Take float fishing trips in Missouri

Within Missouri's borders are enough miles of fishing rivers and streams to reach from Washington D.C. to San Francisco six times. During the hot summer months is an excellent time to float on some of the 19,000 miles of moving water, including one of the 37 major float streams in the Missouri Ozarks.

To list all of the hundreds of rivers and streams would fill this page, but some of the best known are the Eleven Point, Jacks Fork, Black, Gasconade, Current, Big Piney, Roaring River, Niangua, Elk, Pomme de Terre, Sac, Osage, Grand, St. Francis, Blackwater, Platte, North Fork and James, to name a few.

The north Missouri streams feature catfish, carp, bass and crappie, with channel cats the favorite. The Grand, Osage and Chariton Rivers produce tons of fine eating channels each year. Trot and limbline fishing are popular during the summer months and in the past few years winter fishing for catfish has gathered many followers.

Of course, the southern streams have gained national attention as home of the smallmouth bass and floating water like the current feature prime angling for smallmouth, walleye and panfish.

From sucker snagging to a white bass run, Missouri's thousands of flowing fishing waterways provide limits of plump fish and scenic beauty.

Here in the home of float fishing, the Missouri Ozarks, an angler can have his cake and eat it too. The many cool, clear, spring fed streams in the Ozarks are home to smallmouth bass, trout, walleye, white bass, channel catfish and a variety of panfish.

A fisherman can be on his own, in the wild, and float a canoe down a stream or he can engage an outfitter and slip downstream in a "John Boat" with nearly everything provided.

In floating a Missouri stream, you can drift one hour or one week depending on how much time you have. It's very possible to float all day without seeing another boat, however weekends find some streams very busy.

On one of these scenery-filled trips, the angler can get as close to nature as today's noisy world allows. As you move along, you see that there is more to floating than fishing until you are awakened by a hit from a smallmouth bass.

Streams offer a changing variety of feeding stations for fish. In all streams there are stretches where fish are plentiful and others where there are few or no fish. Finding the most productive spots is simply a matter of "reading" the stream to discover where the fish will be found when feeding, and where they rest.

A fast stream usually has some deep pools, eddies, rapids and flats. Trout like the fast and cool streams and can be found feeding in deep water, just over dropoffs or behind boulders where the water is slowed.

Smallmouth bass, walleye and panfish are common in warmer, but still cool waters. Keep in mind that fish are generally found where they can feed comfortably.

Slow streams usually meander. At bends, there are deep holes and undercut banks and often there are scrub thickets along the bank as well as sometimes trees shade the shoreline. Banks are among the best spots to fish slow streams. Here the fish get both food and cover in the deep holes and undercut banks. Schooling panfish congregate along the outer edge of these banks.

At the end of your close-to-nature float fishing trip, more than likely you will be thinking about making plans for another trip soon. A love for the outdoors will bring you back for another adventure on a Missouri float fishing trip.