FISHY STORIES: DIVERSION CHANNEL OFFERS FISHING HAVEN FOR AREA ANGLERS

Joe Brewer said he does a lot of fishing at the diversion channel and helps to clean up a bit.

A makeshift fishing rod holder.

Most days, Joe Brewer has nothing better to do than fish in the Diversion Channel.

He'll wake up late in the morning, then drive his white truck full of gear to the only spot along the channel that offers a boat ramp. But Brewer doesn't use a boat. He uses a rod and reel planted inside a yellow PVC pipe on the water's edge. Then he'll throw his 80-pound-test line into the water to catch catfish. But he doesn't get catfish.

"All I get is gars and drum," says Brewer, who retired recently after 38 years with AmerenUE. "A lot of trash stuff."

The channel, which runs from the Mississippi River near the border of Cape Girardeau and Scott counties to the Castor River, actually offers a variety of fishing experiences. Agents from the Missouri Conservation Department say 25 to 30 different species of fish swim in the channel. But the channel has always been about more than just fishing.

At the beginning of this century, talk about turning what was called "Swampeast Missouri" into habitable land became serious. The talk resulted in the Little River Drainage District, which stretches from Cape Girardeau to the Missouri-Arkansas state line. The area, which is 90 miles long with varying widths of 10 to 20 miles, is the largest drainage project in the United States.

But the 50 or so miles that make up the Headwater Diversion Channel isn't a drainage ditch to anglers. It is sort of a way of life.

Brewer has probably spent more time this summer cleaning up the area around the boat ramp, which is next to an Interstate 55 bridge, than catching fish. With rakes and shovels, he digs up and gathers garbage left behind by others.

"The aluminum cans are great," Brewer says. "I use them in my garden as a sealant. They hold in all the moisture."

He has been working on a dead tree, too. The top is bowing into the water, and the trunk is charred black. Brewer has been trying to burn it up.

"The fire department came down here the other day," he says. "I guess someone saw flames from the bridge."

Besides cleaning up, Brewer and others do catch some fish. When Scott Elder isn't fishing near his home at Lake Buena Vista, he'll cast his net into the channel, pull in a bucketful of shad for bait, and then angle for catfish.

"He caught a 52-pounder this year," Brewer recalls.

Keith May has never caught anything that big in the channel. In the spring, a fisherman can find nice bluegills and crappie in the channel between Cape Girardeau and the river, he says.

Two of May's uncles, both state conservation agents, say they only eat fish from that part of the channel.

"There's a lot of junk floating around in there," says May, an officer with the Cape Girardeau Police Department.

Brewer knows about junk. He has been trying to pull a cabinet out of the water with ropes and hooks for most of the summer.

If someone is looking for big catfish, go to the mouth of the channel at the Mississippi River, says Charles Hutson, circuit clerk at the courthouse in Jackson. The water goes to an 80-foot depth, he says.

Fishermen have done well at the channel's mouth by rigging up a fishing line full of hooks tied to plastic milk jugs, Hutson says.

The water isn't always that deep, Mays says. As a boy, he recalls wading through the channel towing his johnboat behind him.

After Mays got a 200-horsepower outboard motor, the channel lost its allure, he says.

"My wife wouldn't let me put it in there," he says.

Neither would the Conservation Department. The limit on outboard motors in the channel is 10 horsepower.

But this doesn't affect Brewer. With an array of bait that starts with livers and ends with dried blood, he is happy on the banks of the Diversion Channel.

And the "trash fish" and turtles are good for his garden.

"I put those turtles in the ground upside down," Brewer says. "That way all the juices run out better. And you should see my pumpkins after that."