Memorable Fish

[Al Agnew]

I just finished re-reading the whole personal best thread (which may show how ready I am for some warm weather smallmouth fishing--I'm desperate for anything having to do with stream smallies). It made me think of some of my most memorable catches over the years. Probably I've told about many of them on here at different times, but I'll get things started with a couple...

It was back in the mid-1970s, when the Meramec Dam controversy was in full swing and it looked like the dam was going to be built. The Corps of Engineers had already bought up the land for the lake and had started preliminary work on the dam site...and I'd never floated that section of the Meramec, so I figured I'd better see it before it went under. So my first wife, Pat, and I arranged to have Keye's Canoe Rental at Onondaga shuttle the car down to Meramec State Park a day later, and put in on a fine late June morning. The river was flowing strongly and with what I would later learn was the perfect Meramec color, that slightly milky green with about three feet of visibility. I caught a nice 15 inch largemouth within 20 feet of the put-in.

It was a great first day. I caught a lot of smallies up to 16 inches, and some really nice largemouth, including one pushing 20 inches. And I had two huge smallies follow my homemade crankbait all the way to the boat, leaving me goggling at them as they turned leisurely and swam away. One of them was right beneath Campbell Bridge, and the sight of that fish was almost as memorable as what I would catch the next day.

We camped a mile or so below Blue Springs Creek that night, and ate a big breakfast before starting out the next morning. The fishing was a bit slower, though still good, throughout the morning, but it turned into a really hot day, and by mid-afternoon we had stopped to swim several times. I was tired, and was casting the crankbait on autopilot as Pat paddled from the rear. Cast and retrieve, cast and retrieve...we were easing along a high, vertical mud bank dropping off into deep, green water with good current, and the canoe was in against the bank as I cast parallel to within inches of the mud cliff. The lure hit the water and I immediately started cranking, it dipped just below the surface, and there was suddenly this huge boil, looked as big around as a washtub. I set the hooks and the fish bored into the depths, headed toward a big log in deep water off the bank. I wrestled it away from the log, and it came up in its only leap, clearing the water completely. My heart was in my throat; this was a monstrous smallmouth. It took a long time and a lot of driving runs before I had it subdued. It was definitely the biggest smallmouth I'd ever caught.

It turned out to be one of the two biggest I've ever caught on an Ozark stream, 21.5 inches and 5 pounds. You can see the picture of it in the other thread.

The spot where I caught it is no longer there. The river back then came down along a bluff on river left, then swung out into the bottoms to make a horseshoe bend before swinging back in against the same bluff a few hundred yards downstream, and that fish was caught where it was swinging out into the middle of the bottomland. Sometime in the 1980s the river cut through the neck of the bend and now it stays along that bluff the whole way, with the old bend now a swampy but mostly dry channel growing up in trees.

That trip not only hooked me on the Meramec, but made me an environmental activist. I sent letters to every newspaper and politician I could think of, and wrote articles in the local paper and the River Hills Traveler, telling why I was dead set against the Meramec Dam. I like to think that maybe I influenced a few people and accomplished some good, thanks to that trip and that fish.

Speaking of my homemade crankbait...I first got turned onto the store-bought version when I was two years out of high school, working at a dead end job after going to junior college, and fishing local bass tournaments. One of the guys in the bass club was known as a great Big River fisherman. He mainly floated from Browns Ford to the Highway Y (Pine Ford) bridge in Jefferson County, and yes, even back then the take out at the Y bridge was a real bear. He usually fished by himself, and caught a lot of big smallies. He never said much about what he caught them on, but eventually enough guys fished with him during the tournaments that the word got out that he used a Midge-oreno.

Now, at the time, my favorite river lure was the Tiny Torpedo, and I just assumed from looking at pictures of it in catalogs that the Midge was a topwater lure. I couldn't imagine it being better than my Torpedo, so I never bothered to even try one.

I was floating the river up around St. Francois State Park one day when I spied a big tackle box lying on the bottom; apparently somebody had flipped a canoe and lost it. I dove for it and fished it out. In it, along with a bunch of other lures, were two Midge-orenos. I set them aside when I got back home, and forgot about them.

A few weeks or months later I fished a tournament with the "old" guy who used the Midge, and he showed me his secret. (I put quotation marks around "old" because he seemed old to the 20 year old I was back then, but he was probably in his early 50s--which doesn't seem old at all anymore.) He added a vinyl skirt to the belly hook, and used it as a crankbait.

So I dug out those two Midges, and took the skirts off a couple of spinnerbaits and added them. I had the afternoon off, and loaded up the canoe and went to the Bone Hole bridge on upper big River, one of the most popular fishing spots on the whole river. The low water bridge (now a county park behind the county landfill) backs up the river for about a half mile before it reaches a narrow spot with some current, and then there's another long deep pool above that. It's always been easy to put a boat in there, and everybody does it.

I tied on one of the Midges, a frog-back colored one to which I'd added a black skirt, and before I started up the river I made a few casts to the fast water beneath the bridge...and on the second cast I caught a 19 inch largemouth. Hmm...maybe there's something to this lure, after all.

Then I fished my way up the long pool above the bridge, catching fish after fish, including a 17 inch smallie and a 17 inch largemouth. I got to the spot where the stream narrowed and the current picked up, and made a cast to a submerged log in four feet of water, and the surface boiled as a huge bronze side flashed and my lure disappeared.

The smallie was 20.5 inches and pushing four pounds. And I was a believer in that lure!

[rps]

Al

Some years ago I asked you to think about coming to my class and teaching a day or two about writing. You write as well as you paint. Thank you.

[Mitch f]

Great story Al, your crank bait has become one of your trademarks!!

I had a memorable fish last year, which turned out to be the heaviest Ozark stream fish I have ever taken. I was fishing with Lonnie, a good friend and fisherman. We were fishing the Meramec and caught fish on numerous things that morning. Around 1:00 we arrived at a hole that was one of my go to spots for big fish. The water had 6-7 visibility, and I was trying to stay a good ways away from the area we were casting to, which was practically on the "wrong" side of the river. Out of the corner of my eye I glanced down to see a huge smallmouth swimming with kind of a panicked behavior. I told Lonnie that I just saw a big smallmouth, and he didn't even respond!! I just thought ok, if he's not going to cast over there, I will. I threw my home made crawfish lure about 20 feet in front of the fish and she nailed it on the third hop! I had so much line out I had to set the hook so hard the line made a tingling sound. I pretty much horsed the fish in because I was using my flipping stick with heavy line. She was 20 3/4".

[Al Agnew]

My wife and I drove up to Meramec State Park one July morning. I'd arranged a shuttle with the folks running the Meramec Park canoe rental place, but they insisted on us being there at their usual put-in time of 8:30 AM. As we were unloading our gear and canoe to put it on their rack and in their vehicle, I suddenly realized that I'd left my tackle box at home. I had no lures whatsoever!

Unwilling to float the river without fishing, especially since it was in perfect fishing condition, I told the canoe rental people that I had to run into Sullivan, and would be back in less than an hour. They said that, sorry, that was the only time that day they would be putting anybody in up at Blue Springs Creek, and if I didn't go then, my only choice was to do the half day float from Sappington bridge, which they'd be putting in at 11 AM. (That was the last time I used them for shuttles, by the way!)

So we go into the Sullivan Walmart to buy some lures. Of course, I knew they wouldn't have anything close to my homemade crankbait or my homemade twin spin, nor, as it turned out, did they have anything I was used to using in topwater lures. But I knew that the Baby Lucky 13, still widely available back then, could be used the same way as my crankbait with the skirt on the belly hook. Except, they didn't have any Baby Lucky 13s. But they had one lone Tiny Lucky 13 in a baitfish type color. I bought it. No spare skirts for sale, either. So I bought a couple of cheap spinnerbaits, keeping one intact to use itself, but taking the skirt off the other one and putting it on the Tiny L13. I also bought a few plastic worms and hooks, but I didn't expect to use them.

We got back to the park, and while waiting around for an hour and a half, I put together the Tiny L13 and tried it out from the bank. It wobbled more or less right about every other cast, the rest of the time just kind of flopping on the surface.

Finally we got onto the water at Sappington Bridge, along with a dozen or so party floaters. A few of them took off right away, but several, including a group of Oriental people who had obviously never been in a canoe before, kept hanging around talking and loading gear and otherwise not doing much of anything, so we finally took off. We got through the first riffle and heard the Oriental group coming right behind us. The first canoe came into the riffle, crashed into a sweeper tree that had about a third of the channel blocked, and flipped. The canoe came out the other side of the tree but the couple were left hanging onto the tree trunk, which was about half in the water, shouting to each other in whatever their native language was. I was about 30 yards below them, and I shouted up to them asking them if they could swim. They interrupted their intense conversation to shout back down to me, "NO!"

Of course, they didn't have life jackets on...the PFDs were floating by me about then. I picked them up and paddled back up, telling the folks to not try to grab onto the canoe but that I'd hand them the life jackets and they could hang onto them while floating downstream until we got into calmer water, where they could then hold onto the canoe and I'd tow them to the gravel bar. They were calm enough about it, and the rescue went off without a hitch. I then paddled down to where the canoe was drifting, upside down and almost entirely submerged, and towed it to the bottom of the long gravel bar. I gathered up whatever pieces of gear I could find floating and left it next to the canoe, and struck off downriver, finally able to fish.

I caught a pile of fish that day. The Tiny L13 was killing them, even when it would just flop on the surface. And about halfway through the float, a 20.5 incher came up and engulfed that thing as it was floundering on the surface like a half-dead duck. It was a memorable fish, made more memorable by the circumstances in which I caught it!

[riverrat]

My most memorable fish was not even caught by me. I apologize in advance for this being a little long-winded, but background is needed to adequately convey what that fish means to me. I grew up in town and never fished in my youth. I was into sports, chasing girls, partying with friends. Back then I really enjoyed floating the rivers, but never with a fishing pole. My parents never fished, too busy raising kids and trying to make ends meet. I moved away from Missouri and got married, in pursuit of a "better" life. On my annual summer visits home, I noticed that my mom had become totally obsessed with fishing. So out of the blue, where in the world did that come from? She always fished with live worms and it didn't really matter where she was or what she caught. I really believe she would have fished in a mud puddle if she thought she could get a bite. After seven years I moved back to Missouri. I didn't realize how much I had missed the rivers. That first summer I floated every chance I could, but now armed with a fishing pole. I started catching smallmouth and like my mother before me, a switch turned on inside me. As my parents aged, I tried to take each of them on a few float trips each year. The last float I was able to take my mother on was on the Big Piney in the management area, shortly after it was established. This next scene I will always remember like it happened yesterday. The fish weren't biting well that day. We came to a hole where a small creek entered from the left. Just below the mouth was a deep hole with that green color that signifies depth. In the edge of deep water was a big weathered tree, lying parallel to the bank. I put my pole down to position the canoe. On her first cast into that mess I thought she was hung up. Then her line started to move. Then her pole started to bend. I backed the canoe away from the tree, knowing it was a nice smallie. I saw a look of determination on her face that I knew well. It was the same look she gave me when trying to convince her hard-headed kid to do what needed done. She brought the fish to the boat and I lipped it for her. I unhooked it and measured it. A skinny 18" smallmouth, not that remarkable. If you know me at all, you know how adamant I am on releasing all smallmouth. No matter my gentle persuation she was having it mounted. If it would have been anyone else, I would have won that battle. She had it mounted and it became the centerpiece of a living room wall, surrounded by portraits of her children and grandchildren. The reason she never floated with me again was she developed Alzheimer's disease. The last time I took her fishing was a white bass trip in the fall to LOZ. She just stood there, pole in hand, watching my dad catch fish. It was at that moment I finally realized this disease was actually taking her. Such a devasting disease to watch progress. When she finally passed, there was no question where her fish would reside- in my fishing room. I've come to realize that matter how big, or how hard the strike, or how epic the battle no fish will ever come close to that memory. A prized possession.

[Greasy B]

A great story, thanks.

[Mitch f]

Awesome story, I know that fish and the story behind it will never be forgotten

[ColdWaterFshr]

Nice story riverrat