There are some big fish in Clearwater Lake, an not just scattered here and there. Editor Bob Todd went along with biologist Paul Cieslewicz to shock up a sample of fish with an electrofishing boat. Most of the crappie Bob netted were 10-13 inches and one was 16 inches. Most of the largemouth bass were in the 18-21 inch range.
If there is any worry about the lake is that there may be a shortage of small fish to fill the ranks of the larger ones in the next couple of years. This issue tells where the fish were taken.

There are stories in this issue about float trips on Black River and Jacks Fork. The Jacks Fork float trip story is repeated below.

Jim and Donna Featherston begin a series about a Missourian who became a Confederate Major General, went to prison after the war, then became a Missouri governor. There is also a brief story about medicine in the Civil War.

There's a story about worms - perhaps the best bait ever for fishing. And a story on hiking the Hilda Young Conservation Area. Another story calls most lawns and ponds "impoverished ecosystems" and tells you some thing you can do to improve things.

A new length limit for crappie at Lake Wappapello was approved by the Conservation Commission. Details in this issue.

A southeast Missouri Stream Team conference was covered. Many items were touched upon, including the making of a greenway along McKenzie Creek in Piedmont.

The greenway includes a walking trail and parks. The land was obtained in a buy-out of flood prone properties.

Don Rathert ventured into the topic of sex and the outdoors. On reflection, he thinks he may have been conceived following a highly successful crappie fishing trip by his father.

Dave Applton, a first-time writer for Traveler, tells how to cope with high, muddy water. Basically, you go on fishing and maybe find better luck then when waters are normal.

Greg Rudroff confesses to the slight mistake in planning. He thought Gruner Ford Access was downstream from Syenite Access for long enough to float five miles or so the wrong way! Unable to go back, he continued to the next access, about twice as far as he'd intended on that winter day.

As usual, Traveler also has stories on the seasons, coming events, sunrise tables, recipes, Indian lore, and past issues.

Catching upper Jacks Fork just right to float.

By Bob Todd
It was the only floatable part of Jacks Fork River I’d never been on.
And it turned out to be one of those special places.
When we say “floatable”, we mean a creek or river that is floatable at least part of an average year. We don’t mean a stream that is floatable at risk of life when it is at flood stage.
The Jacks Fork River is considered floatable from a place called “The Prongs”, on down to Current River.
The Prongs is where the north and south prongs of the river join up, six or seven miles upstream from Highway 17. It is floatable, but you have to catch it right.
It is seldom “right” after May, and this year, it looked unfloatable even as April progressed. It had been very dry.
Jim Anderson and I were scheduled to do a float on Jacks Fork and I’d told him I’d like to finish up the Jacks Fork by doing the April float from The Prongs. He wasn’t sure that would be possible, as the day approached.
But a big rain, a four-foot rise at Eminence a few days before our float and it became doable. As we approached the county road bridge to begin the float, it looked as if the river was full, but in its banks. Clear. Terrific looking.
Jim runs Shady Lane Cabins and Motel in Eminence and likes to guide. Not for money. But when he has a chance to get out on a river he likes to take the back of the canoe and is more interested in putting the person up front in position to catch fish than in catching anything himself.
He didn’t have to suggest that arrangement twice to me. I too enjoy guiding, but I was ready to catch some fish.
We had in mind catching some goggle-eye to keep, but the river was swift as we began the float. It was even difficult to fish for smallmouth, and I had a feeling they were not battling the current to feed. They probably fed well on the rise and now were under rocks or rootwads in deep, slow water, burping.
But so what. The scenery was spectacular. Both redbuds and dogwoods were in bloom and the trees were turning green.
Jacks Fork has carved a narrow valley this far up and often, we were in sight of bluffs on both sides. Almost no bottom land.
The river was a good ride. Waves were high enough in some of the rapids to slosh some water in the canoe. We passed some that were nearly as high as my shoulders. What fun you could have on this stream that day with a kayak.
Gradually, the bass came out from under cover. Mostly little guys, but a few over 12 inches. Not in season anyway. But above Highway 17, the statewide length limit of 12 inches applies. (Below Highway 17, length limit is 18 inches.)
We came, finally, to some slow, deep holes with lots of big rocks. Goggle-eye country. Jim managed to catch a couple little ones and I caught one. But they were not large enough to force us to get out stringers.
We stopped at a high gravel bar for lunch. The river’s bottom is mostly larger stones and the gravel has not been tumbled much, a sign this stretch of river is high in the watershed. But it was comfortable sitting in the sun on the small gravel high on the bar.
Talk turned to backgrounds. Jim grew up in Piedmont, then spent a couple dozen years in agri-business on the high plains before coming back to the Ozarks. He wrote some stories for Traveler some years back about trapping around Piedmont as a teenager.
After lunch the bass seemed even more willing. Jim caught one from the bank before we got underway again. And scenery became even more compelling.
At one point, the river looks as if it comes to an end. Bluffs ahead on the right. Bluffs on the left and a bluffy hillside ahead with no clue as to how the river might escape from this trap.
I took way too many pictures.
There were a couple places where we decided not to chance it, but to go around. Once we dragged the canoe over a bar to avoid a chute with a tree top in it that looked as if it would comb us out of the canoe.
At another spot the current piled up on a huge rock and then surged around a blind turn. But the river was high enough we could take a side channel around.
And it was a 50 yard run full of beer case size boulders with enough velocity to have us scrambling to avoid running up on one and being turned sideways in the swift current.
“Yaaahoo,” Jim yelled as we shot out of this chute and back into the main river. He was rightly proud of his canoe handling.
There are several larger, slower holes as we came nearer the Highway 17 bridge. The smallmouth could now be caught with some reliability at the upper and lower ends of these holes.
In all, I caught perhaps 20. Jim caught two or three, which no doubt gave him a better percentage than me considering the number of casts made.
We’d originally considered floating past Highway 17 to a place called Blue Spring, another few miles down the river. But it was mid-afternoon when we reached Highway 17 and we’d had a very good float. Further would add more fatigue than pleasure. It was good we planned to end it here.
The scenery is there all the time. But to float this stretch without undo wading and dragging, you need to go early in the spring. And to have the kind of float Jim and I enjoyed, you have to catch it just right.
It is indeed a special place

Two dozen years ago, May 1981

Al Agnew had a story about backpacking in to a section of a creek that is remote and catching fish that probably had never seen a fisherman. It was in eastern Missouri, but Al decided to keep the exact location a secret.
He and Clyde Glastetter made the trek, traveling on public land, then following the creek downstream. Al was most interested in fishing. Clyde was most interested in identifying wild flowers, which were blooming in great abundance. Both were astonished by the geologic wonders they found and worked their way through.
The history topic was how Indians really looked. The Osages that where here when whites first made contact dressed quite different from the Shawnee and other eastern Indians who came here just prior to white settlement. And both looked very different from Hollywood’s Indians, which are based on a few western tribes.
Missouri had traded wild turkeys for 20 otters to begin a restoration program. The only Missouri otters left were basically in the Mingo National Wildlife Refuge area east of Lake Wappapello.
Bismarck Lake had just been acquired by the Conservation Department and the U.S. Forest Service announced the gate had been closed to begin filling Council Bluff Lake.
A float trip from Eminence to Two Rivers on Jacks Fork River was featured, complete with a photo layout.
There were signs a long drought was ending and there was a lot of talk about the impact the drouth and hot weather might have had on fish, game and forests.
Charles and Elizabeth Schwartz retired from the Department of Conservation. They were a couple, both educated as biologists, who took up film making. If you have memories that go back more than a couple decades, you probably also remember some of the films. Charlie’s art work is still used by MDC today.
A couple of young fellows are struggling to hold up a stringer of catfish in the cover photo. The boys floated down Whitewater River from Millersville and caught the fish overnight, then waded and dragged back up the river.

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