Expectations

[MOsmallies]

Great to see you back on here Andy! Missed your reports and insight. Hope you've been catching em good this summer.

[Seth]

The problem with most river tournaments, even the best run ones, is that the fish are relocated, often many miles from where they were caught, when they are released after weigh-in. Of course, this happens in most lake tournaments as well. There have been studies done on the delayed mortality of lake tournament fish, but to my knowledge none have been done for river tourney fish. Nobody really knows how many of them try to move back to their "home water", or how many of them actually make it, or how many of them are so stressed either from trying to get back or from trying to compete with "local" fish around the release point that they eventually die or at least don't thrive. It's possible that everything mostly works out okay and it does little harm, but you could also see where it could be a real problem, especially since we are talking about larger adult fish in so many cases, they being the fish that are kept and weighed in.

I don't worry TOO much about the tournaments. Perhaps their biggest drawback is conflict with other anglers. I don't fish on weekends so I don't run into this problem, but imagine the poor sap who heads down to an access on the Gasconade for a nice Sunday of fishing to find the parking lot completely full because a tournament is being held there that day. Tournaments often concentrate good anglers at given accesses, instead of probably spreading them out over many accesses.

I agree that the local catch and keep anything hoosiers are one of the biggest problems, whether they are doing it with rod and reel, trotline, or gig.

I do know that there was five or six weeks where there were tournaments out of the Jerome and Bell Chutes accesses on the Gasconade. The first Jerome tournament produced a 5 pound and a 4 pound largemouth. The following weekend there was a tournament out of Bell Chutes and the guy that won it ran up to Jerome and camped out at the access all day and ended up catching that 5 pounder and says he lost another one that would push 4 so most likely it was those same two fish. The five pounder was then dumped back in at the Bell Chutes ramp and I believe was also caught within two weeks of that tournament by somebody camping out at the Bell Chutes access during a tournament. I'm sure it was the same fish since a five pounder isn't exactly common for the Gasconade. I fished a tournament out of Bell Chutes not long after that and ended up catching a 4.59 pound largemouth about a mile down river from the Bell Chutes access. It had been caught recently by the marks on it's mouth but the other guys didn't think it was the 5 pounder. It was pretty skinny when I caught it so I think it could have been the same 5 pounder everybody else had caught multiple times but it had just moved down river a ways and I I was lucky enough to catch right away in the morning.

Fish start feeding pretty soon after being caught I do know. Last Saturday we had a tournament out of Bell Chutes. I went back the next day to take a buddy fishing and he caught a 13" smallmouth down from the ramp a few hundred yards that was caught the day before judging by the marks on it's mouth. There was a tournament out of Rollins Ferry Sunday and it took right at 12 pounds to win it. I'm sure a guy could go back this weekend and fish the boulders and wood nearest to the access and catch some a bunch of those tournament fish after giving them a week of rest.

The worst thing about having tournaments at the same ramp that often are that whoever has the most patience to stay near the ramp and fish all day will most likely win. Those fish may not bite right away but eventually they will turn on. There are a few guys that are masters at doing that. Most of us don't have the patience.

[Blazerman]

Ok back to expectations, this past weekend I caught a bunch of fish in a day and a half which has me really looking forward to this fall.

I tried a bait I haven’t used before and I believe this will now be my new number one summer\ early fall bait. The bait is a Bass Pro river bug and I had it rigged on a weedless jig head. I think it was probably a 3/8 oz head. The color I believe was watermelon candy. I caught all 3 species of bass on this bait including one smallmouth about 18”. For most of the smallmouth, I was throwing it in faster water and retrieving it with a slow twitch while keeping the bait moving. I never stopped it or let it fall much- kept it moving pretty good, and the smallmouth would hammer it. I had two different fish grab it and I fought them half way back to the boat. Then they came off and I just stopped the retrieve and they came back and got it again.

For the largemouth and spots, I was working it in slower water like a typical jig and trailer. Casting into cover alongside logs and boulders and letting it fall, then work it back to the boat with hops and twitches.

The best thing about this bait was you could catch a bunch of fish on one and not have it get all tore up so i didn't have to keep replacing it.

Once the weather cools off in Nov\Dec I will switch to the LC slender pointers. In the fall with the super clear water, I love watching the smallmouth come out of hiding to attack those baits.

[MOsmallies]

In regards to Seth's last post.... On one end it sounds great that those tournament fish may be doing fine after release and are biting again, but at the same time it's really concerning. Tournament anglers are purposely trying to catch previously weighed and released fish over and over again. The amount of physical damage and stress these anglers are putting on these river fish is sickening. You said it yourself. There's not that many 5 lb fish in the Gasconade and your club is continuously catching the same poor fish weekend after weekend, dragging it around in their live wells, lugging it in a bag to a weigh in and then after many hours dumping it back into the river to be caught again. Eventually enough stress is going to be put on that fish that it dies, and that's one less 5 lb bass in the Gasconade that could be spreading it's genes every spring.

Not to mention these tournament anglers sound like they're not that great of fisherman. Go find your own fish. Seems pretty easy to sit around and wait for someone else's released fish to bite again. Really no skill in that. I wish all river tournaments would be CPR mandated.

I hope this doesn't come off as offensive... Just my 2 cents on what's best for our resources

Blazerman - Great report and glad you found a cool new bait. Stacey King is known for fishing that bait on a jika rig. He did pretty well on it in the PAA tournament at Table Rock last weekend. Did you get a pick of the 18". Would love to see it.

[fishinwrench]

Not all of us. I can't recall poaching, leaving nightcrawler containers on the bank, keeping more than my limit, fishing without a license, etc. I have been fishing since I was in diapers, so maybe I have appreciated it longer than most.

Oh wow. The definition of a Hoosier is a bit more severe where you're from.

[Al Agnew]

You can't fault "hoosiers" that stay within the law too much. Which means that in the end, as always, it comes down to the law. Length and creel limits are still geared toward consumption in most waters, which automatically means that the big fish are fewer than they could be.

However, I do believe you can fault the "hoosier" mentality that it's okay, and in fact almost mandatory, to exploit the resource as fully as possible. I know guys who will find a good stretch of water and hit it over and over and over again, keeping everything they legally can...until it isn't a good stretch anymore. And then they go find another one.

Whatever happened to a thing called restraint?

[Bird Watcher]

Weird. I had to look up the term hoosier. I guess it's a St. Louis term when used as a derrogatory according to the urban dictionary.

I didn't know Yankees looked down on any other groups of people enough to come up with a hateful slang term. Interesting.

[SmallyWally]

Not everybody is a Yankee in St.Louis!!!

[fishinwrench]

I didn't know Yankees looked down on any other groups of people enough to come up with a hateful slang term. Interesting.

You should hear what the hoosiers call the other groups. LOL

[Mitch f]

Have always found it odd that the MDC has a magazine called the "Conservationist" and in my opinion over- promotes catch and keep to a fault.

That doesn't sound like conserving to me.