Imagine a place where you can catch 4- to 6-pound largemouth bass in a day of fishing without seeing another angler on the water.

That scenario's certainly more likely to come true if you're fishing a remote farm pond or have permission to fish strip pits on private property. But it can also happen on a river within easy driving distance of the St. Louis metropolitan area.

Descending from Council Bluffs Lake in Iron County, Big River offers anglers plenty of opportunities to catch high-quality largemouth bass before it flows into the Meramec River near House Springs. Despite flowing through a heavily populated section of Eastern Missouri, this meandering stream generates plenty of action for both plus-sized largemouths and garden-variety keepers.

"We typically collect some pretty big largemouth when we do our fall surveys," said Mike Reed, the Missouri Department of Conservation's fisheries management biologist for the Big River. "It's not uncommon for us to get fish over 20 inches."

The largest bass that Reed collected last year was a 21-incher picked up near Cherokee Landing, and in previous years the biologist has found bass 21 to 22 inches long. He estimates that a 20-inch Big River largemouth usually ranges between 4 to 6 pounds.

The river also contains a good-sized population of keeper-size largemouths (a "keeper" being defined as a fish 12 or more inches in length).

"It's not uncommon at all to catch legal largemouth there," reported Reed, who has experienced days on the river that saw him and his partner catch 80 to 90 bass. "If you are lucky enough to get a cloudy day when the fish are biting and stay on topwater baits, you can catch 50 fish if you are good fishermen. That's not unusual."

The middle and lower sections of the river support a wealth of spotted bass in the 10- to 16-inch range. Big River also accommodates a solid smallmouth bass population with fish up to 20 inches long, but Reed believes that the river actually produces better largemouth action.

"It is a reflection of the habitat," observed Reed. "The largemouth like a big pool with a big tree in it, and it seems like there is more of that slack-water backwater kind of habitat in Big River."

The stream has felt the effects of mining over the years, having lost several of the rock shoals in which smallmouths thrive. However, those areas have been replaced by scour holes filled with downed trees and rootwads and have become largemouth havens. Most of the pools are about 6 or 7 feet deep, although those on the lower river will be as deep as 10 feet. The area affected the most by mining is a stretch of a couple of miles from the MDC's Leadwood access to Cherokee Landing, a private campground and outfitter near Bonne Terre.

"I believe the river gets a little bit better for largemouth as you go down stream," Reed stated, "because a lot of material has come out of the mining sites and filled a lot of the upstream pools so there aren't as many deep pools there."