Brown Trout Petition for the Eleven Point

[Brian Sloss]

John is out of town right now and is going to send me a chart that I can post and some other info that I will pass on when he sends it to me. May be another week or so.

[Al Agnew]

hornyhead...

In my last two trips to the middle Current, I caught more than a dozen pickerel back in February, and 8 or 9 in late April or early May, can't remember which. And that's spending only a very small percentage of the day actually trying to catch them, I was mostly fishing for smallmouths in the main channel. If you fish the main channel of the river you won't find too many pickerel, but go up into just about any backwater off the main channel and throw a spinnerbait or any lure that resembles a minnow, and I can almost guarantee you that you'll catch some...or at least have a big one bite you off. I lost a high dollar Lucky Craft Pointer to one of those toothy critters back in February. If the backwater is fed by a small spring (several of these on the Current), it'll be weedy and FULL of pickerel. Last time I was on the Jacks Fork just below Eminence, I caught several pickerel in the first couple of big pools. Key to good pickerel habitat is very little current and cool water. Aquatic vegetation is a big plus as well, but the bigger pickerel really like laydown logs, too.

As far as the trout section of the Eleven Point being poor smallie habitat because of the water being too cool...difference between the most heavily springfed sections of Ozark streams and the north country like up in Canada is temperature during spawning season. While the Canadian lakes get a lot colder than Ozark streams in the winter, they do get up into the upper 60s (optimum temperature for smallmouth spawning) in time for the smallmouths to spawn, like about early to mid-June. Problem with the springfed sections of Ozark streams is that they don't get warm enough for smallie spawning in the main channel until way up in the summer...water comes out of the springs at 56 degrees or so and the river stays cold until the time for smallie spawning is about over. So I don't have ironclad data, but I'd suspect that MOST of the smallies in the area between Greer and Turner Mill are NOT fish that were spawned in that stretch, but fish that have moved into it from upstream or downstream, so the population is dependent upon fish moving in instead of being totally self-sustaining.

I have to admit that I don't know as much about the Eleven Point as I do the Current. In the Current, there isn't much smallie spawning and not all that many smallmouths (considering the size of the stream) between Montauk and Cedargrove. Between Cedargrove and Welch Spring, the water warms enough that smallies do pretty well in that stretch, even though it has a stocked trout fishery. But Welch gives the river another big shot of cold water, and even though there aren't many trout below Welch (which is just above Akers) and nobody stocks trout down there (even though a lot of anglers want them to), the smallie population is very poor for ten miles or so below Akers.

As far as trout competing with smallmouths...adult rainbow trout don't compete all that much with adult smallmouths, but I do suspect that adult rainbows compete with fingerling smallies in eating insects. However, just wade down the Current turning over rocks and watching the water and you'll see a LOT more food (minnows, crayfish, aquatic insects) than the large trout population there is able to eat. Browns are more likely to compete with adult smallmouths, but it's all a matter of habitat preferences. There's a reason why you don't find great smallmouth populations in water that never gets much warmer than 70 degrees and stays well below that temp for most of the year...and not all of those waters already have trout.

Oh, and by the way, I don't know Mark Nickless, but I've never caught a chain pickerel in or near Maramec Spring, or anywhere else in the Meramec River system. According to "The Fishes of Missouri", they are not native and not found in the Meramec River system. Grass Pickerel, which are smaller and a different color, are the native pickerel in the Meramec, and I've caught a few of them in the Meramec and tributaries. They are more tolerant of warm water than chain pickerel are. Not saying Nickless is wrong, since I don't know him and haven't spent all that much time fishing in the Maramec Spring branch; I'm just going by the reference material.

[Greg]

Well said Coldwater...

There are evil forces at work here.

Evil forces????? Now come on!! Brown trout do not reproduce in MO waters. So if some browns are stocked in the 11 point and some detrimental effects are seen to the rainbow and/or smallmouth populations (which I doubt) - then the MDC just stops stocking them and there is no further problem.

And I'm no expert here but I think Al is absolutely right. In areas of our MO streams that are springfed and that stay pretty cool year around - smallmouth just don't seem to thrive. And I'm sure it is NOT because trout are stocked. It's been my understanding that was the case way before trout were ever stocked. So if we have these areas where a top level aquatic predator does not thrive (bass) why not stock trout (rainbow and/or brown)?

Greg

[Guest]

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[Kicknbass]

I've fished the crap out of both of these stretches of water for the last 15 years and I can count on one hand how many Pickerel I've caught and seen caught. Maybe you have a particularly good bait or fly, but to say that one of these fisheries is "full" of them is something I have not experienced and I'm sure that many people will agree.

I fish the middle current fairly regularly, and have been doing so for 40 years and I agree w/ Al. Catching pickerel is fairly easy if you target them and fish water that hold them. You will rarely catch the in the main river, though last year, I found a few of them holding on in the lower end of a long deep hole in a beaver or rat nest. Typically, if you want to catch pickerel, you need to fish the sloughs or back water out of the moving water. I will typically use a suspending or floating stick bait and work it in a jerk and stop fashion. You need to watch your bait, because you'll get more follows than hits. The remind me of fishing in canada for the northern pike. Fun fish to catch. But, please if you find these in the river, please catch and release. due to there fondness of a very selective water type, It is very easy to wipe out the population in an area.

As far as Smallies go, in a river system like the ozark streams. The cold water tends to hinder their numbers in areas that stay cold much of the year. I'm not an expert on why, but Al's logic seems to make sense. I wouldn't say that the trout are the differance, because this is the case on streams w/o trout.

And, OH, Horny, settle down, you seem to be easily riled up. I appoligize if I am reading you incorrectly.

Good fishing.

[jcoberley]

pickerel? Dont even know how to say it! LOL Umm Geee I never have caught one anywhere that I know of. I guess I need to try for some. Hey are thay good to eat? how do you prepair them? I am excited about this! I like trout but I get more in to wild natural fish.

[hornyheadchub]

Evil forces????? Now come on!! Brown trout do not reproduce in MO waters.

Greg

Uhhhh, what??? Of course they reproduce, what ever gave you this idea??

In fact, the substrate in the Ozarks is well suited for Brown Trout reproduction. Just ask the Hatchery managers at Shepard of the Hills. They had dismal success at spawning and rearing Browns until they started removing them from the concrete raceways and put them on ones with gravel bottoms.

Further, I've caught lots of tiny Browns (too small to be stockers) on the North Fork of the White up around Rainbow Springs.

[ColdWaterFshr]

Hornyhead - there isn't any brown trout reproduction going on in any Missouri streams.

In hatcheries, uhhh, yeah.

[Gavin]

I volunteered to help with the fish sample on the Current last year I posed the brown trout reproduction question to the biologists. They said there might be some but its not enough to be signifgant. They said the water doesnt get cold enough at the right time of year.

And my own observations seem to support that conclusion.

In two days of sampling on the Current we handled over 800 brown trout, most in the 10-14" range, maybe 20-25% were 15" or better, around 1 in 20 was 18" or better, the two biggest measured 24.2 and 23.9 , but I think they missed at least one bigger due to the size of their net. Out of the baskets of fish that I helped measure, I dont recall seeing any brown trout smaller than 6", but I saw 3-4 tiny rainbows with parr marks. Other game fish..Maybe ten smalmouth best around 14", 0 pickeral, 2-3 confused largemouth, and a couple sunfish.

I measured fish with both Jon & A.J, and they said that the dont get anywhere near those kind of numbers when they sample on the NFoW and 11pt.

As for food on the Current, you would be amazed if you watched the shock boat move through a good run. That river is absolutely packed with sculpins and minnows. The electrodes kill a bunch of minnows, but it doesnt seem to affect the sculpins much. The biologists said its because the sculpins have small scales. Big Scaled fish (Red Horse, Hog Mollies, and Minnows) take a beating from the shock boat and float straight to the top..Small scaled fish like trout & sculpin just get stunned, for a couple seconds and hardly ever float.

[gonefishin]

I am not for Brown Trout in the 11pt but when it comes down to it I am sure it really doesn't matter. If there is bucks in it for them the state will stock them.