The fishing nowadays vs. "back then."

[MObassin95]

Hello anglers, 

I moved to the Ozarks in 2016, and have fished inconsistently throughout the years. But I've really fallen in love with chasing smallmouth in the rivers over the past year or so. They're such beautiful fish, and the Ozark rivers really are special. I've been fortunate enough to travel alot and I think MO really has the most beautiful rivers in the country. Consequently, however, Missouri also has some of the most crowded rivers. But all is not lost. I think we, as Americans, are more conservation minded than ever. So my question to some of you that have been around here longer than I is: How is the fishing nowadays vs. even ten, twenty, or thirty years ago? Less people eat the smallmouth they catch, but there is more overall pressure on the fish. I'm wondering: are there more smallmouth in the rivers these days because of the popularity of catch and release? But are they tougher to catch because of the pressure? I'm curious to some of the responses! 

 

Thanks! 

[fishinwrench]

Honestly, and I'm surprised to hear myself say this, but I feel that it's better now for both size & numbers than it has ever been since I moved to the "Ozarks" in 1989

I grew up catching Smallmouth in the Salt River tribs further north, and expected it to be SO MUCH BETTER when I moved to this part of the state......but I was rather disappointed.    Smallmouth south of the big nasty Missouri river were fewer and much smaller than I was used to.  And it actually made me wonder what all the bragging and glorified articles were about.

It has gotten better in the "Ozarks" in the last 10-15 years though. Undeniably.    

And...... I don't think the rivers up north are as good now as they were when I was young and dumb, so NO I'll never move back !  😊

[tjm]

I don't think numbers or size of fish have changed greatly in my area since ~1958 when I first recall paying attention to the fish others caught. It's very possible that the percentages by species has changed.   I believe that far fewer fish are taken out of the creeks than in my childhood, but  that doesn't mean there are more fish in the creeks, any creek has a limited carrying capacity.  I do think the fishing is less appealing now than even 20 years ago, due to reduced access and hundreds of kayaks.

[netboy]

The fishing for me here on the White and Norfork rivers is getting better each year, but that is most likely due to getting out most days and learning the river and the hatches and getting a bit better at matching the hatches. For example, I was fishing a sulphur hatch this morning and the trout were rising, but not taking my usual sulphur colored dry fly. I netted a couple of the hatching sulphurs and they were pure yellow instead of the usual orange/yellow color. I switched to a yellow sulphur dry fly and started getting many more hookups.

Bottom line... I think we all get better with experience.

[Al Agnew]

I've been fishing these rivers since the 1960s.  And I've kept pretty good records off and on, though not continuously.  So I have a pretty good handle on how they have changed.

First big change: the 12 inch minimum length on stream bass was instituted in 1974.  Within a couple years the fishing for bass over 12 inches improved dramatically.  I mean it was very obvious on my rivers.  From the late 1970s to the late 1980s, the fish got bigger and the fishing got better.  But on my rivers in the eastern side of the state, a few things happened in the 1980s that turned that around...

1982:  Otter reintroduction begins.  While otters haven't been terrible for EVERY stream, they certainly did a number on some of the smaller streams I fished.

1982:  The first spotted bass were collected in the lower Meramec.  This was a harbinger of the absolute worst thing that happened to smallmouth in the Meramec river system.

1987:  Jet boats had become common on the larger Ozark streams.  This was the second worst thing that ever happened.

By the later 1980s, spotted bass were colonizing the Meramec up to Meramec State Park, Big River up to the highest mill dam in Jefferson County, and the Bourbeuse up to Goode's mill dam.  For every pound of spotted bass biomass, there was one less pound of smallmouth.  But, even before that, my catch rate of smaller bass on the middle Meramec had dropped to 25% of what it had been before.  I was still catching about the same number of larger adult smallmouth, but something had definitely happened to the spawning success starting in the mid-1980s.  This did NOT happen on Big and Bourbeuse, only on the middle Meramec.  I am certain it was jet boat wakes, pounding the spawning banks, stirring up silt, and disrupting spawning.  By the early 1990s, the big fish were scarce, too.  So scarce that I all but stopped fishing the Meramec below Onondaga.  And on the lower Bourbeuse and Big, the spotted bass had pretty well taken over and smallmouth, once common everywhere in these rivers, were limited to a few select spots on the lower portions; the rest were dink spotted bass.  I can't stress enough how huge of an impact the spotted bass had on smallmouth there.

1992: The first three smallmouth special management areas were instituted--Meramec from Scott Ford to Bird's Nest, Big from Mammoth bridge to Brown's Ford bridge, Big Piney from Slabtown to Ross Bridge...one fish, 15 inch limit.  Did they have a huge impact on the populations of bigger fish?  I don't think so.  In 1995 sections of the Gasconade and Jacks Fork got a one fish, 18 inch minimum length limit, and THAT made a difference.  There were definitely more big fish in those sections in the next 10 years.

Now...as to what happened after that, the spotted bass eventually colonized most of Big River and Bourbeuse.  They also, in the same general time period, colonized the Gasconade and lower Big Piney.  The smallmouth fishing on those streams will NEVER be as good as it was before spotted bass, period.  The smallmouth population on  the middle Meramec stabilized, and I think the fish eventually adapted to the jet boat wakes; they now spawn on rocky banks where there isn't as much silt to stir up, while before jet boats they spawned a lot on alluvial banks.  The catch and release ethic got strong enough that there are still big smallmouth in most Ozark streams.  And I KNOW more about catching big smallmouth than I did before, as do a whole lot of anglers.  I think that, had I known in the late 1970s and early 1980s what I know now, I would have been catching a LOT of big smallmouth.  I think that may have been the high point in the numbers of big smallmouth on the streams in the Meramec Basin.  But a lot of big ones are still caught these days, mainly because more people are fishing, jet boats make fishing the streams easier, and the knowledge of how to catch them is more widespread.  But fishing pressure has also made fishing tougher on the larger streams, even with catch and release being so common.  And the numbers of smallmouth of catchable size on the Meramec, even in portions where spotted bass have never been able to dominate, is a fraction of what it was back in the early 1980s.  The numbers of catchable smallmouth over much of Big River and the Bourbeuse is half or less what it was before spotted bass.  The numbers of bigger smallmouth on a lot of streams, like the upper Jacks Fork, are also declining in the last ten years or so, both from fishing pressure and perhaps from otters.

The thing is, the fishing was EASY between the mid 1970s and the late 1980s.  It is now more difficult, and getting more difficult every year.  When I first discovered the lower middle Meramec in the mid-1970s, I EXPECTED to catch one or two 18 inch plus smallmouth, and at least 50 bass, every time I went.  I even went on weekends; yes, there were already hordes of rental canoes, but if you put in at daylight you avoided the crowds and caught fish like crazy.  And there were NO jetboats.  Now, fishing the same waters in the summer like I did then, I do NOT expect to catch 18 inchers, and I usually catch 15 or 20...and that's even with knowing a lot more about how to fish.  And I don't even think about going out on weekends; living on the river in a section I fished a lot back in the day, I watch a hundred or more jetboats screaming up and down the river every Saturday and Sunday, and a dozen or more on weekdays.  It saddens me.  I fish the streams too small for jetboats in the summer, and only fish the jet boatable stretches in the off season.

 

[MObassin95]

19 hours ago, Al Agnew said:

I've been fishing these rivers since the 1960s.  And I've kept pretty good records off and on, though not continuously.  So I have a pretty good handle on how they have changed.

First big change: the 12 inch minimum length on stream bass was instituted in 1974.  Within a couple years the fishing for bass over 12 inches improved dramatically.  I mean it was very obvious on my rivers.  From the late 1970s to the late 1980s, the fish got bigger and the fishing got better.  But on my rivers in the eastern side of the state, a few things happened in the 1980s that turned that around...

1982:  Otter reintroduction begins.  While otters haven't been terrible for EVERY stream, they certainly did a number on some of the smaller streams I fished.

1982:  The first spotted bass were collected in the lower Meramec.  This was a harbinger of the absolute worst thing that happened to smallmouth in the Meramec river system.

1987:  Jet boats had become common on the larger Ozark streams.  This was the second worst thing that ever happened.

By the later 1980s, spotted bass were colonizing the Meramec up to Meramec State Park, Big River up to the highest mill dam in Jefferson County, and the Bourbeuse up to Goode's mill dam.  For every pound of spotted bass biomass, there was one less pound of smallmouth.  But, even before that, my catch rate of smaller bass on the middle Meramec had dropped to 25% of what it had been before.  I was still catching about the same number of larger adult smallmouth, but something had definitely happened to the spawning success starting in the mid-1980s.  This did NOT happen on Big and Bourbeuse, only on the middle Meramec.  I am certain it was jet boat wakes, pounding the spawning banks, stirring up silt, and disrupting spawning.  By the early 1990s, the big fish were scarce, too.  So scarce that I all but stopped fishing the Meramec below Onondaga.  And on the lower Bourbeuse and Big, the spotted bass had pretty well taken over and smallmouth, once common everywhere in these rivers, were limited to a few select spots on the lower portions; the rest were dink spotted bass.  I can't stress enough how huge of an impact the spotted bass had on smallmouth there.

1992: The first three smallmouth special management areas were instituted--Meramec from Scott Ford to Bird's Nest, Big from Mammoth bridge to Brown's Ford bridge, Big Piney from Slabtown to Ross Bridge...one fish, 15 inch limit.  Did they have a huge impact on the populations of bigger fish?  I don't think so.  In 1995 sections of the Gasconade and Jacks Fork got a one fish, 18 inch minimum length limit, and THAT made a difference.  There were definitely more big fish in those sections in the next 10 years.

Now...as to what happened after that, the spotted bass eventually colonized most of Big River and Bourbeuse.  They also, in the same general time period, colonized the Gasconade and lower Big Piney.  The smallmouth fishing on those streams will NEVER be as good as it was before spotted bass, period.  The smallmouth population on  the middle Meramec stabilized, and I think the fish eventually adapted to the jet boat wakes; they now spawn on rocky banks where there isn't as much silt to stir up, while before jet boats they spawned a lot on alluvial banks.  The catch and release ethic got strong enough that there are still big smallmouth in most Ozark streams.  And I KNOW more about catching big smallmouth than I did before, as do a whole lot of anglers.  I think that, had I known in the late 1970s and early 1980s what I know now, I would have been catching a LOT of big smallmouth.  I think that may have been the high point in the numbers of big smallmouth on the streams in the Meramec Basin.  But a lot of big ones are still caught these days, mainly because more people are fishing, jet boats make fishing the streams easier, and the knowledge of how to catch them is more widespread.  But fishing pressure has also made fishing tougher on the larger streams, even with catch and release being so common.  And the numbers of smallmouth of catchable size on the Meramec, even in portions where spotted bass have never been able to dominate, is a fraction of what it was back in the early 1980s.  The numbers of catchable smallmouth over much of Big River and the Bourbeuse is half or less what it was before spotted bass.  The numbers of bigger smallmouth on a lot of streams, like the upper Jacks Fork, are also declining in the last ten years or so, both from fishing pressure and perhaps from otters.

The thing is, the fishing was EASY between the mid 1970s and the late 1980s.  It is now more difficult, and getting more difficult every year.  When I first discovered the lower middle Meramec in the mid-1970s, I EXPECTED to catch one or two 18 inch plus smallmouth, and at least 50 bass, every time I went.  I even went on weekends; yes, there were already hordes of rental canoes, but if you put in at daylight you avoided the crowds and caught fish like crazy.  And there were NO jetboats.  Now, fishing the same waters in the summer like I did then, I do NOT expect to catch 18 inchers, and I usually catch 15 or 20...and that's even with knowing a lot more about how to fish.  And I don't even think about going out on weekends; living on the river in a section I fished a lot back in the day, I watch a hundred or more jetboats screaming up and down the river every Saturday and Sunday, and a dozen or more on weekdays.  It saddens me.  I fish the streams too small for jetboats in the summer, and only fish the jet boatable stretches in the off season.

 

Wow, thank you for sharing! That's fascinating. 

 

 I'm not surprised about the jetboats having a negative affect on the rivers, neither the otters. The otter situation is tough because on one hand I do think we should try to reintroduce native animals that humans have eradicated from an ecosystem, but on the other hand, their population can get out of control because we have also eradicated their natural predators . 

 

Spotted Bass must just outcompete Smallmouth. I have been fishing Beaver Creek and there are alot of really nice Spotted Bass, but the Smallmouth fishing is just so-so. The biggest fish I've caught out of there was actually a Spot-Smallie hybrid I think.