Good Smallmouth Creeks?

[ness]

Thanks for the kind words there Gavin. You are a heck of guy. I am not sure that it is my ego that is keeping you from learning something from me though.

Now as far as mini-me, that could also be a description of Ness.

Just keep puffing the old chest there Chief. The internet is a perfect venue for you. I'm just sure the folks are knocking down the doors to get in on an Ozark Fishing Expedition with you, based on your contributions here.

[Al Agnew]

I am not discounting your theory Al. It is a valid theory. I am just saying there are other factors involved and we can't point the finger at just one. If you will remember, there was also a very severe drought in the early 80's that dropped both the Mississippi and Missouri rivers to the point nothing was moving. There was more water moving in the Missouri this summer during the drought than there was in the drought of the early 80's and we were swimming all over the river near Boonsville without any worries. Heck, you could literally walk, and we did, half way into the river. The spots would have no trouble moving around. And really it was surprisingly clear. We went for some catfishing and I was really bumed I didn't bring my bass gear. I would have loved to catch a bass out of that big water.

Yeah, I remember that drought. It may have made it easier for the spots to keep moving, but they'd already colonized Apple Creek, Saline Creek, Establishment Creek, and probably Joachim and Plattin creeks by the early to mid-80s. Those are the streams, in that order, that they would have gotten to by moving up the Mississippi. I didn't fish them enough back then to tell you exactly when they got there, but I know they were almost the only bass species in Apple Creek below the Appleton Mill, but were totally absent above the mill dam, in the time period from 1975-1977. They were absent from Saline Creek, the next stream to the north running into the Mississippi, during that same time period, but were thick in it by the early 80s. Ditto with Establishment Creek, the next one to the north--they were thick in it by 1983 or so. They began to really show up in the Meramec by the mid-80s. So it wasn't just one pulse of fish colonizing all these streams, it would appear that they gradually moved north in the period of a decade or so.

I think what you have to ask is, if there was any good way for them to get into those streams before the 1970s-80s, why didn't they. Surely there were other droughts and such in all the centuries since the last ice age. What made them do it now?

[Chief Grey Bear]

I think what you have to ask is, if there was any good way for them to get into those streams before the 1970s-80s, why didn't they. Surely there were other droughts and such in all the centuries since the last ice age. What made them do it now?

I don't know. There are no hard fast rules to Mother Nature. Come on, you know how women are.

[Chief Grey Bear]

Just keep puffing the old chest there Chief. The internet is a perfect venue for you. I'm just sure the folks are knocking down the doors to get in on an Ozark Fishing Expedition with you, based on your contributions here.

That is absolutly hilarious coming from you.

[drew03cmc]

Dont fret T man....Cook yourself some....Most are with you...but they dont want to waste time argueing with Chief or Drew.

I've heard that Chief can catch a fish. Self important....details v. big picture......hopeless cause...Searching for perfection as defined by him.... in an imperfect world...Good luck with that! Probably still darn good at what he likes to do. Kinda guy you might learn something from if he ever got his ego out of the way.

Drew..not sure what to make of him...Kinda like a mini-me Chief.....leads with his heart....detail guy...cares about stuff that he thinks is important...zip for river time as far as I know...Always shows up for an argument....but no fishing pic....Somebodies Stunt double?

Gavin, river time isn't the word. I have creek time up here catching our bass and sunfish species from the many creeks in the KC area since I live a good 3 hours from the Ozarks.

If you look at the situation from a common sense standpoint it doesn't take much to see big changes in the streams. They're rapidly filling in at the same time springs are diminishing causing the water to warm. Smallmouth don't do well in hot water and they avoid it. The spots have always had access to every river in Missouri, the dams haven't been here forever!

Spots vs Smallmouths, a yearly debate on here. I think the temperature difference and habitat loss are the two factors most important here, that are commonly ignored.

Wayne, what I'll disagree with you on (still not arguing with Chief and Drew is that it's very possible they did NOT have a USABLE direct connection to the norhern Ozark streams. As you probably remember, my theory is that the Missouri River was historically too turbid, and made the Mississippi too turbid between the Missouri and the Ohio, for spotted bass to move through it, or want to move through it. But when the dams were built on the upper Missouri, it cut the silt load downstream considerably and the Mississippi became a spotted bass highway. And the Diversion Channel gave them a shorter route up the Mississippi.

Spotted bass are native to Whitewater River in southeast Missouri, a south-flowing stream that once flowed into the Castor River, which flowed down through the bootheel of Missouri and into Arkansas well before entering the Mississippi well below the mouth of the Ohio. Apple Creek is right across a divide to the east, same latitude as Whitewater, but flows directly into the Mississippi in the stretch of the Mississippi above the Ohio. There were no spotted bass in Apple Creek until sometime around the late 1960s, and even when they showed up, they were only found below the Appleton Mill dam, so they had to come up from the Mississippi. Given that the climate hadn't changed all that much yet at that time, and given that Apple Creek was always perfect spotted bass habitat, there had to be something that kept them from getting there before the 1960s. I believe the Diversion Channel, which cut off Whitewater River and directed it into the Mississippi just 20 miles or so downstream from the mouth of Apple Creek, gave them a shorter route, and all the upper Missouri River dams were in place by the late 1960s.

I would be willing to bet money that, if the genetics of Meramec River spotted bass were ever studied in depth and compared to Whitewater/Castor River spotted bass genetics, they would be a match, as would the genetics of spotted bass in Apple Creek and the other streams flowing directly into the Mississippi between the Diversion Channel and the Meramec.

Two human actions, the dams on the Missouri and the Diversion Channel, allowed spotted bass to reach the Meramec. That's my theory.

The dams on the Missouri are MUCH older than the spotted bass "problem", and the Diversion channel, while a convenient scapegoat, isn't something that we could blame the whole situation on.

[Al Agnew]

Pflieger mentions in his book that there was an undocumented stocking in the Osage system before 1940 and that one was seined at the junction of the big rivers in 1969. That puts them very close 40+ years ago. If you assume they have had access for many decades then the question would be "what is different?". I have trouble buying the dams theory because the dams are not only far upriver, but they are all old enough to question why it would take so long to make a big difference?

I don't see how the big changes in most of the Ozark streams can be ignored, given the fact that spots are drawn to waters just slightly warmer and more turbid than smallies? I'm not real familiar with the eastern streams, but I assumed they suffered the same fate as the ones in the west, loss of deep water and clear water.

Wayne, all the big dams except Fort Peck (1940s) were built in the 1950s, and I believe a couple weren't completed and full until the early 1960s. And the majority of the silt which once came down the Missouri came from rivers flowing into the Missouri above those dams.

But there is one more component to my theory, and that is the Clean Water Act. We all know the Mississippi was pretty badly polluted up until the Clean Water Act required cities like St. Louis to do a better job of treating sewage. So it could have been the lessening of pollution in the Mississippi between St. Louis and Cairo that was the final thing that allowed spotted bass to spread up the Mississippi. The dams reduced the siltation which originally may have kept them from using the big river, and but it was still pretty inhospitable to them because of the pollution.

The streams of the Meramec River system were NOT in worse shape in the 1970s and early 1980s when the spotted bass first reached them than they were previously. The habitat in the Meramec and in Big River was actually getting better at that point. Remember, we're not talking about the last ten or twenty years, but before that. There weren't any major, long term droughts back then. The Clean Water Act had cleaned up some pollution problems on the lower Meramec and on Big River. The mines on Big River had shut down, and although the mine waste already in the river wasn't getting any better, it also wasn't getting any worse than before. And these rivers had ALWAYS been what you'd consider perfect spotted bass habitat. That's a key. There is simply no reason that spotted bass couldn't have thrived in the lower 50 miles or so of the Meramec and nearly ALL of Big River and Bourbeuse River, had they been able to get there. Those rivers had always been slower and more murky than typical Ozark streams, and were not heavily spring fed, so they were also always warmer in the summer than a lot of Ozark streams. Only the upper Meramec and Huzzah/Courtois creeks were more "typical" Ozark streams, the Huzzah and Courtois clear and fast, and the upper Meramec, fed by Maramec Spring and other good sized springs, reasonably cool and clear. And the spotted bass have not to this point come anywhere close to taking over those stream sections, while they are common in all the stream sections that ARE good habitat for them.

There's no doubt that spotted bass from the unauthorized stocking in Lake of the Ozarks were the source of spotted bass in the rivers above LOZ (Sac, Pomme de Terre), those that run into LOZ (lower Niangua), and the Osage River and tributaries below LOZ (Tavern Creek, Moreau River, Maries River). Those in the Gasconade may have come from the Loutre River, where MDC stocked them in the 1960s--the Loutre enters the Missouri on the opposite side, just a few miles from the mouth of the Gasconade. Or they may have come down the Missouri from the Osage, which is on the same side of the river as the Gasconade. But the timeline of when they showed up in the Mississippi River tributaries between St. Louis and the Diversion Channel would tell you that the Diversion Channel was where the Meramec spots came from.

The whole notion of habitat change is, in some ways, a cop out. Yes, habitat in many streams is getting worse these days. But smallmouth can survive in some pretty marginal habitat as long as they don't have the competition. They can survive drought and flood and hot temperatures. Ever float the Buffalo in mid-August of a hot summer? The water feels like bath water and is usually barely flowing over much of the river, but the Buffalo still has plenty of smallies (and very few spotted bass). Smallmouth thrived in the Bourbeuse, an always murky, very slow, warm river that also nearly dries up in the riffles over much of it, until the spotted bass got there. They thrived in the mine waste sections of upper Big River, where there was almost no water over 4 or 5 feet deep and much of the fish-holding water was under three feet deep due to the mine waste filling it in, until now, when spotted bass have gotten to be as common as smallmouth in those sections.

Bottom line is, those rivers were always good spotted bass habitat, so there had to be something else keeping the spotted bass from reaching them until the 1970s and 1980s.

[ColdWaterFshr]

Bottom line is, those rivers were always good spotted bass habitat, so there had to be something else keeping the spotted bass from reaching them until the 1970s and 1980s.

There was.

Paul Dallas was the owner-operator of a 47-ft trawler, the SS Poositania out of Sauget. Those were the days. We ran up and down the Mississippie and dragnetted every gill-breathing creature we could capture between there and Chester, IL and all the way up Quincy and well up in to rivers like the Meremac. Oh, the parties we would have. It was Caligula on the Mighty Mississippi. In one infamous episode of filming, Jacques Cousteau accompanied us in his famous boat the Calypso which we took all the way up to the mouth of the Big River on the Meramec. It was a nighttime mission and Andy Williams was a special guest and we blared him singing Moon River over the loud speakers as the ladies ate appetizers and poured maritinis in the glow of tiki torches on our decks. The nets brought up many a treasure that night I can tell you. Here are the contents of the first one we brought up which we carefully recorded:

1) 432 spotted bass, including one impressive specimen that went 9 lbs and had a live 4 lb smallmouth swimming in its belly which we were happy to cut open and release. Also in the belly of this massive spot we found a well preserved unopened box of Cracker Jacks, which, ironically, as its surprise had a coupon for a free can of Chicken-Of-The -Sea tuna. Jacques got a kick out of that one and cackled like a school girl.

2) a 28 lb walleye that was missing all of its teeth and had fresh weber grill marks on its starboard side; we could only surmise was a lucky escapee from an unattentive gravel bar shore lunch chef from earilier in the day.

3) a dented bumper off a Volkswagen Microbus with a bumper sticker that said Proud Supporter of DeSoto Police Officers Association right next to a steal your face sticker.

4) various rare and exotic Spanish gold galleons and dabloons that went unreported on Jacques IRS filings. We promised each other to keep quiet about it. We later went on Antique Roadshow and found out these coins were worth millions.

5) a parking meter with 23 minutes still left on its time, and it was still ticking.

6) a small white dolphin which was clearly hundreds of miles north of where it should be. We clubbed it and ate it. Dancing around its carcass like a pack of peyotee'd Apaches. A hired hand on the Calypso leaked this story to the press where it became the inspiration for Ted Nugents song White Buffalo.

7) 11 baseballs, 2 of which were signed by Stan Musial, one was signed by Ty Cobb, and another by some kid named Tyler.

8) A yellow Schwinn Lemon-Peeler with a cable-lock attached to a bicycle rack.

9) 197 smallmouth bass

10) 3 brook trout

[ColdWaterFshr]

11) Jimmy Hoffa's left arm.

[exiledguide]

Were you on that boat too? Those were Joe Cockers back up singers with..................never mind that was a different boat and I wasn't on it.................and it was his left leg.................

[Mitch f]

Paul used to keep the Poosotania docked over at Pontoon Beach, we had to help him get it up on rollers to reach the diversion channel around Chain of Rocks. Those were the days!!