God Bless The Kentucky Bass

[Chief Grey Bear]

Again, and as simple as I can make it for you, I am not disputing that the spot range now includs the Meramec system. I never have.

I will dispute that they have caused an almost 100% reduction in smallmouth populations. Have they caused some reduction in smallmouth populations??? Good question. It is possible. But I highly doubt it is anywhere near the numbers that have been mentioned.

How does increased jet boat traffic and increased fishing pressure favor the spot??

[Gavin]

Its been a VERY drastic decrease Chief...Friend of mines family owns some sweet property on the Bourbuese.. Goode's Mill Dam just downstream from Union...First Mill Dam up from the Meramec mainstem and its been in the family for 50 years or so..Fish stack up there...bass, walleye, drum, whatever...spoonbill have been caught there. Some great pics on the wall of that clubhouse...

It used to be a great smallmouth spot.....they are not there anymore......maybe one out of 20-30 8-10" spotted bass.

[Al Agnew]

Chief, you simply don't know these rivers. I do. I've fished them for more than 50 years. I know their histories. And I've spent a lot of time talking about this with the biologists, gone with them on electroshocking trips, kept careful creel records of the fish I've caught over a several year period. The biologists are all in agreement, spotted bass have SEVERELY impacted smallmouth numbers on these rivers. There are no other factors that are COMMON to all the waters affected. Jetboats? They can't run most of Big River and the Bourbeuse most of the year and are a non-factor in the upper halves of these streams. Fishing pressure? It's just as high or higher on the parts of the upper Meramec, Huzzah, and Courtois where the habitat simply isn't suitable for spotted bass, and where the spots are rare. Water quality? There has been little change in water quality in some of the sections of the Bourbeuse where spots are increasing exponentially, and the water quality in parts of Big River has probably actually gotten better.

[Chief Grey Bear]

Chief, you simply don't know these rivers. I do. I've fished them for more than 50 years. I know their histories. And I've spent a lot of time talking about this with the biologists, gone with them on electroshocking trips, kept careful creel records of the fish I've caught over a several year period. The biologists are all in agreement, spotted bass have SEVERELY impacted smallmouth numbers on these rivers. There are no other factors that are COMMON to all the waters affected. Jetboats? They can't run most of Big River and the Bourbeuse most of the year and are a non-factor in the upper halves of these streams. Fishing pressure? It's just as high or higher on the parts of the upper Meramec, Huzzah, and Courtois where the habitat simply isn't suitable for spotted bass, and where the spots are rare. Water quality? There has been little change in water quality in some of the sections of the Bourbeuse where spots are increasing exponentially, and the water quality in parts of Big River has probably actually gotten better.

No I don't know them as well as you. But I do read your reports as well as others that post.

In looking at the Biotic Communities for the area's we are discussing, the smallmouth is not listed as threatened or endangered by the MDC in any of them. I would think that certainly if the smallmouth had experienced a 95% drop in population, they would have made that list.

[Wayne SW/MO]

The most likely culprit is the various stream changes that man has heaped on the watersheds. The Kentuckies have always had access, they just needed favorable conditions.

They're pretty healthy in TR comparatively, but I don't know if they were stocked. They seem to have larger strains in some areas, likes smallies.

[Al Agnew]

How do you quantify when species is threatened or endangered? Is it when they begin to disappear from a whole region? Here we're talking about drastic declines in certain river stretches, and major declines in other stretches, while in the stretches where the habitat is not conducive to good spot survival, the smallmouth are doing just fine. It's not a matter of smallies in the Meramec Basin being threatened, it's a matter of the smallmouth fishery in various stages of decline.

Kevin Meneau, who was the chief smallmouth biologist for MDC, has often called the Meramec Basin spots "evil little critters". If you talk to him or the current biologists, they will confirm figures similar to mine. In fact, the last time I talked to the current biologist about the lower portion of Big River where I said the smallmouth were at 5% of their former numbers, he confirmed to me that there were only two small locations in the lower 20 miles of the river where they were able to find ANY smallmouth. One was in the fast water right below one of the mill dams, the other was in a quarter mile stretch of fast water over a bedrock bottom.

I gave a report early this summer about a particular stretch of Big River where I said I caught a lot more smallmouth than spots, and that I hoped that it was showing the smallies on the rebound to some extent in that stretch. That's a 14 mile reach of the upper river which has always been one of my favorite stretches. Back several years ago when I helped the biologist shock it, we shocked about 75% spotted bass, although in fishing it, I'd been seeing the ratio of spots to smallmouths in what I was catching while fishing hang around 50/50. In the 8 mile stretch just below that one, the ratio in my catch has held at slightly more spots than smallmouth for a few years. In the 10 mile stretch just above it, the one I referenced in my first post, there have been just slightly more smallies than spots for a couple of years. In the 7 mile stretch above that one, the spots have increased over the last four years from about 10% to about 40%. And that stretch is the farthest upstream the spots had reached, until last year when I caught a couple above it. Where is it? The stretch just below the Leadwood Access. There are only about 15 miles of marginally floatable water from there upstream. That's all that's left of the entire 140 miles of Big River that is almost untouched by spotted bass.

The upper Bourbeuse, above Noser Mill, has a similar situation, where spots are gradually getting more and more common as they continue to move upstream. The Bourbeuse below Noser Mill has been fairly stable now for a number of years, with more spots than smallmouth in the stretch just below Noser, far more spots than smallies in the next stretch down to Union, and smallmouth almost non-existent below Union.

The Meramec has been reasonably stable for quite a while now, with spotted bass making up about 10%, maybe a little less some places and a little more other places, in the river above above Meramec State Park. Below the park, they rapidly increase as you go downstream. By the time you get to the St. Clair area, they outnumber the smallmouth. Below the mouth of the Bourbeuse they greatly outnumber the smallmouth.

A lot of us have advocated removing all limits on spots in the Meramec Basin, and complete protection for smallmouth in the areas where the spots outnumber the smallmouth. But MDC is inherently conservative when it comes to regulations. Still, they instituted the 12 fish, no length limit on spots throughout the basin, and on almost the entire length of Big River that is coupled with a 1 fish, 15 inch limit on smallmouth. I believe that these regulations have done a lot to stabilize the spot/smallmouth ratios on the various stream sections, except in the upper end of Big River and the Bourbeuse, where the spots are still increasing.

But there is no doubt that the spotted bass invasion has wrecked what was once some of the best big smallmouth fishing in the Ozarks on these three streams. We catch a lot of nice smallies on the upper Meramec, down to St. Clair, mostly in the winter. Nobody catches big smallmouth with any regularity anymore on the lower half of the Bourbeuse, the lower portions of Big River, or the Meramec below St. Clair. Are there other factors at play? Yes, on the Meramec there are. The spotted bass invasion of the lower Meramec coincided with the explosion in use of jetboats on that river, and the fishing pressure has definitely played a role in the decline of smallmouth fishing on the lower river. The Meramec between St. Clair and the mouth of the Bourbeuse was almost certainly the best place in the Ozarks to catch 18 inch plus smallies back in the 1970s and early 1980s, and the decline in the fishery started with spotted bass moving into that stretch in the mid-80s--suddenly we were catching lots of little spots and far fewer smallmouth. Then jetboats got really popular, and the decline deepened.

But jetboats have never been a big factor on Big River and the Bourbeuse. Neither stream is runnable by jetboat year-round, and the upper halves seldom see a jetboat. At the same time that fishing was declining on the parts of the Meramec where spots were increasing, it was actually getting BETTER on the parts of Big River where the spots hadn't yet appeared. Then the spotted bass got past the barrier formed by the Morse Mill dam, and gradually but rapidly spread upstream on Big River. And as the appeared in each successive upstream section, the smallmouth fishery declined. The biologists agree with us anglers that the spotted bass have directly replaced smallmouth in these sections. The smallmouth haven't disappeared, but their numbers are NOTHING like the were pre-spotted bass.

The jury is still out on the apparent stabilization of the spotted/smallmouth ratio over the lower portions of these three streams, and how much of it is reaching a "natural": balance versus the effects of the liberalized spotted bass regulations. But even if it has stabilized, it would take a major reduction in spotted bass numbers over and above what we've seen to bring back a smallmouth fishery anything like it was.

[ozark trout fisher]

To me the spotted bass/smallmouth situation on the Meramec and Bourbeuse rivers is very sad...and it would be worse for me if I'd fished them back in the good old days before spots. There's just so much excellent smallmouth habitat on stream stretches like the middle Bourbeuse that just can't come close to reaching their potential because of this. I know you read our reports on these streams and see that we're still catching smallmouth, sometimes some pretty good ones. That's true, and it's why I keep coming back despite them being in a diminished state. But smallmouth numbers in the affected stream stretches (right now I'm primarily referring to the Bourbeuse, because that's where I do a great deal of my smallie fishing these days) are perhaps 1/2 to 1/3 of what you'd expect for the sort of habitat you're fishing. Honestly I know the Bourbeuse pretty well and comparing it to other similar streams I can say with a fair amount of certainty that hte smallmouth numbers are just not close to what they "should" be, given the available habitat. And this is on the rivers middle section, above the town of Union, which as Al mentioned is where things really get grim. Smallmouth bass seem to be entirely absent below there. Maybe there a few scattered here and there but I've never had any success finding them. Once again, this all used to be really good smallmouth water.

They're a non-native species, and they are certainly causing damage. So I don't like them in the places where they don't belong. It's nothing against spotted bass...Brook trout are my favorite fish to catch by a mile, and will always release whenever I can-but when they're harming native cutthroat on a Rocky Mountain stream I'll keep them as much as I don't like doing it. Same with rainbows...I'd never keep them in their native range but don't really have to think twice about it when I'm at Montauk Park. So like you I enjoy spotted bass, I love how they sometimes liven up slow days, but I just don't like that they're non-native in the streams I fish and causing a whole bunch of problems for those that are.

[joeD]

Why is it so difficult for so many stream anglers to come to grips with the fact that spotted bass are both a nuisance and a threat to smallmouth bass? That the the very presence of spotted bass in our Ozark streams is worrisome, to say the least. On this forum, we fish for trout and smallmouth bass. We don't fish for spots. If YOU do, fine. Godspeed. Start a new forum, called "Spotted Bass: Really, We Are Misunderstood and Belong In Your Ozark Streams." Really. If you love spotted bass so much, wouldn't you be in favor of our Ozark streams becoming slower, siltier, less healthy? Allowing spotted bass to thrive?

Imagine replacing the smallies in the Jacks Fork with spots. In the Huzzah. Big Piney. Gasconade.

I make no apologies in saying that my interest in keeping spotted bass out of streams I want to fish is the correct and prudent path. Selfish? No question. Simply put, absolutely NO stream will suffer by protecting smallmouth bass. They will, however, suffer in both quality and health, if spotted bass are allowed to flourish.

I love fishing for smallmouth bass in Missouri's Ozark streams.

[ozarkgunner]

Save a smallie kill a spot.

[Chief Grey Bear]

If the decimation of the smallmouth is as described in these waters, then why hasn't the MDC instituted a no harvest rule in these sections? It would be no different than SBMMA's that have been established. Why still allow their harvest if they are on the brink of extinction in those sections? Why haven't LMB numbers been effected?

Al - that dam at Morse Mill, I have never seen it but, how did they get around it?

joeD- bless your heart, you have a lot to learn my friend.