Fishing in the crowds

[Al Agnew]

The lady in the group of six middle aged women surrounding the raft pulled up onto the gravel bar greeted me, and then asked, "Doesn't all this noise and commotion scare the fish?"

There was a group pulled up on the next bar downstream about 70 yards which was splashing, shouting, and playing loud music.  A whole flotilla of kayaks was coming along behind me.

"Well," I laughed, "if noise scared these fish so bad, they'd be having nervous breakdowns every Saturday!"

I had driven out to our piece of land on the middle Meramec yesterday simply because I didn't have much else to do.  I figured I needed to do some mowing and just check on the place, since I hadn't been there since we'd gotten back from Montana.  But...I threw in some rods and my tackle box.  I finished the mowing about 2 PM.  I needed to be back at the house in four hours, and it was an hour and a half drive back.  So I had 2 1/2 hours to...fish.  

Our land is situated perfectly for 2 1/2 hours of floating and fishing, because I can drop a canoe off a gap in a low cliff on the upstream end, float 2 1/2 miles around the bend, and take out on the other side of our land, only a quarter mile walk back to the vehicle I'd used to haul the canoe to the put-in.  I'd just mowed a nice path to walk on, too, though I'd left it grown up at the river on both sides so it didn't invite strangers to hike up onto our land.  We keep two solo canoes, along with paddles, life jackets, and seats, locked up in the shed, so I threw one on the truck bed, not even bothering to tie it down, and beetled my way to my put-in.

The problem is that this is one of the most popular stretches of the whole river, with canoe liveries upstream and downstream.  The parking lot at the access I'd passed driving to the land had a number of vehicles with boat trailers.  When I was doing the mowing, I could see people all over the place on the river.  But I was hot and sweaty after the mowing, and the thought of cool water was as inviting as the possibility of catching a smallmouth or two.

There had been a big group of young people across the river from my put-in while I'd been mowing, but they were gone on downstream by the time I slid the canoe into the water.  But three teenagers in inner tubes had taken their place.  Another large group was a few hundred yards downstream on the opposite bank.  I had three rods in the canoe, so I tied a topwater on one, my homemade crankbait on one, and Mitch's craw on the third.  I figured one of those lures would work if anything did.

I caught a 12 inch largemouth on about my fourth cast on the crankbait.  I would try the craw and the topwater as I worked my way downstream, but that bass convinced me I might as well throw the crankbait most of the time.  I eased down the bank, keeping the canoe in close and casting ahead of me, parallel to the bank.  Another largemouth, a bit smaller than the first.  A 10 inch smallie.  A 12 inch smallmouth.  The people that had been downstream were gone by the time I reached their spot; they'd actually driven into that spot and had disappeared up the bank.  A couple of kayaks passed me.  A single kayak with a guy fishing, casting some kind of small spinner on an ultralight spinning rod.  Not much competition.  I passed a group on a gravel bar, with a very loud-mouthed guy pontificating upon various subjects that I could hear for a quarter mile upstream.  He asked me how the fishing was.  "Slow," I said.  "Slow?" he laughed.  "No wonder!"

30 yards past him and five minutes later, a sixteen inch smallmouth engulfed the crankbait.  I don't think he saw me catch it.

I passed the ladies with the raft.  The loud group downstream pushed off right afterwards and disappeared around the bend.  I could hear another very loud group downstream.  I caught another smallmouth, about 13 inches.  The very loud group came into sight, pulled up on a bar adjacent to the best riffle area in this stretch, but on the opposite side from the good fishing water.  I caught a 10 inch largemouth right in front of them.  They were paying no attention to me.  A very nice smallmouth, probably another sixteen incher, boiled on the crankbait on the next cast, but didn't get hooked.  20 yards downstream the riffle came up against a nice, rocky bank.  The crankbait had barely dipped beneath the surface when there was another boil.  This one was bigger.  It jumped four times, one of the hottest 18 inch smallmouth I've caught in a while.

The pool between that riffle and my take-out is rocky, moving water, and I caught two more little smallies and got a strike from another pretty big fish that missed.  And then I was at the take-out, where another big group was still pulled up on the gravel bar opposite, with rafts, kayaks, canoes, and even two jetboats. I quietly slid the little canoe into the bank where a tiny creek comes in, got out quickly and pulled the canoe up into the creek, out of sight.  I don't know if they even saw me do it.  My timing was perfect; by the time I hiked across the neck of the bend to my truck and drove it down to the little clearing back in the woods where I'd dragged the canoe, it was about time to leave for home.

[Guest]

Deleted.

[Mitch f]

Great report Al, I love your posts!

[Old plug]

That is true. You can catch nice fish here on LOZ on in the worst boat traffic days if you want to risk life and limb. At a younger age I have been out in my big deep targa when the wakes so bad they would throw that boat up into a 45 degree angle or better.  Yet My son and eye caught 8-9 keepers over a sharp drop off on slow sinking plastic worms. Fish just kept rising to the feed boat wakes or what have you. It s a very dangerous thing to do in this lake and something I avoid anymore.

Well AL I will tell you Leeburg was like our second home. From Onandaga all the way up to birds nest was my stomping grounds. We had been away from it for better than 20 yrs. We returned to attend a funeral of a friend down there that died. Being there I just had to go down and look at the river at Onadaga. Let me tell you it made me phycally sick to see all the commercial crap and  crowds. I swore then I would never go back. To me all they have done is rape Mother Nature. 

 

[joeD]

What is possibly ironic, is, it's not the pleasure floaters and partiers and sheer volume of recreational visitors to our streams that harm smallmouth fishing, it's actually other fishermen. 

Be as offended as you want about the appalling behavior of many floaters, littering not withstanding, 99.9% of them aren't fishing, and therefore aren't taking  smallies out of the stream. 

They have a right to be there equal to yours.  Be angry about other fishermen who are actually doing the real damage.