? For Al

[aftersh0ck]

I was reading a post about floating around union. you were giving your description about bass in the area. I always have wondered but never asked over the last 15-20 years what caused the big spotted bass explosion in that time?

[Al Agnew]

The last time we talked about this it started a big argument whether the spread of spotted bass into the Meramec River system could be considered "natural" or not. Nobody knows for sure, although probably if somebody cared enough they could do genetic studies comparing the Meramec system spotted bass to spotted bass in other parts of MO. But there are three possibilities, two of them definitely "unnatural" and one semi-unnatural.

First possibility...according to Bill Pflieger in "The Fishes of Missouri", spotted bass were apparently introduced into the Osage drainage sometime prior to 1940. By the early 1940s they were well established in the upper Osage system above Lake of the Ozarks (this would include the Pomme de Terre and Sac rivers), and by the late 1950s they had colonized the lower Osage and into the Moreau River, which enters the Missouri a short distance upstream from the Osage. To get to the Meramec from there, they would have to have spread downstream on the Missouri (not a particularly hospitable river channel for them, but possible) and then down the Mississippi to the mouth of the Meramec.

Second possibility...MDC actually stocked them in the Loutre River (north bank tributary of the Missouri just downstream and across the river from the mouth of the Gasconade. By 1974 they were well-established in the lower Gasconade...these fish could have come from either the Osage fish, moving on down the Missouri along the south bank, or from the Loutre stocking, crossing the river and going a few miles upstream. To get to the Meramec, the Loutre fish would have had to go down the Missouri and across it to the west bank of the Mississippi, and into the Meramec.

Third possibility is my own theory, but I think the time-line supports it. It goes like this...Spotted bass were always native to the Castor River and Whitewater River in SE MO, which used to flow into the swamps of the MO Bootheel and on into eastern Arkansas before entering the Mississippi well downstream of the Ohio River. Back sometime around 1900, however, the Diversion Channel was built to drain the SE MO swamps. It is a big ditch that collects the waters of Castor and Whitewater and diverts them into the Mississippi just south of Cape Girardeau. This gave the Castor/Whitewater spotted bass a much more direct connection to the Mississippi. However, back throughout the first 65 or 70 years of the 1900s, the Mississippi was highly polluted (much of it from St. Louis), and it was also extremely silt-laden, due to the influx of the Missouri River, which was one of the siltiest rivers in the nation. Both factors probably made the Mississippi inhospitable to spotted bass. But then two things happened...the Clean Water Act forced the cities along the Mississippi to clean up their act, greatly reducing pollution, and several huge dams were built on the upper Missouri in the Dakotas, trapping much of the silt that the Missouri once carried. So the Mississippi became both cleaner and clearer. And the spotted bass could spread upstream from the Diversion Channel. In my own experience, in the early 1970s spotted bass were very common in Apple Creek, the first good sized stream you come to going upstream from Cape Girardeau (actually they were very common below the Appleton Mill Dam, non-existent above it--the mill dam was a barrier to their spread). But they were non-existent at that time in Saline Creek, the next large creek you come to going upstream on the Mississippi. By the early 1980s they were common in Saline Creek and Establishment Creek, the next Mississippi tributary upstream. I don't know when they reached Joachim and Plattin Creeks, the next tributaries upstream, but I would expect that they got there sometime in the early to mid 1980s. They started showing up in the lower Meramec in the mid 80s.

Actually, there were a few earlier strays. Pflieger reports that a single juvenile was seined at the junction of the Missouri and Mississippi in 1969, and several more were taken in the same year at the mouth of Isle du Bois Creek, which enters the Mississippi between Establishment Creek and Joachim Creek. And I caught several hybrids in lower Big River in the mid-1970s--but never saw another hybrid or pure spotted bass in Big River until the late 1980s.

Once they got into the Meramec, no matter how it happened, they spread from the lower river upstream pretty quickly. In the late 1980s I was catching lots of juveniles, less than 10 inches long, in the Meramec in the St. Clair area, and in the early 1990s the lower part of Big River, below Morse Mill, was full of them, even though I floated that section ten years earlier and they were non-existent. I also floated the lower end of the Bourbeuse around 1980 and there were zero spotted bass, but by the early 90s they were thick below Guths Mill. The mill dams on Big River and the Bourbeuse stopped their spread for a number of years, but by the mid-90s they had gotten past Guths Mill and all the mill dams on Big River. By the end of the 1990s they had made it past Noser Mill on the Bourbeuse, and there was nothing to stop their spread on both Big River and the Bourbeuse, except a couple of slab ford lowwater bridges on upper Big River. On Big River, they steadily spread upstream until at present they are common up to the highest of the lowwater bridges, at the Leadwood MDC access. So far I have caught none above that bridge, but it's only a matter of time. I had hopes that upper Big River would not be good habitat for them, but apparently they are thriving in it. The entire Bourbeuse, being slower and murkier than the normal Ozark stream, is perfect spotted bass habitat and they are rapidly crowding out smallies on the upper Bourbeuse.

The upper Meramec, for whatever reason--either too big and strong a current, or too cool from the springs feeding it--is apparently not good spotted bass habitat, though. They are common up to about Meramec Caverns, but have not really taken over the Meramec between the caverns and the mouth of Big River to the extent they have on the lower half of Big River and the Bourbeuse. Their population in that stretch of the Meramec has been pretty stable, or actually decreased slightly, in the last 15 years. And they have never become really common on the Meramec above Meramec State Park, though I've caught them all the way up above Steelville (and a few in the lower end of Huzzah Creek as well). I've never caught one above Maramec Spring, though others have reported catching them up there.

So there you have it...the demise of two great smallmouth rivers, and the decline of the lower Meramec smallmouth fishery, due to spotted bass.

[Tim Smith]

Spotted bass like warm water. Just sayin'.

[aftersh0ck]

thanks,

I knew that you would lay it out in detail, greatly appreciated

[drew03cmc]

The last time we talked about this it started a big argument whether the spread of spotted bass into the Meramec River system could be considered "natural" or not. Nobody knows for sure, although probably if somebody cared enough they could do genetic studies comparing the Meramec system spotted bass to spotted bass in other parts of MO. But there are three possibilities, two of them definitely "unnatural" and one semi-unnatural.

First possibility...according to Bill Pflieger in "The Fishes of Missouri", spotted bass were apparently introduced into the Osage drainage sometime prior to 1940. By the early 1940s they were well established in the upper Osage system above Lake of the Ozarks (this would include the Pomme de Terre and Sac rivers), and by the late 1950s they had colonized the lower Osage and into the Moreau River, which enters the Missouri a short distance upstream from the Osage. To get to the Meramec from there, they would have to have spread downstream on the Missouri (not a particularly hospitable river channel for them, but possible) and then down the Mississippi to the mouth of the Meramec.

Second possibility...MDC actually stocked them in the Loutre River (north bank tributary of the Missouri just downstream and across the river from the mouth of the Gasconade. By 1974 they were well-established in the lower Gasconade...these fish could have come from either the Osage fish, moving on down the Missouri along the south bank, or from the Loutre stocking, crossing the river and going a few miles upstream. To get to the Meramec, the Loutre fish would have had to go down the Missouri and across it to the west bank of the Mississippi, and into the Meramec.

Third possibility is my own theory, but I think the time-line supports it. It goes like this...Spotted bass were always native to the Castor River and Whitewater River in SE MO, which used to flow into the swamps of the MO Bootheel and on into eastern Arkansas before entering the Mississippi well downstream of the Ohio River. Back sometime around 1900, however, the Diversion Channel was built to drain the SE MO swamps. It is a big ditch that collects the waters of Castor and Whitewater and diverts them into the Mississippi just south of Cape Girardeau. This gave the Castor/Whitewater spotted bass a much more direct connection to the Mississippi. However, back throughout the first 65 or 70 years of the 1900s, the Mississippi was highly polluted (much of it from St. Louis), and it was also extremely silt-laden, due to the influx of the Missouri River, which was one of the siltiest rivers in the nation. Both factors probably made the Mississippi inhospitable to spotted bass. But then two things happened...the Clean Water Act forced the cities along the Mississippi to clean up their act, greatly reducing pollution, and several huge dams were built on the upper Missouri in the Dakotas, trapping much of the silt that the Missouri once carried. So the Mississippi became both cleaner and clearer. And the spotted bass could spread upstream from the Diversion Channel. In my own experience, in the early 1970s spotted bass were very common in Apple Creek, the first good sized stream you come to going upstream from Cape Girardeau (actually they were very common below the Appleton Mill Dam, non-existent above it--the mill dam was a barrier to their spread). But they were non-existent at that time in Saline Creek, the next large creek you come to going upstream on the Mississippi. By the early 1980s they were common in Saline Creek and Establishment Creek, the next Mississippi tributary upstream. I don't know when they reached Joachim and Plattin Creeks, the next tributaries upstream, but I would expect that they got there sometime in the early to mid 1980s. They started showing up in the lower Meramec in the mid 80s.

Actually, there were a few earlier strays. Pflieger reports that a single juvenile was seined at the junction of the Missouri and Mississippi in 1969, and several more were taken in the same year at the mouth of Isle du Bois Creek, which enters the Mississippi between Establishment Creek and Joachim Creek. And I caught several hybrids in lower Big River in the mid-1970s--but never saw another hybrid or pure spotted bass in Big River until the late 1980s.

Once they got into the Meramec, no matter how it happened, they spread from the lower river upstream pretty quickly. In the late 1980s I was catching lots of juveniles, less than 10 inches long, in the Meramec in the St. Clair area, and in the early 1990s the lower part of Big River, below Morse Mill, was full of them, even though I floated that section ten years earlier and they were non-existent. I also floated the lower end of the Bourbeuse around 1980 and there were zero spotted bass, but by the early 90s they were thick below Guths Mill. The mill dams on Big River and the Bourbeuse stopped their spread for a number of years, but by the mid-90s they had gotten past Guths Mill and all the mill dams on Big River. By the end of the 1990s they had made it past Noser Mill on the Bourbeuse, and there was nothing to stop their spread on both Big River and the Bourbeuse, except a couple of slab ford lowwater bridges on upper Big River. On Big River, they steadily spread upstream until at present they are common up to the highest of the lowwater bridges, at the Leadwood MDC access. So far I have caught none above that bridge, but it's only a matter of time. I had hopes that upper Big River would not be good habitat for them, but apparently they are thriving in it. The entire Bourbeuse, being slower and murkier than the normal Ozark stream, is perfect spotted bass habitat and they are rapidly crowding out smallies on the upper Bourbeuse.

The upper Meramec, for whatever reason--either too big and strong a current, or too cool from the springs feeding it--is apparently not good spotted bass habitat, though. They are common up to about Meramec Caverns, but have not really taken over the Meramec between the caverns and the mouth of Big River to the extent they have on the lower half of Big River and the Bourbeuse. Their population in that stretch of the Meramec has been pretty stable, or actually decreased slightly, in the last 15 years. And they have never become really common on the Meramec above Meramec State Park, though I've caught them all the way up above Steelville (and a few in the lower end of Huzzah Creek as well). I've never caught one above Maramec Spring, though others have reported catching them up there.

So there you have it...the demise of two great smallmouth rivers, and the decline of the lower Meramec smallmouth fishery, due to spotted bass.

Al, the uppermost bolded statement just confirms what I have theorized over the past few years about spotted bass. They have always been present, but in very small numbers. Some minor environmental factor made the fish able to thrive in waters where they were marginal at best.

I find it hard to believe that the upper Meramec might be too big with too much current, yet spotted bass do and can live in the Missouri and Mississippi, albeit in small numbers.

Aftershock, don't write spotted bass off entirely. They are a fine sport fish and are prettier than largemouth as well as some smallmouth. They give a good account of themselves when hooked as well.

[Tim Smith]

They give a good account of themselves when hooked as well.

...and one of the few species I've caught that will get hooked....fight a bit and get off...then chase the bait and get hooked again on the same cast. Weirdly aggressive.

[drew03cmc]

...and one of the few species I've caught that will get hooked....fight a bit and get off...then chase the bait and get hooked again on the same cast. Weirdly aggressive.

Yep. Where they are the only native black bass, they are king dick normally and as such they can do what they want, when they want and how they want. Where they are a bit overpopulated as they are in the eastern Ozarks apparently, they are opportunistic. If they pass on this crayfish, there might not be another one for awhile.

[eric1978]

Aftershock, don't write spotted bass off entirely. They are a fine sport fish and are prettier than largemouth as well as some smallmouth. They give a good account of themselves when hooked as well.

They're not all that sporty at 6 or 7 inches, which is mostly what you catch out here. I guess they could be fun on a 3wt, but who's bass fishing with a 3wt? Those fat chunks you see in the TRL reports are non-existant in the Meramec and Gasconade watersheds. We just have tons of the little guys that come out and grab your lure before the big smallie has a chance to.

[Al Agnew]

Al, the uppermost bolded statement just confirms what I have theorized over the past few years about spotted bass. They have always been present, but in very small numbers. Some minor environmental factor made the fish able to thrive in waters where they were marginal at best.

I find it hard to believe that the upper Meramec might be too big with too much current, yet spotted bass do and can live in the Missouri and Mississippi, albeit in small numbers.

Aftershock, don't write spotted bass off entirely. They are a fine sport fish and are prettier than largemouth as well as some smallmouth. They give a good account of themselves when hooked as well.

Got to heartily disagree with you that they were always present. I fished these streams extensively before spotted bass. Other than, if I remember correctly, exactly three hybrids taken on Big River in the area around Browns Ford in the 1970s, I never saw another one anywhere in the Meramec system until they started showing up in numbers. And, if you look at all the collections made by various biologists that are shown in Pflieger's book, you will see that if there were ANY in these rivers prior to the late 1960s, they would have shown up in those collections. And since the only places where they were taken in the collections prior to when they started showing up in numbers were along the Mississippi itself in 1969, that only supports a spread either up the Mississippi or down the Missouri that started late in the 1960s. By that time, the dams on the upper Missouri were in place. Keep in mind that time line I told about, too. I think it's very instructive that they started showing up in sequence in the streams running into the Mississippi above the mouth of the Diversion Channel. I also think it's instructive that when I fished Apple Creek extensively in the 1970s (I was living in Cape and Jackson then), they were abundant right up to the Appleton Mill dam and non-existent above it, because if you look at that water, other than the mill pond itself (which should have been good habitat for them, by the way), there is no discernable difference between the waters for several miles below the dam and the waters for several miles above it. It makes no sense that they would have been abundant below and absent above unless the mill dam itself was stopping their spread. Same thing applies to all the streams in the Meramec system. They spread upstream from the mouth of the Meramec, no question about it, even though the lower sections of Big River and the Bourbeuse should have been excellent habitat for them.

And since I've been intimately familiar with these streams since the early 1970s, and Big River even before that, I can tell you that there simply was not any major habitat change that occurred during the time they started to spread up the Meramec and tributaries. To be honest, you probably couldn't pick better habitat for spotted bass than has ALWAYS been present on the lower portions of Big and Bourbeuse. If there were spots anywhere in the system, they should have been present in significant numbers in those stream stretches. Sure, the Subject That Must Not Be Mentioned might be making the streams a little better for them these days, but that Subject was not much evident back then.

Some biologists in MDC that I've talked to have suggested habitat changes could be making them thrive at the expense of smallies in these streams, but they can't say what those habitat changes could be. But none of them believe they were always present in the north-flowing Ozark streams.

The thing is, as near as anyone can figure, spotted bass habitat differs from classic smallmouth habitat mainly three ways...warmth during the summers, murkiness and fertility, and gradient. Some of the biologists say that it seems like the spots don't do well in stream sections dropping more than about about 3.5 to 4 feet per mile, and this seems to hold true on Saline Creek, South Fork Saline Creek, and Establishment Creek, since they are practically non-existent in the faster upper reaches of these creeks, but in a very short distance where the streams slow to below that magic gradient, they suddenly become very common. Heavily spring fed streams like the Niangua below Bennett Spring and the North Fork below Rainbow and Double Springs certainly seem to be inhospitable to them and have kept them from moving upstream above those springs in numbers from the reservoirs below, which is why I think the influence from Maramec and other springs on the upper Meramec are keeping them from becoming common in the upper river. And in most of the streams where they are native, they aren't found in any numbers in the upper, very clear stretches, but start to show up in the lower, murkier stretches.

So if you look at the lower Big and Bourbeuse, they qualify as spot habitat on all three counts. Neither are heavily spring fed (and never have been, of course). Both are quite slow, gradient around 2 feet per mile (and always have been). And both are normally murky. If spots were present at all, they should have been common in those streams.

The wild card in this whole discussion is the St. Francis. Spots are native to it, AND found over the entire river. There are many stretches of the St. Francis that drop far more than 3-4 feet per mile...the shut-ins sections drop 20 feet per mile, and much of the river below the shut-ins sections, all the way down to at least Sam A. Baker Park, drop more than 3 feet per mile. So gradient has little or nothing to do with spotted bass habitat in the St. Francis. The other two requirements, however, do apply--the St. Francis has always been rather murky, and it isn't heavily spring fed and gets quite warm in the summer. As I mentioned in the other thread, smallmouth have been increasing in population on the St. Francis in recent years. My theory on this is that there really HAS been a habitat change on the St. Francis, which also occurred on many other Ozark streams, that favors smallmouth. My theory is that there is so much less row-cropping in the watershed than there used to be, and more no-till farming when it is cropped rather than pastured as most farmland along the rivers is, that less silt is entering the St. Francis nowadays and it has gotten less murky. Of course, bad land use practices like clearing of timberland might be negating that in many rivers. But getting back to the Meramec and tributaries, they have certainly NOT gotten more murky since the early 1970s.

As you can see, I've given this subject a lot of thought and study, and I don't see any way the spots could have been always present in small numbers on the north-flowing streams...and the biologists agree.

[drew03cmc]

Al, those three hybrids didn't just miraculously appear. There was obviously interbreeding occurring in the 70s, albeit in low numbers. The collections do not sample the entire population of fish on the river, they get a prescribed "sample size" and go from there. To look at these collections and assume there is no way there are a few dozen spotted bass among the thousands of smallmouth is a bit naive.