[music playing] NARRATOR 1: The following program is a production of Ozarks Public Television.

Welcome to "Sense of Community."

I'm your host, Gregory Holman.

This edition of sense of community goes on air a few days before this year's Thanksgiving holiday, and our topic for this show fits in well with concepts of Thanksgiving and gratitude.

"On the River, A History of the Ozarks Float Trip" is a new book out from the Ozark Studies Institute.

The Institute is based here at Missouri State University and part of its mission is to preserve and share knowledge about Ozarks culture.

After 200 pages of reading, I think it's safe to say "On the River" is a labor of love for its two co-authors, Tom Koob and Curtis Copeland.

The book is an expression of gratitude for the remarkable rivers and lakes of the Ozarks, and all of the wildlife, including fish species, that call our region home.

The book offers a detailed history of float fishing trips around the Ozarks.

It details connections between human beings and this corner of the world.

It covers how people fish our local waterways for food and survival over many centuries, and how more recently, fishing guides led eager anglers through these living waterways, finding an incredible set of opportunities for sports and recreation.

We're delighted to have both Tom and Curtis on "Sense of Community."

Please stay tuned.

[upbeat music] NARRATOR 2: Welcome to "Sense of Community."

"Sense of Community" is a public affairs presentation of Ozarks Public Television.

Tom Koob and Curtis Copeland.

First, I want to introduce you to everyone watching "Sense of Community."

Tom, you've lived in the Ozarks' White River Hills for more than 30 years.

You've written four nonfiction books about the Ozarks region.

Curtis, you studied cartographic sciences here at Missouri State University, and you've served as Geographic Information Systems Manager for the city of Branson for 25 years.

Before this book, "On the River," the two of you collaborated on "Ozarks Hillbilly, Stereotype and Reality," published three years ago.

I am so delighted to welcome you to "Sense of Community."

Thank you, Gregory.

Let's get right to our questions.

And we'll start with you, Tom.

Then we'll move to Curtis.

Set the scene for me with the most basic question of just what is an Ozarks float fishing trip?

What do we experience with our senses?

What are we feeling with our emotions if we're out on a real banger of a float fishing trip?

Let's start with you, Tom.

Well, it might depend on what time period you went on this float trip.

First of all, it doesn't always have to involve fishing.

There's plenty of float trips that don't involve it, but there are a lot that do, too.

So that's an important part of it.

Now, if you went on a float trip in 1925, it would have been a big deal.

It would have been up to two weeks on the water.

People were floating from Galena, Missouri, all the way down to Carter, Arkansas.

They were carrying all kinds of equipment and supplies with them.

They were out there a long time.

It was a big deal.

Now today, if you went on a float trip, it would be probably quite a bit shorter, and you'd probably take some supplies, but not very many.

But I think the things that are the same between those is people's desire to get out on the water, be close to nature, enjoy the solitude, interacting with that.

Those are the pleasant experiences that I think people experience on the river on floating, whatever time period it was in.

Curtis, what do you think about this?

I agree with Tom, definitely about the changes in what we would call an Ozarks float trip over the past 100, 120 years or so.

I think most folks these days, when they think of a river float in the Ozarks, they think of going to an outfitter, renting a canoe, and having the outfitter take care of most of the work for them, getting the canoes either up or down the river, and just have a great day of playing on our Ozark streams.

The Ozarks is a really wonderful place, and we're known for our waterways.

We're known for clean water, beautiful rivers, and streams, and lakes now, of course.

And as you would find in the book, the lakes that so many people enjoy, both locally and visitors, are one of the main things that impacted how we look at float fishing and float trips, and how it's done today versus how it was 100 years ago.

Now let's stay with Curtis, and I'm going to move to our next question.

Let's just talk about the fish themselves.

I was actually tickled reading your book because there seems to be some real fishing stories.

Now "real," take that with a grain of salt, right?

But real fishing stories in there.

And I'm not sure if they count as, like, highly fact checked historical certainty, but we got folks reporting they caught a 100-pound fish, 151-pound fish, sometimes a 3-pound fish, 7-pound fish.

And I just wanted you to talk a little bit about the fish species, historically, that people are chasing after when they go on these float.

Trips.

Sure Yeah.

Yeah.

So of course, I'll start with saying, there's always fish tales and fish stories, and exaggeration and embellishment is just part of it.

This is part of the history and the culture.

Yeah.

Right.

But still today, on a lot of our Ozark streams, folks go after Smallmouth bass.

Yeah.

They're not only one of the more popular sport fish on the river, they're a heck of a good fighter, as far as whenever you're fishing for them.

But also, one of the river sports that has persisted is gig fishing or fishing with a gig, and that's where you get into, like, more of the bottom feeders, like the sucker fish.

There's a variety of species of those.

And, of course, catfishing.

We've got several species of catfish, Channel cats and so forth.

But again, as I mentioned previously, with the impact of the big lakes and impoundments below-- what remnants there are of rivers below those lakes, the water has changed to a cold water, like rainbow Trout, Brown trout, and so forth.

So those are the main species that folks would go after.

Of course, you're going to run into sunfish, and Bluegill, and Largemouth bass periodically.

But those are the main ones on the river.

Now Tom, let's expand on that a little bit, if we could.

There's this transition right from bass to trout as the dams came in in this area, as far as what the main species are that people fish for.

Is that correct?

Absolutely.

Trout are not Indigenous to the Ozarks.

They were brought in starting in the late 1800s.

So yes, the big dams, when they started coming in on our rivers, that really impacted float fishing, and particularly fishing.

Because when you build a big dam like Bull Shoals, or Table Rock, or Beaver, the water that draws off those dams into the tailrace below the dams is quite cold, usually into 50 degrees.

And that was not suitable for warm water fishes like the bass, and the catfish, and the others.

They will exist there, but not in great numbers.

But what people found out was that those were great waters for trout.

So there was this period mostly starting in around the '50s where people realized that these waters may not be great for Smallmouth fishing anymore, but these runs below the dams are great for trout.

And they really had to make that shift.

They were still out in their johnboats.

They were still guiding people.

They were still camping on the gravel bars, but they were fishing for a different species.

And the trout have done really well.

And that's worked out to be a really great boon for the Ozarks.

I think particularly in still some of the rivers, but particularly below Beaver, below Table Rock, below Bull Shoals, those are great trout fisheries.

And now I want to actually talk about the fishing guides, because you alluded to this aspect of the fishing guides.

We're going to stay with you, Tom.

Then we'll talk to Curtis about this.

But the fishing guides are like really adaptable people, right?

And I wonder if you can talk about if a person works as a fishing guide, what does that really mean?

What is the actual work that they do?

And of course, there's going to be some differences between what happens today and what happened in the 1950s prior to the dam, prior-- you know, the Golden age period.

Let's start with you, Tom.

What do fishing guides do?

Well, the whole sport or pastime started when wealthy people started coming on the railroads into the Ozarks, late 1800s.

They came down here and they saw really pretty country, nice rivers, great for hunting and fishing.

And the sportsmen wanted to take advantage of that.

Well, what they needed was needed some local help.

So the local fellers knew how to handle the johnboat on the water.

They knew the rivers.

They knew how to fish.

They were fishing for sustenance, for the most part, for food for their families.

So that connection between these sportsmen coming into the area and these local guys that knew how to work on the rivers really created the issue of the guide.

And originally, it was one guy paddling and one guy fishing.

And they would go out on the river.

Curtis and I are fortunate to be able to interview a lot of guides and came across a lot of interesting stories.

They are interesting people.

They didn't write down their experiences very often, but fortunately-- The guides themselves were not big writers.

They were not big writers.

But other people would become big writers about guides, including you guys.

Exactly, yeah.

So there was family members and newspapers.

Magazines wrote a lot about these guys.

Now if you want to comparison, I think one of the first big names in the Ozarks was Perry Anders.

He was over at Arlington on the Gasconade in Big Piney.

We're talking late 1800s here.

And so when these folks from the big cities like St. Louis and Kansas City started coming down on the railroad, he realized there was an opportunity here.

He was one of the first guys to really go beyond that one guy paddling and one guy fishing and started developing it into more of a guide service, providing supplies, and it really worked out well.

The other smart thing.

He did is that he had contacts with the newspapers in St. Louis, and he would write regular articles about what fishing was like.

So it was really good marketing.

At that time, he was known as the sportsman's friend many, many years before Harold Ensley used the same moniker.

So he was one of the early ones.

Let's bring that back up a little bit farther into the early 1900s.

And I think one of the most well known guys is Charlie Barnes.

He was out of Galena, sometimes credited for developing the first johnboat.

Charlie would have scoffed at that himself.

He did develop a johnboat, and a nice one, but he knew that there was plenty of other people doing the same thing.

But Charlie not only was a great guide, but he knew the water well and he was a great boat builder.

And he worked-- he started his own outfitting business, Barnes Brothers, out of Galena.

Worked for Jim Owen out of Branson for many years.

Really epitome, I think, of a guide who was generally probably a fairly quiet guy, but knew his job, knew the water, knew how to tell tales, knew how to set up camp and cook.

Just one of the really great guides.

Now Curtis, this is the part I was going to hopefully hear from you on, which is can you talk about some of the logistics that the guides would actually do?

This is-- they had a lot of prep work before they get on the water, and a lot at the end of the fishing trip, right?

Right.

Yes, definitely.

So of course, they had to have a good knowledge of where to find the fish.

And then also, as Tom had mentioned, the ability to tell some good stories and entertain the guests on their trips.

But it was the entire package.

So they had to-- and still today, the same today, where they have to prepare the bait.

They have to be ready, have the boat ready at the crack of dawn.

The equipment back then for the guides would include a great deal more than it does today.

And when I say "back then," I'm talking prior to 1950.

But a lot of these guides were also cooks, because in the early float trip days, they would be on a multi-day trip, like, like Tom had mentioned, up to two weeks at a time.

So a lot of these guys had to know how to cook.

They had to know how to set up the camps.

They had to know how to set up the camps in a safe place in case of flooding, or in case-- You got a funny story or two about mishaps, basically.

Yeah.

Right.

Plenty of mishaps along the way.

But yes.

And then, of course, catching the fish, but also preparing the fish to be cooked up along the gravel bars in the evenings, and also the transport at the end of the trip.

These johnboats were not the lightweight canoes that we have today.

And they had to help transport the boats, first, in the early days, by rail, and then later on by truck.

And so yeah, they had to have a wide variety of skills.

Plus the other kind of peripheral skills.

If you're out on the river for days at a time, basic first aid.

What if somebody gets ill or is sick?

Just these guys-- and-- these guys-- and there were female guides as well, had to know how to survive on the river.

And not just for themselves, but for their guests, too.

Now as far as the fishing guides go, some of these were pretty small operations.

We might say a person is kind of an independent contractor, or freelancer, just a one-person outfit.

But some of these were full on outfitters, and had 20 boats, and it seems like it was a pretty cracking family business.

Can you expand a little bit about that?

And we'll start with you, Curtis.

Well, I think probably the most well-known one, because the proprietor was a fantastic marketer, was the Jim Owen float trips out of Branson.

And he employed a number of guides from not only the White River and Taneycomo area, but also Galena area and James River.

And so it was a big operation, and he was very successful with that.

And that included all the rental gear and everything that was necessary for these visitors from St. Louis, Kansas City, and other areas.

But yeah, he got some of the best.

The roster of his guys were some of the most well-known guides in the area.

Now you alluded-- we're going to-- we'll shift to Tom here.

But you alluded to the fact that there are few women who were documented as being fishing guides, but there definitely are some-- there was one, Zoti Dablemont.

Associated with a very prominent family of fishing guides.

Can you talk a little bit about the role of women in those businesses?

Was this pretty common, even though there weren't a ton of them?

Yeah, I don't think it was common.

I actually-- I knew there had to be some female guides, so I looked really hard.

But I could really only find one documented.

And that was Zoti Dablemont.

The Dablemont had been in the guide business for many, many years and still are.

They worked all over the Ozarks, including in some of the lakes of the Ozarks.

And Zoti was a young girl in the Dablemont family, and honed her skills, and was well respected, and did a good job at that.

So I didn't find a lot of other female guides, although there probably were.

But I will say that women love to fish, too.

And there's plenty of pictures today, and 100 years ago, of women in their full dresses and their big hats, and they're out there enjoying the floating just as much as the guys did.

Now I want to ask about 100 years ago, and we'll stay with you, Tom.

This book is replete with mentions of the heyday of float fishing trips and the golden age of float fishing trips.

When was that time period and why is it not so much today?

Let's start with you, Tom.

It kind of depends on the area.

Now, if you go into more of the Eastern Ozarks, over around-- I mentioned Arlington, the Gasconade, the current, Jack's Fork, 11 Point, Merrimack, some of those rivers over there.

Those were the areas where the railroad first came in.

So that's kind of where the sport really kicked off over there.

And it developed and it was a big deal.

There was plenty of people coming down, plenty of lodges, and sportsmen's camps, and clubs down there.

But I think when it really hit off is when the railroads came through Galena and down into Branson.

And that opened up the James and the upper White quite a bit, and they really took off.

There was a lot of big outfitters out of Galena, and they employed a lot of guides and they took some long trips.

So I would say probably the peak of the sport was probably between the two world wars, the 1920s up into the early '50s when the big leagues really started getting completed.

Surprisingly, that's also the period of the depression, when you think that would have had a big impact.

And I'm sure it did some, but Jim Owens started his float fishing business in Branson in 1935 right, in the heart of the depression.

The heart of the depression.

And it was very successful.

So there was some reason that this sport was continuing to operate and be very popular.

There's a famous magazine spread done by "Life Magazine" in 1941.

And it's got a lot of the big names in, it Charlie Barnes, Jim Owen, and a couple young ladies from Branson who were featured in that.

And it's an enjoyable spread.

It doesn't give a lot of detail about the sport, but it did show that still, at that time period, 1941, it was still a pretty big deal.

And they were taking some pretty nice trips out there on the water.

So after World War II, the big lakes started having much more impact.

Bull Shoals came along, Table Rock, Beaver, some of the other ones.

There were many other dams planned for almost every stream and river in the Ozarks.

Fortunately, though, a lot of those didn't happen.

Didn't happen on the Buffalo, didn't happen on the current Jacks Fork, Eleven Point, Merrimack.

Now there were plans to build dams on those rivers, but it didn't happen.

And I think a big reason it didn't happen is people love the rivers the way they were.

Now as far as the rivers, the way they are today, Curtis, let's take this question to you, how are people practicing the art of float fishing today?

If we look at it through all this history, going back to this golden age into our latter days here in 2024.

I think probably one of the best examples of a bridge to the past, if you will, of techniques and methods that were around 100 years ago that are still around today, we look at those areas below the big dams, which are more like a river, on the White River, and you-- but you're there fishing for a different species, as we discussed earlier.

They're fishing for trout.

But you more often find these riverside resorts below the dams that offer guide services.

And the boats are more similar to the original johnboats.

They may be fiberglass or aluminum now, but the design and the structure of them is just like an original river johnboat.

And I think even today-- well, I know even today that you can hire a guide.

They will-- and they'll prepare the boat.

You'll have the boat prepared for you.

They'll take you out, they'll find the fish.

They'll help you clean the fish.

You can do a gravel-side lunch and they'll prepare some of the fish.

And you really get that feel of what it was like 100 years ago.

And when you're surrounded by the Ozark scenery and the Ozarks river, and you really get a sense that you've traveled back in time because it's so similar in the method and the feeling that you would get.

And I would say that is probably the good relationship between the past and the present.

So in terms of this through line between the past and the present, Tom, is this a matter of maybe people don't have as many vacation days where they're not gone for two weeks?

But it's a similar trip, but it just isn't as long.

Is that a fair assessment, or what would you say?

Yeah.

In the book "On the River," we discuss that quite a bit.

How did the sport change and why did the sport change?

And of course, probably the biggest reason is the big dams.

That really had a big impact.

But there are also a lot of other things happened that were more social, or economic, or cultural.

Particularly after World War II, people's idea of a vacation began to change.

They were probably not going to go out and float on the river for two weeks.

So I think the length of the vacations-- the vacations became more family oriented and people were bringing their families with them, which changed it a little bit.

And it also-- floating was never an inexpensive sport.

So that's why early on, a lot of the practitioners were wealthy folks, business people and railroad people from the cities.

But when you came down, you were paying the guide and you were paying for the rent of the boat, and all the supplies, and the food and everything.

Now you when you compare that to after the war in the 1950s up till today, that could get really expensive.

So I think it tended to get shortened.

People still want to do it.

They still enjoy it, but it has changed in scope, I'd say.

In scope.

Yeah.

In scope.

If you're just joining us on "Sense of Community," we've been talking to authors Tom Koob and Curtis Copeland.

Their new book is "On the River, A History of the Ozarks Float Trip."

We've only just scratched the surface of it in this conversation just now.

These gentlemen have taken us back all the way up to 10,000 years ago with the bluff dwellers, the first identified humans, Native Americans, to interact with our waterways and Ozarks culture.

And they zoom all the way up to the present day.

Gentlemen, it is such a pleasure to have had you on the broadcast.

The book, again, "On the River, A History of the Ozarks Float Trip."

It's published by the Ozark Studies Institute right here at Missouri State University.

Thanks so much for joining us Today.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

For "Sense of community," I'm Gregory Holman.

We want to leave you where you can find more information.

Thanks so much for watching the program.

Until next time, goodbye.

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