Invasives

[fishinwrench]

I remember there being spotted bass in the strip pits up home in the early 70's

Wonder how they got there ?  🤔

[tjm]

Natural expansion of range isn't invasive, it's natural expansion due to our ability to change the climate. 

Them spots in the pits walked there in a bucket, it's called stocking. The feds did it with carp and the state does it with trout walleye etc.

[fishinwrench]

45 minutes ago, tjm said:

 

Them spots in the pits walked there in a bucket, it's called stocking. The feds did it with carp and the state does it with trout walleye etc

Well there was never anyone taking credit for the fish in those pits.   And it was no easy chore getting back in there to several of them. 

When the fed or the state are responsible for anything they definitely want to be recognized for it. .

[tjm]

Bucket biologists don't want credit for stocking invasive fish or for releasing hogs to go wild, they just want a secret fishin hole and wild hogs to hunt.

[snagged in outlet 3]

10 hours ago, Al Agnew said:

Yup.  Or unintended consequences.  Take something close to home; spotted bass invading the Meramec river system.  A classic invasive species.  And it probably got there "naturally", by extending its range from the streams running into the "Bootheel", up the Mississippi River and into the Meramec (as well as all the small streams between the Meramec and Cape Girardeau, where spotted bass were not native as well).  But why did spots suddenly, after many thousands of years since the last ice age, NOW decide to travel up the Mississippi?  Well, the theory is that three things, all human caused, all combined to open the way up the Mississippi.  First, the Diversion Channel was built back in the early 1900s, cutting off Castor River and directing it into the Mississippi far upstream of where the Castor used to enter the big river, thus shortening the distance the spots had to travel.  Second, the big lakes on the upper Missouri were built.  The Missouri River was always a VERY silty river, and made the Mississippi from St. Louis down very silty as well, probably so silty that spotted bass didn't travel it.  But the big lakes shortstopped a lot of the silt, and the Missouri and Mississippi got less silty.  And third, the Clean Water Act was passed, and began to take effect in the early 1970s.  It was a GOOD thing, but it may have reduced pollution in the Mississippi below St. Louis to the point that spotted bass had no trouble traveling it.  And spotted bass being great migrators in floods, they took advantage of all three things and next thing you know they are thriving in the lower Meramec.

How far up the Meramec are they?   Fish a lot Red Horse and far below and rarely catch them.  

[Al Agnew]

21 hours ago, fishinwrench said:

I remember there being spotted bass in the strip pits up home in the early 70's

Wonder how they got there ?  🤔

There has probably been bait bucket stocking of spotted bass here and there.  The spotted bass in the Osage river system first appeared in Lake of the Ozarks in the 1940s; prior to that time they had apparently never been anywhere in the Osage, and there is no record of them ever being stocked there, so chances are somebody released some into some body of water connected to the lake.  

And then MDC had the brilliant idea of stocking them in some streams north of the Ozarks in the 1960s.  The spots in the Gasconade river system may have come from MDC stocking them in the Loutre River, which flows into the Missouri from the north very close to the mouth of the Gasconade.  Or they could have come down the Osage and Missouri to the mouth of the Gasconade.  But the Meramec River spots almost certainly came up the Mississippi, because records (and my own experience) show that they appeared in sequence from the streams running into the Mississippi close to Cape Girardeau, then one by one in streams farther and farther upstream until they reached the Meramec.  When I was living in the Cape Girardeau area going to college and then teaching in the mid-1970s, spots were in Apple Creek, the farthest creek running into the Mississippi farthest downstream, but only up to the Appleton mill dam; there were no spots above the dam.  And there were no spots anywhere in Saline Creek and River Aux Vases, the next upstream creeks of significant size.  By the early 1980s they were common in Saline and River Aux Vases, but not yet in Joachim Creek, the next big creek upstream.  By the mid-1980s they were in Joachim Creek and the lower end of the Meramec.  By the late 1980s, they were showing up in the lower middle Meramec and were common in the lower portions of Big River, up to the last intact mill dam, and in Bourbeuse River below the Goodes Mill dam.  (Interestingly, there were apparently a few adventurous spots that pioneered these streams, as I caught two smallmouth/spot hybrids in lower Big River in the late 1970s.  But I fished Big River and the middle Meramec about as much as anybody during this whole period, and until the late 1980s, I'd never caught a spotted bass in any of these rivers.)

[fishinwrench]

"on the feet of ducks"   

That's what we were taught years ago.

Then they followed up by explaining how delicate fish eggs were. 🤔

[Al Agnew]

On 1/6/2024 at 6:23 AM, snagged in outlet 3 said:

How far up the Meramec are they?   Fish a lot Red Horse and far below and rarely catch them.  

Thanks in large part to stupid tournament setups, you can catch spots all the way up to the Steelville area; a lot of them were caught far downstream, transported to the weigh in, and released right there.  But they are still just a small portion of the bass population above Meramec State Park.  I'm really surprised that you haven't caught many around Redhorse, though, because they are pretty thick below Sand Ford.  I almost always catch more spots than smallmouth from Sand Ford down.  Our new house is not far above Redhorse, and anytime I want some fish to eat I just go down below the house and catch a half dozen or so.  If I don't want to put the jetboat in, I keep a little canoe back in the woods below the house, and just paddle it a mile or so upstream and fish from there to the house and then on down a half mile or so.  I usually catch more spots than smallmouth. Bigger ones are pretty scarce, though; most of them are 10-12 inches.  If you want big ones, go below the mouth of the Bourbeuse.  

They are at least as abundant as smallmouth on Big River all the way up to the Leadwood MDC Access.  On the Bourbeuse, they are common over all but the farthest upstream stretches.

[Al Agnew]

18 hours ago, fishinwrench said:

"on the feet of ducks"   

That's what we were taught years ago.

Then they followed up by explaining how delicate fish eggs were. 🤔

I don't know...but I do know that green sunfish will somehow get into places that you'd think there would be no way they could reach, like farm ponds, and who would purposely stock them?  And bullhead catfish?  Those things have to be able to crawl on wet grass.

[fishinwrench]

48 minutes ago, Al Agnew said:

I don't know...but I do know that green sunfish will somehow get into places that you'd think there would be no way they could reach, like farm ponds, and who would purposely stock them?  And bullhead catfish?  Those things have to be able to crawl on wet grass.

True.   Ain't nobody hauling in green sunniest and bullheads in buckets.....Yet they seem to end up in isolated ponds just fine.