AGFC fish sampling

[fishinwrench]

I obviously haven't spent time on them all, but the best Smallie stream that I have fished, in this state, is a good hour or more north of what everyone considers the "Ozarks". 

Never saw a 20"+ come from it......but the number of 15-18 inchers far surpasses anywhere I've ever been.   

[tjm]

The green is where MDC says SMB live. That streak along the Mississippi from the Missouri River north is  all outside what is normally considered the Ozarks. They need to revise that map though to show that SMB don't live in the Neosho/Grand drainage. Probably the Mo. river could be considered the northern edge of the Ozarks, even though there isn't a lot of agreement on what/where the Ozarks is. 

[WestCentralFisher]

There are plenty of smallmouth in Missouri places you'd absolutely never expect. If there is a cool, clear stream with some semi-consistent spring flow (and yes, those exist north of the Missouri River), it's at least worth checking into. They may be concentrated in short stretches, and the best water amounts to a few bluff holes, but such places exist. Those fisheries tend to be really vulnerable due to generally pretty limited habitat. The types of places that you should think twice before telling even family about.

In finding these places, think about source populations. If a stream is a MO trib on the north side, think about what other streams flow in relatively nearby from the south. If any of those are smallmouth streams, and the stream you're looking at appears to have decent habitat, there is a good chance they're in there somewhere. In NE MO, your source is gonna be the upper Mississippi. It's not all that far north of Missouri that the Mississippi has fishable smallmouth populations. There aren't really any such source populations in NW Missouri. If smallmouth exist up that way, I've yet to find them.

 

[Al Agnew]

I might have to beg Wrench to private message me his "best" smallmouth stream north of the Ozarks!

The sections of streams north of the Ozarks that have smallmouth are fairly limited.  You have to find the sweet spots, the sections that have some clarity and consistent flow.  Too far upstream and they are too much like prairie streams, too far downstream and they are too slow and muddy.  The Salt River below Mark Twain has smallmouth mainly because the lake resulted in changing the river below to more suitable smallmouth habitat; it was probably too muddy that far downstream to support much of a population before, but there were smallmouth farther upstream in the watershed.

Smallmouth populations change over time in the Ozarks, too.  I haven't fished EVERY Ozark stream, though I've probably fished more of them than most.  And some I only fished 30-45 years ago, and populations could have changed considerably in that time.  In my lifetime, I've seen smallmouth populations crash in some streams, especially those where the spotted bass were non-native but invasive.  And I've seen the smallie population get a lot better in a few, for somewhat mysterious reasons.  Last year I fished two long sections of two streams that were mostly new to me--I'd floated parts of these long sections, but it had been 30 plus years ago in one of them, and nearly 50 years ago in the other.  So they were virtually new to me.  On both, I would consider the smallmouth fishing to have been about average.  On one the numbers we caught were pretty good, but the size was lacking.  On the other, numbers were just okay but several really good fish were caught.  Both were four day floats.

But only fishing a section once doesn't really tell you much.  Did the fishing happen to be faster than normal or slower than normal those two trips?  Heck, getting back to the original subject, I haven't fished Crooked Creek enough to REALLY judge how good it can be.  

But, I have some confidence that I can go to an unfamiliar river, and if the conditions are normal and stable on that river, I can usually figure the fish out and get some idea of how good it can be.  On the other hand, I did a float on a section of the Bourbeuse earlier this summer that I'd only been on a couple times before, and that had been 30 years ago.  It was pretty poor fishing back then, and this time it was the WORST fishing I've had in 40 years; I caught 2 10 inch spotted bass and a 12 inch smallmouth all day.  Is it REALLY that bad?  I know that there are sections of upper Current River that are poor smallmouth fishing simply because they are too cold for good smallmouth populations, but I have no explanation for that section of the Bourbeuse; it looks no different from sections above and below it where I've caught plenty of fish.

[fishinwrench]

25 minutes ago, Al Agnew said:

I might have to beg Wrench to private message me his "best" smallmouth stream north of the Ozarks!

The sections of streams north of the Ozarks that have smallmouth are fairly limited.  You have to find the sweet spots,

No begging necessary, I've mentioned them here in the past.....but I'll PM you👍 

You're 100% correct about "finding the sweet spots".     Ya gotta float on through the slow mud-bank areas, and concentrate on the bluffy, rocky/gravel, clay bank spots.....which are typically just around every other bend. 

I used to have access to certain areas that made it really handy for short trips, but I've lost track of those people over the years.    The one really cool thing about the streams up there is that it's just as easy to navigate upstream as it is downstream 😊.  I had a little BassTracker Bantam plastic boat with a MinnKota 10 on it, that fit in the back of my truck and was the perfect rig for those creeks and the nearby strip pits. 

[fishinwrench]

2 hours ago, Al Agnew said:

The Salt River below Mark Twain has smallmouth mainly because the lake resulted in changing the river below to more suitable smallmouth habitat; it was probably too muddy that far downstream to support much of a population before, but there were smallmouth farther upstream in the watershed.

Before the lake was impounded the area near the Monroe/Ralls county line was OUTSTANDING bass water.   Even a stupid kid with a couple of Heddon River Runt crankbaits, Jitterbugs & Lazy Ikes could literally load the boat.   

There were Hellbenders too.  And without a doubt it was the bullfrog capital of the world!   I'm talking about messes of bullfrogs that could land a guy in jail !   😉