... A BITE!

[mattj]

So last year I posted a fishing thread and found out a few of you like to fish too. Since the weather has warmed up earlier than normal here in the Midwest, fishing season has started earlier than normal too. Since the fish have started biting again, I figure its about time to post a new one.

I don't mean to brag, but I'm a pretty lucky good fisherman. Last year I decided to put some serious time and effort into finding the best spots to fish in my area and figuring out how best to catch the local fish. Last season was one of the best fishing season's I've had since I was a little kid. I didn't come home empty handed once, I broke many of my previous records, and I learned to clean and cook several new fish. The only goal that I didn't meet last year was to catch a sturgeon. I thought I'd post my progress this season.

My Pack

I have to walk quite a ways to most of the places I fish, so i carry everything I need on my back. It holds:

*fold-up stool
*3 poles with reels with 20, 20, and 40 lb line (I usually set all 3 up)
*2 bank poles with 100lb line (they don't have reels, they just have the line tied to the bottom and through the holes)
*small tackle-box with all the hooks and lures I need
*bait (worms when i buy them and a box of Wheaties brand cereal)
*extra reels and line (incase one reel breaks)
*various utility and fillet knives (you can never have enough knives)
*pair of pliers (for getting hooks deep out of fish's mouths, plus I happen to catch a lot of snapping turtles)
*stringers
*flashlight (I usually head out before sunrise).

Used to, the pole ends and hooks and line would get tangled up when I'd walk through brush, but now I use a hair-tie to keep all of the reels pointed the same way and to keep the line and hooks in check. The only thing that doesn't fit is my fishing net. Oh, and a tent. That would be nice. Its very convenient to have everything in one bag that I can just throw in my trunk and then grab it out and be on my way.

The Places I Fish

Catawissa Conservation Area

The Catawissa Conservation Area is about 8 miles outside of town. Its a series of oxbow lakes that fill up when the Meramec River floods. Most Missouri Conservation Areas have big brown wooden signs that point you to them. For whatever reason this one doesn't have any signs. Catawissa is a town of less than 200 people, with only a few houses and a bar. To get to the Conservation Area you just have to know to take a Left at the dead end road by the bar. Few people know about the place, and there aren't any real trails to get you to any of the back lakes, so it doesn't get overfished.

Here's a shot I took with my 3DS of the spot where the River pours in when its up enough.

I took it a week or so ago after it had rained heavily for a few days and the water had started to pour in. I came back the next morning and all the lakes had raised 15 feet overnight. I can't wait for the water to go down enough to get around to all the back lakes so I can catch some of the new fish that got dumped in from the river.

I've caught a lot of good fish in the lakes in the back. The second lake from the bottom, kind of shaped like a long boot, has proven to be consistently good fishing. Last season I caught a 10 lb flathead catfish, and a 20 lb grass carp, along with many other catfish, gar, and drum. It always feels like an adventure fishing here because there aren't any trails, and there are rarely any other fishermen.

Pacific Palisades Conservation Area

Another spot that has proven to be good is the Palisades right outside of town. Unfortunately, everybody knows about this Conservation Area, so that big, beautiful sandy beach near the top is filled up with drunks and partiers whenever the weather is even remotely favorable. What most of the partiers don't know though, is that if you walk around the back side of those trees and then down the shore there's another nice sandy beach. Hardly anyone walks down there to fish, although there are the occasional boats (the Meramec is a pretty popular river for boat recreation). Its one of my favorite spots.

A creek dumps in on the other side of the river, and the river makes a very hard bend, so the far side is extremely deep and the current is strong. But on the sandy side, its a gentle slope for a 100 yards or so over to the other side, so there is plenty of smooth, sandy bottom for catfish, carp, bass, drum, and gar. The water tends to be fairly clear here, and there are bluffs and hills on either side of the river. I enjoy taking off my shoes and soaking my feet in the cool water here as I wait for a bite. Last season I caught several 3ft or so gar, tons of drum, several catfish, and a few grass carp here.

The Missouri River At New Haven

Its about 50 miles from where I live, in Pacific, to my hometown, in New Haven, but its worth the trip to catch some huge fish and see my family. My Grandpa Pratt, who has lived in New Haven all his life told me that when he was a child, his father would tell stories about fishing in the exact spot that I still fish in today to catch the exact same fish that I go after today. Its been a great spot to catch fish for quite literally generations.

I walk down a trail near the boat ramp downtown, past the waste treatment facility, and fish just past the second dike (like in the picture). The dike does a great job stopping the current and creates a pool that is just chock full of enormous, and I do mean ENORMOUS, asian carp (silver and bighead), catfish (channel, flathead, bull, and blue), grass carp, drum, and gar. This is one of the only places I know where I can show up, and consistently have a 30lb fish within a few minutes if I really want. I can't tell you how many huge grass carp, and asian carp my friends and I pulled out of this spot when we were kids. And the ones that got away! Oh buddy! There are some stories! I'll never forget the looks on my friends faces when I hooked what had to be an 8 foot gar! That huge tail churning up the water! Too bad I only had 20 lb line. :(

My First Catch Of The Season

I decided to start this season off with a bang, so I went down to my old fishing spot in my hometown on the Missouri River and snagged me a decent silver carp. It was 30 inches and probably 15-20 pounds (I didn't have a scale). For those who don't know, silver carp are actually filter feeders, like some whales. They aren't carnivores or bottom feeders, so they are literally not at all attracted to bait or lures. I had frustrated myself to no end when I was younger trying to get those stupid carp to bite my bait before I read about their eating habits online. It might seem difficult to catch a fish that will literally never bite your bait, but I devised a simple way of catching them.

1) Figure out where they are. This is pretty easy, because as I said my grandpa told me that people have been catching grass carp, and more recently asian carp at this spot in New Haven for probably a hundred years now. I literally know the exact spot, down to within a few feet where they swim by and gobble up algae and gulp air all the time.
2) Put a bobber about 6 feet up on your line, and put a fairly large treble hook at the end. Then space out 3, or 4 more treble hooks between the bobber and the bottom hook by looping the line through and around the hook and pulling it tight. The bobber tells you where your hooks are and keeps them floating so they don't get tangled up on the bottom, which they definitely would if you didn't use a bobber.
4) Toss the bobber out where you know they'll be, in my case very literally a foot out from the rocks, and wait till you see one surface near the bobber.
5) Give it a tug an hope for the best. If its close, one of the hooks will probably snag it.

My friends and I have also had success by tying a fairly heavy sinker onto the end of our line, looping 4-5 large treble hooks, and just casting out and reeling in really fast and hoping for the best. That way does tend to get you snagged on stuff like underwater trees and rocks more often than the bobber method though.

The next issue I had was how to clean this huge carp I had just caught. In years passed, I had always thrown asian carp up on the shore like everyone else, because they have these odd, and unfortunate bones that feather out into the meat. You can't just fillet them like you can catfish, bass, crapie, drum, and even Gar. I had seen a few videos on youtube explaining how to cut them up and deep fry them in such a way that you can "break" the deep fried fish nugget and just pull out the bone, but with a 4 year old daughter and a picky wife :p that wasn't really an option.

Luckily I found this video series though.
[youtube]T1NVUV8yhmU[/youtube]
It has the hokiest/cheapest 90s kind of production, with cheezy saxophone music, but it does an excellent job of showing how to accurately debone these fish. Its kind of unfortunate that if you seriously want to debone these fish, you only get to keep a fairly small portion of the meat. But on the flip side, these fish tend to be so large, that even though you only get to keep a small percentage of the meat, its still a lot of meat. I followed the instructions and deep fried this one and it was delicious. We didn't find a single bone either, so apparently the guy in the video knows what he's talking about. It really makes me happy that I've found a new fish to clean and eat that I used to just throw away, and that so many people still do throw away.

Part of the reason that pokemon is such a fun game is the collecting aspect. The catchphrase used to be "Gotta cach 'em all!" Fishing is a lot like that for me. There aren't that many native fish in my area that I haven't caught yet. The only ones left are the sturgeon, paddlefish, and bowfin, as far as I'm aware. I'm thinking about making a serious effort to catch a sturgeon this year, since I had planned on it last year, but had ran out of time. That'll be my real goal for this season.

So that's my news for now. I'll be heading out early next Saturday morning, probably to the spot at the Palisades, to catch some drum, catfish, and gar. I'll post the fish I catch then.

So, do any of you take your fishing seriously? What has your fishing season been like this year? What kind of gear do you use? Where do you fish? What kind of fish do you catch? Do you have any goals for this season? Do you have any great fishing stories? Why not post some of your best catches? Hows the fishing in your neck of the woods?

My Catches So Far This Season

03-31-12

04-10-12

04-22-12

04-28-12

05-06-12

05-12-12

05-31-12

06-16-12

06-28-12

06-30-12

 

[Heroes Fall]

I don't fish often but have gone on occassion. Very relaxing, but the fishing season is sub 3 months here.

 

[aurora]

went fishing once
of course, since i have the best luck in the world, i got seasick -_-

 

[Nightmare Jigglypuff]

Why does your pack look like bagpipes?

Never really fished, just needed to point that out.

 

[mattj]

I don't know how its been where you live, but the weather here in Missouri has been extraordinary. Its been in the mid 60s with clear skies and plenty of sunshine. Its supposed to start raining tomorrow though and continue through the weekend, so I figured I'd better go out tonight if I was going to keep up with my schedule for this season.

I went to the Pacific Palisades Conservation Area, which is maybe 2 miles outside of town, walked about 2 miles down the shore to my favorite spot and set up shop. My plan was to set up 5 poles, but before I could even get the third one up my bobbers were zipping every which way. The Gar were definitely biting tonight.

I brought home two small Gar and a small Drum. Nothing special, but at least I didn't come home empty handed. Throughout the few hours I spent fishing I probably tried to land 12 Gar. But the thing about Gar is that they have extraordinarily hard mouths filled with sharp teeth.

Quite often you'll think you've hooked one for sure, he'll be dragging your line all over the river, you'll have jerked hard and kept the pressure on, and you'll drag him splashing all the way to the very edge of the water...

...and it'll turn out that he was just holding your hook in his mouth and he'll casually let it go and swim away. Usually, I can tell when its a Gar fooling with the bait because they just seem to casually, though quickly, move your bait in a straight line against the current without really tugging on the line or taking it under at all. The most consistent way I've figured out to actually land a Gar is to just let it swim around with the bait. Eventually, after they've swam pretty far with it, they'll swallow it, at which point the hook actually has something soft to grab onto. I missed several of them tonight by being impatient and jerking too early.

As I'm sure you can tell from the second picture up there, Gar have an odd body shape for a fish, at least for fish here in the Midwest. They're long and slender. Gar are another one of those fish that most people just throw back in the water or even onto the shore, instead of keeping and cleaning and eating them. Admittedly, they are a lot of work, but surprisingly, they yield more meat for their size than any other fish I've cleaned. A lot of fish, like this Drum that I also caught tonight...

...have relatively short, bulky bodies. Their meat is greatest behind their head and along their dorsal fin and tapers off toward the tail. Gar, while being a comparatively skinny fish, are considerably long. And surprisingly, their meat starts right at the back of their head, wraps all the way around their sides, all the way around even their bellies, and goes quite literally all the way back to where their tail fin starts. They even have relatively tiny rib cages too, so they're not at all a "bony" fish. Even though they may look small you get a ton of meat off of them.

But getting the meat off of them is kind of difficult to do if you don't know what you're doing. Videos like this one really helped me learn.
[youtube]Po2JUlQwE-o[/youtube]
Once you've got the head off, most fish, at least here in the Midwest, are fairly easy to skin. You just cut along the top of their backs with any sharp fillet knife. Go around their dorsal fin to the top of their tail fin. Then you cut along their belly, around any fins, to the bottom of their tail fin. Then you just grab the top, front edge of either side of their skin and gently tug, and it'll just peel right off. Works for Catfish, Bass, Drum, Carp, Bluegill, Crapie, pretty much everything. It does not at all work for Gar!

The skin and/or scales on a Gar are incredibly hard and tough. You seriously cannot understand it until you've skinned one of these yourself. Their skin and scales are so hard that once you do get the skin off it retains its shape and very literally feels like a thin PVC pipe. Its very much like an Aligator's skin. For this reason, even with the sharpest fillet knife there is no possible way to just slide the knife down the back and belly. I've tried it before with brand new knives and they just slide over the scales. And you cannot de-scale them either. Most fish's scales kind of flake off all over the place, but not Gar. Those scales are stuck in there. They're like an Aligator. They're not coming out. Some youtube videos have suggested using industrial tin-snips to cut through the scales and skin, but most of the Gar I catch are small enough that a butcher's knife is strong enough to "pop" through the skin and scales. I just slide it into the rib cage all the way up to the hilt and pull up and the skin kind of "breaks" in two, rather than slicing. Its like cutting PVC pipe, it really is. I'm sure as soon as I catch one over 4 ft I'll need tin-snips though.

And then, because the skin is so rigid and retains its shape, you can't just pull it off with pliers. I've found its actually fairly easy, once I've popped the skin apart along its belly, to just run my fingers between the skin and the meat, and the meat pops out of the stiff skin that way. I tried filleting it once, but then accidentally found out that its much quicker and easier to just slide my fingers to "pop" the meat out of the skin.

After that, you just fillet it like normal and get two very long, very skinny boneless fillets. The meat tastes great too. Its kind of odd though, most fish flakes up and separates when you cook it, if you know what I mean. But Gar meat kind of has the consistency of chicken to it. It still tastes just like any other fish, but the meat doesn't flake when you cook it. It stays together.

Well, that's my report for this trip. I had a great time stompin' around in the mud and sand in my bare feet in sunny, 65 degree weather. I caught a few fish, which will make a great meal tomorrow evening (with fried potatoes, and onions of course). I think I'll try the Catawissa Conservation Area this weekend if it doesn't rain, which the forecast as of right now suggests it will. I can't wait to try out the lakes now that they've been re-stocked by the flooded Meramec River! I'm looking forward to another adventure hiking through the wilderness, and bringing back some more tasty fish!

 

[Yoshi King]

I remember fishing once in Florida and being really excited because I loved fishing in Zelda games (Namely Link's Awakening and Ocarina of Time). When I actually got down to fishing I found it really fun, excitedly waiting for the fish to bite after I had been tugging my line around.

And then I hooked the fish and freaked the fuck out. I was wrenching my rod and yanking and I am surprised I didn't tear the damn hook out of the fish's poor mouth. Eventually I landed the thing--it was a catfish-- and I was horrified when I saw the hook. I thought to myself "How could I ever inflict pain on this poor thing?! I'm a fucking monster!" and started crying while my father gave me that "I have no son" look and knelt down to take the hook out and throw the fish back in the lake.

I haven't fished in real life ever since. Thankfully though Pokemon came into my life the following winter and I thought nothing of enslaving animals and forcing them to fight on my behalf.

I think fishing as a sport/for food is really fun and I would honestly like to try it again someday, I just really dislike harming animals so it makes me feel bad. I have no idea how I'm not a vegetarian. mattj, what would you say is your best catch?

 

[mattj]

You know, I'd have to kind of agree with you about the whole not being comfortable with causing unnecessary pain to animals thing. Obviously I'm going to continue to fish because my family and I love to eat the fresh meat and I enjoy the outdoors and the thrill of the catch, but there are a lot of things that many fishermen do that I refuse to do. I don't torture fish. As a child, I remember seeing some of my friends catch, and then poke, or cut, or step on, or beat fish to death just to do it. I also don't throw fish up on the bank to let them suffocate anymore. Its an absolutely common sight here in Missouri to find huge skeletons of Gar and Carp up on the shoreline everywhere you fish. They're considered nuisance fish and too difficult to butcher, so when people catch them they throw them on the bank to suffocate so they don't reproduce. Aside from the fact that they're both chock full of great tasting, healthy meat that's not actually that hard to get off, there are much more sane methods of euthanizing fish if they really are a legitimate environmental concern (which Asian carp admittedly are here in Missouri). I also don't skin fish alive. For whatever reason, most of the fishermen I know usually don't kill the fish before they start skinning, gutting, and filleting it. It could just be the fish's nerves reacting, but I am quite literally sickened by the sight of a skinless, quivering fish. The very first thing I do when I go to butcher a fish is get its head off in a matter of seconds. I know its just an animal, but there's no reason it should have to endure being skinned, gutted, and filleted alive.

My best catch? My most memorable catch definitely has to be a 30 or so pound Drum I caught in the Gulf of Mexico while fishing with my cousin Josh and uncle Harvey in Port St. Joe Florida. It was my first "big" fish. Before that I had just caught small stuff like 1 pound Blue Gill and Catfish. That was definitely the turning point in my young life that got me hooked on fishing, and catching large fish. It was kind of funny too because I caught it on a piece of beef jerky.

 

[tofucocoa]

oh yes! we caught about 5 pretty good sized fish last year and i had one for dinner the other night. the only thing wrong with that was we didn't scale them too well, but they were tasty regardless!

we have a pond we can fish in and catch something within a few minutes, but it's all small fries and occasionally snapping turtles. i heard you can try feeding them up to good sizes, but herons have become a common sight after hurricane katrina -_-

also i'm not sure this is on topic but has anyone tried crawdads? idk if we have big ones or not, but i see their nests every now and then around the creek.

 

[coolbiz]

I caught a 5 pound 21 inch Large Mouth Bass last week in my uncles back yard(He has a lake). That thing fought like a monster. I'll try to find the picture to put up later.

 

[mattj]

also i'm not sure this is on topic but has anyone tried crawdads? idk if we have big ones or not, but i see their nests every now and then around the creek.

That is absolutely 100% on topic! Yeah, here in Missouri, whenever I've caught some by hand and put them on the hook I've caught a catfish, literally every single time I've tried one. I'm sure they're just as good of a bait where you are too.

When I was a kid living in New Haven Missouri we had a lot of little creeks around town, where I could just walk down the street from my house, go down in the creek and grab as many as I wanted. But I don't know of any small creeks like that around Pacific yet. I guess I'll just have to do some scouting because I'm definitely not paying $1 a crawdad like they want at the bait shop.

[edit]
Waaaaaaaait... did you mean "try" as in "eat"? I think I totally misunderstood you. I thought you meant "try" as in "use as bait". Yeah, they're actually great to eat too, as long as they're not full of worms. I'm no expert, but if I recall correctly at a certain time of the year they get full of these little worms. We caught a ton of them to eat as a kid one time, and had to toss them all because they were wormy. The times that they weren't wormy and we ate them they tasted just like great big jumbo shrimp.

I caught a 5 pound 21 inch Large Mouth Bass last week in my uncles back yard(He has a lake). That thing fought like a monster. I'll try to find the picture to put up later.

That's a great catch! I'd love to see a picture of that!

 

[macle]

pffffffft home grown bass dont count as bass

 

[tofucocoa]

...oh i didn't know you could use them as bait (i'm a noob at fishing) but that sounds like a good plan!

 

[coolbiz]

pffffffft home grown bass dont count as bass

My Uncle stalked the lake over 4 years ago and I authentically caught them myself with a artificial worm and rod and reel combo by Daiwa. Thank you come again.
P.S. I found the picture will put up tomorrow.
P.S.S. I also salt water fish but havent gone this year, the fishing season is year round here in Florida so its pretty cool :P

 

[mingot]

I've never known anyone to eat gar, that's crazy. Of course they're so hard to actually catch. We had "alligator gar" where I am from so maybe those are harder than regular gar? Of course we didn't eat carp or wild catfish either.

 

[mattj]

@mingnut
Hahahahaha! Bro! Bro! You have no idea how many people tell me that exact same thing! My whole Carter side of the family are extremely avid fishers, who make several trips to lake, as well as countless trips to the creeks every season. But every time I mention eating Gar and Carp they're like "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa???"

Yeah, it was just like, one day, I caught around 8 Gar, and I had thrown the first few back, and I was just like, "You know what... I've heard people can eat these. I'm going to look it up on youtube and give it a try." It is admittedly much more work than normal fish, but you get a surprising amount of great tasting meat off of it, so personally I'm happy to keep eating them.

And yeah, Aligator Gar are much larger than these Longnose Gar that I've been catching and eating. These get up to 4-5 foot max. Aligator Gar get anywhere from 12-15 foot max. But we do have those in these same waters. I've hooked several 4-6 foot Alligator Gar, both in the beginning of last season and this season. I just haven't gotten one in to shore yet. Since I started using 40 lb line on one of my poles and 100 lb line on two others, its just a matter of time though. As fast as those things swim, GEEZ MAN, it is such a rush. They'll go 50 feet or so in a few seconds against the current, the big ones will, zipping all the way across the river and back if you let them.

@coolbiz:
I'm dying to see this pic bro!
;o;

 

[coolbiz]

How can I upload the picture on here you guys?

 

[Brambane]

I was in the Florida Keys this past February. We had a block of chum out and out of nowhere this massive nurse shark comes up and starts eating the chum. My uncle had a pinfish out as bait and the nurse shark grabbed it. His rod bent so far I thought it was going to snap. Eventually the shark broke the line, but it was probably for the best. I would have had no idea how to unhook the thing.

Also I caught two jack crevalle on the same lure at the same time and managed to hoist in a 32 inch king mackerel, which was the biggest fish I caught during the trip. Other fish I caught include yellowtail snapper, mangrove snapper, various grouper, bermuda chub (which are the worst things ever, they school in the hundreds behind the boat and steal your bait) and various reef fish which I couldn't identify.

 

[mattj]

So, when you go to the boat ramp at the Catawissa Conservation Area, if you look all the way down the first lake you can see these two black barges beached on the shore that stick way out into the lake. Unfortunately, if you walk down the right side of the lake you're blocked by a deep creek where the Meramec River pours in when its high, and you can't walk down the left side of the lake because it get lots of sunshine and is completely overgrown with impassable brush whenever the lake is at its normal depth. I figured out earlier this year though that if you cross over the first hill between the first and second lakes, there's almost no brush whatsoever on the shady, other side of the hill and you can just walk the length of the second lake and around the corner of where the two lakes meet when they're high to get to the other side of the first lake, where the barges are.

I think I had mentioned it before, but about a month ago I had showed up at the lakes to try to fish off the barges for the first time, but the night before it had rained a ton and the lakes had raised about 15 feet. The path I had found to get me down there was under about 10 feet of water, and it was way too flooded and murky to fish. The water was still up about a foot or two from what it normally is Saturday morning, but it was down enough to give it a try again. It wasn't "sink up to your calves muddy", but because the water had been so high last month, there was still a thin layer of slick silt on everything. And because it had sprinkled last night, that silt was very slick. The lakes are prone to extreme flooding (20 foot or more in a single night sometimes) so the banks on either side of the lake are sometimes fairly steep. I found this wonderful walking stick while scouting Friday night to make sure the path to the barges was still open. It had all the bark gnawed off by beavers, the bottom tip was nice and sharp, and the knot on the top fits my hand very well. I'm glad I picked it up because it saved my butt from sliding straight into the lake several times while I was hiking down to the barges Saturday morning. I'd just stab it into the ground, take a step, stab it again, step again. And when I'd slide it held my ground every time.

The top of the barges are covered with a thick layer of dirt and brush and trees, but the bottoms are nice and clean and dirt free. I used the rigging along the sides of the barges to hold 5 of my poles.

You know, for as nice of a place to fish as the barges look to be, and for as many good things as I'd heard from locals about fishing off the barges, I didn't really catch much. There were a ton of small fish all around the barges, and quite a few turtles, but I'd have sworn there would be more catfish and larger drum and gar. I saw a ton of small gar, but nothing large, and never had one touch my bait. The water off the tip of the barges was around 10 feet deep. I stuck my arm holding my long walking stick down into the water and couldn't touch the bottom. And I know it only got deeper from there. But, surprisingly, after 5 hours of fooling with the smallfries, I didn't have even a bite from a single big fish. You'd think that with the water being so deep and clean, and just being refilled from the flood last month there'd be a ton of big fish, but if they were there they weren't biting apparently. I'm still happy with what I caught. It made for about a pound of fillets, which was a great meal Saturday afternoon. But I really was looking forward to pulling out at least one big catfish. It had gotten pretty cold for this area (40 degrees) the night before, and it still was pretty muddy, so maybe that had something to do with it.

I'm thinking about trying one of two spots this next weekend, if the weather holds out. The first is this nice, deep pool at the very beginning of the second lake at the Catawissa Conservation Area. Its very close to the parking lot, but hardly anyone goes there because you have to walk a short deer trail up a steep hill and through thick brush. But its nice and shady, and there's almost no brush at all there on the other side of the hill, and it has lots of nice, open beaches to fish from. I caught several catfish and gar and drum there last year. The second spot is the second arm of the second lake. Its just beyond that nice pool there, but you have to walk a lot longer to get to it. Its got a nice beach too, and I caught several large (10 pound or so) catfish, and a nice 20 pound or so Grass Carp there last year. If my buddy Scott comes along we'll probably just fish the first pool because he whines about having to walk very far. :p

 

[mattj]

My buddy Scott had hurt his back last week and hasn't been able to get out at all since then. He was feeling much better today so I picked him up on my way out the the Catawissa Conservation Area. The weather was perfect (mid 70s, a little breeze) and the fish were biting and jumping and zipping around the 2nd lake like crazy. I wasn't even able to get all 5 poles out because one would start bobbing before I could get the next one set up. I missed several fish just from fooling around with setting up extra poles! Kind of defeats the purpose on days like today I suppose.

All that came to a quick end though. All of a sudden some really dark clouds just appeared and the wind kicked up. We had actually started to discuss whether or not to stay or go (because the fish were biting so well) when we heard the Weather Alert Sirens blaring from town (I guess 4 or so miles away, as the crow flies). We grabbed our couple of fish and packed up and made it back to the van just as it started to get crazy.

Man, if we had gotten out there a few hours earlier we could have had buckets full of fish. I don't know if it was the weather change, but the perch and drum were gobbling up our bait as fast as we could throw it out there, there were Gar snapping all over the place and there were huge Vs in the water from large fish moving all over the place. At least I came home with something! Oh and I didn't die in a horrible tornado, that was nice too.

It was a memorable hour to say the least! Although they're just one small Bluegill and one small Drum, they made for 4 more little fillets up in the freezer. They'll add to the pile for next time.

 

[mattj]

You know its been a good fishing season when your new fillet knife is already too dull to slice anything.

2 Long Nose Gar and a Flathead Catfish

25' Long Nose Gar

18' Flathead Catfish

Pro-tip: If you want to catch fish, keep up with astronomy.

I had read there was supposed to be a really good full moon this Saturday night. Something about the moon reaching its fullest point at the same time that it swings closest to the earth. I usually wake up very early in the morning and go out to the water before the sun comes up, but I figured this would be a good time to try some night fishing. Boy was I right.

I showed up at my favorite spot at the Pacific Palisades Conservation area, the sandy beach down where the Meramec River makes a hard left turn, at about 7:00 PM. I only got 3 poles set up when it started to lightning and downpour. I retreated off into the brush and the woods to get out of the rain. There are extremely steep and tall hills in the valley I was fishing in, and by the time the rain had stopped and the clouds had disappeared the sun was going down. I'm not sure why most fishermen go home when it starts raining, because I had a TON of bites right before and then after the rain. It definitely was a muddy mess after the rain though. I just took off my shoes and rolled my pants legs up and tromped around in the mud.

I assumed that since there was supposed to be such a big, bright full moon it wouldn't get very dark. I didn't take into account that the valleys were so deep where I was fishing though. From about 8:00-10:00 it was daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaark. I had to rely on my flashlight to keep an eye on my bobbers.

At about 10:00 though, the moon seriously just about scared me to death. It was pitch black where I was. I noticed something up on the top of the steep hill across the river and I swear it was the brightest, biggest full moon I've ever seen. It was just like the sun was coming up. I seriously thought some hunter was shining a spotlight from on top of the hill. After that it was easy enough to see. I'm glad I went out, if only to get a great, unobstructed view of that moon! There are no lights whatsoever out there, and its far enough from town, and deep enough in that valley, that you can't even see the glow from the lights in town. It was gorgeous.

I think I'm going to focus on the Palisades for a few weeks to try and land an Alligator Gar (can you believe people actually swim in that same river???). I had a bunch of solid hits from, and tried to land what was obviously a Gar, before the sun had gone down, but I don't think it was a Long Nose Gar, like the two I caught there in the picture above. It was at least 4 foot long, if not longer, and very fat. I'm pretty sure it was an Alligator Gar. Long Nose Gar only ever get up to 4 foot long, and never that fat, so I doubt it was a Long Nose Gar. I've seen large Alligator Gar out about 100 feet or so into the River, but I can't cast quite that far, so I rarely get hits from them. I got these bites from this Gar on a really far cast that had drifted out into the river a ways. It kind of flopped/rolled over on the surface. I could see its bright white, thick-scaled belly, and it made a B-line straight for the shore, so it was definitely a Gar, but I doubt it was a world record Long Nose haha. Probably just a smaller Alligator Gar. I definitely want to get back out there and land one this next time.

I was happy with what I caught. They weren't any River Monsters, but they were decent enough. I deep fried them for lunch today, but even after eating till we're stuffed we still have leftovers for tomorrow.

Oh geez, and the one part that ssssssssssssssssseeeeeeeeeeeeriously sucked! Its hard to understand if you haven't been there, but there used to be a nicely kept up, wide, gravel road that led straight to the gravel bar. The Missouri Department of Conservation didn't want people to drive their 4 wheel drives down onto the gravel bar, so they put up some of those large concrete construction barriers to block off that part of the road and direct people to another nearby parking lot. That wasn't a terrible thing because you could still walk down the road, which was only maybe a half mile tops, to get to the gravel bar. The problem was though, people who had 4 wheel drive vehicles just drove in the ditch and through the trees right around the barrier, then drove down the road and out to the gravel bar.

This spring, I noticed that the Conservation Department had cut down and mowed and weedeated a trail from that parking lot they wanted everyone to park in, straight through the woods straight to the gravel bar. Its not a bad trail, but its not level, and its skinny, and its crooked and completely overgrown with trees, and they didn't do a very good job of cutting down the small trees here and there. There are still left over, small stumps and logs here and there that are easy to trip on. Its just like a path straight through the woods. I always took the road anyway because, even though they didn't keep it up it was still wide open and straight and you can see well at night and there's nothing to trip on.

Yeah, when I showed up. It was gone. The whole road was just completely gone. They put up a second set of barriers, dumped a 20 foot dam of dirt just past the barriers and then cut down and dumped hundreds of large trees all along the road, so it was covered in trees. Oh, and they apparently tore the road up with a backhoe or something too, its like half dug up. Its completely impassable now.

Its cool and all that they don't want people to drive their 4 wheel vehicles out on the gravel bar. But I really miss that road. I usually go out to the Palisades way before the sun comes up. I took the trail down to the gravel bar while it was still daytime, but geez, on the way back, even with a flashlight, because the trail is so skinny and crooked and slick and uneven, it was terrible trying to get back to my van in the dark. I faceplanted more than once, dumped my entire pack, got a mouthfull of dirt and just about lost my fish. I'm writing a letter to the Conservation Department right after this.

Except for the black trail of doom, it was a great trip though. The rain was really peaceful. I caught 3 very decent fish, I got to sit and look at the stars with very little obstruction, and I got to see that great full moon.

 

[mattj]

So what do you do when the fish aren't really biting?
Go mussel hunting!

Every time I've taken my daughter fishing we've both ended up catching nothing. Thankfully, today turned out differently.

Just downstream and around the corner from my favorite spot on the Meramec River at the Pacific Palisades Conservation Area, there's this idyllic, long, clean, clear, sandy and gravelly beach. I never fish there because the river gets much skinnier after that hard left turn and the current on the other side is incredibly fast. It doesn't even matter how much weight you put on your line, it'll get sucked downstream and into the shallows right away. However, the beach was perfect for Lilly. There were shady, clean, sand dunes for her to dig in, and a long, clear shore for her to explore, and the water is only ankle deep, then knee deep for a ways out, so she could wade around. There was plenty of beach for her to explore. We both had a blast! She spent the day digging in the sand and running up and down the shore tossing rocks in the river. I set up a few poles and kept an eye on them while making sand castles with Lilly. The weather was glorious, mid 70s and sunny. There was so much pollen in the air that it looked like it was snowing from time to time.

I saw this snake from a distance heading our way up the river. At first I assumed it was a cotton mouth, so I walked over with a big stick to kill it before it could get close to where Lilly was playing. But when I got close I noticed it didn't have venom glands and it didn't have slit eyes, so it wasn't venomous and wasn't a cottonmouth. I guess it was a diamond back water snake or something harmless like that, so I called Lilly over and showed her it. Even though it wasn't venomous it did start heading to where Lilly was playing in the shady sand, so I walked over with a long stick, scooped it up and tossed it way down the bank.

I noticed one of my short bank lines was jigging around a bit, so I walked over and gave the line a big jerk. When I did, this gar shot right out of the water and up on the shoreline. It flopped back into the water, but I jumped in and grabbed it before it could swim off. It got me pretty good on my left hand though, and I had to pick a couple teeth out of my pointer finger and thumb with my fillet knife. At least I didn't get skunked! I was surprised I caught anything with the current being so strong over on the other side. All of the normal fish that I go after don't like strong currents like that.

I did notice tons of long, thick, dark fish swimming very slowly upstream, about 10 feet out, in about knee deep water. They weren't eating any of my bait so I assumed they were asian carp, and some of them may have been, but after a bit I noticed some of them flip on their sides and I could tell they were white suckers, which is a fish I haven't gone after in years. For some reason I thought that suckers were game fish, so I stopped trying to snag them, because you can't legally snag game fish in Missouri. But after I got home I checked and they're non-game fish, so I could have snagged some. x_____x I'll definitely make a trip back just to snag some.

Although the current was too swift for the type of fishing I normally do, I did happen to accidentally snag a large mussel. I looked around along the bank and suddenly realized that the entire shoreline was littered with large mussels. On this side of the river, the water was ankle deep and clear and swift with a gravelly bottom for about 5-10 feet out or so. It was really easy to spot the mussels. I asked Lilly if she wanted to go "mussel hunting" and she thought I meant "muscle hunting". It was pretty funny. We waded out a little ways and walked about a half mile down the river in the shallows picking up large mussels along the way. We found about 40, but the two of us could only keep 20, so we tossed the smaller ones back. Luckily, while we were buying worms at Wal-Mart that morning, I had bought her a bucket and shovel for playing in the sand. We easily filled it to the brim, just with the 20 we kept.

I watched a few youtube videos on how to cook mussels, and after scrubbing the algae and muck off, boiled them in a big huge stock pot with some butter and Italian seasoning. They smell great! I filled up a big tupperware container with all of the mussel meat. I think we'll mix them in with some linguine with white sauce tomorrow for a big lunch tomorrow. They're way bigger than the mussels you can buy in the store.

 

[mattj]

Oh I went fishing last weekend. I'd better post this now because I'm heading out after lunch tomorrow too.

Those are terrible pictures that don't do the fish justice, but it was like 11PM and I had walked like 4 miles to get back to the car, and the 3DS camera was right there so.

Last Saturday evening I decided to walk much further down the bank on the Meramec River at the Pacific Palisades Conservation Area. I usually stop at the corner where the river makes a hard left turn, and recently I tried going farther down the bank with little success (aside of finding a ridiculous amount of enormous "bigger than my hand" mussels). But this time I walked even further down the bank, waded over to a very long gravel bar and fished from the tip of the gravel bar where the river forks in two around this huge island with 15ft steep banks. I did a bit of scouting around and as far as I can see there's no way to go any further down the river without either swimming (yeah, people drown in this stretch of the Meramec every single year, so no) or trudging through the brush (which means trudging back in the dead of night, so also no). Thankfully though, while the right fork of the river is very fast and narrow, the left fork is very wide, shallower, and slow. As you can see from the pictures it turned out pretty good.

As I was grabbing my left over worms out of the fridge I asked my wife if she had any, you know, expired or left over meat or something that she was going to throw away. I was hoping for maybe a pack of hotdogs. She's like, "Oh, yeah, there's a whole defrosted chicken in the bottom drawer."

HECK YES!!
Now I had as much bait as I could possibly need. I wrapped it up tight and headed out to the river.

The spot where I was fishing was kind of odd. It was on a long, narrow gravel bar that led right out into the middle of the river. On the right side the current was very fast, it was very deep, full of debris, and fairly narrow. On the left side it was much wider, reasonably deep maybe 8 feet max, and there was little to no current at all. The water was surprisingly clear for the Meramec and I had seen asian carp, grass carp, suckerfish, and catfish swimming up the slower left side, so I set up a few poles pointing that way.

Immediately I started getting bites on the chicken. I was out for at least 6 hours and I literally never had a dull moment. The problem was though, it was Memorial Day Weekend, and everyone and their brother was out on the River too. There was no one fishing or even swimming where I was, because I had to be at least 3 miles downstream, but there were still tons of people on boats and whatnot zipping up and down casting huge waves, drunk as can be just waving and smiling as they didn't even slow down as they passed me. I had tons of hits and nibbles from 6PM-8PM, but there were just so many boaters every single time I had one going a stupid boat would zoom by, crashing waves everywhere, causing asian carp to jump all over the place and scaring off all the fish. It was very annoying.

But after 8PM they had pretty much all left. But by that time it had gotten pretty dark. The problem I've always had with night fishing is seeing my bobber. I have to squint so hard, or waste battery shining my flashlight at them to tell if they're doing anything. Thankfully though, I tried two of these out.

If you ever, e v e r, plan to do any night fishing, get a couple of these. They work extraordinarily well, much better than I had imagined they would. I had them out at least 100 feet and I could still see them clear as can be. They've also got these ball bearings inside that act as a kind of rattle. At first, when I read that I was like, "Rattle...? This is dumb..." But the rattles actually helped out a lot. A lot of times I'd hear the rattle before I saw the bobber zipping off. On top of the nice flathead and channel catfish and longnose gar I caught, I caught at least 10 soft shelled turtles. Turtles love meat like I was using. When I go back, if I catch a large one, I might see if I can figure out how to fillet it...? Maybe.

Once all the drunk boaters went home, it was a great time out fishing under the stars. It has rained a little bit this week, so the river might be up too high to get to the same spot, but I'm heading out after lunch tomorrow with a buddy to try the same spot, this time with much fewer boats.

 

[Myzozoa]

This is so awesome, I didn't actually read all the shit, but I assume you smoke them with a barbecue. If that isn't what you do, I highly recommend it because they'll cook really fast and have a lovely flavor. Cool thread.

I haven't done any fishing lakes or streams in a few years, but I go deep sea fishing every once in a while, which is cool because you can clean the fish and eat it raw.

 

[sandman]

Extremely jealous of your access to mussels like that. Nice read although I wish you wouldn't kill snakes even if their venomous.

 

[mattj]

Definitely going to try to smoke them now, Myzoza. Thanks for the great tip!

And yeah, I actually do agree with you sandman. When its just me out there fishing I let cottonmouths swim by my feet all the time. If I don't bother them they won't bother me. But in that case my 4 year old daughter was with me, and it was heading in her general direction. Either way though, I ended up not killing it. I just flung it about a quarter mile down the beach.

The weather is absolutely, unimaginably perfect right now. I can't wait till noon to get out and catch some more fish!