Who knows what kind of adventure is going on in the minds of a couple of boys as they battle their way down Current River with a kayak.The August issue has travel maps for five rivers, plus a regional map that contains information on float trips. One of the front page stories is about a day of Black River, swimming, fishing, catching minnows and taking pictures of nature.

The other page one story is about a fishing trip to Lake Wappapello just at dawn. The author relived some other trips on this southeast Missouri reservoir. The big catch this morning, however, turned out to be a five pound drum.

Jim Featherston's historical piece tells of an escape of the Confederate forces by construction of a vine and log bridge over the flooded St. Francis River. The historical series is about John Marmaduke, a Missourian who became a Confederate General, but later was elected Missouri's governor. The concluding part of the story will be in the September issue.

As sometimes happens, several stories touched on the same thing - trout fishing, this time. Bill Cooper wrote about trying to teach his fiance how to fly fish, Bob Todd wrote about teaching granddaughter Shannon Dickerson to catch trout on a float trip on Eleven Point River. and Russ Doughty wrote about how to tie and use flys that attract trout in the depths.

Don Herzinger writes about a time in his youth when he and some others tried to shoot fish in Huzzah Creek and actually killed a trout. They were arrested and jailed for the deed.

Alaskan author Janett Grady writes about an unusual encounter when hiking the Ozark Trail - they came upon a couple hiking in the nude, thinking they were in the Garden of Eden, perhaps - certainly thinking they were all alone in the wilderness.

A story answers the question of whether a meanmouth bass - hybrid of smallmouth and spotted bass - comes under laws for smallmouth of spotted bass.

Howard Helgenberg writes about getting in shape for deer season by learning how to use a GPS unit.There's recipes, a story on the 40 years members of the Delaware tribe spent in Missouri, the plight of the rare Ozark Hellbender.

There's also letters, duck hunting outlook, coming events, sunrise and moonrise tables, the seasons, news, and a story on how wheat could fit into a plan to manage wildlife on small acreage.

The Wappapello fishing story is repeated below, and below that, some information from what was in Traveler two dozen years ago.

Dawn fishing on Lake Wappapello

By Bob Todd
We have an Al Agnew print on the wall, showing a largemouth leaping in orange and purple pre-sunrise light.
I saw that painting in my mind as my reel’s clutch gave line with a scream. The light was just so on Lake Wappapello. Obviously a big fish, the zing stopped after several feet and I expected the water to erupt.
But it didn’t. The fight turned to a slug match instead. And in a couple minutes, I brought a five pound drum to the boat.
I was disappointed, but not entirely. It was a nice fish and a nice fight, and I was wanting to put a few fish in the freezer. The drum would do nicely for blackening, like the New Orleans specialty, blackened redfish.
I’d arrived at the lake early. I wanted to be there in total darkness, but didn’t quite make it. It was getting light in the east as I shoved the boat off the trailer. I needed a flashlight to rig up my rods, but it wouldn’t be needed again.
I was fishing memories again.
There’s a big stump about six feet deep out in the middle from the boat ramp I used. One time it was visible when the lake was extra low so the dam’s tunnel could be inspected. But mostly it is unseen and unknown to the vast majority of people who fish this area.
There’s also an underwater bar that sweeps out to this stump. As I used to do, I located the bar and began fishing along it to toward the stump. I’ve taken some very large bass off that stump and the occasional mess of crappie.
Boat traffic from the ramp tends to go right over this spot and since the ramp was built, I’ve not done much good here. I thought maybe the early launch would catch fish on the stump before someone motored over it.
But the stump was unproductive and I’d gone on over to a steep bank. When I was a boy, there had been a large oak tree down in the water here and if we managed to get this far from Holliday Landing, sometimes we tied up to it and fished for crappie while we ate lunch.
I remember my Dad’s surprise when what he thought was a crappie biting turned into a major battle. Finally the fish gave in to the relentless pull of the cane pole. It was a nice flathead catfish.
In like manner, the bass I expected along the bank turned out to be the drum.
I continued with the electric motor to where this cove spills out into the main lake. A rock outcrop, just below the junction, yielded a bass on 17 consecutive casts for Pat and I one fall trip - talk about a school of bass.
Out in the middle here is another old spot. The old treetop did not stick out, but you could see it down in the water if you knew where to look. Everett knew. He and Dad and I anchored there.
I had a telescoping steel rod and was letting a minnow go deep, without a bobber. Something grabbed it and moved on down smoothly. I set the hook and it keep moving down, down.
The rod buckled, then the line broke. I always thought it was a big walleye, but Everett thought it might be a big turtle. He was probably right, but my memory is of a walleye that broke up my tackle. There were huge walleye in the lake back then.
I tossed out a plug at the rock outcrop and used the electric to troll over where the old treetop used to be. Surely it is gone now, but something grabbed the lure. A white bass. The first white bass I ever caught was taken trolling, not far from this spot.
The far lake bank is evidently the top of an old gravel bar. It always was a sandy bank, and still is. We often caught spotted bass there - called them Kentuckys back then.
This time I caught two spots and two largemouth, one of which was large enough to keep. Spots never were common in Wappapello, but they still like this place.
Before there was a boat ramp back in the cove, we used to camp there some, often fishing for a day or two before we ever started the gasoline motor. Now too, I stuck with the electric, going up the lake and across into what Everett used to say was an old corn field. Everett grew up here before the lake and knew where everything was.
When Wappapello was new, it was maintained five feet lower than it is today. Willows and sycamores grew up along one edge of this corn field. They were killed when the lake level was raised, but their stumps provided good fishing for many years. Silt, I discovered, has covered them now. I had to raise the trolling motor part-way to cross this old stump field.
We never did figure out what it was Pat hooked in a chute between two islands. It was enormous and silver. We also caught the occasional huge buffalo fishing in the fall. That was always a struggle. But the thing Pat hooked was no buffalo.
And gar.
After Pat lost that big whatever-it-was, we got some minnows and anchored where the big gar roll. With just a hook, we tossed our baits to gar we could see and left the bail of the reel open when they took the bait and began to run.
We smoked back then, and the rule of thumb was used - had to let the gar run for at least as long as it took to smoke a cigarette. Then you’d set the hook and maybe he’d have the bait swallowed. You couldn’t set a hook in his bony mouth.
Big gar put up a very good fight, leaping and running. They’re good practice for handling other big fish. And a lot of fun.
I worked my way across the upper end of the corn field and down the other side to the old river eddy where the big gar roll. They still do, and I had a laugh or two as I enticed them to follow and grab at my lure.
Then on down the bank. There was the little pocket where Jerry and I cornered a school of white bass one evening. They’d cornered a school of shad and were slaughtering them. Anything we tossed into the mess was immediately hit by a white bass. I think we caught 35 before it ended.
I hadn’t caught a fish since I left the sand bank. The lake has changed and I knew the old spots are not much good anymore. I’d catch if I didn’t remember anything and it was all new to me. Still, it is fun to fish it again, anticipating strikes where they once occurred.
A flight of birds . . . . I identified them as a flock of little blue herons. Their young are white. Unlike the great blues, they travel in flocks. They reminded me of a flock of migrating gulls, circling down to feed.
I was alone that October afternoon, listening to the Missouri Tigers play football, I found a deep pocket in the corn field and caught 50 bass before I had to move. Wind had exhausted the battery of my trolling motor.
But this morning was getting late. I needed to leave. I fired up the outboard, went back up in the cove to take out.
There was a fellow sitting at the ramp, just watching. Said they hadn’t been biting good in several weeks. I had to agree, but the drum would make us a meal. The one largemouth and white bass would go with a small package still in the freezer. I enjoyed the memories and finding the spotted bass.
And I’d had a pretty good thrill to start the morning.

Two dozen years ago, August 1981

At the time, Al Agnew described it as the “finest disaster” he’d ever been in. Left home without his tackle box, that’s what. Instead of an early morning put-in, it was 1 in the afternoon when he made it into the Meramec with a brown bag of assorted lures in which he had no confidence.
The river was being heavily used, and stormy weather was threatening too boot. But the smallmouth were really biting. One measured 20 inches along the paddle - the biggest smallmouth Al had ever released up to that point.
The bass tore up the tackle he had purchased and he had to just paddle the last mile to Meramec State Park.
There was also a story about floating and squirrel hunting. The author recommended using an anchor to pause and pick out squirrels in the foliage above.

There was a picture story about a pleasure float on Black River and a photo of an almost unbelievably high tree swing graced the August cover.
We had discovered the state record gar to be 57 inches long. This was after catching and releasing one that was more than 60 inches long. We’d seen one even bigger, and went back to the St. Francis River attempting to locate it again and catch it. There was a story about the trip, how to fish for gars, and how we clean them - they’re good eating.
Two young eagles were on the verge of leaving the nest at Mingo National Wildlife Refuge and Traveler had a camera trained on one. It got to the edge and looked down. And changed its mind. Another day,
An unpopular experimental crappie regulation had just ended on Lake Wappapello but results from an experimental tagging in Stockton and Pomme de Terre Reservoirs again pointed the finger at crappie fishermen as the cause of so few big crappie being taken.
In those lakes 40 and 31 percent of tagged keeper sized crappie were caught within just a couple weeks of being tagged. This strongly suggested that fishermen were removing so many crappie that few could live long enough to grow large.
Conventional wisdom at the time was that crappie were so prolific that you could not overfish them. Indeed, that may have been the case in Wappapello back then. But in the less fertile west Missouri lakes, it was obvious fishermen could indeed impact the crappie population.
Researchers had discovered that Blue Pond - the unusual body of water in Castor River Conservation Area - is 66 feet deep and water was 41 degrees at the bottom.
That was a surprise, because it had been thought to be a spring. Apparently a spring enters at a shallower level, for water runs from Blue Pond as if it were a spring. But 41 degree water at the bottom means it is a lake. At 66 feet, it is the deepest natural lake in Missouri.
It was also reported that divers had reached a depth of 340 feet in Blue Spring, which feeds into Current River. Divers traveled more than 600 feet into the spring to reach that depth and reportedly the floor of the spring still sloped down.

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