Mitch f Posted August 12, 2016 Posted August 12, 2016 32 minutes ago, top_dollar said: This is completely made up... I don't think Hog Wally is the kind of guy that would make things up. Do you have any evidence? "Honor is a man's gift to himself" Rob Roy McGregor
ollie Posted August 12, 2016 Posted August 12, 2016 Wrench, I have seen them actually work around here! I know you won't go there, but up at Shawnee Trails I have seen them getting dirty and everything. Also have been checked for a license as well. Shoot, I must look bad because I have been checked over 5 times in the last 10 years or so. I use to think they were never around until I got checked one day. I can't speak for the MDC in your area, but down here I have seen several times trucks dirty, guys getting out of them dirty and undercover agents on the creek. Hard to speak badly of them when I see this around here. SpoonDog and Chief Grey Bear 2 "you can always beat the keeper, but you can never beat the post" There are only three things in life that are certain : death, taxes, and the wind blowing at Capps Creek!
top_dollar Posted August 12, 2016 Posted August 12, 2016 57 minutes ago, Mitch f said: I don't think Hog Wally is the kind of guy that would make things up. Do you have any evidence? Looking at the previous 14 pages of opinions with no evidence....id say i dont really need any, you should just believe me. Chief Grey Bear 1
Smallieguy87 Posted August 12, 2016 Posted August 12, 2016 On 8/10/2016 at 5:38 PM, Smalliebigs said: Ditto The extension of the MDC management area for Smallies were extended or put where they were because if they were moved to the areas that have much more potential to grow a bigger smallies it would mess with the tournaments if you think otherwise you weren't at these meetings and talking to the people I was talking to at them. It's all good Britt....we all deserve and need to be able to keep these fish. Seriously though who is the Stl7?? I can assure you I only speak for me....any of my friends like Mitch F, Hog Wally, MO Smallies,....that's 4....Al????...then Gavin???? Hahahaha that's only 6 None of these guys want anything to do with what comes out of my mouth Britt...it's all me, my words that is. It's all good.....I just want to improve and preserve some of the coolest and slow growing indigenous predators in our rivers that are also not only entertaining to catch but, easy to catch because of their aggressive nature. When I get an email like that from the MDC because I am in contact with fisheries biologist and Agents in St.Louis,Franklin and Crawford Counties fairly often I have to laugh because I don't like smoke being blown up my arrse....no need to argue it's just my opinion and I will continue to be out on our rivers and streams doing my thing....just want to know who the 7 are hahaha Can i be a part of your fake group? Or am i by association because i've already fished with Hog? Is it required for me to live in STL? Or is it ok that I'm around 70 miles south? Do i need a river pro? and are there any club fees? How many MegaBass lures do i need? Enough BSing though.....Smallie we need to fish soon!
Mitch f Posted August 12, 2016 Posted August 12, 2016 23 minutes ago, top_dollar said: Looking at the previous 14 pages of opinions with no evidence....id say i dont really need any, you should just believe me. That's what I thought "Honor is a man's gift to himself" Rob Roy McGregor
Smallieguy87 Posted August 12, 2016 Posted August 12, 2016 If you've ever personally met Hog then you'd know right away that he is a very no nonsense individual. No beating around the bush. A very direct and honest guy who also happens to know his stretch of the water very well and is a hell of a fishermen.
Al Agnew Posted August 12, 2016 Posted August 12, 2016 Having been in the boat and helped to do the electroshocking, I have seen how ineffective it can be at giving one a good picture of the fish in the river. Conditions aren't always conducive to shocking being effective--water clarity, volume, and even chemistry makes a big difference in how many fish are shocked and actually brought in to count or measure. And all those conditions can change daily. I shocked one time with a biologist who retired recently, on a stretch of Big River that I know like the back of my hand. We shocked a pile of rock bass, which surprised even me with the numbers, since I seldom catch rock bass in that stretch while smallmouth fishing. We shocked a bunch of under 12 inch spotted bass, enough to be dismaying. We even shocked a flathead that must have weighed 30 pounds. What we didn't shock were many smallmouths. One 17 incher and a handful of smaller ones, in a stretch that I'd fished several times that year and caught way more smallies than spotted bass. If going by that particular day alone, you would have concluded that there just weren't many smallmouth in that stretch. The biologist told me that he knew from other trips that there were more smallies than what we had found that day, but he was still surprised when I told him that my experience was that there were more smallmouth than spots in that stretch. Point is, I think that sometimes their data isn't as good as they rely on it to be, both the shocking surveys and the angler interviews and surveys. It's probably pretty good in showing changes from one year to the next, but maybe not so good in showing absolute make-up of the fish populations or what effects anglers are having on them. And trust me, Hog Wally is telling it like it is. He catches a lot of walleye on the Meramec, enough that it surprises me, since I've never specifically targeted them and only went on how many I caught accidentally while bass fishing. I would have said the walleye population was pretty marginal in the Meramec before getting to know him. And, you also have to realize that not everybody in the shocking boat is a biologist, nor sometimes is ANYBODY in the shocking boat a really knowledgeable person. I was floating Big River one day during the time of the biologist I was working with above, when I caught up to the shocking boat. Figuring on seeing him, I was surprised when the boat had just a couple of young guys in it who must have been interns or grad assistants or something. As I got up to them, they taking fish out of the tank to measure them, and I watched as they removed an obvious spotted bass about 10 inches long. This was back at the time when spots were first invading this particular stretch, and they were still uncommon, but I'd caught a number of them there that year already. The guy doing the measuring said, "largemouth, 10.2 inches" as the other guy was writing it down. I told them to wait a minute, that was a spotted bass, not a largemouth. "Oh, there aren't any spotted bass on this stretch," the guy told me with a superior air. I tried to argue with him for a bit, but gave up on it, and went on down the river, happy to be ahead of the boat since the fishing had sucked behind it. MOsmallies and Mitch f 2
Al Agnew Posted August 12, 2016 Posted August 12, 2016 But...I'm not going to bash individual agents or biologists. I know or have seen some good ones, and a few not so good. They work hard and for the most part do a pretty good job. If I have a beef with anybody in the department, it's the higher-ups who set policy and decide how money gets spent, and even there I am happy with them a lot more than I am angry. In my opinion there is no excuse, though, for having just one agent per county for the most part. But having done a lot of traveling and seen how it's done in other states, MDC is still better than most. That's not to say that they couldn't improve and we shouldn't hold their feet to the fire occasionally, but threatening to call for cutting their funding is, as somebody previously said, cutting off your nose to spite your face. Be vocal. Call the commissioners (they hate that) and complain to them when you don't like something. If they get enough complaints they will tell the department to do something about it. But a few crackpot complaints won't get it done. We river anglers need to be organized in far greater numbers than we are now to really accomplish things. In one aspect Britt is right, the Smallmouth Alliance is good at recreation, not so good at the other aspects. Guys like Dan Kreher work tirelessly on the conservation aspects, but there aren't many of them and they are stretched thin, because the rest of us (me included) are more interested in fishing than activism and volunteer work. DownStream, Johnsfolly, Daryk Campbell Sr and 1 other 4
top_dollar Posted August 12, 2016 Posted August 12, 2016 21 minutes ago, Mitch f said: That's what I thought Doesnt change the fact that what he said never actually happened....
fishinwrench Posted August 12, 2016 Posted August 12, 2016 56 minutes ago, ollie said: Wrench, I have seen them actually work around here! I know you won't go there, but up at Shawnee Trails I have seen them getting dirty and everything. Also have been checked for a license as well. Shoot, I must look bad because I have been checked over 5 times in the last 10 years or so. I use to think they were never around until I got checked one day. I can't speak for the MDC in your area, but down here I have seen several times trucks dirty, guys getting out of them dirty and undercover agents on the creek. Hard to speak badly of them when I see this around here. I agree. If I saw more of that in my 6 county home range I'd be proud of them.
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