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Yeah he told someone to move, "get your fat a** out of the way, im fishin!..please"

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Posted

Smalliebigs, I am probably not half the fisherman you are. I have read many of your post and you seem to get after them pretty good.

While you were hammering the bass at the rock over the weekend I was getting skunked on the Meramec. I only fished a few hours of the 3 day weekend but when I did fish, I could get nothing going at all. Saturday and Sunday I threw all my favorites baits that usually get plenty of bass and got zilch. Well I did catch one 13’ bass on a zoom centipede. But that was it.

By Monday I was frustrated and went to minnows. Same results. I had a friend with me and he caught as many as I did. We did not try fishing any crowed beaches.

Truthfully it was not the first time for me minnows have not produced. Like I said I am probably not as good a fisherman as you are.

I like to fish minnows because I like to catch fish and they normally catch anything that swims. But not always {for me anyway}.

Around logs and boulders in deep water I will many times get Spotted bass or the occasionally catfish, white bass or walleye. Which I keep and eat.

When i do catch them, I have not had much problem with deep hooking smallmouth personally. A couple of taps and I set the hook and normally the hook ends up in the lip. Smallmouth are always let go.

Posted

Well Blazer, Smallie and I went out the other day for a few hours and didn't do so well either...

"Honor is a man's gift to himself" Rob Roy McGregor

Posted

My friends and I did fairly well this past Friday on the Big. Above Cherokee Landing. But, as far as favorite spots, I consistently catch nice fish in non "fishy" looking water. These nondescript looking places sometimes are fishing gold. You know, "keeping them honest," fishing opposite where one would think to throw. Many big fish have been caught like this by me, often in a mere foot of water. I have no explanation, but, that's what I do.

Posted

Minnows aren't magic. It's easier for the inexperienced angler to catch fish on live bait than on lures, which is also the problem with deep hooking fish--inexperienced anglers or meat anglers who purposely let the fish swallow the hook. An experienced minnow fisherman can usually avoid deep hooking fish, though the chances of it are probably still greater with live bait than with most lures (smaller soft plastics often excepted).

JoeD's nondescript places are one of the many reasons I fish fast moving lures. With topwaters, crankbaits, and spinnerbaits, I can make a cast to every spot that looks remotely possible that it could hold a fish, because I'm not investing much time in any given cast. If I was fishing soft plastics, I'd be reluctant to cast to places that looked like the chances of it holding a fish were slim at best. And yes, I've caught multiple big fish from very unlikely spots. A few that come to mind...

A 20 incher from the Huzzah, that came out from under a rather small log in about 18 inches of water on the dead water side of a pool. There were rocks on the other side and some current, but the gravel had filled in the pool until there was no water anywhere in it over two feet deep.

A 20 incher on upper Big River that came from a gravel run, zero cover, no more than 18 inches deep and only about 30 yards long, gravel bottomed, a good 100 yards above the first possible spot that I would have expected a big fish. That one was probably there because the river had changed that spring, and cut off the deep run where it had probably lived before, making it a dead water slough off the channel.

A 20 incher in another, similar spot, gravel bottomed and two feet deep with no cover, a tiny pool in between two long riffle areas.

Multiple 18 inchers from a long stretch of solid bedrock bottom, mostly fast water, no cover other than grooves in the bedrock, no water over two feet deep in it.

A 21 incher from a shallow water willow bed in slack water. This one was just upstream from the spot where that fish probably actually lived, a big log jam with good current. But 99% of the anglers wouldn't have bothered to cast to that shallow weed bed when that great looking spot was 20 yards downstream beckoning.

Multiple big fish over many years from a little gravel spit that is the delta from a small wet weather rill. The spit is just big enough to narrow the river channel a bit in the middle of about a mile of almost dead water pool on Big River. The narrowing gives it just a little bit of current in the otherwise long, slack pool. The whole pool is not over four feet deep for the most part, and the water off that little spit, which is usually covered with sparse water willow, is not more than two feet deep with no real cover.

Those are just a few of such spots, places that few people would bother to even make a perfunctory cast to. In the summer, big fish can be found in some "not classic" places, and the more heavily pressured the stream is the more likely that those overlooked places will hold big fish. And it's not only in the summer. Ask Mitch about the wintertime hotspot he discovered somewhere along the Meramec last winter. It was not a classic wintering pool.

Posted

Catching a Smallie in an unlikely place or catching a displaced bass are some of the most enjoyable aspects of river fishing. On the small head water streams I fish I often catch very nice bass after high water events, they were obviously displaced when their normal holding spots shifted or were filled in by moving gravel or collapsing banks. Sometimes these fish will get stranded by shallow riffles when the water drops out making them super exposed, not a good prospect for surviving the catch and keep fishers.

His father touches the Claw in spite of Kevin's warnings and breaks two legs just as a thunderstorm tears the house apart. Kevin runs away with the Claw. He becomes captain of the Greasy Bastard, a small ship carrying rubber goods between England and Burma. Michael Palin, Terry Jones, 1974

Posted

I still think fishing with minnows siened out of a body of water is too easy and will result in more gut hooked fish than not.

There is really no skill involved but, thats cool fish with minnows and keep 5, 15 inch smallies everytime out and see what the rivers are like for fishing in ten years you will love it.........we'll all be fishing for Carp like they do in England

Posted

Smallie, I’m a not sure who your last post is aimed at, but I mentioned earlier I never keep smallmouth.

Funny thing is, based on your pictures in some of your post, I was probably catching and releasing smallmouth when you were eating strained peas and carrots.

I was thinking about your comments while I was catfishing over the weekend. I grew up fishing the Meramec and back in the 60s and 70s you didn’t hear much about catch and release. The old timers who had the cabins by us taught me a lot about fishing a river and the first thing they taught me was how to catch bait. They showed me the best places to dig for night crawlers and seine for minnows. And they showed me how to use a screen to catch crawdads and hellgrammites’ by overturning the big rocks in the shallows.

Once we had enough bait we would head out fishing. I would usually wade downstream and the old timers would jump in their boat and head upstream. Back then I was not into cleaning fish so I let everything go. Those old guys would catch a ton of fish and keep everything. They had a big fish holding tank, which was basically a small aluminum swimming pool and they would throw everything in there until they were ready to clean them. I remember seeing big catfish, drum, and carp swimming alongside smallmouth, bluegill, goggle eye, and the occasional big sucker. Then they would have a big fish fry and everyone was invited and man that was some good eating!

They were not the only ones catching and keeping everything in those days. I think that was normal back then.

The thing I remember most about those times was how good the fishing was. Seems like we always caught fish. Never saw an area get “fished out” even with everybody keeping fish.

But I also know the river was different then. More deep water and not near as many fisherman.

So I will continue to let smallmouth go and continue to fish with minnows on occasion. I used crawdads yesterday fishing a slack water area and caught some good size spotted bass which I cleaned to eat. Like I always do.

Posted

Blaze,

All I was saying is fishing with minnows or recomending some of the people that frequent and lurk on this forum would be detrimental to smallmouth fishing on rivers.I have fished with minnows and have seen the results. I'm pretty sure you are older than me and have fished the Meramec longer than I have but, have you fished more, well I don't know about that????

Keep fishing with minnows and if you tell enough people to do the same see how good your fishing is in your favorite holes above Redhorse.After what I witnessed out there this weekend the Meramec is in good hands and the future is bright :lol:

Posted

The idea of casting everywhere with anything came into focus for me while fishing the MF in its "heyday." Those fish would be everywhere. A little 3 ft stick a half inch wide on a nothing mud bank would produce multiple smallies over 15 inches. Incredible. So, for that reason, I cast everywhere, with anything, all the time. Sure, some spots are more likely to produce, but, given my history, any spot in the stream is fair game. And will be pounded.

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