Brown Recluses

 When I was a kid, I knew nothing about brown recluses.  It's no wonder; this spider wasn't described scientifically until 1940 (meaning NOBODY knew about brown recluses until after that point), and wasn't really studied until the early 1960s.  I was a kid in the 1950s and 60s.  I wonder now how many recluses I saw in the house growing up, not knowing how dangerous they could be. Where were all those horrific brown recluse bites back then?  We've all heard the horror stories about huge rotting wounds from the venom of this shy and unassuming spider.  Were bites prior to the 1960s diagnosed as something else?

Actually, there are a lot of misconceptions about the recluse.  It is one of the two Missouri spiders that can be dangerous to humans, but though it is a very common spider throughout its range, bites are rare.  In fact, according to most authorities, bites are far more rare than most people believe.  The tissue necrosis caused by severe brown recluse bites is similar to that brought on by many other causes, including infections such as MRSA.  Doctors, who are seldom knowledgeable about spiders, often misdiagnose otherwise unexplained wounds as spider bites, especially if the person presenting the symptoms suggests (or swears) they have been bitten by a recluse.  For instance, there has never been a live recluse found in California--it is well outside the range of the brown recluse, although parts of southeastern California do have a related species, the desert recluse.  Yet there are hundreds of reports of brown recluse bites in the most populated parts of California, outside even the desert recluse's range.  Medical authorities now believe nearly all these cases were not spider bites at all.  There have also been a number of bites reported in Maine, which is far north of anywhere brown recluses have been found--it is a southern species with Missouri one of the northernmost states that harbor large numbers of recluses.

There is no doubt, however, that brown recluse bites causing serious tissue damage do occur.  Reactions to recluse bites are dependent upon the amount of venom injected, and the sensitivity of the victim to the venom, with 90% of bites not requiring medical attention.  Many bites cause only a small red mark that quickly disappears, and the vast majority do not cause significant wounds or scarring.  However, a "bad" bite really can be a horror story.  It is seldom painful when it happens, but usually starts with a small, white blister, which becomes a hard bump, then a dry, bluish or purplish lesion surrounded by redness.  From there it can progress to a growing area of dying tissue, causing a deep wound than can become as large as 6 inches across. If a bite is going to cause necrosis, it will turn purple in color within 48 to 96 hours, and then black as the tissue dies, with the necrosis eventually falling away, leaving a deep pit that gradually fills with scar tissue.  According to the NIH, a bite can also cause chills, fever, nausea, sweating, and general discomfort.  There is no antivenom for recluses, and treatment consists of taking care of the wound.  Medical sources advise that if you're bitten by a recluse, wash the bite area with soap and water, then wrap ice in a washcloth and apply it to the bite for 10 minutes, remove for another 10 minutes, and repeat until you can get to an emergency room.  My wife Mary was bitten by one when she put on clothing where it was hiding, and her bite progressed to the hard, white bump stage, but eventually disappeared. It was quite painful for several days, but we did not seek medical attention for it.

Because of the questionable reporting of other infections as brown recluse bites, it is impossible to ascertain just how many people are bitten each year.  But according to the latest information, there have been no fatalities from the effects of brown recluse bites in North America.  So recluses aren't quite as fearsome as the urban legends suggest.  I would bet that nearly every home in the range of the recluse, including Missouri, harbors at least a few recluses.  And they can be incredibly numerous.  In one example, scientists collected 2,055 recluses from a single house in Kansas!  But you seldom see them because they are well-named; they hide during the day.  Recluses are entirely nocturnal.  The females build wispy patches of webbing as part of their home, but do not use the weak webbing to capture prey.  They tend to stay in the vicinity of their lair, but males are entirely roaming hunters.  Recluses seem to really like cardboard, perhaps because it is similar to their habitat in the wild, hidden areas beneath logs and tree bark.  Stacked cardboard boxes in a garage, basement, or attic are great recluse hiding places.  You can also find them behind picture frames on your walls, and if you really want to start having nightmares, try getting up in the middle of the night and switching on the lights in any room of your house; chances are you'll see some recluses on the floor near your baseboards, since they like to hide in the thin crack between the baseboard and the floor during the day, and come out under cover of darkness.  While it's definitely an urban myth that the average person swallows so many spiders in their life while sleeping, recluses do roam around at night, and I've had a few crawl across me while I was in bed.  You will also often find one in your sink or bathtub.  Many people think they must come up out of the drain, but in reality they fall into the sink or tub while roaming at night, and it's too slippery for them to escape.  If you have a noticeable infestation of recluses in your house, it's not a good idea to leave clothing on the floor for a day or more because they find that a very good hiding place.  You should also shake out clothing that has been lying around, or even in your drawers, before donning it; most bites, like Mary's, happen when someone puts on clothing where a recluse is hiding.  Their fangs are not long enough to bite through cloth, but bites occur when the spider is pressed against your skin by the clothing.

Recluses are small to medium size, nondescript brownish spiders; their main identifying feature is the dark violin shape on the top of their carapace (the front part of the body).  This marking is usually quite distinctive, though it requires observing the critter from a fairly close vantage point.  They way they hold their legs is distinctive if you are already used to seeing recluses, but difficult to describe.  They can be various shades of brown but are otherwise unmarked.  They are not obviously hairy, but their abdomen is covered by very fine, short hair that gives it a slightly velvet appearance.  The males are slightly smaller than the females, but with longer legs in relation to their body size.  Spiderlets are like lighter miniature versions of adults.

The female usually mates with one male at a time, and will try to eat him after mating.  She deposits her eggs in a white silk pouch about the size of a dime, usually attached to a vertical surface and surrounded by wisps of webbing.  The exoskeleton of the male she mated with may be stuck to the silk near the pouch.  These exoskeletons also remain after the spiders molt, and you will commonly see them loosely attached to surfaces such as cardboard when there are recluse present, appearing as translucent legs and carapace.

The females often produce more than one egg sack, with 30-100 eggs per pouch.  Some eggs get eaten by spiderlets from previous hatches that remain in the web.  Eggs hatch in about 13 days, and by about 50 days later the young are mature.  Recluses have been known to live up to 894 days, and they can live for over six months without food or water.  They are also somewhat resistant to pesticides.  Commercial pest control measures are seldom really effective at ridding a house of recluses; their chief effect is in removing the insects that the recluses feed upon.  But insecticides may also kill the predators of recluses, such as wolf spiders, so they are questionable as a control measure.  Sticky traps around anywhere recluses can hide can reduce their numbers--and it is often disconcerting to see how many recluses you can catch in a sticky trap!  But the best control measure is simply to declutter your house as much as possible.

Another interesting thing about brown recluses is that if a predator grabs them by the leg, or another spider like a wolf spider bites their leg, they can easily detach themselves from that leg to escape and minimize envenoming.  Unlike some spiders, they cannot regrow a lost leg, but they adapt very easily to losing one, altering their gait to compensate.  They can do just fine with as few as four legs, as long as they have at least one leg left on both sides.

There are several other species of recluses, but they are limited to the Southwest from eastern California (the desert recluse) to south Texas, mostly along the Mexican border.  In addition, a "foreign" species, the Mediterranean recluse, occasionally shows up in various parts of the U.S. by hitchhiking in commercial trade.  It is almost identical in appearance to the brown recluse.  Recluses, because of their propensity for hiding in things like cardboard boxes, are probably transported to parts of the country outside their native range, but there is no evidence of significant breeding populations resulting from these introductions.  

Black Widows

I encountered my first black widow spider when I was about seven years old. The house where I grew up in Missouri had a basement that only extended to within about 15 feet of the front of the building; that last 15 feet was a dirt-floored crawl space. There was a door leading into it from the basement proper, and just inside the door the dirt had been excavated to the level of the basement floor in a ten foot square "room" we called the "coal bin hole". There was a small door through the foundation there, and back in the days when the house had been heated by coal, that was where the coal was unloaded. I often explored the coal bin hole to see what kind of bugs I could find, but one day I was shining a flashlight into one of the corners, and there was a big, fat black widow in its web. I'd heard plenty of horror stories about black widows, and I quickly retreated; it was a couple years before I got up enough nerve to go into the coal bin hole again!

I always seem to picture black widows in such places, even though most of the other widows I've found have been in the outdoors. I have found them in woodpiles and under rocks. In Montana, I was doing landscaping at the cabin that was our first dwelling there, and found five different widows under the round river rock I was picking up from around our 20 acres to use to line the parking area. In Missouri, I've found a few in out of the way corners in barns and sheds. But really, they don't seem to be all that common in most of the places I've lived.

There are five widow species in the U.S., though more than 30 species in the genus are spread across the world. The most common species in Missouri is the southern black widow, Latrodectus mactans, though the northern black widow, L. variolus, is also widespread across the state.  The spiders I encountered in Montana were western black widows, L. hesperus--their appearance is very similar to southern widows.  The red widow, L. bishopi, has a dark brownish or black abdomen with a red spot that is often a triangle on the underside and various red spots with yellow borders on the back and sides, and reddish brown cephalothorax (head portion) and legs.  The brown widow, L. geometricus, has a brown body with the typical red hourglass on the underside of the abdomen, and legs that are banded with dark and light brown.  The northern black widow is found across the northeastern quarter of the U.S. as far north as southern Canada and south to Missouri.  The southern widow is found across the South and Southeast from Arizona to Florida, and north to Missouri and Virginia.  The western widow ranges from British Columbia to Mexico and as far east as Colorado.  The red widow is confined mainly to Florida, and the brown widow is a tropical and subtropical species that was not native to North America but now has established populations across the southern tier of states.  All these species have similar venom and body shape, and are found in similar habitats. 

Black widow males are no more than 1/4th the body size of adult females, but have longer legs and more colorful bodies, with various white, red, and yellow stripes and spots.  

In the wild, black widow habitats are crevices in and beneath rocks and logs, holes in embankments, and other dark, sheltered areas.  But they readily use human structures, including sheds and outbuildings (and outhouses!), water meter holes (I'm always concerned when I lift the cover off the valves in my irrigation system at our place in Montana, and so are the guys that service the system), and under any large object that has been undisturbed for a while.  They are seldom found indoors in houses, but occasionally will come inside as cold weather descends.  Perhaps the one widow I found all those years ago in the coal bin hole came in during the autumn.

One of the most famous characteristics of black widows, and where they get their name, is that the female kills and eats the male after mating.  However, according to most authorities this seldom happens in the wild; it was observed in captive situations where the male had no chance of escaping.  Females build haphazard three-dimensional webs with little structure other than a dense area to the rear where the female hides.  The male enters the web and mates with the female, and then at least attempts to escape.  Males also often dismantle portions of the web, tearing them apart, rolling the silk up, covering it with their own silk, and removing it from the vicinity.  This is believed to be for the purpose of removing the scent of other males from the area in order to monopolize the female; females will mate with several males, and can produce up to nine egg sacs in a summer, each with an average of 400 eggs.  The spiderlets are very cannibalistic, and few survive the two to four months to maturity.  Adults are preyed upon by mud dauber wasps.

While black widow webs are far from artistic, the silk ranks among the strongest of all spider silk.  Like most web-building spiders, the female lurks in the rear of the web, waiting for vibrations to signal that a prey insect has entered--widows have very poor eyesight.  The female then quickly emerges, bites the prey, and holds it tightly.  The venom takes about ten minutes to take effect, and and when the prey stops moving, she releases digestive enzymes into the bite wound and carries the insect back to her retreat before feeding.

Unlike brown recluse venom, the venom of Latrodectus species is a neurotoxin, and the effects are quite different from the tissue damage that recluses are famous for.  Widows are reluctant to bite, and people usually get bitten when the spider is pressed against the skin, often by reaching under objects where the spider is found.  Putting hands in gloves that have been sitting undisturbed, or feet in boots that have been sitting for a while, is another good way to get bitten.

The southern black widow is reputed to have the most potent venom, while the brown widow has the least severe bite symptoms--it may not be dangerous at all.  Often the bite will be dry, with no venom injected, and the severity can vary due to the amount of venom injected.  A bite may first be felt only as a pinprick as the extremely small amount of the potent venom is injected, but quickly swelling and redness around the bite appears, and in one to three hours there is severe pain which often moves through the body and settles into the back and abdomen.  Intense muscle and abdominal cramping can last for more than 48 hours.  Nausea and profuse sweating are common, along with chills, fever, headache, and severe high blood pressure.  Tremors, convulsions, and unconsciousness can happen with untreated bites, and if death does occur it will be due to suffocation.

Treatment of black widow bites usually consists of treating the symptoms.  There is an antivenom available, but it is usually only administered to those at highest risk, such as young children, the elderly, or those with heart conditions. Victims usually recover within two to five days.  Deaths are rare; about 2,600 black widow bites are reported in the U.S. in an average year, resulting in 7 deaths. 

    

 

Floating Adventures, Misadventures (River Hills Traveler, May 1978)

Note:  Here is another of my early illustrated articles for the River Hills Traveler.  The illustration was one of my favorites.  I've had many float trip adventures since, but I still tell the stories about these early ones.

Of all River Hills outdoor activities, floating is my favorite.  I don't think I have ever gone on a float trip I didn't enjoy.  But not all float trips turn out like those in the fancy outdoor magazines.  The weather and the fish don't always cooperate, and well-laid (or half-baked) plans don't always work out.  Perhaps by reading about some of my less-than-perfect float trips, you will glean something from my mistakes.  My first overnight float trip was enough to turn the average person against floating.  My friend Rick and I had planned it for several weeks, and had finally talked our parents into providing transportation to the river.  Several of our friends, all of them without boats, wanted to go, too.  All we had was a beat-up 12-foot johnboat, but we finally agreed to take one other guy, a big, gangly kid called Gook, if he agreed to sit in the middle of the boat, atop the gear, and get out at every riffle.

Even now, with light, compact equipment and plenty of experience to know what to leave at home, it amazes me how much gear we take on a two day trip.  Just imagine the mountains of gear and food we carried on our first one.  It took us an hour just to unload it.  Rick was supposed to bring one paddle, I was expected to supply two, and Gook would furnish an extra one.  After Dad had pulled away, we discovered just one paddle among us.  That was bad enough, but--typical 14 year old behavior--Rick tossed a nice-sized rock at me and I swung at it with our only paddle.  I was left holding the handle, staring at the two halves of the blade.

It was mid-afternoon when we arrived at the river.  By the time we loaded all the gear and found two willow poles and a 4 foot length of splintery two-by-four for locomotion, there was an hour of daylight left.  We started down the river, the johnboat wallowing with water a couple inches from the gunwales, Rick in the back with a knotty willow pole, myself in the front with the board, and Gook perched atop the huge heap of gear in the middle like some sort of buzzard on a mountaintop.

We were floating upper Big River from Mount's Gravel to Leadwood Beach, and we had never floated that stretch.  We planned to drift downriver until we found a good gravel bar next to a deep catfish hole where we could make camp.

There weren't any good gravel bars.  We covered nearly two miles, and dark found us evaluating an 8 foot square, 6 inch high sandbar.  The bar was so small that, once we laid the sleeping bags out, there was no room for the other gear and we had to leave it in the boat.

We spent the first part of the night in an unsuccessful search for dry firewood in the swamp behind our "gravel bar".  We fished for catfish unsuccessfully until the swamp's mosquitoes turned us into masses of itchy lumps; they even bit Gook on top of his other gift from the swamp--poison ivy.  Driven finally into our sleeping bags, we found them soaked from water seeping up through our too-low sandbar.  In spite of all this, I went to sleep about 3 AM, only to be awakened immediately by a crazy mountain man throwing boulders at us.  It was actually a beaver, slapping his tail on the surface, and that scroungy creature must have taken a perverse delight in our plight, for he continued his antics until dawn.

Wet, cold, and miserable, we got an early start that morning, but the warm sun soon dried us out, and the river seemed to be trying to make up for all the abuse we had taken, for the fish were very cooperative.  But it kept getting hotter.  A fine May morning turned into a dog day afternoon.  At 2 PM we came to a recognizable place which I thought (wrongly) was about halfway through the float, and since our parents were to pick us up at 5:00, we were afraid we were running late.  Our hands too blistered and  splinter-infested for further frantic paddling and poling, we waded and swam and pushed and dragged the boat, splashing desperately down the river, and came to our take-out in 15 minutes.

The scanty shade of the gravel bar at Leadwood Beach was all occupied by people who gave us odd stares as we pulled our boat onto the bar, tossed away our makeshift paddles, and tried to relieve our exhaustion by sleeping on the hot gravel.  We baked, and dozed, and prayed for our parents to come early.  They were late.

That same stretch of river was the scene of another near disaster years later.  My companion on the trip, Dwain Qualls, had a new 4WD International Scout he was quite proud of.  It had been stolen off the lot where he worked just the week before, but had been recovered intact.  Leaving my vehicle at the low water bridge at Leadwood, we put in at Mount's.  Qualls left his Scout, securely locked, on the gravel bar and we started downriver. 

A nice day quickly turned nasty, with a deluge lasting more than an hour.  We waited it out, minus raingear, on a slippery mud bank beneath some willow trees that provided no shelter at all.  When we finally continued downstream, we found the fish had never read the books which say they are supposed to be active after summer showers.

All the little creeks we passed were pouring torrents of muddy water into the river, but there was still plenty of clear water for fishing, and we didn't notice at first that the river was rising.  However, soon we were floating over weed beds that are usually out of the water, and the river quickly changed to brown.  Fishing was forgotten as we concentrated on navigating a river growing more powerful and dangerous all the time.  Water was surging over the low water bridge when we made a precarious landing just above it.  We were thinking of Dwain's Scout on the low gravel bar back at Mount's, and we loaded quickly and rushed back.

When we came to the high ground overlooking the gravel bar, it was out of sight under swirling, muddy water, and the Scout was gone!  Dwain was stricken, moaning about losing his pride and joy (again!)  Then, to our amazement, we spotted his car on the high ground behind us, still locked.  We never found out who moved it, or how, but whoever it was, they had Dwain's heartfelt thanks!

Sometimes your best-laid plans just don't quite work out.  My frequent partner, T. G. Harris, and I had planned a trip on the Bourbeuse River for more than a year, having heard it was an excellent stream for big smallmouth.  I had made several scouting trips to the area, checking water levels and access points, and we had decided that the 20 mile trip from Noser Mill to Reiker Ford would be a perfect two-day excursion.

I suppose the car trouble we had on the 90 mile trip to the river was a sign of things to come, but we didn't let it stop us.  When we arrived at Noser Mill we were greeted with a shock.  Instead of the strong volume of murky water I had encountered on every previous visit, there was a bare trickle of too clear water seeping through the cracks in the old mill dam.  But we had driven that far and we weren't about to go back home.  Hoping for a swell in volume from tributary creeks, we started scraping down the river.

The Bourbeuse has plenty of long pools, almost stagnant in the low water.  Fishing was poor except for a two pound walleye which hit my spinnerbait on the surface in a shallow pool where walleye just don't belong.

By mid-afternoon we had covered barely five miles, and we had to stop fishing and cover some river.  We soon passed the mouth of Spring Creek, which freshened and swelled the river with a strong flow of cold, clear water.  The next few miles were the best water we had come to, but were forced to paddle through them.

We covered about half the float by late afternoon and began looking for a campsite.  We were still looking at dark, having passed two more miles of river devoid of good gravel bars.  We finally conceded defeat and decided to paddle until we reached the take-out.  Unfortunately we had only brought one small flashlight, and it was a moonless night.  We sloshed down long pools and blundered through riffles.

At 3 a.m. I checked my inadequate maps and guessed we were getting fairly close to the takeout at Reiker Ford, a simple road cut beside a shallow riffle which I had never seen from river level.  At the bottom of a shallow riffle I folded the maps and told T. G. it should be about one more mile to the takeout.  Then I just happened to shine the dying flashlight back upstream, and there was the road-cut.  We came that close to continuing on to the next takeout seven miles downstream!

The ultimate in bad float trips had to be the experience of two young men I encountered while wading the St. Francis River below H Highway south of Farmington during a period of very low water.  This stretch of river has shut-ins at least as rough as those in the Millstream Gardens and Silvermines area farther downstream, but the first couple of miles below the bridge is tame water, long pools and couple of gravelly riffles.  I was near the head of the last pool above the beginning of the shut-ins when the two guys passed me in an empty canoe.  It was already mid-afternoon, and the next real access was 72 Highway, ten miles downstream, so I wondered where they were going in an empty canoe. 

A half hour later, a 14 foot jonboat with three young men and a mountain of gear reached me.  They were lazily paddling and diligently consuming beer. 

"Hey, man, did two guys in a canoe go past ya?" one of them asked between sips.

"Yeah, they did.  They with you?"

"Yep, we're carrying the camp gear.  They are gonna float down a few more miles and wait for us to get there and make camp."

"You headed for 72 Highway tomorrow?" I asked.  They told me they were, and drifted on downstream.  I heard their boat banging against the rocks of the shut-ins around the bend shortly afterward.

An hour later, I reached the shut-ins.  They were resting, having wrestled that heavy boat a whole 30 feet through the rocks thus far.  It was obvious they would never get through in that low water.

"Hey, man, how much more of this is there on down?"

I'm afraid I snickered superiorly, "the rest of the float is all about like this."  That produced a series of groans and curses.  One of them wondered what they should do.

I suggested, "if I were you, I'd turn around and go back.  You'll never make it through with that boat."

They agreed, and began to shout for the two guys in the canoe, who were probably miles downriver by that time.  We soon saw that a storm was brewing, and I climbed the bank to hike back to my car.  They watched me, and hollered some more, and finally one of them said, "to heck with them, let's start back."

The last I saw of them they were paddling back up the river.  The storm struck with rain, hail, and lightning, as I reached my car.  Somewhere down the river two young me huddled without gear as the gloom of a stormy night descended.  I've often wondered how they made out.

Buried Past the Barb

Many years ago, when I was a very young adult, I belonged to a local bass fishing club.  This was in the early days of bass fishing tournaments, and almost none of us in the club had the early "bass boats", which were ridiculous-looking compared to what is common today, both in looks and in performance.  We used canoes and aluminum johnboats, and we had tournaments once a month, mostly on small, local lakes.  We were having a tournament on Sunnen Lake, west of Potosi, Missouri, one day.  There were probably about a dozen boats from our group scattered across the lake.  I was fishing that day by myself; I was in my little 12-foot johnboat with an electric trolling motor and a very small outboard motor.  I was using a big deep-diving lure with two large treble hooks, casting it toward the bank, when I miscalculated and landed the lure in a bush overhanging the water.  I jiggled and jerked to no avail, so I turned my head to reach for the switch to the trolling motor to turn it on and go over to the bank, and as I did, I gave the lure one more hard tug.  It came loose, flying through the air back toward me, and I turned my head back to see where it was going, just in time to catch it in my face.  It was stuck right in the very sensitive skin where my upper lip meets my nose.  I reached up, felt the hook, and realized it was buried well past the barb.  It wasn't coming out.  I looked around, and saw that there was nobody else in our group anywhere near me, but I could see a couple of boats on the other side of the lake.  I clambered to the back of the boat to start the outboard motor to go over and get some help.  When I tugged on the starter rope, that's when I realized all the slack line from my reel to my lure had wrapped around my arm and shoulder, and the hard pull to start the motor jerked the lure attached to me VERY painfully.  But the motor started on the first pull, and I headed across the lake.

Eventually, I had three or four of my friends and competitors gathered around me on the bank, discussing what to do.  Going to the emergency room was discussed, but one friend who was the city marshal decided he could get it out.  He bore down, pushing the barb of the hook on through, the curve of the hook making it come back out of the skin.  Then he clipped off the now exposed barb and point with a set of side cutters, and removed the hook.  You can imagine how much that hurt!  If you've ever tried to do something like that, you've probably been surprised at how much force it takes to push even a very sharp hook through human skin.  If you've ever tried to use simple force to just pull the hook barb back out of the hole it went in, you'll know that unless the hook is very small, that takes even more force, and results in a LOT of pain, and probably won't work at all.

Perhaps coincidentally, just a few weeks or months afterwards, I came upon an article in one of the big three outdoor magazines about how to more easily remove hooks.  I still remember the photos accompanying the article, which used a raw chicken from the grocery store to show the technique.  I read it and it made some sense, and I kept it in the back of my mind.

Fast forward about a decade.  My wife Mary and I hadn't been married long...or perhaps this was even before we got married.  We were fishing, and Mary ended up with the treble hook from a Rattletrap lure stuck past the barb in her forearm.  Again, the emergency room was discussed, but I remembered that article from long ago.  I told her I knew an easy trick for removing the hook.  She reluctantly agreed that I should try.  As I was getting the materials ready for the big operation, she asked me, "You have done this before, haven't you?"

I knew a truthful answer would result in quitting fishing and driving the hour or so to the ER, so yes, I lied.  "Sure!  I've done it many times."

I have to tell you that I was sweating bullets.  If this didn't work our relationship would certainly suffer, as would Mary.  But I got the hook into position, pushed down on the barb, and yanked, very hard, on the loop of line.  The hook went flying into the brush, never to be seen again, and Mary was impressed; she had hardly felt it.

I and many others call this the string trick.  I have since removed hooks from myself and others many times, and it has never failed, always surprising me and whoever has suffered the buried barb with how quick and painless it is.  If you are an angler, you really, really need to know this trick.

First of all, you should be prepared.  I always carry either a set of side cutters or a small multi-tool in my pocket or my tackle when I go fishing. I also have a length of old fly fishing line, about three feet long, in my tackle.  That is basically all you'll need.  And you don't even need the fly line, any sturdy line or string will do.  I've used doubled over monofilament fishing line at times, and my shoelace at other times.

In the case of lures with treble hooks attached, the first order of business is to remove the lure from the buried hook, and that's where the side cutters come in. On most such lures these days, the hooks are attached to the lure body with split rings, and you just clip the split ring with the side cutters.  I've gotten it done even with the tiny little wire cutting section of the pliers of my little multi-tool.  That will probably be the most painful part of the operation, because you have to move the lure around, twisting the hook a bit, in order to get it off.  Once you've gotten that far, you're home free.

The diagram below shows how to do it.  You loop your length of line around whatever part of the bend of the hook is still exposed.  Then, you push HARD on the eye of the hook, pushing it directly toward the buried barb.  THIS PART IS IMPORTANT!  You MUST push HARD on the eye, and push it directly toward where you imagine the barb of the hook is.  Then, while pushing, you simply jerk the line in the direction shown, trying to jerk it parallel to the hook shank.  Jerk sharply and hard.  The hook should pop right out.  I've always thought that both the operator and the victim should be wearing eye protection when you do this, or at least close your eyes, because that hook will go flying to who knows where.

I show to cut the other barbs off the hook, and that's a good idea if you have a set of wire cutters that is strong enough to do so, but it isn't necessary.  As for the pushing firmly on the eye of the hook, I once watched a Youtube video where this guy stuck two big hooks in his own forearm to test the efficacy of removing a hook using the string trick compared to the technique of pushing the barb on through and out and clipping it off.  He pushed the barb on through first, and just about collapsed from the pain and difficulty of doing so.  Then he had a helper to push on the eye of the hook while he used the string trick.  BUT...he did not tell the helper to push firmly, he just told him to hold the eye of the hook down.  So when he jerked on the string, the eye of the hook came out from under the helper's fingertip, and instead of the hook popping out, it just twisted, and ended up pushing the barb on through just like the first time.  And he almost collapsed from the pain!  The main reason to push HARD on the eye of the hook is to stretch the skin and open a channel for the barb to travel through when you jerk, but it also serves to keep THAT from happening.

One note...the string trick won't work on those "outbarb" hooks with the barb on the outside of the bend.  I don't care whether those things hook fish better or not, I will NOT use them, because I don't want to have to deal with trying to get one those types of hooks out of myself or my buddy.

I've had to remove hooks from my own big toe, calf, thigh, belly, forearm, and several fingers.  Removing them from your own arm or hand is problematical, since you need a hand to push on the eye of the hook and another hand to tug on the string.  I have solved that problem by finding a log or rock that has a protuberance that I can place the eye of the hook against and push down on it, while tugging the string with the other hand.  No matter how you do it, you must apply that force pushing the eye toward the buried barb.  

It is always surprising to me when people tell tales of going to the emergency room to get hooks removed, and the doctors numbing the area and either cutting the hook out or pushing the barb on through.  I have yet to hear a story where the doctor used the string trick.  In fact, one of my fly fishing buddy's brother is a doctor, and when we were discussing the string trick one day on the river, he said he didn't believe it worked and wouldn't try it on a patient, even after I told him some of my hook removal stories.  One of my best stories was when I was at a gathering of people on a small lake, and one of the other guys was fishing the lake and got the hook from a Zara Spook in his forearm.  He came back to the campground saying he had to go to the emergency room to get it removed.  

"Nah," I said, "I can get it out.  And it won't hurt, either."

Now he didn't know me all that well, and he was dubious, but finally he agreed.  So he sat down at a picnic table while I got my stuff out.  I quickly clipped off the hook, but as I was doing so, he was staring at that big hook in his arm and I could tell he was getting woozy.  I told him to look away.  Then his head came down on the table; I think he had passed out.  By that time I had the line looped around the bend, so I simply gave it a jerk and out the hook came.  A second or so later he raised his head, and said, "No, I'm sorry, I gotta go to the ER."  

I just told him, "Take a look at your arm."

The string trick won't work in some situations.  You don't want to try it if the hook is in or near an eye, or stuck into cartilage or a joint.  You have to evaluate it to see if it is possible to push in the required direction.  But I have yet to encounter such a situation.  The only time I was unable to use the string trick was when I was floating and fishing by myself and got a hook stuck in the back of my upper arm.  I couldn't reach it well enough to get it off the lure, let alone figure out how to maneuver to be able to push the eye of the hook against something.  Fortunately, I was only a half mile from where my truck was.  It was still a two-hour drive home with the lure stuck in my arm, but I made it, and my wife quickly popped the hook out.

Jack Fishing: An Ozark Challenge (December 1976 issue, River Hills Traveler

Note:  I graduated from college in the spring of 1976, and got a job teaching art that same fall. At the time I was living in Jackson, MO, and I met Bob Todd, Editor and Publisher of the River Hills Traveler, a little periodical on the outdoors in Southeast MO that he'd started a couple years before. He was also based in Jackson at the time. The one thing I'd always "wanted to do when I grew up" was to write and illustrate for outdoor magazines, an ambition instilled in me as a kid reading and looking at the illustrations in my Grandpa's Field and Stream and Outdoor Life magazines. So when I met Bob, I showed him a couple pen and ink drawings I'd done. He was impressed enough to agree to use them. I also asked him about writing and he told me to write something and he'd consider it. Much later, he told me that he would have probably accepted anything I wrote no matter how bad it was just to be able to use the illustrations, but fortunately my writing was okay as well. He used a squirrel pen and ink I'd done, and a couple other small pen and ink drawings, before I submitted my first article, complete with illustrations. So...from the December, 1976, issue of River Hills Traveler, the first illustrated article I ever had published!

Two and a half feet of brown and brass fish materialized out of the green depths of Black River like a ghost under the lure as it neared the boat, keeping the same eight-inch distance behind it right up to the surface, even sticking its nose out of the water as the plug was lifted.  Then it slowly sank back into the depths, leaving me with the memory of a rare glimpse of one of the most mysterious denizens of the Ozark rivers, the toothy-mawed, filmy-eyed, spiny-backed dweller of the depths we hill people call the jack salmon.  To most other folks, it's the walleye.

Many fishermen never see an Ozark walleye, or even think of catching one.  But there are a few hardy souls who regularly pursue this elusive quarry, and for good reason.  They believe that there are world record class walleye in the Ozark streams, especially in some of those in the River Hills area, and they have certainly proven that trophy-sized fish can be taken.

There have been several unsubstantiated reports of walleye being caught (and eaten) that were larger than the present world record of 25 pounds, and Missouri's state mark, at 20 pounds, is not too far from the world record.  Each year walleye are taken by River Hills anglers that top 15 pounds.  Probably many professional guides in the famous walleye country of Minnesota and Wisconsin have never seen a 15 pound walleye.

However, this doesn't mean that there are huge walleye stacked in layers on the bottoms of the Ozark rivers, nor does it mean that anybody could catch them if there were.  The average Ozark walleye will be from one to three pounds, and even average jack salmon are often hard to come by.  It's not unusual for even the most experienced anglers to get skunked.

It is not easy fishing.  In fact, it may be the most difficult fishing there is.  The jack fisherman must endure cold, wet weather, hours of watching rods for bites that never come, and the frustration of missing many of the fish that do bite.  There is usually ice on his rod guides and ice on his numbed hands as he tries to impale a wriggling minnow on a hook.  Not the least of his tribulations are the stares and laughs people give him when they find out he is going fishing on a frigid January weekend.

Jack fishermen, being--as you can see--a bit crazy, are a closed-mouth lot, and some of my friends would skin me alive if I told any of their secrets.  But here are some pointers for anyone wishing to try this frigid sport:

First of all, walleye are found in large, deep rivers and lakes.  In the River Hills area, they are present in Wappapello and there are possibly a few in Clearwater [Note: I was wrong on both counts at the time this was written; Wappapello MIGHT have a few now, since MDC stocked native river walleye in the St. Francis River back in the 1990s.], but the rivers are the hotspots.  Castor River in the Zalma area has a few, and I was told of a 17-pounder taken from there in 1975.  The St. Francis produced the state record, and there are probably some more walleye just as big swimming in it.  [Note:  I was probably wrong about that, too, at the time; it appears that walleye were completely gone from the St. Francis before the restocking.]  But the two top walleye rivers in this area and perhaps in the state are Black River below Clearwater Dam to Poplar Bluff, and lower Current River.  The best spots are the big, deep pools formed by gravel digging, but any area of deep water will harbor walleye.

There are easy ways of fishing for Ozark walleye; unfortunately, they are seldom effective.  Some fish are taken by trolling deep-running lures, or by trolling or drift-fishing a small minnow attached to a Colorado spinner.  Bucktail jigs have taken a few, and I know of one old-timer who used to slay them on the St. Francis with a chicken-feather jig.  Walleye can be taken during the summer months, especially at night.  But the best and most walleye are caught on large live minnows from November through March, especially on dark, overcast days when it is raining or snowing and almost always freezing.

To successfully fish for jack, one must overcome all kinds of obstacles.  The first is finding an accessible place to fish that has a good walleye population.  The second, and often the most difficult, is obtaining bait.  Most jack fishermen prefer "slicks", the large, horny-headed minnows known as stonerollers.  They must be from four to seven inches long.  Have you ever tried to find and trap large minnows in the dead of winter?  It is far from easy.  If the jack aren't biting, you will only need about a half-dozen minnows for a day's fishing, but to be ready for those rare days when they are especially cooperative, you should have at least 75 good minnows, and you must be able to transport them to your fishing hole.  Most fishermen use large coolers equipped with aerators.

The most common tackle is heavy casting outfits with 20 pound line, and some use wire leaders to protect against the wicked teeth of a jack.

Most use heavy 1/0 to 3/0 hooks and sliding sinkers heavy enough to hold the minnow on the bottom.  Usually two or more rods are used, propped on the old reliable forked sticks.  It is possible, but more difficult and uncomfortable, to fish from a well-anchored boat.

The minnow, hooked lightly through the lips, is cast out allowed to rest, with occasional cranks of the reel handle to move it a few inches.  If a jack picks up the minnow it is usually difficult to detect, and it must be detected immediately so that the fish can run on a slack line.  There is absolutely no way to predict when to set the hook.  Sometimes you will hook the fish by immediately snapping your rod tip back, and other times you can let it run for a hundred yards or fifteen minutes and still come up with nothing but a tooth-scarred minnow.  This is just one of the many frustrations of jack fishing.  You may never catch a big jack, or even want to try.  It took me four years to catch the 12 pound 5 ounce fish which is my  biggest so far.  But some of my friends catch bigger ones than that each year.  If you ever catch a big one, it will be an accomplishment to be proud of, for catching a big walleye may be the greatest angling challenge to found in the Ozarks.

Choosing a Canoe for Ozark Streams

A post asking for recommendations on a canoe prompted me to write this. I've been paddling canoes on Ozark streams (and elsewhere) since about 1968. I've paddled a LOT of different canoes, and have owned 6 different tandem canoe models and 5 solo models over the years. I've paddled everything from a 19 ft. square stern Grumman to an 11 ft. Old Town Pack solo. Aluminum, glass, Kevlar, poly, Royalex, even a cedar and canvas canoe one time. I'm a canoe guy. I don't particularly like kayaks, and think a solo canoe is a FAR better craft for pleasure floating and for fishing. I'm also a student of the canoe--I read everything I can on them, read all the reviews on different models...in short, I think I know a thing or two about canoes. And here's what I know: there is no perfect canoe. There is only the canoe that suits what you think is most important in your paddling. Stability? Maneuverability? Speed? Tracking ability? Weight? Beauty? There are canoe models that are great at every one of those things, but none that are good at all of them. First consider material. Your choices are mostly a few different plastic constructions, fiberglass, Kevlar composites, and aluminum. All have advantages and disadvantages. The first canoe I ever owned was a 15 ft. Grumman aluminum, and it served me very well for more than 15 years--and is still being used by my brother-in-law on his pond today, nearly 50 years later. Yup, aluminum is durable! But it is noisy, and it is cold to the touch in the winter and hot to the touch in the summer. And worst of all for Ozark streams, especially those like the upper Jacks Fork when the water gets a little bony, aluminum sticks to rocks, gravel, and even logs. It doesn't slide over much of anything very easily. And aluminum canoes are pretty vanilla in design, okay for most things, not great at anything. An aluminum canoe is serviceable, durable, and reasonably inexpensive. Plastics--everything from the Coleman whatever the heck that plastic is to high end Royalex. Most common is the polyethylene sandwich such as Old Town Discovery models. It's fairly heavy, scratches easily but is reasonably durable, and fairly inexpensive. Like aluminum, the poly sandwich canoes are difficult to mold into more sophisticated designs, so like aluminum these canoes are pretty middle of the road, okay at everything, not great at anything. Biggest advantages over aluminum are that they are quiet, slide over obstacles easily (especially if you treat the hull with something like Formula 303 or even Armor-all regularly), and are more comfortable to be in and around in hot or cold weather. The Coleman type plastic is heavier, less rigid (hence the "plumbing"--internal bracing--in Coleman canoes), doesn't slide quite as easy, is terrible to mold into anything but a barge. Other than that it's pretty cheap and pretty durable. Royalex used to be the top end plastic canoe material...lighter in weight, fairly durable (though like the Discovery material it scratches easily), and while still having some of the molding problems of the other plastics, there were canoes being made of Royalex that were better designs for various uses than the vanilla plastics and aluminum. Unfortunately, Royalex was patented by Dupont, which was the sole manufacturer of the sheets that canoe makers used. Dupont decided it wasn't profitable enough, stopped making the sheets, and refused to sell the patent. So new Royalex canoes are not being made anymore. I was fortunate enough to buy a new solo and a new tandem canoe in Royalex right before it became unavailable. With the demise of Royalex, canoe companies were scrambling for a replacement.  One company came up with a material called T-Formex, and they are selling it to a few other manufacturers. I haven't paddled a T-Formex canoe yet, but so far the reviews are good...all the advantages of Royalex, apparently. It's also pretty expensive. Glass and Kevlar composites are not very common on Ozark streams, but are actually pretty decent materials for our rivers. They scratch easily, and they don't take to being pounded on rocks, but not many Ozark streams have a lot of really rocky rapids. They are also somewhat noisy...not as bad as aluminum but not as quiet as plastic. The advantages are mainly that these materials lend themselves to complex, sophisticated canoe designs, and they are light in weight. The fastest, best-tracking canoes are made of these. They can be expensive. My second tandem canoe I owned was a glass composite canoe that was a speed demon, but there was a steep learning curve on how to get the thing to turn. It was a joy to paddle through long pools, and a pain to wend your way through a narrow, fast, twisty riffle! But I now own several glass solo canoes that are maneuverable enough for my tastes, and are still a joy to paddle through the frog water. Where most people get their experience, such as it is, in canoes is by renting them. Rental canoes have to be relatively inexpensive and relatively durable, so they end up using "vanilla" canoes, okay at most things, really good at none of them. And canoes have the reputation of being "tippy". Seems like people living around rivers in the Ozarks all watch the drunk, totally inexperienced "tourists" flipping canoes with wild abandon, and are sure that they want no part of a canoe. So a lot of people think their first and most important criterion for choosing a canoe is stability. They want one that won't tip. Second criterion is usually maneuverability. They see those twisty little riffles on streams like the upper Jacks Fork and think they need a canoe that will turn with the barest stroke of the paddle to get through such places. A fairly distant third on the list of stuff people want in a canoe is speed and/or tracking ability. They MIGHT want a canoe that can go faster with hard paddling, or stay straighter without having to switch sides so often when paddling. These characteristics--stability, maneuverability, tracking ability, speed, are all purely functions of one thing...the shape of the hull. Let's take the stability thing first. There are actually two parts to stability. One, how stable or unstable does it FEEL when you are in it? Does it feel wobbly or does it feel solid? This is determined mainly by the width of the canoe and the shape of the bottom in cross section. If your canoe has a wide bottom that is flat across a wide part of the cross section, it's going to feel more stable than a narrower canoe, or one that has a more rounded bottom. Some models, most notably a lot of Mad River canoes, have a shallow V bottom, which is about mideway between a wide flat bottom and a narrow rounded bottom in the feeling of stability. But in reality, what you're really wanting is FINAL stability. Which means, no matter whether or not the thing FEELS stable, you really don't want it to actually flip over easily. And that is determined to a great extent by the shape of the SIDES of the canoe. Some canoes have what is called tumblehome, which means the sides are rounded and turn inwards at the gunwales. These canoes were designed that way to make it easier to reach out from your seat and paddle without scraping the gunwales with each stroke, and are usually found on wide, flat bottomed canoes. But...those sides are just like a log, and you know how easily a log rolls over. Once you get such a canoe leaning far enough to get up on the side, it just keeps going. What you really want is a canoe with straight vertical sides. Such canoes will resist that last little roll that flips you. Now for what I'll just call handling--how maneuverable it is or how well it stays straight when you want it to. This is purely a function of the hull shape below the waterline. And unfortunately, hull shapes are ALWAYS a compromise between maneuverability and tracking ability...a canoe that turns easily when you want it to is never easy to keep going straight when you want it to. All other things being equal (which they never are), a longer, narrower canoe will stay straighter--and be harder to turn. A short, wide canoe will turn easier, but be harder to keep going straight. But that isn't the only thing that determines it. Tracking ability is related to speed--how fast the canoe will go and how far it will glide when you stop paddling, as well as how straight it stays with normal paddle strokes. Canoes have "entry lines", which means the shape of the part of the canoe that first cuts into the water. A canoe with sharp entry lines (the front end is narrow and stays narrow for a good distance toward the center) is a faster, better tracking canoe; a canoe with a wide, blunt front end is slower and harder to keep straight. There is one other thing that affects maneuverability, and that is rocker. Rocker means that the bottom curves upward on the front and the back portion, long before it emerges from the water. A canoe that is flat from front to back until it gets very close to the ends is said to lack any rocker. The more rocker, the easier a canoe is to turn. Ah, but what about a keel, you ask. Well, having paddled a lot of canoes both with and without keels, I would tell you that a keel on a canoe is the least important feature for keeping it straight. The dirty little secret among canoe makers is that the keel's purpose is mostly to make the bottom more rigid. It actually has one other purpose on aluminum canoes--it protects the rest of the bottom of the canoe to some extent, because the keel is the first part of the canoe to scrape that rock much of the time. But that is true of keels on plastic and glass canoes, too...and a keel on such canoes gets worn quickly. So...what do I want in a canoe for Ozark streams? It may not be what you think you want. I prefer a canoe of reasonable length--16-17 feet in a tandem canoe is a good compromise, because anything shorter is going to have to be very wide and it will paddle like a barge. And I want one where the compromise between maneuverability and tracking ability (remember, a canoe good at one is bad at the other) leans just a bit toward tracking ability. The number of riffles where you really need maneuverability is fairly small, but if you want to get somewhere fast on middle Current River you want a canoe that will stay straight with minimal corrective paddle strokes. And as a fisherman, I also want a canoe that tracks well, because the same characteristics that make it slide through the water with ease while staying straight also make the current slide by it with ease when you really want to slow or stop it to make a cast to that perfect spot. I also want a canoe that will resist that final roll that flips you. So I want one with straight sides. In my opinion, the Old Town Penobscot in Royalex was one of the best canoes ever made for Ozark streams. It came in 16 and 17 ft. models. The 16 footer was actually 16 feet 2 inches. It was 34 inches wide, 33 inches at the waterline, so it was fairly narrow--lots of canoes that size are 35-36 inches. It was 21 inches tall at the bow, 13.75 inches tall in the middle (and I think it was 19 inches tall in the stern). It had a shallow arch bottom (slightly rounded in cross section) and slight rocker. And it had the sharpest entry lines of any Royalex canoe. It was fast, tracked well, had straight sides so it resisted tipping, but the relative shortness kept it from being too hard to maneuver. It weighed all of 58 pounds. I still own two of them. But if I was looking for a new canoe, I'd look for something with dimensions pretty close to the Penobscot. Old Town currently offers the Penobscot 164 in their three layer polyethylene. It's a little wider but not much at the waterline, and the other specs are pretty close--except it weighs 75 pounds. Other companies also still make very good canoes, though. So if you're looking for a good tandem canoe, stick with reputable companies, and expect to pay at the very least $1000 for a decent one if buying new.  Some good companies are Wenonah, Old Town, Mad River, L. L. Bean, Nova Craft, and Clipper.  Choose which material you want first.  Then decide where you will most likely be using it...lakes and slow rivers, you want one that tracks well; small, twisty creeks one that maneuvers easily.  Other considerations are weight first of all--are you going to be loading and unloading it by yourself, or carrying it to the water at difficult accesses?  Length can be important if your storage area for it is limited, even though longer canoes are generally better paddling canoes.  And of course, price...I think that ANY canoe is better than no canoe, but you get what you pay for, and if you can afford it you'll probably be happier with some of the more expensive models. You will see a lot of people who float rivers in the Ozarks saying that kayaks are the way to go.  They will say that they've rented canoes and kayaks and far prefer kayaks.  But the problem is that it makes no sense to compare a tandem canoe, meant to be paddled by two people, to a solo kayak.   The biggest reason kayaks have gotten so popular is that most of them are solo craft. I've always said the quickest way to divorce is to put a couple in a tandem canoe. The autonomy you have with a solo kayak is a game changer. But what most people don't even think about is solo canoes. I hear people all the time saying how much better and easier to paddle a kayak is than a canoe. When I ask them if they've ever paddled a good solo canoe, they usually give me a blank look. A good solo canoe can do everything a kayak can do and do most of it better. It will almost certainly be lighter in weight. It is easier to carry and handle loading and unloading because the gunwales make excellent carrying handles. It holds a LOT more gear if you're into overnight trips. It can carry a bunch of fishing rods, and have them stowed to where the tips are all inside the gunwales and protected. I find the seating in solo canoes to be far more comfortable because you're sitting like you would in a real chair, and not sitting with your legs way out in front of you. And that also makes it easier to get in and out of in the places where I usually enter and exit a canoe...very shallow water. I've had guys say that it's easier to get out of a sit-on-top kayak by just putting your feet over the side and standing up, but they are usually talking about water that's more than a foot deep. In shallow water, it's pretty much the same as getting up off the floor...except the kayak "floor" is moving. The only advantages that some kayaks have are that you can stand up on them better, and they are less affected by wind. Oh...and some of them are considerably cheaper! And depending upon the model and hull shape, solo canoes can be as fast or faster than kayaks. And you can paddle upstream in them just as easily...especially if you keep a double bladed paddle around for just such a use; there is no law that says you can't use a kayak paddle in a canoe if you wish. Unfortunately, your choices are limited these days in good solo canoes...kayaks have largely taken over a market that wasn't all that big even before they got popular. My first solo canoe was an Old Town Pack, Royalex, 11 feet long, 33 pounds. I used it until it got pretty worn, put skid plates on it, used it a ton more, and finally decided to try something different, which happened to be a Royalex Wenonah Sandpiper, another short canoe that I soon found wasn't any kind of upgrade from the Pack. Then one day I was floating in a group, had a companion in my tandem canoe, and one of the other guys was floating in a Wenonah Vagabond (another Royalex boat, 14.3 feet, 42 pounds). I asked him if I could try it for a bit. I fell completely in love with that boat, and very quickly bought one and gave my Sandpiper to my brother-in-law. Along about that same time, I bought an Oscoda Coda for my wife, fiberglass, 14 feet, 43 pounds. It was a narrower boat, faster, tracked better, but still had okay stability. I found that I preferred it over the Vagabond in one kind of situation--streams with long, dead pools. I could zip through those pools, which seldom held good fish, so much quicker and easier with the Oscoda. Over the years I've acquired two more Oscodas, and keep a couple of them at our cabin on the Meramec. They weren't particularly expensive boats new, but were well made. So I have the same criteria for solo canoes as tandems...I want something that leans a bit towards tracking ability over maneuverability. I want something that's around 14 feet long. I'd prefer Royalex if it was still being made, and probably would opt for T-Formex if I ever bought another new one. There just aren't many out there. Old Town makes the Discovery 119 out of their 3 layer polyethylene. It's short, slow, but perfectly serviceable. If you buy one, I'd get the regular 119 and not the 119 Sport, which is a couple hundred dollars more expensive, and has a lot of crap on it that I wouldn't want. I want a bare-bones canoe that I can modify to suit myself, not one with all kinds of stuff some marketer thinks I would like. If you own a regular 119, I'd suggest moving the seat forward. In the newest pictures on their website, it looks like Old Town may have moved the seat forward, but every one I've ever paddled had the front edge of the bench seat a good 8-10 inches behind the center of the canoe, and in any solo you want the front edge of the seat to be no more than 3-4 inches behind center. It makes the canoe handle a LOT better, and also makes it feel more stable. There is also the Old Town Next. Nice looking canoe, longer at 13 feet, heavier (unfortunately) at about 58 pounds. I don't like the fancy seat. I do like the hull shape and the speed and tracking ability. I keep hoping that Wenonah will come out with the Vagabond in T-Formex; they produce the bigger Wilderness in it. The Wilderness is a great solo canoe for bigger people, or if you REALLY want to carry a pile of gear. L. L. Bean is making a nice looking solo in T-Formex, the Royal River. At 13 feet and 47 pounds, it might be the canoe I'd buy if I needed a new one. The specs look very good. But the thing is expensive at nearly $1500 retail. I haven't been keeping up with the solo canoes that are available these days, but a quick perusal of solo canoe reviews from Paddling.com shows a bunch of glass and kevlar fast boats, a bunch of whitewater boats, and some really expensive good looking boats (over $3000!). And not much else that I really think will work for Ozark streams. So if you ever come across a used Royalex solo from any of several companies, try to buy it! Continuing the canoe discussion with solo canoes... The biggest reason kayaks have gotten so popular is that most of them are solo craft. I've always said the quickest way to divorce is to put a couple in a tandem canoe. The autonomy you have with a solo kayak is a game changer. But what most people don't even think about is solo canoes. I hear people all the time saying how much better and easier to paddle a kayak is than a canoe. When I ask them if they've ever paddled a good solo canoe, they usually give me a blank look. Comparing a solo kayak to a tandem canoe is apples and oranges. A good solo canoe can do everything a kayak can do and do most of it better. It will almost certainly be lighter in weight. It is easier to carry and handle loading and unloading because the gunwales make excellent carrying handles. It holds a LOT more gear if you're into overnight trips. It can carry a bunch of fishing rods, and have them stowed to where the tips are all inside the gunwales and protected. I find the seating in solo canoes to be far more comfortable because you're sitting like you would in a real chair, and not sitting with your legs way out in front of you. And that also makes it easier to get in and out of in the places where I usually enter and exit a canoe...very shallow water. I've had guys say that it's easier to get out of a sit-on-top kayak by just putting your feet over the side and standing up, but they are usually talking about water that's more than a foot deep. In shallow water, it's pretty much the same as getting up off the floor...except the kayak "floor" is moving. The only advantages that some kayaks have is that you can stand up on them better, and they are less affected by wind. Oh...and some of them are considerably cheaper! And depending upon the model and hull shape, solo canoes can be as fast or faster than kayaks. And you can paddle upstream in them just as easily...especially if you keep a double bladed paddle around for just such a use; there is no law that says you can't use a kayak paddle in a canoe if you wish. Unfortunately, your choices are limited these days in good solo canoes...kayaks have largely taken over a market that wasn't all that big even before they got popular. My first solo canoe was an Old Town Pack, Royalex, 11 feet long, 33 pounds. I used it until it got pretty worn, put skid plates on it, used it a ton more, and finally decided to try something different, which happened to be a Royalex Wenonah Sandpiper, another short canoe that wasn't any kind of upgrade from the Pack, I soon found. Then one day I was floating in a group, had a companion in my tandem canoe, and one of the other guys was floating in a Wenonah Vagabond (another Royalex boat, 14.3 feet, 42 pounds). I asked him if I could try it for a bit. I fell completely in love with that boat, and very quickly bought one and gave my Sandpiper to my brother-in-law. Along about that same time, I bought an Oscoda Coda for my wife, fiberglass, 14 feet, 43 pounds. It was a narrower boat, faster, tracked better, but still okay stability. I found that I preferred it over the Vagabond in one kind of situation--streams with long, dead pools. I could zip through those pools, which seldom held good fish, so much quicker and easier with the Oscoda. Over the years I've acquired two more Oscodas, and keep a couple of them at our cabin on the Meramec. They weren't particularly expensive boats new, but were well made. So I have the same criteria for solo canoes as tandems...I want something that leans a bit towards tracking ability over maneuverability. I want something that's around 14 feet long. I'd prefer Royalex if it was still being made, and probably would opt for T-Formex if I ever bought another new one. There just aren't many out there. Old Town makes the Discovery 119 out of their 3 layer polyethylene. It's short, slow, but perfectly serviceable. If you buy one, I'd get the regular 119 and not the 119 Sport, which is a couple hundred dollars more expensive, and has a lot of crap on it that I wouldn't want. I want a bare-bones canoe that I can modify to suit myself, not one with all kinds of stuff some marketer thinks I would like. If you own a regular 119, I'd suggest moving the seat forward. In the newest pictures on their website, it looks like Old Town may have moved the seat forward, but every one I've ever paddled had the front edge of the bench seat a good 8-10 inches behind the center of the canoe, and in any solo you want the front edge of the seat to be no more than 3-4 inches behind center. It makes the canoe handle a LOT better, and also makes it feel more stable. There is also the Old Town Next. Nice looking canoe, longer at 13 feet, heavier (unfortunately) at about 58 pounds. I don't like the fancy seat. I do like the hull shape and the speed and tracking ability. I keep hoping that Wenonah will come out with the Vagabond in T-Formex; they produce the bigger Wilderness in it. The Wilderness is a great solo canoe for bigger people, or if you REALLY want to carry a pile of gear. L. L. Bean is making a nice looking solo in T-Formex, the Royal River. At 13 feet and 47 pounds, it might be the canoe I'd buy if I needed a new one. The specs look very good. But the thing is expensive at nearly $1500 retail. I haven't been keeping up with the solo canoes that are available these days, but a quick perusal of solo canoe reviews from Paddling.com shows a bunch of glass and kevlar fast boats, a bunch of whitewater boats, and some really expensive good looking boats (over $3000!). And not much else that I really think will work for Ozark streams. So if you ever come across a used Royalex solo from any of several companies, try to buy it!

Salamanders

A recent post on Facebook asking to identify a salamander got me curious as to the difference between salamanders and newts, and a little research provided some very interesting answers to several different salamander questions.

There are several families of these amphibians. There are four families of entirely aquatic salamanders, those who live their entire life cycles completely in the water and cannot live long out of the water. The most common species in Missouri are mud puppies and hellbenders (if you can call hellbenders common). Those two are in separate families, but both live their entire lives underwater. You'll never see one out of the water unless it was taken from the water, and it won't live long out of the water. The two look very different, but the biggest real difference between them is that mud puppies have external gills, feathery reddish or pinkish structures that stick out from their necks. Hellbenders have internal gills with small gill openings to let the water in and out--and oddly, one gill opening is often completely closed.

The other two families of entirely aquatic salamanders are sirens and amphiumas, both of which are long and eel-like. Sirens have ONLY forelimbs, and they are very small. Amphiumas have both fore and hind limbs, but all are very small. Both are mainly confined to ditches and swamps of Southeast Missouri, and most people will never see one.

The newt family is interesting. It is represented by only one Missouri species, the central newt. And what makes newts different is that they go through THREE life stages. There is the entirely aquatic larval stage (kinda like a tadpole is the larval stage of a frog or toad). But before turning into an adult, a newt goes through an intermediate stage where it becomes an eft, and lives entirely on land. It remains an eft for two or three years, and THEN changes to the adult stage, and moves BACK into the water, becoming entirely aquatic. So you might see an eft out of the water, but you won't see an adult newt anywhere but in the water (they prefer fishless ponds).

There are two main dry land salamander families, the mole salamanders and the lungless salamanders. The adults of both families spend most of their time in moist but not wet places, like underneath forest debris and rocks--some live in caves. They do NOT need water except as a place to lay their eggs, as the larval stage IS aquatic, like frogs and toads. Members of the mole salamander family tend to be fairly large, thick-bodied, with thick tails. As you can guess from the name, some species live much of their lives underground. But mole salamanders have lungs and breathe like we do, more or less. Lungless salamanders, as you can guess, DON'T have lungs, they take in oxygen through their skins. They tend to be small and thinner bodied with long, thin tails.

So the next time you encounter a salamander somewhere out of the water, don't assume it needs to be IN the water. They do not. Just give it a chance to get under something, or leave it alone. They don't like bright sun and will get dried out if exposed to it too long, but ordinarily all they need is shade.

Goggle-eye--the rock bass species of the Ozarks

Growing up in the Missouri Ozarks and being from a family of avid anglers, I learned the names of common fish early on...or at least the Ozark names. One of those common fish was the goggle-eye, as we called it. When I was in junior high school, finding school too easy and tending to get in trouble now and then because I was bored and had all my work done, I was sometimes given a "special" project to keep me busy, and because I was already interesting in drawing and painting, it was often something to do with those pursuits. One such project was for me to do a "book" illustrating the common fish species of Missouri, and that's when I first learned that what we called a goggle-eye was a rock bass.

At that time, back in the early 1960s, there was just one rock bass in the Ozarks--or at least all the rock bass were lumped under a single species. But sometime later, biologists discovered (or perhaps just decided) that there were a total of three rock bass species in the region, the "typical" rock bass--northern rock bass, the shadow bass, and the Ozark bass.  Shadow bass had been recognized as a separate species back in the 1930s, and was generally considered the "southern" rock bass.  But the Ozark bass wasn't recognized until 1977.  Most anglers, if they even heard about this, ignored it, because all three were pretty similar in appearance. So similar, in fact, that the average angler probably never noticed the subtle differences, or attributed them to individual variation.

  Complicating the issue was that all species of rock bass have the ability to rapidly change color and especially pattern.  This is a fairly common attribute among freshwater fish.  It is governed by cells called melanocytes.  Humans also have melanocytes; they are the skin cells that produce tanning effects.  But these fish melanocytes hold special structures called melanosomes, which contain dark pigment.  The melanosomes in each cell have the ability to contract to the center portion of the cell, or expand out to the edges of the cell.  When they expand to the edges, they turn the color of that skin cell darker.  Other basal skin cells in fish also govern color; these are called chromatophores, and operate the same way as the melanocytes, but contain various other pigments.  So the fish can rapidly become darker or lighter and have dark markings appear or disappear with the operation of the melanosomes, and change overall color or color in certain portions of the body by the chromatophores.  Whether the fish can do this voluntarily, or whether it is an automatic response to various stimuli, is an open question.  But we know that external factors such as light levels, turbidity of the water, and the character of the fish's surroundings can cause color changes, as well as internal factors like stress and excitement.  Many fish also change color (usually getting brighter or more strongly marked) during spawning season, and can rapidly change color when in the actual act of spawning.

When it comes to the rock bass species, they are masters at these color changes, especially the dark and light changes that make their markings appear, disappear, or get more or less prominent.  Thus it's difficult to attribute the shape or prominence of various markings on the fish to it being one species or another.  There are unchanging structural characteristics that are slightly different in each species, but actually, if nothing else, you can tell which species you've just caught from where you caught it, with a few exceptions. In the early days, according to many biologists who have studied them, there were NO rock bass in the Gasconade or Osage river systems (including streams like the Niangua and Big Piney) and all the rock bass in those streams come from stockings in the 1930s and 1940s.  Because those fish are the same species as Meramec River system rock bass, it's surmised that they were collected from the Meramec River or its tributaries and transplanted. 1931 was the first year that rock bass were documented in the Big Piney, and they were not documented in the Niangua until 1940, and in lower tributaries of the Osage like Tavern Creek and Maries River until 1964!

Why were there no rock bass in these two river systems, when they were found over the rest of the Ozarks?  The most likely explanation has to do with the connections between river systems.  The centers of distribution of northern rock bass are the upper Mississippi river system above the mouth of the Missouri, the Great Lakes, and the Ohio river system (which includes the Tennessee system).  It's easy to see the connection from the upper Mississippi to the Meramec, which enters the Mississippi a fairly short distance below the mouth of the Missouri.  But in order to get to the Gasconade and Osage, rock bass would have had to travel up the Missouri River a good distance.  And historically, the Missouri was one of the more turbid rivers on earth, far muddier than the upper Mississippi above the two rivers, which, although much shorter, flowed considerably more water.  Perhaps the Missouri was just too muddy and silty for rock bass, which generally live in clear water, to travel to reach the Gasconade and Osage.  But the Mississippi probably diluted the mud in the Missouri from where the two come together, making it possible for rock bass to move down it to the Meramec and the short, direct tributaries of the Mississippi downstream along the eastern border of Missouri.

As for the other two species, shadow bass are mainly a southern "model" of the rock bass.  Their center of distribution is the rivers from Mississippi to Georgia that flow south into the Gulf of Mexico; the Ozarks is actually an outlier in their range, separated from the other places they live.  But the streams in which shadow bass live in the Ozarks do have a connection to the lower Mississippi, because the shadow bass is native to tributaries on both sides of the river in Mississippi and Louisiana.  The streams where they live in the Ozarks--Castor, St. Francis, Black, and Arkansas river systems--all end up in the lower Mississippi well down into Arkansas (or at least they once did; Castor has been diverted into the Mississippi just south of Cape Girardeau, MO, by the Diversion Channel).

The Ozark bass is a bit of a special case, however.  The upper White River system, above the mouth of Black River, is the only place on earth to which it is native.  So it must have evolved in these rivers.  Why it is separate from the shadow bass, which is native to the Black river system, is a mystery, since Black River runs into White River at the edge of the Ozarks and has a clear connection to the upper White.  All these species in the Ozarks would probably have become established in their present ranges at the end of the last ice age.  Previously, even though the ice never reached the Ozarks (stopping just north of the Missouri River), the climate would have been much different and perhaps too cold to support them.  Assuming they evolved long before, there were probably sanctuaries where they remained during the cold times, such as the southern portions of the Tennessee river system for northern rock bass, and the Gulf Coast streams for the shadow bass.  But perhaps the ancestral Ozark bass remained in the upper White and tributaries during the cold climate, and had time to evolve into a different fish.

So, if you are fishing the Meramec river system (Meramec, Big, Bourbeuse, Huzzah, Courtois), Gasconade system (Gasconade, Big Piney, Osage Fork), Osage system (Niangua, Maries, Tavern), or any of the direct tributaries to the Mississippi between St. Louis and Cape Girardeau, the fish you will catch will be a northern rock bass (scientific name Ambloplites rupestris). If you are on the Castor River system (Castor, Whitewater), the St. Francis system (St. Francis, Little St. Francis, Big Creek), the Black system (Black, Current, Jacks Fork, Eleven Point), or the Arkansas system in Arkansas and Oklahoma (Big Piney Creek, Mulberry, Illinois), you're going to be catching shadow bass (Ambloplites ariommus), and if you're on the upper White River system (North Fork, Bryant, Beaver, James, Finley, and the Buffalo, Kings, and Crooked Creek in Arkansas) you will catch the species that happens to ONLY be native to that river system, the Ozark bass (Ambloplites constellatus). Only on the streams of far southwest Missouri (Elk, Big Sugar, Spring) will there be a bit of a question.  Theoretically these streams, which eventually flow into the Arkansas River by way of the Neosho and Grand rivers, should hold shadow bass.  But apparently at some point there were enough northern rock bass transplanted to them that the fish in them appear to have genetic characteristics of both species.

There is actually a fourth species of rock bass, though it is far from the Ozarks.  The Roanoke bass is native only to some drainages above the fall line in Virginia and North Carolina.

Below are scientific illustrations I've done of all three Ozark rock bass species, and descriptions of their distinguishing characteristics.  The illustrations are done from photos of these fish that I have taken of fish I've caught, and modified where necessary to more clearly show the color and structure of these fish and to include some color patterning that I've seen in other individuals.

Northern Rock Bass (Ambloplites rupestris)

This is the native species of the Meramec Basin, the Gasconade and Osage river systems, and direct tributaries of the Mississippi River between St. Louis and Cape Girardeau.  Rock bass in the streams of the southwestern corner of Missouri may also have many northern rock bass characteristics.  The main characteristic of this rock bass that distinguishes it from the shadow bass is the coloration of the anal fin.  In these northern rock bass it is almost unmarked except for a thin black margin, especially on males, while in shadow bass the anal fin is usually heavily mottled and may lack the dark margin.  The dorsal and caudal (tail) fin of northern rock bass may also have a black margin.  Other than that, northern rock bass tend to have almost unbroken rows of dark spots, one for each scale, on their sides.  They are a little less likely to be marked with the large, irregular blotches that often make these fish look like they are dressed in camouflage, but those dark markings can show up very strongly at times, depending upon the fish's mood and stress levels.  There are a few other distinguishing characteristics that one can find if so inclined, including scale counts--northern rock bass have 36 to 47 scales along the lateral line, and 21 to 25 scale rows across the breast from pectoral fin to pectoral fin.  Northern rock bass grow the largest of the three species, attaining lengths of over 12 inches; the Missouri record still stands at 17 inches and 2 pounds 12 ounces. The specimen in this illustration was taken on Huzzah Creek, a Meramec River tributary. 

Shadow Bass (Ambloplites ariommus)

This is the native species of the Arkansas, Black, St. Francis, and Castor river systems.  It also occurs in clear drainage ditches in the Bootheel of Missouri, and the rock bass of far southwestern Missouri may show shadow bass characteristics.  The main distinguishing mark is the heavy mottling of the anal fin.  The rows of dark spots on the sides are usually interrupted; some scales will be lacking their spot, and in certain color phases the black spots may be almost indistinguishable from the background color, especially very darkly "camouflaged" fish.  Shadow bass tend to stay more darkly and heavily marked with large, irregular blotches than the other species. Shadow bass usually have 41 or fewer scales along the lateral line. They have larger scales on their breasts--15-18 scale rows from pectoral to pectoral. Shadow bass are the smallest of these species, seldom growing larger than 9 inches. This specimen was taken on the St. Francis River.

Ozark Bass (Ambloplites constellatus)

This species is native only to the upper White River system, including all streams flowing into the White River above the mouth of Black River.  The anal fin is largely unmarked and does not have a black margin, which distinguishes it from the other two species.  The spots on the sides do not form obvious rows but are almost randomly scattered and sometimes irregularly shaped, giving the fish a freckled appearance, and are always prominent, never obscured by the camouflage pattern.  Ozark bass are also noticeably more slender than the other species.  They have 40 to 48 scales along the lateral line (usually more than 41 scales), and have 20 or more scale rows across the breast.  Ozark bass can attain lengths of better than 10 inches; the Arkansas state record "rock bass" was an Ozark bass, and weighed 1 pound 8 ounces. This specimen was taken on the North Fork of the White River.