big Ozark river smallmouths

[creek wader]

Keep the big smallie stories coming. I think we all want to hear more. ... It sounds as if I need to get off those creeks, and start fishing the rivers. I enjoy playing with the 6 to 15 inchers but, it would be nice to tangle with some of those heavy weights.

[Al Agnew]

Some creeks have big fish. I was floating the far upper end of a rather famous Ozark stream many years ago. The stream was a foot higher than normal, which was the only thing that made it possible to float, but it was also extremely clear. I wasn't really expecting big fish from it, since it is ordinarily wading water at best...was really just floating it to say I'd done it. I was with a buddy, both of us in solo canoes. He had already gone down this pool, which was gravelly banked, 4 feet deep or so, and had several newly downed trees in it, so much so that it wasn't easy to maneuver through them. I was using an ultralight spinning rig with a 1/16th ounce marabou crappie jig, dropping it around those trees, which this humongous smallmouth suddenly materialized and sucked in the jig. For the next few minutes I bounced from tree to tree, somehow keeping that fish out of all of them, until the current carried the canoe into the riffle below. I figured I had everything under control at that point, since the riffle was short and the pool below wide and shallow. Except, there was this one little snag sticking up out of the gravel at the bottom of the riffle. Yep, the fish, at least 20 inches, wrapped the line around that one little wrist-thick snag and snapped off.

It's also surprising where you find them sometimes even on rivers where you would expect them to be. A few years back, I was floating one of my least favorite sections of Big River. At this point, the river comes out of a couple of pools, 3-4 feet deep, solid bedrock bottom, very little cover, I'd never caught a decent fish in either of them. Then it runs through a little run, 1.5 feet deep at the deepest, slick rock bottom, NO cover. Then it goes into a fast riffle which dumps into a little bitty pool about the size of a big living room, 2 feet deep at the deepest, before hitting a long, fast riffle which finally dumps into a pool that does have a nice log in about 3 feet of water, but is otherwise pretty sorry looking. But...on this day that little living room size pool produced a 19.5 incher.

Another spot, a little farther down Big River. There was always a fast riffle which swung into a little run, about 3 feet deep, with very thick overhanging willows covering most of it and all the fish-holding water. It was pretty much impossible to fish well. If you were in a canoe, by the time the canoe got through the riffle it was already in the best part of the run, and you were working so hard to keep the canoe out of the willows you didn't have a chance to fish anyway. If you got out and tried to wade down to it, the willows lined BOTH banks, and the only way you could fish it was to stand at the base of the riffle and try to drift the lure under the willows. Hence, I'd never caught a fish out it, but I kinda figured it could hold a decent fish or two.

Then one year the river changed. It cut a new channel through the willows, leaving that run as a dead backwater, barely connected to the channel. The new run was open, 1.5 feet deep, gravel bottom, no cover. But the first time I floated it after the channel change, I caught a 19 incher out of the new run. That fish had to have been living in the old run until the river changed.

But lots of spots are proven big fish places. Just a half mile or so below the last spot I talked about, there was a fairly deep cut clay bank, nice current sweeping along it, with a huge, ancient log sticking out of the clay at right angles. It was one of those logs that had probably been buried for centuries. The current had hollowed out a nice little pocket underneath the log, and that spot produced several huge smallies in about a ten year period, including one that I caught in early spring that was probably a very old fish. It had a huge head, the biggest head I'd ever seen on a river smallmouth, and was nearly 21 inches long, but it's body was pretty skinny. It was still a very strong fish, but just LOOKED old.

Then one year a big flood ate some more bank away, and washed out the log. No more big fish there.

Another spot like that was actually right in the middle of St. Francois State Park, right above a spot where practically everybody that visits the park comes down to the river. There was a big rock with a nice log washed up against it that stayed there for many years, just a few yards above a riffle. I caught 3 20 inch plus fish off that spot, always in mid-summer, always with people splashing and fishing and running around within sight of me. Luckily, none of them ever actually saw me catch a fish there, or they would have probably done everything short of dynamite to see if they could duplicate the feat. It's been more than 15 years since I caught a big fish there, the log is gone now, but I still get a bit excited when I come to that spot, usually at the very end of a float trip.

[BrianK]

Good stuff! i'm still looking to break the 19" barrier.

Corey, you never mentioned the size of the most impressive fish up on the Big Piney???? did he not make it in?

I lost 2 fish last summer that coulda/woulda been 19+. one jumped and threw the hook. My son laughed, i cried.....

bk

[Al Agnew]

There's a big pool on the upper part of Big River, long, curving against a bluff, big rocks, 4-6 feet deep. One summer, I hooked and lost a big smallmouth in it on a Tiny Torpedo. I got a good look at the fish, and it was well over 20 inches. So I made plans to catch that fish. The plan consisted of a night float trip. I figured I could catch it on a Jitterbug.

So it's about 11 PM on a partly cloudy night, nearly full moon, but when I get to the big pool the clouds are covering the moon and it's pretty dark. I get my aluminum canoe situated to make a cast to the exact spot where I was sure that fish was. Perfect cast (as near as I can tell in the dark). Jitterbug starts across the surface, bobble-bobble-bobble-KAWOOSH! Of course, I set the hooks with all the strength and keyed up reflexes I have, miss the fish, and the lure comes flying back and WHANGS into the side of the canoe with a sound that probably knocked turkeys off the roost a mile away. The lure is lying in the water 5 feet from the canoe, and I'm frantically reeling in all the slack when I hear a SLURP. Finally get the slack out, lift up on the rod, and sure enough, I've got a fish...and it turns out to be 20.5 inches! I thought about going down the river beating the side of the canoe before every cast, after that!

I drove up to the middle Meramec one time, planning on getting one of the canoe rentals to shuttle me. Got to the canoe rental place, made the arrangements, the guy got in the truck with me to go put in, planning on driving it back to the take-out. And then, just before we took off for the put-in, I made the horrible realization that I had forgotten my tackle box. I was well over an hour from home, no lures whatsoever. So I dropped the guy off and went into the Walmart in Sullivan to shop for enough lures to get me by.

Walmart had just about nothing that I thought would work. I was just sure my homemade crankbait would be what the fish were wanting, and there was nothing like it at Wally World. But they did have another lure that, at one time, somebody had told me would work like my homemade lure if you added a skirt to it. Walmart didn't have any skirts, so I bought one of the lures and then bought a spinnerbait just to take the skirt off it.

By the time I got back to the river, it was too late to do the all day float I had planned, so I shortened it to a half-day. The canoe rental guy put me in and I started fishing the jury-rigged lure. Well, it KINDA worked. It would wobble for a foot or two and then flop up to the surface like a dying duck. You know what? The fish didn't care. They were eating that thing up. About a third of the way through the float, I had caught two 18 inchers and a 20 incher, the skirt was in tatters, and the lure had decided it was going to do nothing but flop on the surface. I finally had to give up on it and just throw the extra spinnerbait I'd also bought. Caught a 17 incher and a bunch of little ones on it. One of the best half days of fishing I'd ever had!

The first time I ever floated the middle Meramec was a couple years before the Meramec Dam was deauthorized, back in the mid-1970s. I had always been pretty excited about the possibility of a big lake not far from home, back in the days when my dad and I fished Wappapello all the time, but by this time I'd fallen in love with Ozark rivers and was pretty much against the dam. But I had never floated the section to be flooded, and it was looking like it was going to happen, so I decided to do a two day float from Onondaga to Meramec Park. Before I got out of sight of the put-in I'd caught a 21 inch largemouth, and the first day was terrific fishing. I can still remember a huge smallmouth that followed my lure in right under Campbell Bridge. And I caught several 16-17 inchers that first day.

The second day the fishing slowed somewhat, and by mid-afternoon I was just casting mechanically, using my homemade crankbait. I remember that I was right against a high, vertical clay bank, casting straight ahead and parallel to the bank. The water there was deep, at least 6 feet. I can still picture the lure dipping under the surface at the start of a retrieve, and seeing this huge boil. I set the hooks and the fish dove for even deeper water off the bank. It stayed down for a long time, and I couldn't see it. Then it came up in a head-shaking leap 10 feet from the canoe, and I about had a heart attack.

Well, I got it in, finally. It was the first of the only two legitimate 5 pound Ozark river smallies I've ever caught.

Needless to say, after that trip I was REALLY against the Meramec Dam. I wrote letters, I joined every organization that was fighting it. And no one was happier than I was when the referendum went 2 to 1 against the dam and Congress later deauthorized it.

[hank franklin]

Man, you guys are driving me crazy with this big fish talk. I still haven't joined the 19-inch club, but it could be as soon as this weekend!? One of my favorite fatties was on the Big River above Blackwell in a little chute with slick bedrock and weeds on the left bank. We had just turned a corner and this perfect scene unfolded, trees shading the chute and all quiet, water gently churning, and like almost every memorable fish I've ever caught you could just sense that this scene held potential.

I was in the back of the canoe but threw my black-gold Rapala minnow ahead of the bow and ahead of the riffle V and right into a little side pocket just off the current. A perfect cast and as soon as the lure hit, Wham! it was on. The fish went downstream and of course the canoe started skidding a bit as we hit the V, and I was trying to find a way to control the boat and control the fish at the same time. As we swung past he took a jump and showed himself and it was definitely the biggest smallie I've ever hooked into, so big it was downright scary. What made the scene extra pretty was this was the golden hour, high twilight and everything had that added dappled bronze golden color, including the fish. Anyway we slide past and then he takes me upstream and of course by now I'm trying to figure a way to hold the line without breaking, and he takes me into some weeds and by then my options were gone as the line got hung in weeds. The line went tight and snap! I was sunk.

Sad, I know. We beached just below the riffle to catch our breath and for the next few minutes you could see the fish splashing and jumping, trying to get the lure outta his mouth. I hope he did.

[Wayne SW/MO]

Don't feel bad Hank, I'm a native and I've never done it in Missouri, close, but no cigar. If we could get about 3 years of average or above rainfall we would probably start to see more of them.

I think you need a good population of Smallies to create larger fish, the idea being that the smaller more aggressive fish protect the larger ones.

[hank franklin]

Well, I have caught a couple nice ones, including a pair of big honkers caught on West Fork Black River in spring, 2001. Funny thing about those is I don't recall much about them other than they were caught on a Wiggle Wart out of a deep hole near Sutton Bluff campground. Both were released of course, one 18" and another 17". Caught a nice 16-eener out of the Huzzah last spring, on a Fluke just below the chute after the Narrows. A couple nice ones off the Osage Fork a few years back.

This thread got me thinking of one of my favorite fish, which goes back to when I was in what I call my “student” days as a smallmouth fisherman. I had been reading Tim Holschlag’s first book and he was encouraging fall fishing for big smallmouth, so I decided to try a mid-October trip, which was a time of year I had never really fished before. Holschlag also talked a lot about reading water for hidden, or less-than-obvious, fish-holding spots, so I was making a point of looking for fish in different areas of the stream. Anyway, we were on the Bourbeuse River near Union and had just cleared a pretty nice long run and I spied a boil in otherwise quiet water just up ahead, right in the middle of the river. I was in the back of the boat and we pretty much floated right over the boil, so I really couldn’t do much but just drop my jig just upstream of the boil and let it sink into the suspect area. So I did and it sank quite a way, a lot deeper than I thought the water would be there, and when it got real low I felt just the slightest tap on the line. Somehow, instinctively, I knew that this tap meant “big fish” so I pulled hard to set the hook and instantly it pulled back and I thought I must be on a rock. Still, I wasn’t quite sure it wasn’t a fish. So I pulled again but it still felt like a snag, though it did seem to maybe be moving a little. After a couple more seconds, and as we were getting downstream, the line went slack and the suspense ended, at least momentarily, as I figured I’d got off the snag, or whatever it was I had hooked down there. But in the next instant I noticed my line was moving again and it was then I realized what was happening, that it was a fish and he was coming to the surface. I hadn’t said a word to my fishing partner to this point but as the line rose I said something along the lines of “dude, look at this” and all of the sudden here comes a giant smallie breaking the water and leaping skyward! It was really quite a show and of course from that point on both of us were freaking out, being somewhat new at this, and trying to figure the best way to get the fish to hand. The fish dove again and it was a struggle to bring him up, but we got to the side of the stream where I was able to bring him to hand. At the time I remember thinking that it must have been a four-pounder or so, maybe even five! but in retrospect I realize he was just a mid-monster smallie, probably 16 inches or so, maybe 17 max. It was definitely fat though, much more so than the summer smallmouth I’d been catching, and was probably the first smallmouth I’d caught that was in the “football” category. We didn’t have a tape or even a camera so we let him go with only the story to tell.

That was my first really big smallmouth, especially one that had been caught using a little bit of finesse. And of course the experience sold me on fall fishing. Every year I seem to catch at least a few big ones that time of year.

[cwc87]

That Big Piney July Giant smallmouth is the one Al talks about in an old thread and I'm still thinking it was a smidge over 20inches. I carry a MDC Sticker ruler on my paddled blade and that's how I measure my fish. Trick of the trade. I have another story below wesco on the meramec. It was june and had a local hillbilly paddle me down the river and it's been about 8 years ago. The hole were crooked creek (Crawford county) enters the meramec I casted a Charlie Campbell spinnerbait (the one with a cut out on blade) over a log and wammo a hog daddy inhaled it and broke me off big time. Frustrated, I sat across the hole scrambling and trying to retie. Then it happened, Kersplash the fish jumped and through it. I paddled(20)yards or so over and there it laid on the bottom. Got it, thank God I had a witness. The fish was easliy over 18 inches.

[cwc87]

I may be getting into a new topic but, the story about a fish breaking me off and getting to retrieve the lure is interesting. Onetime float fishing with wife and other employees below Eminence on the jacks I was throwing a Bomber Long-A jerkbait when a powerful solid big smallmouth sawed my line on a pieplate size rock. Boy was I frustrated then. I went on and on to my wife how I would miss that old plug. Then about 3/4 of mile later there it was floatin along us. Boy that's when you know your the luckiest guy in the world!! The only other time a Lure was sucessfully retrieve after breaking off was on the James. I was guiding a client(Robert Lynn Hall) and he was throwing a bubble gum skirted spinnerbait and wammo the smallie nailed it and sawed him off behind a voltswagen size boulder. And yes, the fish jumped and through it and the bait was successfully retrieved. Boy, spending time on the water things happen that you really can't explain.

[Al Agnew]

I was floating Castor River with my wife, fishing with my homemade spinnerbait, catching 10-14 inchers regularly but nothing bigger...until this beast of a smallmouth took the spinnerbait and jumped all over the river. I fought him around for a while and thought I was in good shape, but he took one more lunge and broke off. Castor River being its usual gin clear self, I could see him plainly as he swam calmly over to a big rootwad and disappeared under it. I paddled over to it, and there was my spinnerbait, lying on the bottom next to the rootwad, which made me happy not only to get the lure back, but to not leave it in that fish's face. It was probably a 20 incher.

Another especially memorable 20 plus was one I caught on the Meramec while paddling Pete Kaminsky, who was a field editor for Field and Stream and had come to the Ozarks to do an article on Ozark river smallmouths. I really felt the pressure to show him some good fishing, since it was the first time anybody had ever recommended me as a knowledgeable Ozark angler. It happened this way...I'd gotten to know Tom Rodgers, who had started an organization known as Smallmouth, Inc., because he was looking for somebody to do some cover illustrations for his publication. This was just a few years after I'd started doing artwork full-time as a profession. I even went on a trip with Tom on the John Day River in Oregon, so he'd seen that I knew a little about fishing for smallies as well as painting them. When Kaminsky was looking for somebody to show him around the Ozarks, he contacted Tom, and I was the ONLY Ozark angler Tom knew so he recommended me.

So Pete shows up, wanting to hopefully catch smallies on a fly rod. Used to going to trout destinations that have plenty of fly shops, he was planning to buy his flies when he got here. Now...Ste. Genevieve County is NOT a trout nor a fly-fishing destination. Pete's choices were limited to the Farmington Walmart.

So I was sweating it. I hadn't done much flyfishing for smallies at the time, and had very few usable poppers or streamers. Pete had one small fly box that had been stuck in his vest since his last trip, a saltwater outing. I told him I wasn't sure we could catch much on the fly rod but we'd give it a try.

The first day we floated Big Creek, just because I wanted to show him lots of great scenery as well as some fishing...figured that if I "failed" and we didn't catch fish, at least he'd see some pretty country. As it turned out, he caught a bunch of fish on a big white saltwater streamer--he was incredulous when I told him to try it. But nothing big. Second day was on the Meramec. He was fishing a Walmart popper when a huge smallmouth engulfed it, leaped in his face, and contemptuously threw the cheap cork popper. I was afraid that was our one chance, and it turned out to be so with the fly rod. But late in the day, making a few casts from the back of the canoe as I kept him in position, I eked out a 20 incher on my casting rod. Pete later said, and wrote, that he had been to fishing destinations all around the world, but catching 4 pound class native river fish was really something special.

Corey...got a 17 and an 18 yesterday, less than 40 fish all day, but most of them were over 12 and half were over 14. I didn't catch a single fish in the first 3 miles! (And nope, it wasn't on Corey's river, but he knows where!)