Niangua River

[Al Agnew]

The Niangua is a great river. It's almost four rivers in one...you have the upper river, above Bennett Spring, which is rather small, rather murky, and good fishing for both smallmouths and largemouths. Then you have the trout section from Bennett to Prosperine. Below Prosperine to Tunnel Dam you have a good sized, fast, cool river that just shouts big smallmouths. And below Tunnel Dam it's a river that is much affected by Lake of the Ozarks, with a lot of fish like white bass coming up out of the lake.

I floated the upper end, from Big John Access to Williams Ford, a few years ago, and did pretty well, including hooking and losing a big smallmouth. It was good habitat and I'd like to try it again. I've also floated from Moon Valley to Bennett, which is also good water, though it gets a lot of canoe traffic.

I did a float in the trout section a couple of years ago with Bob Todd and the Director of MDC. It was the first time in a long time (actually the first time since I really learned enough about flyfishing to be effective) that I'd floated that stretch, and the trout fishing was very good.

The first float I ever did on the Niangua was from Prosperine to Blue Spring Resort. It's a beautiful river down there, with big glade-like bluffs and fine water, and I caught several 17-18 inch fish. A couple of years ago I did that float again, the last year that the resort was open, and although I didn't catch any big fish, I caught plenty. I always wanted to float from the resort down to Tunnel Dam, but the resort closed before I could do it. The accesses down there are problematical, being at the wrong distances apart and the wrong sides of the river, and since there are no bridges on the Niangua between Bennett and the slab ford below Tunnel Dam, getting from one side of the river to the other entails LONG shuttles.

[Whiskey Joe]

Big John Access. . .

Brings up a sad memory from 1995. Parked my 1967 Bonneville there for our take-out of a 2 night float.

Rained 5 inches Friday night and Ole Bonnie was underwater for 3 days. Turns out the road on the other side of the gravel parking area runs through the old river channel. There was about 6' of water in it and we couldn't retrieve her.

Did the same float the next year. Nice river.