Last Fishing Of The Year

[Al Agnew]

Mitch and I have been trying to get together for a fishing trip for weeks now, and on Wednesday we thought it was finally going to happen. We'd made plans to meet on the Meramec Wednesday morning. I was all ready to go, actually was less than five minutes from walking out the door, when I heard my wife scream. I ran into the walk-in closet and she was huddled in the doorway, clutching the door frame, in horrific pain. All she had done was bend over to pick up a pair of boots, and something in her back just exploded in pain. I got her to her feet and she tried to walk it off, but it wasn't happening; she was in agony. I knew there was no way I could leave her to go fishing, so I called Mitch--he had just left his house--and told him the trip was off.

I took Mary to a hotshot chiropractor that she goes to a lot, and he told her it probably wasn't anything really serious like a herniated disc, but there wasn't anything he could do while she was in so much pain he couldn't touch her. So we contacted her regular doctor, and got prescriptions for a heavy duty muscle relaxant and anti-inflamatory.

She wasn't much better on Thursday, but she told me I should plan to go Friday because she thought she'd be better then. But Friday morning she was still struggling just to get out of bed, and I quickly decided that even though she told me to go, I wasn't going to leave her on her own.

Which brings me to this morning, New Years Eve. She awoke me at 7 AM, saying that she was better and that I should definitely go fishing. Last day of the year, supposed to be up around 60 degrees, but windy. I watched her walk around and decided she was right, I should go.

I got to the Meramec about 9:30 AM. River was still up a bit and somewhat murky, maybe 4 feet of visibility. Only one car in the parking lot, without a boat trailer, that's good. I had a specific plan, to fish six pools that were proven winter producers. As I started up the river, eagles were flying all over the place, at least eight of them. The first two pools upstream are separated only by a short riffle, so I motored up to the head of the upper of the two and began to fish my way down it. Water temperature was about 44 degrees, possible jerkbait temperature but more likely jigs would work, so that's what I started out fishing.

This pool used to have one key spot. There is a big, quiet eddy just off the main current in the upper half of the pool, running about 4-7 feet deep, mostly sand and gravel bottom except right along the bank on the lower edge of it, where there are big rocks. I've caught fish off the rocks, but there used to be a big log lying right in the middle of the eddy in about six or seven feet of water, and that log was a fish magnet. But it washed out a couple years ago, and since then I've not been able to find another sweet spot, so today I was going to fish every inch of that eddy, along with a piece of slower water toward the downstream end of the pool where I'd caught fish before as well.

Two solid hours of careful fishing produced two smallies, neither much over 12 inches. I finally gave up on that pool, letting the boat drift into the next one. I've never found a sweet spot in this one, just fish scattered here and there, and today was no exception...three small bass, two smallies and a spotted bass. So I cranked up the motor and took off upstream for the other pools, running to the most upstream of the other four pools I wanted to fish.

In this one, the sweet spot is an eddy behind a couple of big, fully submerged boulders toward the lower end of the pool. It produced one bite which I missed. But I found a couple of fish, the biggest 15 inches, in an eddy just below the riffle at the head of the pool, and missed two others there. Then I picked up another 15 incher at the lower end of the pool below the sweet spot.

I drifted into the next pool, and found two sweet spots. One produced three fish all under 14 inches, the other two fish about 11 inches apiece.

Two pools left, and about two hours of good daylight left. The first pool is a fairly fast, narrow bluff pool, but the few times I've found big fish in it they were in the slower water on the side opposite the bluff and rocks. But with the water up like it was, there was still a lot of current there, so I went down toward the lower end of the pool, where a rock point formed an eddy behind it. The eddy produced two fish, including another 15 incher.

Last pool. This one is easy to figure when the water is up, because it's fast water around big boulders, and there is only one 30 foot stretch along the bank below a couple of huge rocks where it's slow enough to produce winter fish. They were there. I caught 8 smallies, including one more 15 incher, and then it was starting to get dark and time to go.

So I didn't find the big fish I was looking for. But was it ever nice to be out on the water, and 23 bass ain't too bad for mid-winter. It was a nice way to close out 2011.

[FishinCricket]

Nice report.. Glad to hear the wife's getting better, too bad about the timing with Mitch though..

[Haris122]

23 fish, in one day, in the winter, on the Meramec. Good stuff, but man that stings hearing right now. I've gone 7 times in the past 2 weeks including today and just had 2 bites, both of which got off the hook. All right, tomorrow I'm going up to the Meramec with a powerline or some dynamite, darn it. Then again, I probably couldn't even get them that way.

[Mitch f]

23 fish, that's a good day!! Glad you got to go out

Did you try any crankbaits or were all the fish on jigs and jerkbaits?

I'm glad Mary is feeling better, back pain can be the worst pain anyone can endure. I remember my back went out right before we were carrying our newborn baby out of the hospital.... what great timing. Turned the joyous occasion into a stressful situation.

We will try to go fishing again sometime soon!

[cwc87]

Nice to see that you got a trip in before this cold weather hit and that Mary is doing better. I got out from about 1 til 4 on saturday also. Caught about 18 fish. One lm and the rest smallies. Biggest was a solid 18.5 incher and a couple 15inchers but mostly 12 inchers. Plastic was the way to go. The fish were a bit off with not nocking the fire out of it just kinda climbing on. caught my fish nowhere near a spring just a hole that doesnt get gigged that much. Only caught one with gig scars on it.

[Smalliebigs]

"Only caught one with gig scars on it"....... man that sucks, the loosers that gig smallies are pieces of s*hit if you ask me.It's a horrible reality and it seems like a lot of people don't want to own up to the fact we have a bunch of law breakers and there isn't going to be anything done about it until the economy gets better.If you fish the Meramec, Current and Gasconade in the winter like I do you will catch and see smallies that have escaped the gigging attempt.....pathetic loosers.

[Mitch f]

I'm in total agreement with you on this! I remember my outrage a couple of years ago finding good wintering holes cleaned out of bass. The MDC can't effectively police this problem, no one is going to stay up all night to enforce this. I know a guy who spoke up one time and woke up to a mafia type message on his doorstep (dead filleted smallmouth). The economy doesn't help the situation either I agree, some people are gigging for food for the year. I've been told they kill all the fish they can and put them in pickling jars to eat months later.

I understand gigging is fun, but apparently the temptation is too great for some people to break the law. The MDC goes into the defensive mode when someone brings this to their attention. I think Kathy Etling (?) from the Post Dispatch wrote an article a couple of years ago about the illegal gigging problem and kind of stirred things up for the moment. I have personally called them and had them give the "sound bite" answers to illegal gigging. Their statement was as follows; "We have no evidence that illegal gigging is causing a decline in the numbers of bass on our rivers". Either they are in denial or have no idea what to do about the situation, or possibly they haven't done their homework...I think it's a little of all three. So I don't want to hear the comment "You people stop posting pics of trophy bass and tell me there is a gigging problem!" Has nothing to do with the potential of our rivers.

Sorry to get off of the original post but....Man, don't even get me started!

[mic]

Al,

Out of all of that I only got one thing... you've got a great wife. Happy New Year.

[Al Agnew]

Gigging story...

My brother is one of those guys who is friends with a whole lot of people, especially people who fish. He was talking to one of his friends, who had talked to another guy (who I think I went to school with back in the Jurassic era). This guy had just recently moved back to Missouri from some place else, and wanted to go gigging. He talked to another guy who he'd heard does a lot of gigging on upper Big River. (So, understand this is third or fourth hand story.) The gigger guy agreed to take the guy who'd just moved back to MO gigging. They put in at the Leadwood MDC Access a couple weeks ago. The gigger guy immediately started gigging bass, mostly largemouth, in the pool about the low water bridge at the access. Apparently he gigged a bunch of them, and kept the seven biggest, which ranged from "2.5 to 4.5 pounds". The newly back in MO guy kept asking him not to gig them or to turn them loose, but he said he always gigs bass because he likes to eat them, and he'd already gigged a bunch of them this year. The newly back to MO guy said he'd never go gigging with him again.

I'm trying to get all the names, especially of the guy who actually did the gigging, and when I do I plan to notify the local agent, but geez, if this is true, this guy wasn't even worried about being caught, gigging right at one of the easiest accesses to get to in St. Francois County.

Don't kid yourself, this crap happens. And it only takes one pinhead doing it to make a big dent in the population of BIG bass in a given piece of river. The river at Leadwood Access is too small to jetboat, so the guy there is limited to two big pools above the bridge, about 3/4 mile altogether. Just how many big largemouth are there in that little section? What percentage of them were killed in that one night? I'd bet it was a significant percentage.

[Al Agnew]

I'm in total agreement with you on this! I remember my outrage a couple of years ago finding good wintering holes cleaned out of bass. The MDC can't effectively police this problem, no one is going to stay up all night to enforce this. I know a guy who spoke up one time and woke up to a mafia type message on his doorstep (dead filleted smallmouth). The economy doesn't help the situation either I agree, some people are gigging for food for the year. I've been told they kill all the fish they can and put them in pickling jars to eat months later.

I understand gigging is fun, but apparently the temptation is too great for some people to break the law. The MDC goes into the defensive mode when someone brings this to their attention. I think Kathy Etling (?) from the Post Dispatch wrote an article a couple of years ago about the illegal gigging problem and kind of stirred things up for the moment. I have personally called them and had them give the "sound bite" answers to illegal gigging. Their statement was as follows; "We have no evidence that illegal gigging is causing a decline in the numbers of bass on our rivers". Either they are in denial or have no idea what to do about the situation, or possibly they haven't done their homework...I think it's a little of all three. So I don't want to hear the comment "You people stop posting pics of trophy bass and tell me there is a gigging problem!" Has nothing to do with the potential of our rivers.

Sorry to get off of the original post but....Man, don't even get me started!

I too think it's all three. What gripes me the most about that response is that it isn't the numbers that are the problem, it's that the BIGGEST bass are being cropped off by the giggers. Numbers of smallmouth and other bass aren't a problem in most Ozark streams, because they easily produce enough young each year to keep the habitat filled. But MDC apparently doesn't have a clue about how many 18 inch plus smallmouth are there to begin with, let alone how many are being killed each winter. Or, like you say, they don't know what to do about it so they try to deflect the problem by talking about numbers.