Spots above the Huzzah

[Al Agnew]

Brian is right, cwc made sure the spots weren't released up there.  But there are other tournaments and from what I've heard they've released a lot of spotted bass around Steelville.

MAYBE there's not too much to worry about.  If the Meramec above Meramec State Park was great habitat for spotted bass they would have been up there in great numbers by now, like they are on Big and Bourbeuse.  There seems to be something holding them back on the upper middle Meramec, so maybe it'll stay that way for the most part.  But that doesn't mean I'm not worried about it.

[Seth]

I'm not aware of any other tournaments besides the UMBC Invitational where fish are transported from way down river and dumped up river. There are Wednesday evening tournaments starting at Onondaga and running on down to Sand Ford throughout the summer, but those fish are dumped back in at the access and likely caught within 5 miles up or down from the ramp anyways.

[thewhitesnoop]

Tournament fishing is best left to the lakes. Rivers are not well suited for it.

[thewhitesnoop]

River tournaments are dumb and should not be allowed. Let it be a lake thing. 

[fishinwrench]

13 hours ago, thewhitesnoop said:

River tournaments are dumb and should not be allowed. Let it be a lake thing. 

Why do you consider it less dumb on a lake than it is on a river?  

Just curious 🤔

[tjm]

14 hours ago, thewhitesnoop said:

River tournaments are dumb and should not be allowed. Let it be a lake thing. 

It's not the tournaments that are dumb, it's the hauling and releasing of fish. Every single fish caught in a tournament should be eaten by the taker at the weigh in. Lake or river, if you haul them you eat them. Anybody any where that is not in a tournament has to release every fish immediately or make part of the bag, that law should apply to all, period. Change the law so that only dead fish can be weighed in for any tournament.

[Seth]

6 hours ago, tjm said:

It's not the tournaments that are dumb, it's the hauling and releasing of fish. Every single fish caught in a tournament should be eaten by the taker at the weigh in. Lake or river, if you haul them you eat them. Anybody any where that is not in a tournament has to release every fish immediately or make part of the bag, that law should apply to all, period. Change the law so that only dead fish can be weighed in for any tournament.

Why? I can haul fish around all day long in my live well and they are as frisky as when they went in. What would be the point of killing those fish? We've caught the same fish multiple times throughout a year in some of our river tournaments. Those fish obviously had no problem being caught, put in a live well for a while and released again. If a fish is weak or dead when weighed in at the end of the day, somebody will claim it and eat it so it doesn't go to waste.

[tjm]

Do you haul them back to the habitat and location you took them from? Or from the other point of view why does a non-tournament  angler have keep fish as his bag when not released immediately ? Hauling the fish and releasing them in a distant place is why you have the spots where you don't want them.

[Smalliebigs]

23 hours ago, thewhitesnoop said:

River tournaments are dumb and should not be allowed. Let it be a lake thing. 

Agreed!!

[Seth]

1 hour ago, tjm said:

Do you haul them back to the habitat and location you took them from? Or from the other point of view why does a non-tournament  angler have keep fish as his bag when not released immediately ? Hauling the fish and releasing them in a distant place is why you have the spots where you don't want them.

The issue you bring up about spots is related to the Upper Meramec Invitational. People can put in way down river at Hwy 30 or Sand Ford where spots are more abundant and then they are hauled up to the Rafting Co for weigh in. In the past I believe spots were set aside and not released back in to the rivers, but I'm not sure that's still being done. There usually aren't many spots brought in from what I've seen though as the smallies and largies tend to be bigger on the Meramec. Spots can swim freely on the Gasconade and Osage are already full of spots everywhere you go so you're not hurting anything on those bodies of water. The biggest downfall of river tournaments otherwise is that a lot of fish get dumped in at one location. I'm sure a lot of them get caught by anglers looking for a meal from the bank on bait a few days after the tournament is done. Weights have been up in recent years so either we're all getting better at catching bass or the rivers aren't be destroyed by the evil tournament angler. There have been 16-18# bags of smallmouth weighed in over the past two weekends on the Gasconade.