Yep, The Upper Meramec Is Low

[Al Agnew]

My wife Mary wanted to go on a float trip today, and I kinda wanted to go someplace different. Mary loves the Huzzah, and we've also gone on the Meramec a number of times together the last couple of years. I seriously thought about floating the upper Black, but finally decided to float the Meramec. I wanted to float from the Riverview access to Bird's Nest, and called Bird's Nest Lodge several times yesterday to see if I could get a shuttle. The lodge is a decent place, but they almost never answer their phone, at least when I'm calling. I left messages but heard nothing from them. So this morning I decided on the fall back option, Ozark Outdoors at Onondaga for a float from their "Bluffs" put in down to Onondaga.

Now I know Bear Bass, the owner, pretty well and he's always treated me like royalty. Great guy. But when I called them at 8 AM he wasn't available, and they told me that they couldn't shuttle us until 11 AM. Oh well, no problem, since it looked like we weren't going to even get on the road until after 9, and it's about 1.5 hours from the house.

When we got there, it was pushing 11, but they had a bus load of canoes and kayaks heading up to the Bluffs, along with one couple besides us. The canoe racks were full so they just shoved my 16 ft. Penobscot into the bus between the seats, and we took off.

As we were putting in, Bear showed up at the Bluffs, so I talked to him for quite a while. He had always shuttled me just by having a driver go with us in my car to the put-in, but he said his insurance guy told him he couldn't do that anymore for customers (but, he said, he could probably still do it for friends, wink-wink).

Anyway, when we finally got on the water it was close to noon. The river was quite low but somewhat murky, nice upper Meramec color, visibility about 3-4 feet. Perfect for my homemade crankbait, I thought. We paddled up the pool at the Bluffs first to try out my usual lures. It's a nice pool that always holds fish, and often it will tell you what's going to be happening that day. Today it told us that some fish were active, tentatively hitting the homemade crankbait, slapping at a Sammy, and taking my twin spin fairly well. I know, sounds odd that I could learn this from just one short pool, but I had about six fish strike in that pool on the different lures, though I only caught two.

A half mile down the river and I'd already caught a dozen bass, mostly smallies, and mostly small, and mostly on the twin spin. Then Mary volunteered to handle the canoe from the back for a while and let me seriously fish. Mary has an arthritic shoulder that won't let her paddle for very long, but she likes to paddle until it starts bothering her.

We came to a nice riffle running into a rocky bank, and I told Mary to slow the canoe so I could fish it. She did, perfectly, and it paid off for me with a beautiful 18 inch smallie...on the crankbait. So that made me fish the crank a lot more.

Though the river was so low, it was still easy to float most riffles. No dragging, a little scraping bottom that could have been avoided if I'd wanted to paddle the deepest channels, but often I wanted to fish those deepest channels instead of paddling through them. The couple who had ridden to the put-in with us were long gone downstream, and we wouldn't catch up to them until almost at Onondaga. Four ladies in three kayaks passed us, then we passed them, then they passed us again, but they were paddling quietly and were no problem. We stayed ahead of one more group that we'd seen upstream at one point. So it was a nice, quiet day. I didn't expect any jetboats, though actually most of the riffles would have been runnable. However, there were a few riffles that would have been nearly impossible, especially one that wasn't far above the mouth of the Huzzah.

The fish were almost all in current near the heads of the pools and in deeper runs. I caught fish out of just about every good stretch of bank, and a lot of them were right up against the bank. But most remained small. I did catch a few more smallies between 12 and 15 inches, and a couple of nice largemouth about 15-16 inches, and one fat spotted bass about 15 inches. But as we neared the mouth of the Huzzah in mid-afternoon the fishing slowed considerably, and after we passed the Huzzah, we were suddenly in amongst a bunch of rafters. I think they must have come down the Huzzah, since Ozark Outdoors puts in rafts and other craft up on the Courtois above its intersection with the Huzzah. The fishing was very slow from there on, with only a few little ones caught.

All in all, it was a pretty nice, relaxing afternoon with beautiful weather. I ended up with about 35 bass with one very good one, and got to the take-out about 6 PM. We drove into Cuba and ate at the Country Hick Barbeque, which is a pretty decent barbeque place, and then drove home. The drive home is always the worst part of fishing the Meramec...we really want to eventually find a nice place near the river and move out there one of these days.

[joeD]

Al- Country Hick BBQ is quite good. I love their monster "loaded" potato. With regard to the Meramec, well, I'm not surprised. You would think that a seasonal business would be more "on the ball" when it comes to answering phones and getting people booked. Next time call Green's, since Jason McCormick (of Birds Nest) has now taken over.

Also, I'm not surprised at your middling fishing results. For you anyway. I think the Meramec (in the upper third, to Blue Spring) is just not as productive as in the recent past. Water quality is still great, but, for some reason, fishing success (for me anyway) has definitely been sub-par. Too, I think there has been a noticeable increase in both fishing, and recreational traffic in this section of the river.

Please note: The degradation of my fishing ability (sniff) was, obviously, not a factor.

[Greasy B]

Thanks for the report, timely too. I'll probably be in that neighborhood this weekend. The low water is throwing a loop in my usual plan to avoid the teeming masses. Guess I'll have get a little more creative, maybe put in at 4:00 in the afternoon Saturday, take out at noon Sunday.

[Gavin]

Sounds like allot of fun...There used to be some pretty good fishing around the Bluffs in its heyday...Have they cleaned out any of those burned out camper shells, or are they all still stitting there?