Fishing in Missouri

The angler looking at a map of Missouri might suppose that two mighty rivers, the Missouri and the Mississippi, provide a lot of fishing. They don’t. Both suffered such severe navigation development that the immense fishery they once represented is today a fragment of its former self. Nevertheless, Missouri offers abundant angling for a landlocked state, and this potential is fairly diverse, thanks to 13 large reservoirs, thousands of smaller reservoirs, and many rivers and streams.

The quality of the state’s gamefishing is largely due to an excellent conservation agency. The Missouri Conservation Department, which for several decades has been the best-funded and best state conservation agency in the nation, has used scientific research to develop and maintain healthy fish populations in most of the state’s waterways.

The largemouth bass ranks first with both resident and nonresident anglers in the Show-Me State, and it is followed closely in popularity by crappie. Next, in descending order, come catfish, sunfish, white bass, smallmouth bass, walleye, sauger, and, surprisingly, trout. Missouri even has muskellunge, which are stocked in two of the state’s reservoirs, and includes among its fish populations in certain waters striped bass, hybrid stripers, paddlefish, freshwater drum, and carp.

Most people coming to Missouri to fish do so in one or more of the larger reservoirs. Many also come to fish and float the streams of the Ozarks. A smaller number pursue trout, primarily rainbows and, in a few places, browns, stocked in water kept cold by either spring discharges or deep-reservoir discharges, usually referred to as tailwaters.