need some bass advice

[Randall]

on tuesday, my buddy kyle and i are heading down to fish the meramec for smallies after the morning hatch ends. neither of us has ever targeted smallies on this river or with a flyrod. neither of us is very experienced chasing smallmouth either.

i would appreciate any advice on where smallmouth start and any general tips for locating and fooling them.

thanks in advance

-randall

[Ted Calcaterra]

I fished last Saturday from Scotts Ford to Indian Springs. Caught some nice fish on sculpins and crayfish on a sink tip line. You should be able to get by with a floating line as long as the flies are weighted. Concentrate on where there are rocks and eddies. That is where I seem to catch the most fish. Just my 2 cents. Good Luck.

[Al Agnew]

There are smallmouths throughout the Meramec, including within the trout section, although there are more of them above and below it.

Differences between smallies and trout:

Smallmouths relate a lot more to cover. In the Meramec, cover consists of rocks and logs, along with water willow weedbeds. They will be in gentle to moderate current, not in the faster parts of the riffles like trout. Don't spend a lot of time in the middle of the big, deep pools, either.

Smallies are much more likely to chase things...dead-drifting is not usually as effective as stripping nymphs and streamers. They also look for bigger bites...you're usually wasting time fishing anything smaller than a 2 inch long Woolybugger. You might catch some small smallmouths on smaller flies, but usually the dink sunfish beat the smallies to them.

I find smallmouths to be more wary than trout. I can stand in a riffle and catch trout dead-drifting nymphs less than ten feet away. If you're within 15-20 feet of a good smallmouth, chances are the fish knows you're there and doesn't like it.

As for flies/lures...you can't beat big Woolybuggers weighted and fished near the bottom, big Muddlers fished the same way, big marabou Muddlers fished weightless and stripped just under the surface, and various cork and deer hair poppers. Most of the time that's about all you really need.

[brownieman]

Randall,

Couple of questions if I may...that picture you posted...even with a mag. glass these old eyes can't tell and please correct me if I'm wrong, hope I am.

Are those smallies and some gogs on the stringers? They appear to be...please tell me I am wrong...about the smallies anyway.

Do you practice catch and release on the smallies?

This is the main reason I did not feed into this thread...I can't feel responsible for the decline of the river smallies. They are such a slow grower and are being threatened in many different ways...it's a shame !

Al,...I suspect you know where I am coming from. Such as yourself smallies have earned my total respect as far as river fish ( native ) in our streams and rivers. Pound for pound there is no harder fighter, the "bronzebacks" and patterns, red eyes...imo they are a magnificant and unique species of bass.

It don't get no better than an 18, 19 inch smallie on your line in swift water...that's hard to beat my friend.

There hve been no efforts made by the MDC ( besides designated smallie trophy areas with little enforcemnent ) to save these fish. If any efforts have been made in this arena someone please let me in on it. An effort such as this would be a little bang for our buck...at least an attempt, even if futile.

Are you catching any walleye on the St. Francis ? I hope that effort was successful...last I heard some decent size fish were being caught here and there.

You said you own land there...reckon you would know if anyone would.

You and I are standing on common ground with the exception of one thing and you know what that is...we each are going by the things we have seen and experienced...we could have a good one on one discussion, I am convinced of that...just feel you view the MDC through rose colored glasses, as do millions of others.

[Randall]

brownieman,

i fish catch and release exclusively with the exception of an occasional string of crappie for a fish fry. the fish in that pic are crappie and largemouth taken out of a privately owned lake. the owner- who was our advisor in college- asked myself and my two buddies there to catch some fish for their freezer.

thanks ted and al for the advice. hopefully the rain i'm getting right now won't change our plans. the plan we made up was to put in above the park and float down to scotts ford, fishing the morning hatch for trout then switching to smallies after that ends. i imagine it'll be an all day ordeal- sunup to sundown. i've been cranking out clousers and i have a few crawfish and sculpin patterns too. we may just blow through the trout water and start fishing again downstream of suicide... not real sure yet.

[brownieman]

Thanks randall...I like nothing better than a fresh mess of fish once in a while...private lake, that's cool...don't get much better eatin than that.

[Al Agnew]

Brownieman...I too would like to see more done for river smallmouth fishing. This is one place where I'm somewhat disappointed in MDC. The biologists is charge care deeply about the smallmouth fishing, but have been limited by the higher-ups in this area. For instance, if the biologists had their way, there would be no limit on spotted bass in the Meramec river system, but the more conservative higher-ups barely agreed to the 12 fish limit. As for special management areas, the biologists would like some more, but have to study what they have to see if the restrictive regs are working the way they should. I agree that there needs to be more enforcement, which is another thing I have against MDC in general...not enough agents, and not a visible enough presence on the Ozark streams.

As you can see, I don't think MDC is infallible. While I'm mostly okay with how they seem to be spending their money, I'm far from completely happy with everything they do. Only part of it is in their expenditures, more of it is in the mindset of the powers that be.

[brownieman]

Brownieman...I too would like to see more done for river smallmouth fishing. This is one place where I'm somewhat disappointed in MDC. The biologists is charge care deeply about the smallmouth fishing, but have been limited by the higher-ups in this area. For instance, if the biologists had their way, there would be no limit on spotted bass in the Meramec river system, but the more conservative higher-ups barely agreed to the 12 fish limit. As for special management areas, the biologists would like some more, but have to study what they have to see if the restrictive regs are working the way they should. I agree that there needs to be more enforcement, which is another thing I have against MDC in general...not enough agents, and not a visible enough presence on the Ozark streams.

As you can see, I don't think MDC is infallible. While I'm mostly okay with how they seem to be spending their money, I'm far from completely happy with everything they do. Only part of it is in their expenditures, more of it is in the mindset of the powers that be.

Well put Al,

We do need more agents but only if they are willing to put forth the effort it takes to catch people, you know...get out in the heat and walk a few ridges or paddle a canoe down a river instead of using a jet boat to let people know they are coming 3 miles away.

Otters...it's said their main diet is crayfish although I have had otters on numerous occasions chase a bait right up to my rod tip...it's a delicate balance and crayfish are one of the mainstays of smallies...often times I have been told by dept. employees on certain streams when they are unloading trout the otters have a feeding frenzy...have talked with fisherman that have seen this also.

I also don't agree with their sampling methods, shocking...well the name implies what it is to me and it can't be good for the fish and IMO I'm sure a few have have been totally fried on occasion. Creel limits, whatever. Both methods may give an idea but not very accurate imo. You and I have fished and have pashion for the same type waters...you and I have seen the decline with little effort put forth...imo it's because it is not a high dollar source of revenue.

They will study and study till their gone and then and then only...they'll stand back, scratch their heads and wonder what happened.

I say again, if it's deemed endangered, they will study it till it's extinct. I do not understand the mindset or is there one?

[Al Agnew]

Brownieman, their mindset is that they don't want to change regulations unless it's absolutely shown to be necessary. Hence the studies, until it seems like things are being studied to death. The enforcement people don't want regs to change because they don't want to be bad guys and ticket people who complain that they didn't know or understand the regs. It took many years to convince them that the average angler could actually tell the difference between spotted bass, smallmouths, and largemouths--they were highly resistant to regs putting different limits on one species of bass. And when it came to the decline of smallmouths in the streams where spotted bass were taking over, they had an ally in one biologist, who was convinced that the spotted bass were no problem...he finally retired.

Otters--I doubt that you could have found a half-dozen people in the whole state who were against otter reintroduction before it happened. NOBODY expected the otters to take off. Their reproductive rates were 4 times as fast as all the literature said otters could reproduce. This is one case where hindsight is 20/20...we all know now that the Ozark stream habitat is such that it's too easy for otters to prey on game fish, especially in the winter. But nobody knew it beforehand. MDC has, in my opinion, done about as much as possible to control the otters through liberalized trapping regs. Unfortunately, any further methods of thinning the otters would probably run up against the animal rights idiots and be a major hassle. Best we can hope for, and I think it's possible that it's happening, is for the otters to reach an equilibrium with smallies and other native gamefish, and the gamefish survivors evolve a bit back to where they can better avoid being prey.

When it comes to agents enforcing the laws, I've had several sessions with MDC enforcement people, where I told them the same thing you're saying. In all the years I've spent on Ozark streams, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've been checked by agents. Their stock answer is that I don't know and don't realize how many times I've been observed by hidden agents, who didn't let themselves be seen because I was obviously not breaking any laws. My answer to that is--is the goal to arrest as many bad guys as possible, or to keep the regs from being broken and thus protect the resource. Some agent hidden in the brush in one spot isn't going to stop all the bad guys on other parts of the stream from breaking the law. On the other hand, if agents made themselves highly visible part of the time, where they were OFTEN seen on the streams, there would be less temptation to break the law for most of the bad guys.

Shocking...I don't know how harmful it is. I do know it's not necessarily a really effective method of sampling fish populations. Sometimes you don't get a lot of the fish that are there. Creel censuses? The problem I see with them is that they miss a lot of the guys who are meat hogs. Most meat hogs are locals, who don't necessarily use the MDC accesses and who don't use them at convenient hours. There has been a lot of resistance to more restrictive smallmouth regs because the censuses show that the vast majority of bass anglers release all the fish they catch, anyway, so the regs would have little effect. But I KNOW that there are a bunch of guys on my home river who keep a legal limit of nice fish every time they go out, and they go out at least once a week.

[mcp633]

Let me just say this one thing. Enforcement people, such as myself, don't have a problem with ticketing people just because they don't know what they did was illegal. Ignorance of the law has never been a defense against any crime or statute violation. Therefore, just because you don't know what you did was illegal, doesn't mean you're going to walk on it. It's academy 101! MDC agents DO a outstanding job! There's just not enough of them!