Why Does Fishing Continue To Decline In Our Rivers?

[Wayne SW/MO]

I've had more experience with otter on the Jhon day in Oregon than here. I know there was one hole that that had and extended family of them several seasons. It was not unusual to see them or to see them have a snack, but I never thought that hole suffered. Granted the JD didn't see the pressure that our rives do, but there were fish fries on it almost any weekend during the summer. The one thing that you didn't see was any human activity on most of the river, the banks or in it.

There was normally a very good spawn, but it was also susceptable to heavy floods and while that would reduce the population of smallies they always bounced back quickly.

[ozark trout fisher]

Otters and stream degradation are our mutual enemies.

If you simply view the river as a place that you come to catch smallmouth bass, then yeah, the otter is your enemy. If you actually view it as an ecosystem that's supposed to support a wide variety of native species (otters included) then they're just a necessary part of the picture.

And look at it this way: assuming your assertion is correct, that an otter can eat 2 pounds of fish per day. On an average legal stringer of a limit catch of smallies, you're looking at almost a bare minimum of 5-6 pounds, and often close to double that. Also figure in that otters are probably eating a lot more suckers, chubs, sunfish, and crayfish than smallies, and your problem isn't near as pervasive as it seems (at least in comparison to the threat of a good minnow fisherman with a big bucket, who probably only wants the smallies.)

[Riverwhy]

OTF,

I have not eaten a smallmouth in years but I do love a skillet of google eye and sunfish a couple times a year. I am not for a mandatory CPR but I certainly would like to see the length limits and creel limits tightened. The question in the post was "Why Does Fishing Continue To Decline In Our Rivers?". So, folks might like to watch the otters frolick on the bank and they may like watching their cattle graze on the river banks while they watch from the back deck of their house that use to be timber but these are the reason for the decline and not the fellow with a bucket of minnows.

[ozark trout fisher]

OTF,

I have not eaten a smallmouth in years but I do love a skillet of google eye and sunfish a couple times a year. I am not for a mandatory CPR but I certainly would like to see the length limits and creel limits tightened. The question in the post was "Why Does Fishing Continue To Decline In Our Rivers?". So, folks might like to watch the otters frolick on the bank and they may like watching their cattle graze on the river banks while they watch from the back deck of their house that use to be timber but these are the reason for the decline and not the fellow with a bucket of minnows.

I think you're a lot more right about the cattle than the river otters.

But without immediate scientific evidence to back either of our claims, there's not much further we can really go with this.

[Flysmallie]

Yeah you will need some hard evidence to convince me that otters are to blame. I've seen it differently with my own eyes.

You can strengthen and tighten the regulations all you want but unless you change the issues with enforcement of the current laws it won't change anything. The guy keeping a short fish today will also keep a short fish after the changes.

[Mitch f]

The guy keeping a short fish today will also keep a short fish after the changes.

Agreed, up until the point he is fined for his violations.

Case in point, last year OFallon proper had a "last year of amnesty" for fireworks violations (little known to me). So my next door neighbor, who has the pitbull,has been laying awake at night, dreaming of ways to get revenge for me turning in his pitbull for attacking my dog. I'm standing with my 4 year old daughter lighting a fountain type firework and the police drove up within one minute and wrote me a ticket because of a new zero tolerance fireworks rule. So the cop asks me if I was having a dispute with one of my neighbors.... I immediately knew who called the police. I paid the ticket of $130 2 weeks ago. So I will Never Ever shoot fireworks again in Ofallon. My pleading of ignorance didn't help. Maybe if a poacher gets a hefty fine he will change his ways.

[Jerry Rapp]

lots of good comments on this post. Nobody mentioned the 30% real unemployment rate which is increasing the catch and eat population. Heck, I can't even go to Wappapello or Clearwater on a weekday without feeling crowded. I guess we could spend millions on smallmouth hatcheries to stock the streams like we do with trout. Or maybe, the govt could spend maybe $900,000 to hire 10 to 15 extra agents to patrol the Ozarks streams for violations. They wouldn't have to be there everyday, but their presence on the streams once or twice a week would probably make the poachers think twice. And with this increase of enforcement, a 2 or 3 fish limit, with one over a 16 inch minimum limit would also make better fishing overall. Just some random thoughts while waiting for the Cardinals to lose again.

[Al Agnew]

The otter thing is pretty questionable. I don't think there's any doubt that otters decimated a few smaller streams when they first got populous. But I've seen quite a few otters on some of the rivers I've fished a lot, without noticing any real drop-off in the numbers of fish I've caught. I think that, if the habitat is decent (especially wintering habitat) the otters won't have much effect, but if the fish get concentrated in a few isolated wintering pools and the otters find them it's a different story.

As for those kinds of stringers being common in the old days, depends upon what you mean by old days. I already mentioned the big positive difference I saw with the advent of the 6 fish 12 inch limit. By the 1970s, due to the influence of BASS and the big tournaments, catch and release began to be more common. Those two things really changed the number of fish being harvested from our rivers. The "old days" of huge stringers of fish began to wane by the early 1970s, and the numbers of fish got better. In my opinion, the early 1980s might have been the high water mark, so to speak, for the smallmouth populations in our larger streams. There were plenty of fish and plenty of good fish, far better than things had been in the 1960s.

Then came jetboats, and on the Meramec, spotted bass. Things declined quickly. We've hashed it out before, but not only did jetboats make fishing these streams much more convenient and for many, more effective, but they also made gigging a lot easier.

Jerry has some good points, too. There has been a trend for more people to fish these rivers during the week, and it has accelerated since the Great Recession. More people out of work, perhaps keeping more fish.

Most Ozark streams are capable of producing lots and lots of fish. Spawns are usually good and the habitat is good enough to support lots of little ones, at least. Like Jerry, I'm convinced that a slot limit would do the most good to change the size structure of the smallie population to one that has a somewhat greater percentage of larger adult fish.

[Flysmallie]

Agreed, up until the point he is fined for his violations.

Not in all cases. But it would surely help.

Me and a friend ran across a man and wife on the James a few years ago and they were keeping everything they caught. We tried to explain the dangers of floating down the river with a stringer full of short fish but he would have none of that.

Later on we had the pleasure of meeting them again when the sheriffs deputy and conservation agent were hanging out in their normal spot. They were both given citations.

Once he was away from the river fuzz he commented on how it wasn't a big deal. He had done it lots of times and this was the first time he had been caught. He would just float a different section or river.

Sometimes you can't fix stupid.

But I do love running into the river fuzz down there frequently. It's fun to hang out with them and watch the circus. I've never spotted them but they have guys in the trees, they call in the violators and depending on what they have done they either get to get acquainted to the deputy or agent. It's a good system but they are always on the same section at the same spot. They get plenty of business but wish they would spread the love.

[ozark trout fisher]

I do tend to agree that enforcement is an issue. With that said, it's inherently challenging on our Ozark smallie streams. If we were talking about trout water it's a completely different story, with something like 100-150 river miles to keep track of. But smallies live in untold thousands of miles of stream in Missouri and you can't (even on a fairly occasional basis) have someone everywhere.

If you were to pin me down on it, I guess the best allocation of resources would be to have people as much as possible on the streams that see heavy fishing pressure (mostly, I mean the big, jetboatable rivers like the G'nade, Meramec, etc) because those are the ones that are hurting the most-and they are naturally easy to patrol with motorized boats being an option. But then, one poacher can do more damage on a little creek with only a few good pools where the fish are highly concentrated, so you could make a valid argument in the other direction. But you're not getting both, probably.

So bottom line, I'm not sure there is a good answer.