MDC Survey

[Al Agnew]

On 7/21/2021 at 3:26 PM, tjm said:

I've had written permission on several parcels in the past, and for any hunting, trapping or pond fishing would not go without it. It takes away my liability as well as the landowner's.

A few things wrong with that, first off- MDC can't make any laws, that is the legislatures job; secondly the land under the streams is deeded to the landowner going back to the first owner after statehood and is a significant source  of tax revenue  to the state and all the counties, to provide the access you mention would require the state to buy back all those lands and lose all those taxes, likely also have to be run through the SCOTUS since federal laws dictated the original land distribution and stream designation. The current situation requiring access/use of each stream to be decided in court is based on an old US Court decision. Thirdly stream use in Mo. is based on Case Law, almost every stream big enough to interest fishermen could be opened to public access  as a thoroughfare if only someone would get arrested and then take the case before the State courts, this is pretty clear from past judgements.  Fourthly, if the city or state declared your back yard open to the public for BBQ and concerts, wouldn't you object, possibly sue the the city or state? Your proposal deprives thousands of landowners of their rights as landowners in the same way that opening your back yard to public use would. bet it would cost the State a few $billion when a class action got through the Federal Court system.

I like the idea of the state (regardless of agency) buying access to all the streams, but legally, that only gives us permission to use the part of the stream they own, unless the stream has been adjudicated  a public thoroughfare by a court or the state has acquired easement/landowner agreement, like they used to have on Capp's Creek.   I do recall when every bridge had parking and access and every place a state road came next to a creek there were lay-bys big enough for about three cars, all those were taken out in the '90s, I'm not sure why. At the time  I assumed the state had liability issues. Those places now are posted heavily with "No Parking" signs and "Keep Out State Property" signs. 

What I question but have never really researched is the legality of the County Sheriff declaring a "No Parking" zone near county road crossings of streams with no action by the County Commission, that seems to let the Sheriff make laws rather than be an enforcer.  A few times every month I see cars towed away from a nearby bridge area. 

Actually, Montana has that exact stream access law.  If you can legally access the stream from either public land or a bridge crossing, or with the permission of a single landowner, you can travel up and down the stream and fish to your heart's content, no matter whose land you cross, as long as you stay below the high bank.  And it doesn't matter how big or small the stream is, as long as it has a population of fish to fish for.  It's probably the most enlightened stream access law in the nation, and most landowners are either okay with it or resigned to it.  Once in a while, an uber-rich person comes along, buys up a length of some nice trout stream, and tries to keep people off it, and it goes to court...and they lose.  And most bridges still have a usable spot to park at least a couple cars, and are still used for access.  

Could that work in MO?  Not in the current political climate.  Might not even get passed in Montana today.  But it works there.

[tjm]

Al, are you talking about a constitutional amendment? I don't think case law gets changed easily.   Do you pay taxes on the underwater land in Mt?

[tjm]

9 hours ago, Al Agnew said:

And most bridges still have a usable spot to park at least a couple cars, and are still used for access.  

Not in the counties I fish.

[MoCarp]

Very early 90s we had a surge in bridge building, and the effort by design to make it difficult to access many of our SW Missouri streams…this pushed people to easy to get to places

[MoCarp]

I was told that the county commissioners got pissed with newly Americans fishing the way they were used to, keeping whatever they wanted….apparently minnows and shad make good fish soup

[tjm]

I was told the canoe rentals paid off the commissioners to close some accesses, to insure they had access control and got the fees. A fellow can hear all sorts of stories.

The water company backhoe closed some ROW  accesses too, at the request of nearby landowners. I never heard why MDOT removed the pullouts/parking spots, but they are gone.

(those commissioners are all dead now too, I think and maybe the outfiters too, I know some are)

[DADAKOTA]

"I was told".  With the advent of social media lots of unsupported comments get passed on as fact.  A ROW is typically granted by a landowner for a specific use.  Providing public access is typically not one of them.  As such the landowner can choose to allow the public access or not.  The way most people treat public accesses by leaving trash, tearing up the property, dumping, vandalism, etc. I can completely understand why landowners close the access points.  The State would be better off buying the property to allow for public access.

[MoCarp]

4 hours ago, DADAKOTA said:

"I was told".  With the advent of social media lots of unsupported comments get passed on as fact.  A ROW is typically granted by a landowner for a specific use.  Providing public access is typically not one of them.  As such the landowner can choose to allow the public access or not.  The way most people treat public accesses by leaving trash, tearing up the property, dumping, vandalism, etc. I can completely understand why landowners close the access points.  The State would be better off buying the property to allow for public access.

This was in the early 90s my wife’s uncle was Circuit Court clerk back then….pretty reliable source..

heck that was before windows 95 or a sniff of what we call the internet

[tjm]

Yep, social media was the local breakfast joint and the feed store porch. One land owner back then told me a couple of outfitters had offered him a fee to keep others out.  Exclusive use lease his access but never use it arrangement. By the time kayaks  and cell phones became common 80-90% of previous park and walk access were gone and with 25 years passed, 80-90% of the public no longer remembers them. The folks that used them have mostly passed.

[Seth]

On 7/22/2021 at 9:09 PM, jfrith said:

 

Tyler obviously doesn't seem to have any problems catching plenty of big smallies. Maybe other guys just need to get out there and figure em out. If he's figuring this stuff out on his own and wants to post videos, that's on him. He seems to be fishing the same stretches of water quite a bit so he's not messing up everything. I enjoy making videos of my fishing escapades myself, but they are always on highly pressured waters anyways so I don't feel like it really matters. Everything I'm catching fish on is nothing secret. I'm not one to ask for advice from another person either and would rather figure things out on my own. If somebody feeds me info or shows me something, I don't post any video of it because it's not mine to share. That seems like the fair thing to do IMO.

I only really fish the Gasconade so that's all I can really comment on. The fishing pressure from tournaments and pleasure anglers has gotten worse every year since I started fishing in 2012. The smallmouth fishing has been better the past two years than it had been the years prior since I started fishing it. Most tournaments are dominated by smallmouth instead of the largemouth like they had been in years past. I've seen more 3.5lbs+ smallmouth brought to the scales in the past two years than I can recall in the previous 7-8 years that I've been fishing for them. 

Is this due to higher water levels or something else? I know it takes smallmouth a lot longer than 2 years to grow to 3-4 pounds, but they sure seem to be more abundant than they used to be. The opposite seems to hold true when it comes to largemouth though. It seems more difficult to find a 3+ pound greenie now than it used to be.

Many of you have a lot more years of service chasing bass on these bodies of water than I do so this is just based on my decade of experience. I don't do much floating on the smaller streams so I have no say on those, but I do feel like I have pretty good tabs on everything below Big Piney through all of the different bass clubs that fish it. I've only fished way up the Gasconade once and it was like a completely different body of water. No tournaments and little jet boat access made for a lot easier fishing. The biggest fish still seem to come from way down river even though it gets a lot more pressure. Could just be more places for them to hide I guess since it's quite a bit bigger water.