Big Gasconade Smallmouth

[Smalliebigs]

awesome fish!!! too bad it's just about dead or soon to be, or at least it looks that way to me......fins are all red and it's striped up and dry.....for some stupid club tourney on a river???

No wonder there are hardly any that size in there anymore. I'm very impressed with the fish but, the river tourney thing is as gay as it gets IMO. Another one bites the dust......oh well nothing new there

[jbooth24]

I feel you you smalliebigs I hate to see fish that big bein taken. They need to be let go.

[GloryDaze]

That is a heck of a fish! But help me understand- it's 2014, there has to be a better way to do this, right? I mean are these guys still listening to cassette players, playing Atari and watching tube televisions?

Couldn't we just take a pic for proof and let her go? I thought I read somewhere alot of folks are doing that, where u have an object that has to be in the pic that's given to them that morning.

[jbooth24]

Or do like the pros do and have someone with them to weigh an measure it and then let it go

[Al Agnew]

Have to agree that the fish doesn't look like it will survive if released. Maybe he was going to keep it to mount anyway.

[jbooth24]

I hope that he did.

[fishinwrench]

Nice one! Any idea what the top three weights were?

I'd expect 10-12# to be pretty respectable in a Gasconade river derby. Does it ever take more than that to win?

I'd agree that a method of paper scoring would be better on ALL tournaments, but especially on med.sized rivers. But it is what it is. At least they DO get released, and modern boats have pretty good livewells so I can't get near as bent about river tournaments as I can about gigging.

If you wanna see a fukton of dead smallies just take a look at the photos on Boiling Spring campgrounds website. At least the tourney guys actually DO care.

[Seth]

Nice one! Any idea what the top three weights were?

I'd expect 10-12# to be pretty respectable in a Gasconade river derby. Does it ever take more than that to win?

It varies quite a bit. Anywhere from 5# to 13# has won this year. Usually if you can break 7#, you will be in the money. Most of June was very tough fishing and the weights were down overall. There were a couple of lunkers largemouth around 5 pounds caught though.

I'd agree that a method of paper scoring would be better on ALL tournaments, but especially on med.sized rivers. But it is what it is. At least they DO get released, and modern boats have pretty good livewells so I can't get near as bent about river tournaments as I can about gigging.

I couldn't agree with you more. Everybody I fish against has a very good livewell setup that will keep those fish very lively throughout the day. In fact, I can hardly get them in the bag at the end of the day in my livewell because they are so frisky! The biggest issue I have with it is that a lot of nice fish get dumped at the boat ramp. It would be naive to think that some of those fish don't get caught again by somebody drowing a minnow or crawler and taken home. We just hope that those fish migrate away from the ramp quickly and move to other sections of the stream. This isn't BASS or FLW so we don't have designated boats to haul fish off or "marshalls" like some of the folks on here obviously seem think we need when a dozen boats get together and fish against each other a few times a month.

If you wanna see a fukton of dead smallies just take a look at the photos on Boiling Spring campgrounds website. At least the tourney guys actually DO care.

I seen some of those. Definitely wasn't a fan of the dead fish pics. Of course those folks are probably the type of person who doesn't fish often enough to do much damage. The people that fish for bass a lot on the rivers aren't the ones you have to worry about killing the fish or at least the ones I know.

[Mitch f]

If you wanna see a fukton of dead smallies just take a look at the photos on Boiling Spring campgrounds website.

Not to mention a very high percentage of Drum munchers!

[fishinwrench]

Standing by to see who's the first to swear that drum are absolutely delicious and the best tasting fish swimming in freshwater.