End Of Public Ownership Below City Park

[troutbum479]

trespassing or not, if i owned land on any river or lake i think i would at least pick the trash and tires up and dispose of them the right way. After paying $50 of a Missouri non resident license i'm not going to guess where i can and can't fish on a creek or river. If there is any river or creek that needs a clean up it Crane. I packed out a Wal-Mart sack full of trash.

[eric1978]

My understanding (oh god why have we gotten started on this again!) is that the legal definition of "navigable" is that it be able to be "navigated" for the bulk of the year. "Navigated" I guess is the difficult word here. I know that in December you must have had to do A LOT of dragging since there were places the creek was three feet wide and others it was four inches deep! Unfortunately there very places where it was very shallow with a gravel bottom -- a place where you'd have needed to "drag" -- are also where fish lay their eggs.

Just sayin'.

Just to clarify, I didn't ever float Crane...I said I easily could. A canoe can float in a little more than 4 inches of water and get through spots that are 3 feet wide. That means Crane is navigable, to me. Are you saying that any stream where you have to drag a little bit is non-navigable? How about Jack's Fork in the summer?

[drew03cmc]

trespassing or not, if i owned land on any river or lake i think i would at least pick the trash and tires up and dispose of them the right way. After paying $50 of a Missouri non resident license i'm not going to guess where i can and can't fish on a creek or river. If there is any river or creek that needs a clean up it Crane. I packed out a Wal-Mart sack full of trash.

There is one hole just below the city park, across from the last ballpark that I could have filled a dozen Wal-Mart bags with trash and barely made a dent. You undoubtedly saw this mess as well. Crane is due to be beautified. The denizens of the drainage are beautiful, but the surroundings aren't quite on par with the fish.

Just to clarify, I didn't ever float Crane...I said I easily could. A canoe can float in a little more than 4 inches of water and get through spots that are 3 feet wide. That means Crane is navigable, to me. Are you saying that any stream where you have to drag a little bit is non-navigable? How about Jack's Fork in the summer?

How about the Little Niangua last October? There were spots where the water was less than two inches deep and there were spots where the water was green enough that you couldn't see bottom.

[parachiteadams39]

Touche about stream depth -- the analogies to other streams in summer are well-made.

That said it would have to be a teeny tiny small canoe to take a 90 degree turn on a 3 foot wide creek! There are several on CC. Stuart Little, perhaps?

There was an organized stream clean up a couple of weekends ago. Cheers to all of you who have cleaned up trash then and on your own!

I also buy a non-resident fishing tag and trout stamp but do not regard this as a license to trespess either actively by ignoring signs or passivly by assuming that if there's no sign it must be ok. In fact somehow as a non-resident (though I lived in Missouri for 40 years) I feel almost as if I should hold myself to a higher standard of behavior -- because I'm a guest I suppose. Call me old fashioned. Keeps me out of the way of the guys with revolvers...

This amused me:

"if i owned land on any river or lake i think i would at least pick the trash and tires up and dispose of them the right way."

I will be sure to tell my friend that when you were trespassing on this land you were offended by the trash!

There are approximately 4.5 full stream miles of publicly owned creek. Biggest fish I ever caught in CC were on the long hole at the end of lower Wire Road and between the Park and the Trestle. I just fail to see why people need to trespass. But I guess sometimes being told "no" is too tempting to resist.

[troutbum479]

I have yet to be told NO by landowner or sign. And since you claim to know this landowner on Crane i would like for you to send me his phone number or address in a pm so i can contact him about letting me look for arrowheads in his field. Understandable if not.

[parachiteadams39]

I have yet to be told NO by landowner or sign. And since you claim to know this landowner on Crane i would like for you to send me his phone number or address in a pm so i can contact him about letting me look for arrowheads in his field. Understandable if not.

That's my point: you are taking the lack of an explicit "no" to mean "yes." I can assure you that on Crane Creek between the bottom of the publicly owned access (clearly deliniated in my initial post) and the top of the lower wire road access, clearly deliniated by Grisham's Ford Rd., that the answer is, explcitly, "no."

We planted about 800 trees in the field you mention a couple weeks back and didn't find any arrowheads. Anyway, I doubt my landowner friend will be receptive to letting you look for arrowheads given you've already helped yourself to the fishing.

[troutbum479]

You doubt he would allow me to access his land? Sounds like a maybe to me. I'm not shy or scared to ask a landowner access to his land. I guess i can drive around and find the owners of the land attached to the creek and ask myself. After all they can only say no, which to my understanding by law i have access to the creek if entered via public access.

[Chief Grey Bear]

Touche about stream depth -- the analogies to other streams in summer are well-made.

That said it would have to be a teeny tiny small canoe to take a 90 degree turn on a 3 foot wide creek! There are several on CC. Stuart Little, perhaps?

There was an organized stream clean up a couple of weekends ago. Cheers to all of you who have cleaned up trash then and on your own!

I also buy a non-resident fishing tag and trout stamp but do not regard this as a license to trespess either actively by ignoring signs or passivly by assuming that if there's no sign it must be ok. In fact somehow as a non-resident (though I lived in Missouri for 40 years) I feel almost as if I should hold myself to a higher standard of behavior -- because I'm a guest I suppose. Call me old fashioned. Keeps me out of the way of the guys with revolvers...

This amused me:

"if i owned land on any river or lake i think i would at least pick the trash and tires up and dispose of them the right way."

I will be sure to tell my friend that when you were trespassing on this land you were offended by the trash!

There are approximately 4.5 full stream miles of publicly owned creek. Biggest fish I ever caught in CC were on the long hole at the end of lower Wire Road and between the Park and the Trestle. I just fail to see why people need to trespass. But I guess sometimes being told "no" is too tempting to resist.

I think I may have bumed into you one time on Crane. Aren't you Richard Cranium???

[ollie]

Ouch Chief, that was a classic! I don't beleive in trespassing either, but if there isn't any signs or anything else to tell me otherwise just how am I suppose to know? Forget about GPS, most guys I know wouldn't check that. As a land owner, I would make sure and put some kind of sign out if I cared that much about the issue. On many local creeks around here people go out of their way to make sure you are not on their property. Lots of them will string barbed wire across the creek to let you know. Parachute I just don't see why you are calling out Troutbum on this. The guy C&R, picked up trash and had no clue to seeing any signs! He also never gained access via private property it sounds like. I admit I don't fish CC, but you are coming of very strong with your assumptions.

[ozark trout fisher]

Thanks for putting the fish back! Seriously. It was legal to keep and the fact you put it back tells me there's more we agree about than disagree about.

I only trespass when I want a nice stringer of wild rainbows.

(Just kidding-for the record I never trespass intentionally and I have never killed a Missouri wild trout on purpose)

I think it is very much up for debate whether Crane is navigable or not. What Troutbum479 is doing may well not be trespassing at all-you should be more sure of the facts before you pass judgement, Parachite. You don't have a full understanding of the law more than anyone else on here does. Maybe you need to give it a little more thought before publicly accuse someone of committing a crime. And that is certainly what you are doing.