. For instance, those 20 inchers that are like the gold standard of "big" stream smallies will very seldom weigh much over 4 pounds, but a quite a few of them will weigh less than 3.5 pounds.

[taxidermist]

The gravel mining helped the creeks to have some nice deep holes of water. These were great for smallies.

Same crap is happening on the Ouchita, Talked with Ric and M&M wed. and he said the holes are filling with gravel, he has been running M&M canoe rental since 1996.

gravel fills waterholes

[taxidermist]

Years ago I mounted a lot of Smallies out of both CC and Bull SHoals, I dont think I ever saw one over 22 inches may have been one or two but not many several in the 6lb plus range but zero over 7 lbs.

river fish can out weight lake fish by 18 ounces size for size. the reason is muscle tissue verse fatty muscle tissue.

Muscle weight is much more.. So a fish for a river or creek can weight a bit more than a fish from the lake of the same measurements.

[eric1978]

The gravel mining helped the creeks to have some nice deep holes of water. These were great for smallies.

Same crap is happening on the Ouchita, Talked with Ric and M&M wed. and he said the holes are filling with gravel, he has been running M&M canoe rental since 1996.

gravel fills waterholes

You should study a little potamology. Gravel mining helps a stream ZERO.

[Al Agnew]

There may be a few short term benefits to gravel mining depending upon how it's done, but even they are outweighed by the negatives. Medium and long term, gravel mining is neutral at best and disastrous at worst, depending upon how it's done. I know of NO stream that has seen extensive gravel mining that has benefited from it long term. And the kind of gravel digging that makes those deep holes is the worst kind.

Bad effects I've seen first hand from gravel mining:

1. Siltation downstream of the diggings. Digging within the channel stirs up massive amounts of silt, which makes the next few miles of river muddy. The silt settles out within those miles, but hangs on the bottom to be stirred up continually. Streams below recent gravel diggings are usually murky to muddy until the digging stops and a couple of floods finally move the silt out. Short term but very serious adverse affect on fish like smallmouths, along with a lot of their food sources.

2. Warming of the water. Removing gravel often means making big, wide pools with no tree cover to shade them. Water below extensive gravel diggings can be up to 10 degrees warmer in the summer. Again, bad for smallies AND their food.

3. Not all gravel digging results in deep pools, even temporarily. A lot of it in the streams I grew up on basically scraped gravel away from solid bedrock. The result was wide, extremely shallow, coverless water over bedrock. And even if it wasn't scraped to bedrock, a lot of gravel digging widens the stream channel. A wider channel quickly turns shallow, even if it's dug deeply to begin with.

4. Deep pools left from gravel digging harbor few smallmouth in spring, summer, and fall, at least in my streams. Too much dead water. Not enough rock and log cover. Not many places for smallie food to live. Make for good carp holes, though.

5. Downcutting upstream. This one is sometimes not quite so easy to notice, but any stream bottom has an overall slope, which it maintains even though individual pools and riffles make the slope somewhat like stairsteps. If you suddenly dig out a deep chunk of channel, it messes up the equilibrium that the stream naturally maintains, and the stream "wants" to repair the hole and get its normal slope back. To do so, it starts to dig out the channel upstream, to bring the slope back to normal instead of having a big drop in one spot. And by digging out the channel, I don't mean it makes the holes deeper, instead it makes the banks higher while the bottom becomes much more unstable. So the habitat changes, but almost always for the worse, with shifting bottoms, caving banks, trees being undercut and washed away in floods.

6. Even "bar-skimming", which is scraping gravel off the gravel bars above normal water level, has very bad effects, in this case downstream. A normal, healthy gravel bar usually has some vegetation covering parts of it, and the surface gravel has some "cementing"--it has weathered to where the gravel sticks together. Anybody who has ever driven a vehicle out onto a gravel bar knows that as long as your tires don't START to sink into the gravel you're okay, but once the tires break through that surface layer of gravel, they dig in instantly and you're stuck up to the axles. If somebody comes along and starts removing the vegetation, even if it's just weeds, and then starts digging away that surface layer, the bar becomes MUCH more unstable. The next flood that comes along wouldn't have had much affect on the previous bar with its hard surface and vegetative cover, but it starts moving that now loose and unstable gravel...and dumps it into the next few pools downstream.

I can take you to places where every one of these things has happened after gravel digging. I can show you stream sections that have been pretty much wrecked for smallmouth habitat due to gravel digging, and streams that are just now getting back into some semblance of good smallie habitat FORTY YEARS after the gravel digging stopped...and sections that are still horrible smallie habitat 20 to 30 years later.

I guarantee you, it is not the halting of gravel digging that is causing the streams to fill in with gravel. The usual culprit is continuing development of the watershed, with increased erosion dumping more gravel in. And patterns of floods also make a big difference. There are three kinds of floods...little ones that fill the stream about bank-full, big ones that cover all the bottom fields, and those really massive ones that truly tear things up. The little ones take unstable gravel off the bars and move it into the pools, filling them in. The big ones move more gravel, but are more likely to scour out the channel deeper around any obstructions or on the outside of bends, and pile the gravel up higher on the gravel bars on the inside. So big floods may actually be better for deepening pools, while little ones are worse. And those really massive ones--well, they do a lot of scouring, but they also tear up banks, widen the channel, and wash in massive amounts of new gravel out of every little tributary and hollow coming into the river. We went through a long period of drought starting back in the late 1990s, when there were few big floods, just little ones that moved gravel into the pools. And now we seem to be in a pattern of little floods along with a few really massive ones, which is probably the worst kind of flooding pattern. I suspect that history is a lot of why we're seeing streams seemingly filling in with gravel.

[Justin Spencer]

I guarantee you, it is not the halting of gravel digging that is causing the streams to fill in with gravel. The usual culprit is continuing development of the watershed, with increased erosion dumping more gravel in.

Bingo

Look at all the draws that dump in to rivers, always a big pile of gravel at the mouth. Watching the flood events we've had here over the last 7 years it is amazing how the river changes following each one. Big floods, while I hate them, make the river look beautiful. Unfortunately streamside erosion increases with these big floods so we lose bank in some of the vulnerable locations. Amazing how water can erode even areas with a good riparian zone. After a big flood the river slowly fills back in with the smaller floods until we get another biggie which scours it out again. Not sure how we get the banks back after erosion, unfortunately it widens the river, and seems to reduce channelization and slow the flow. Ultimately I think bank erosion is much worse than gravel filling (at least on the NFoW) because the gravel seems to get cleaned out while erosion just gets worse.

I always knew Eric was a potamologist!