Hey Al - Is Creek Fishing Done

[Greasy B]

It was a simple question with a simple answer. It's just a lot more fun to bicker about individual perceptions of the answer.

[fishinwrench]

Well there's obviously no blanket answer, it just depends on the individual body of water. Hell I know of a cove here in LO where crappie can be caught in 2-3fow all Winter, no spring influence, no massive amount of cover, nothing special that you'd ever recognize....but for some reason they are there. Next cove over...same water temp, same N-S-E-W orientation, same bottom composition....but no crappie. Crazy! It's like trying to figure out why your wife sits with her legs crossed, and your girlfriend sits with both feet in the floor.

Ooops! Did I say that outloud?

[Chief Grey Bear]

By the way, Chief, smaller springs DO attract fish in the winter, as long as they are large enough to have a thermal effect bigger than a bathtub and as long as that thermal effect is in water deep enough to allow the fish to feel comfortable hanging around. Not all of them do, but some do. I know several on the Meramec that always have a group of fish (both largemouth and smallmouth) clustered around them in the winter. And on upper Big River, some of the old drill pipes that lead down into the flooded mines and now gush groundwater into the river will hold fish in the winter...but some don't. But as little spring-fed as Big River is, the one good sized spring on it, which comes out into what should be a good wintering pool, apparently does NOT attract fish. It could be that it's too polluted, or the water chemistry is somehow wrong. Even this spring water effect is still somewhat of a mystery. I know springs that come out into shallow runs on small, clear rivers that attract a lot of fish, and springs that come out into deeper water on good winter fishing streams that don't appear to attract many. And there are springs that appear to attract fish from somewhere in the coldest weather, but in less cold periods of the winter are devoid of fish with apparently no fish anywhere close to them. Even some of the biggest springs are not big fish attractors in the winter, while they really stack up around other big springs.

I have talke to three different biologist at different times about springs and winter fishing. It wasn't the subject of conversation but, did come up during our discussions. That seemed to be somewhat of a magic number with them. And basically it was explained that anything smaller was in effect like trying to heat a cold storage warehouse with a hairdryer.

And I agree with the some do and some don't. Just like your scenarios, there are three spots close to home where spring creeks run into a larger river that creates a significant thermal change in both winter and summer. But as you state for some reason they do not hold any more fish from one season to the next.

Now the next question, but first a little story. My dad is an avid bird feeder. And that means he has squirrels. So he started live trapping them and taking them to the river and letting go. After catching all of them over a week or two period, he would be squirrel free for a few weeks but slowly, he would have four or five more and out would come the live trap. This has gone on for years. It is a never ending process. We have concluded that some squirrels just seem to be on the move constantly.

We know that some fish move. And now with tagging, we know alot more about their movements. Of the tagged fish in the recent study, the only fish we have heard about is the few, that were caught miles from where they were tagged. Were this fish already moving? Do they not really have a home territory? Are some fish like these squirrels, always on the move? There are a ton of questions that will take years to answer.

[fishinwrench]

Good point. Just because a fish was released in one spot and caught in another really doesn't indicate anything, except that the fish wasn't tied to a log.

Evidence that fish ping-pong back and forth seasonally is just an assumption.

A tagged fish captured a year later from the same area where it was released hasn't happened yet. Or has it?

[Al Agnew]

I don't know about tagged fish, but back when the biologists were getting baseline data on the stream sections that they were considering for special regulations, it was fairly common to shock the same fish in the same place two or three years in a row, especially bigger fish. However, most of the shocking was done in early autumn, if I'm not mistaken.

I've caught the same fish from the same spot, or at least within 100 yards of the same spot, three years in a row on middle Big River, and caught the same fish from the same spot two years in a row a couple of times. These were bigger fish with obvious identifying characteristics.

Interestingly, that fish I caught three years in a row...the first two years, I caught it in the exact same spot, both times in mid-summer. It was a short run of moving water between two long, relatively shallow stretches of very slow water. The third year, I caught it in mid-November in the middle of a long warm spell, when water temps were still in the 60s. It had moved to the next pool downstream of the lower stretch of slow water, and was hanging in fairly fast water at the head of that pool. That pool was a pretty decent wintering pool, with big ledges of rock that fish could get under. So I'd say that fish spent the summers in that little bit of faster water in a stretch of otherwise poor habitat, and moved downstream to the first good wintering place in the fall.

Chief is right that we won't know for sure how many migrate and how far they go until there are better tracking studies done. The problem with tagging studies is that you have to depend upon the fish being caught and turned in, and once the tag is turned in that's the end of the data on that fish. And since few people fish Courtois Creek in the winter because they know it's practically useless to do so, the chances of having a tagged fish turned in on Courtois in cold weather is practically nil even if the fish is still there. To know for sure whether they migrate back and forth, you'd have to catch the fish in the Meramec in the winter and then catch it again on Courtois the next summer.

But there's a lot of circumstantial evidence, based upon both the characteristics of Huzzah and Courtois, how much the fishing declines on these streams even before the water gets really cold in the fall, and some other things...

For instance, there were a couple of years when the Meramec right at the mouth of the Huzzah was about 4 feet deep and medium-slow current. No cover, just a gravel bottom and a couple of smallish logs on the edges. It's since changed to where it's even shallow and faster. But when it was just that little bit deeper, but certainly not what you'd consider wintering habitat, in February and March there were smallmouth and goggle-eye simply crammed into that spot. If they weren't staging to travel up the Huzzah, I have no idea whatsoever what they were doing there.

[Chief Grey Bear]

IChief is right that we won't know for sure how many migrate and how far they go until there are better tracking studies done. The problem with tagging studies is that you have to depend upon the fish being caught and turned in, and once the tag is turned in that's the end of the data on that fish. And since few people fish Courtois Creek in the winter because they know it's practically useless to do so, the chances of having a tagged fish turned in on Courtois in cold weather is practically nil even if the fish is still there. To know for sure whether they migrate back and forth, you'd have to catch the fish in the Meramec in the winter and then catch it again on Courtois the next summer.

The only way to have true and accurate information is to use radio tagging. Set it to ping once every two weeks. Or maybe even once a month to maximize battery life. It would be a great read to study all of these movements. There has been some fascinating movements recorded. One was duck that was tagged, I believe in S. Dakota. It flew 1300 miles in 24 hrs and was in Louisiana the day. Also one of the Prairie Chickens that was captured in KS and relocated to MO. It spent a few days in MO then flew back to KS. Spent a few days and then decided it like MO better and moved back. I forget the milage right now, but it was one heck of a long way for a chicken.

[Greasy B]

A radio tagging study would be interesting for sure. Would we be able to discern a homebody bass from a 13 incher who's filleted carcass was tossed into the water?

[Chief Grey Bear]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_migration_tracking

Maybe this can explain it for you.

[exiledguide]

mic I changed my mind. I now believe creek fishing is done for me, ended last week when my expert repair on my waders failed, unless I buy new waders..............nothing like a leak at your wallet pocket.........wet foot is one thing

[ColdWaterFshr]

downstream of a certain spring branch (to remain nameless but you could probably figure it out) had hundreds of these guys stacked up yesterday -- and much bigger, including a couple largemouth that were easy 20"