Return To The Meramec

[Old plug]

About 50 yrs ago I started fishing the Meramec river spending most of my time between the birds nest and onadaga. My wife's people settled that area of the state and founded the baptist church in the Steelville. and one if her ancestors was a circuit rider preacher. I loved the area. I loved to be out on the river. A long time ago I wrote a story for the Missouri conservationist called The River of Surprise. My wife family all passed and we got busy with other things and it has been many many years since I have even seen the river.

Recently we had reason to go back to Leasburg. And before we left I wanted to take a ride down and see the river. I did not like what I seen. The place was loaded with people tubes, canoes, a massive campground. Beer cans and such all over the place. I sure did not need to see that. I get enough of summer people destroying things around my home here. It made me feel like visiting a very sick old friend. It was a real river of surprise this time. I will not be going back

[405z06]

I understand where you are coming from, but I really don't know it any other way than the way it is today. On summer weekends it is a zoo. Those people are enjoying the river, but in a quite different way than I enjoy it. But those people allow Ozark Outdoors and other camps to stay open almost all year, so when I go down there off-season, or even in-season but on a weekday, then I can enjoy the river the way I like to, and do so mostly in peace and solitude.

When you get as many people as that river does on summer weekends, there is going to be a footprint left behind. But I honesty don't see much of it. I don't see trash, I don't see many beer cans, i don't see cigarette butts.

I love that stretch of the Meramec and hopefully always will.

[Hog Wally]

The same kind of losers will trash any place they go and little regard for the future. Luckily most of them don't fish. With the ethics they have it would be disastrous. We commonly call these people city trash.

[gramps50]

I will never understand people who come out to enjoy the outdoors and can't pick up after themselves. Maybe it should be a requirement that they bring their mothers with them to clean up after them.

[Old plug]

Yeah I know gramps. There is times I think about leaving LOZ. I have found drug needles floating near my dock after a weekend of the rich and privileged running around here drunk and disorderly. It's not all but it is sure a lot f themand it is getting worse.

[Al Agnew]

Not many people love the Meramec more than I do, but it has certainly changed since I began floating it 40 years ago. Even then, the weekends were getting crazy due to all the canoe rental places springing up, but it was strictly a weekend thing...especially a Saturday thing. And you could avoid most of it by putting in out of synch with the crowds, which the canoe rentals all put in at the same accesses between 9 and 10 AM. If you got on the river at daylight you'd have much of the day to yourself. And almost nobody was actually fishing the river, at least fishing it well, before the jetboats arrived on the scene in the mid-1980s. Also, nobody was renting rafts, and the river dorks renting canoes would usually flip and lose their boom box at some point during the day, along with all their beer...just had to hope that most of them would flip early. I never brought beer on my floats, but would usually pick up a six pack or two sometime during the day when I'd see them lying on the bottom. Once the canoe rentals started renting rafts, which were almost impossible to flip and held a whole party, things got a lot rowdier yet. And once the jetboats got popular, you couldn't avoid the motorhead river dorks that would cover ten miles of river...over and over again. And these days, Fridays are nearly as busy as Saturdays and even the weekdays are getting busier...does nobody work anymore???

But it's still a wonderful river. The fishing isn't what it once was (again, both directly and indirectly because of jetboats). Too many good anglers fishing from jetboats, which made fishing the river so much more convenient, too many people gigging illegally, which jetboats made a lot more convenient and effective as well. But when you float from Onondaga to Meramec State Park during the offseason on a coupld of weekdays, you can still forget all that and just enjoy a spectacularly beautiful river.

[Mitch f]

That river provides much enjoyment for me! In 1 hour I can be at the ramp. Some big smallies at the rate of about 1 per mile

[Hog Wally]

Last winter I gigged a lot of my water and used it as a scouting tool cause I really can't handle more than a few ziplock bags of hog mollies I found that we have some giant smallmouth on the river still. Even better is the amount of crappie and white bass and lunker largemouth. I have to say most guys I know don't keep bass. I haven't ate a smallmouth in twenty years. Was camping when I ate that one. For all its worth I think when the boats are stirring it up that's time to fish.

[Old plug]

Mitch I have no doubt the river would provide some good fishing. I just do not like crowds in spite of where I live.

[405z06]

Last winter I gigged a lot of my water and used it as a scouting tool cause I really can't handle more than a few ziplock bags of hog mollies I found that we have some giant smallmouth on the river still. Even better is the amount of crappie and white bass and lunker largemouth. I have to say most guys I know don't keep bass. I haven't ate a smallmouth in twenty years. Was camping when I ate that one. For all its worth I think when the boats are stirring it up that's time to fish.

I'd love to hear stories about the quantities and quality of smallmouth you see while gigging suckers.

There is some cool videos on YouTube of guys on the Jacks Fork with underwater cameras taking the camera under shallow log jams & downed tree roots. Even in shallow-ish water, tons of fish hanging in there, often deep, deep inside the cover.