MDC Survey

[jfrith]

There are many posts made everyday on the fishing, hiking, kayaking, etc. Missouri Facebook groups from people that seem to be attention seeking or something else. Half the time it seems like the only reason they went outside was so they could take pictures and post about it on Facebook. When your main reason for getting out on a stream is to get enough views on your YouTube video to get monetized, I think it’s ridiculous. And it becomes an issue when everybody is trying to do it. 
 

All of the people that comment on the posts asking about where it is….. followed later by “I’ll check it out next weekend”. It’s silly to believe it hasn’t greatly added pressure on the streams/ CA. 
 

And yes, obviously we do the same thing to a degree with this forum, but FB and YouTube are in a whole different league of exposure. Some people value 1k “likes” on an internet post more than they do keeping a good thing to themselves. 

[Seth]

18 hours ago, Smalliebigs said:

Yeah okay lol 

Oh come on! Give us that overly aggressive smalliebigs response that we all know and cherish. 😆

[Al Agnew]

Once the fishing goes to crap on a small stream because too many people are fishing it, yeah, people mostly stop fishing it, and a few years later maybe it's back to being pretty good.  So what?  In the meantime, it sucks.  And worse, as has been pointed out over and over, the landowners have gotten tired of all the nimrods showing up to fish it, and have closed off access.  THEN it gets good but only for the landowners.

The internet has been an unbelievable source of info not only for locations to fish but for techniques.  I don't think I've been guilty of divulging locations, but I certainly have shared a lot of my lures and techniques here and elsewhere, and I wonder how much of a negative impact that kind of information being so widely spread has had on stream fishing.  I find myself being a little more careful about giving out ANY kind of fishing info on Facebook.  Not that my techniques and lures are magical or anything, but to be honest I'd just as soon keep a little more quiet about it because the more people fishing the way I fish, the smarter the fish get to the way I fish, and yep, I'm a little selfish about that...I'd just as soon keep catching fish the way I like to fish.

I don't fish river tournaments.  I doubt that I'd do well in them, UNLESS my partner was an experienced and successful river tournament fisherman.  Why?  Because I don't know any of the rivers where the tournaments are fished well enough, except maybe the Meramec.  It takes very detailed knowledge of WHERE to fish more so that HOW to fish to win river tournaments.  I don't have that knowledge.  Put me on a strange river with a bunch of other anglers who don't know the river any better than I do, and I'll probably hold my own.  But I ain't gonna beat them on their home waters.  I don't know, but I suspect Tyler has done well in the tournaments he's recorded himself in because his partner knew where to fish.

[jdmidwest]

Once the fishing goes to crap on a small stream because too many people are fishing it, yeah, people mostly stop fishing it, and a few years later maybe it's back to being pretty good.  So what?  In the meantime, it sucks.  And worse, as has been pointed out over and over, the landowners have gotten tired of all the nimrods showing up to fish it, and have closed off access.  THEN it gets good but only for the landowners.

Not really.  The water table has dropped, pressure has declined the fish population, and the world has become a not better place.

[Smalliebigs]

On 7/30/2021 at 11:35 PM, Al Agnew said:

Once the fishing goes to crap on a small stream because too many people are fishing it, yeah, people mostly stop fishing it, and a few years later maybe it's back to being pretty good.  So what?  In the meantime, it sucks.  And worse, as has been pointed out over and over, the landowners have gotten tired of all the nimrods showing up to fish it, and have closed off access.  THEN it gets good but only for the landowners.

The internet has been an unbelievable source of info not only for locations to fish but for techniques.  I don't think I've been guilty of divulging locations, but I certainly have shared a lot of my lures and techniques here and elsewhere, and I wonder how much of a negative impact that kind of information being so widely spread has had on stream fishing.  I find myself being a little more careful about giving out ANY kind of fishing info on Facebook.  Not that my techniques and lures are magical or anything, but to be honest I'd just as soon keep a little more quiet about it because the more people fishing the way I fish, the smarter the fish get to the way I fish, and yep, I'm a little selfish about that...I'd just as soon keep catching fish the way I like to fish.

I don't fish river tournaments.  I doubt that I'd do well in them, UNLESS my partner was an experienced and successful river tournament fisherman.  Why?  Because I don't know any of the rivers where the tournaments are fished well enough, except maybe the Meramec.  It takes very detailed knowledge of WHERE to fish more so that HOW to fish to win river tournaments.  I don't have that knowledge.  Put me on a strange river with a bunch of other anglers who don't know the river any better than I do, and I'll probably hold my own.  But I ain't gonna beat them on their home waters.  I don't know, but I suspect Tyler has done well in the tournaments he's recorded himself in because his partner knew where to fish.

I also watched his tourney video and let me tell ya he missed 3 or 4 very good top water bites that would have won them that tourney. Yeah I have bigtime respect for the river tourney guys but, In the same respect I know I could hang with them any of them. Over exposing one darn creek no less so you can get monetized on YouTube is gay as hell in every respect and to think you are doing something special by catching nice Bass out of one of the BEST fishing creeks in Missouri you are a naive fool who is just narcissist.

[Seth]

On 7/30/2021 at 11:35 PM, Al Agnew said:

I don't fish river tournaments.  I doubt that I'd do well in them, UNLESS my partner was an experienced and successful river tournament fisherman.  Why?  Because I don't know any of the rivers where the tournaments are fished well enough, except maybe the Meramec.  It takes very detailed knowledge of WHERE to fish more so that HOW to fish to win river tournaments.  I don't have that knowledge.  Put me on a strange river with a bunch of other anglers who don't know the river any better than I do, and I'll probably hold my own.  But I ain't gonna beat them on their home waters.  I don't know, but I suspect Tyler has done well in the tournaments he's recorded himself in because his partner knew where to fish.

You pretty well summed up tournament river fishing. Once you learn the water and where the good spots are, it then turns in to knowing how to manage water while you have a bunch of other boats fighting for the same areas. That's what separates the better tournament guys. There are several guys who do well fishing with certain people, but struggle on their own. They already know the right areas to fish, but they lack the decision making skills. Catching a good limit of fish when you have the whole river to yourself is easy. Doing it when you have 20-40 other boats trying to do the same thing is a whole different deal.

You have a fantastic ability to understand things so it's not surprising that you get it even though you don't fish any tournaments.

[bronzelivesmatter]

Not sure how people were selected but I happened to be selected. I think the statewide length limit should be 18" simply due to the pressure from landowners, amish, tournament fisherman, your seasonal floaters that cast a line, out of state fisherman and the giggers its just simply too much for even the best of rivers in my opinion. I think lobbying for more catch and release only zones would be another area of concern. Certain conditions cause smallmouth to get stacked up at spillways so maybe having some catch and release only rules for smallmouth within lets say a mile of certain spillway would really do the population some good in a lot of rivers. 

I am curious about the number of fisherman who prefer catfishing vs the number of people who prefer specifically smallmouth fishing. I received a survey on catfishing not long ago.