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Had a good trip for me. Boated 10 fish, lost 3. Smallmouth-8, Meanmouth-2, and LM-1. Most decent size in the 15" range. Didn't know a thing about Indian Creek so I just picked a long cut off the main creek and started chunking the swim bait. Not much doing the first hour and I was feeling a skunk coming on. Ned rig to the rescue. Started putting them in the boat shortly after changing. I was blind casting to about 8-15 ft. Beautiful day, light wind and partly cloudy. This area of the lake is just beautiful. Throw in some rolling fog and was like fishing in a postcard picture. The bite was very soft. Only one hit it hard and I lost it before I could ID it. Is the fish in the pic a mean mouth? Left them biting at 9:30. A tournament fisher I will never make! I think I had a Quillback truck sighting. Saw a Phoenix trailer attached to a white Tundra as I was loading up.

I have fished one Tourney in my life, buddy suckered me in at Terre Du Lac one day. $25 entry and it took all the fun out of the day. Winner was a local that pulled up to his dock on the lake and filled his live well with bass he had been collecting. Because he always wins it and nobody knows why.... It has never made me want to watch a tourney, fish a lake because of it, buy anything because a pro used it to win one. I check schedules and avoid the lakes if there is one coming when I want to fish it. Drop down in the river below and catch more fish without the crowds.

It’s all about the benjamins. Nobody gives a big F about conservation until you fry up their swimming profit. It will never go away.

Sounds like you have some great trips being planned. But for the love of dog please leave those freeze dried meals at home!

Nope.

The streams around here are muddy and largely unwadeable, throwing a major wrench in my Friday afternoon creek wading plans. So naturally, I'm thinking about high summer and floating, in the Ozarks and elsewhere. There is no particular purpose to this thread, other than to talk about my summer plans, and hear about others. The first big trip of the year we're planning is to northern Michigan. The streams up there, in many ways, are very recognizable to anyone who has fished in the Ozarks. The streams are clear and spring-fed, and the little 5-8 inch wild rainbow trout (baby steelhead in many cases) are not unlike what you'd catch on the Little Piney or Crane Creek. The Big Manistee in particular, which we plan to float, reminds me a fair bit of a north woods version of the Eleven Point, with its big water and mixture of trout and smallmouth bass. My heart has always been captured by the north woods in a way that is only eclipsed by the Rocky Mountains. That is a trip that will get me through many a boring day between now and then. The other one planned is the annual float trip with my Dad. That is usually a Thursday night to Sunday operation on an Ozark stream TBD, though there's a very high likelihood it'll be the Eleven Point or Big Piney. With any luck, there will be camping, some probably modest fish catching that will be slowly exaggerated in my own mind to epic fish catching, and mountain house freeze dried meals cooked over a one burner. On the median trip, we'll probably dump the giant, over-burdened and unwieldy canoe once, and agree to simply tell others that "we had a little trouble in one spot, but we got it figured out ok." Which will be mostly true, because we'll have everything well-secured and in dry bags to guard against this likelihood. Some key item will get wet anyway. If course, those are just the planned trips. There will be many a Friday afternoon/evening trip to a a little smallmouth stream, maybe a weekday float on the Niangua if it can be arranged. Too many trips to count to the pretty little lake with lots of big redear and an occasional bass that's worth taking a picture of. That has already started; muddy water and all, the redears do not seem to care a bit. In fact, as soon as I'm done with work I'm going over there. Even when conditions are mostly a wash, there's usually still a loop-hole you can find somewhere. (Note: third time is the charm, I guess. Not only did I originally post this errantly in the Conservation Issues forum, it somehow double posted there. Apologies for any confusion created by this. One can assume I am simply very excited for summer/floating).

Oh the horror 😆

Now that's going just a bit too far. Blocked on FB. Imagine!

About 15 seconds in hot oil will make those worms edible. I can recall decades ago people on the east coast being upset by a newspaper story mentioning worms in store bought ocean fish. I don't recall the details of the story but the gist was that all fish have parasites, that parasites are usually species specific (so don't harm humans), and that cooked worms are easily eaten if you aren't told about them. The next week, at the super market every package of fish that I examined did seem to have worms. So, yeah, eat more bass.

And the lakes around here are so busy on a spring Saturday, I have never understood how fishing a tourney can be fun when you've gotta deal with so many other boats, crowded launches and everything that goes with being on a lake with so many other people. Fishing has always been to me a way to get away from the world. Now the world comes to the lakes. I am fortunate to be retired and not have only Saturdays to fish. That being said, there are still a lot of people out on the lakes during the week. Hard to predict the future of bass fishing, but there sure are a lot of youth tourneys. Pre-high school, high school and then college. Kids are accustomed to fishing out of fully rigged bass boats from age 12. What they see on a Saturday tournament morning is normal to them. It is so different than the way many of us older folks fished years ago when we were 12 years old. Hard to see it changing much in this area, things are booming here. Booms end of course, but the people are here and some of them will fish or boat out on the lakes.

There are a few people that I'd gladly buy a ticket to Paris for...... if I knew they'd STAY!

Oh, that brings back memories. Back when tournaments first came onto the scene, we started a local bass club. I was fresh out of high school but I knew how to catch bass back then (ain't worth a crap at it on reservoirs now). We didn't fish for money, we just got together for the competition and bragging rights. Got a 10 dollar trophy if you won. None of us had what passed for bass boats back then (and the "new" bass boats would be laughed off the lake these days). Heck, some of us fished from canoes with a trolling motor, and I had a 12 ft. aluminum johnboat for fishing the lakes. There were only about 15 of us in the club, so usually no more than 6 or 7 boats, and we mostly fished the local public or semi-public lakes like Bismarck Lake and Sunnen Lake; we fished Wappapello and Clearwater once a year. Well, Terre du Lac hadn't been a thing for very long at that point and they were still trying to sell lots, so they contacted us to help organize a tournament to publicize their lakes. So of course we fished it. You could fish any of the three biggest lakes. One lake had the reputation of being terrible fishing. One was muddy. So I fished the third one, along with about 10 other boats. We just all kinda lined up and went around the lake fishing the banks...over and over and over. I just used my favorite crankbait and kept casting, and at the end of the day, I had the biggest bag...on that lake. A couple guys fished the muddy lake and blew us out of the water.

There you go, lets all start eating bass. White worms and all....

It might as well be. Even if the rest of us was triple we still don’t bring in the cash. Just another reflection of our society.

Yeah buddy, I think I parked next to you. I got there at 9 AM, fished until almost 5 PM. The smallies are biting, I'll post some pics tomorrow, I am too beat right now.

I actually did fish a lot of tournaments. It was a blast. But the late 80’s, early 90’s, was a different time.

Parasites in fish is a thing no matter what you catch other than some palegic ocean fish. If you can see them cook them up! More protein. I do flick out the yellow grub deals in bass. The tip of the fillet knife makes quick care for that. @curtisce should have a good supply of worms now because he makes cervechi out of white bass with no ill effects. Come to think of that he's tall and skinny and this could be the reason. Another deal if eating bass is holding you back . Freeze your tasty fillets for -4 for 7 days or -35 for 15 hours. Then you can eat it raw. Bon appetit 😁

shoot, there arent enough trout in there to sustain stripers for more than a day or two. that river has more crawfish in it than any river I have ever seen though

The smallies are biting. Dutch and myself caught 60 today, maybe 4 of them were spots, but the rest smallies. Dutch, once again, had a couple of decent fish that I got to net. One of them looks to b a meanmouth. A lot of 12-15" fish, I think mostly males moving onto the banks. Ned rigs were the best bait, followed by 2.8 Keitechs. Some spots, especially back in Indian have a lot of floating wood. Did see a few stripers early blowing up by the boat. Had one take a swipe at the spook, he did not get it however. WT 60-62

I might see you out there, I'm waiting for the fog to clear and morning traffic to end and head out later this AM.

Sounds like an important plant, did it have 5 leaves and smell kinda skunky? Like this??

It would be hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube at this point. On the other hand, my buddies nephew Trey just qualified for the Bass Master Classic.

There is a double decker Airbus that is manufactured in Germany, France, United Kingdom and Spain. May someone bought her a one-way ticket to go across the pond?

Good luck!

Okay, Quillback this has given me sufficient motivation to give it a go tomorrow morning. I'm going to heavily arm myself with a ned and a 2.8 Keitech setup. After a scouting trip with truck only last week, I prefer the drive to Indian Creek Park vs Lost Bridge North or South. Ain't too keen on that curvy 127 road. Looks like light wind and slight chance of rain in the a.m., good enough. I'll start chunking it at first light and ignore the clear water confidence buster.

I don't bass fish so don't really have a personal dog in this fight. But I can't see where this many tournaments - maybe especially in the spring - can have anything but a negative impact on the fishery. How much I couldn't begin to say. But common sense says it has to be something.

Decades ago there was 2-3 tournaments per MONTH. Which was not a big deal. Now there are 2-3 tournaments per DAY. I feel like the constant relocation of those fish has become an issue. LM/SM Bass are not naturally a pelagic open water fish, typically living their entire lives in the general area in which they were born, relating to cover and being ambush predators. But they are totally lost now, and forced to survive in unfamiliar areas......So their habits are changing. Becoming more like stripers, cruising open water and chasing schools of shad.

Do you just now have an issue with it because an "influencer" told you to have a problem with it? Tournaments have been fished in the spring for decades.....

Last fall I wrote here about trying my smallmouth baitcasting tackle out here on the Yellowstone River for trout, and hooking (and losing at the bitter end) the largest trout by far I'd ever hooked anywhere but Alaska. I called it sacrilege because I was almost embarrassed to be fishing casting tackle on an iconic fly fishing river. We've been out here since early March, and it's been a pretty sucky spring so far. Cold. Snow. And WIND. So far I've actually had one nice day a couple weeks ago that I got on the river by myself in my little Water Master raft, and one day floating in the little drift boat with Mary. Both days, the fishing was pretty decent. Both days, I took nothing but fly tackle. I hadn't fished the casting rod since one more day last fall. We got up this morning, and I checked the forecast. I had two options I was thinking about for today. One was fishing. The other was maybe fishing maybe not...I belong to an athletic club in Bozeman, and there's open pickup basketball there every day of the week from noon to 2:00. There's also pickup basketball for older guys (like me) from 10:00 to noon on Tuesdays and Fridays. I almost never miss the old guys game, and had played yesterday. Sometimes I stay afterwards to play with the young guys for an hour or so...the old guys play half court and it's not as much of a workout as playing with a bunch of 20 somethings full court. But yesterday, not enough young guys showed up after I'd played with the old guys (by the way, I'm 72, and there are three or four men playing that are older than I am...one is in his 80s!). So I thought maybe I'd load up my waders and fly tackle along with my gym shoes and clothes, and head over to the athletic club. If there weren't enough guys again, I'd drive on out to the lower Madison and wade fish. I checked the river at the house...it's been very murky for the last couple days from a somewhat warm heavy rain over the weekend. It was still murky but fishable, and had come up a few inches during that time but seeemed to be dropping a bit. What to do...Mary said, "Just get on the river. I'll pick you up at 3:30 wherever you want to fish." Well, it seems the older I get, the more piddling around I do before I actually get on the river. I checked to see if the Water Master would fit into the back of the 4-Runner, so that Mary could use it to shuttle me. Had to rummage around to find a carabiner that I could use to click into the latch on the hatchback of the 4-Runner...last summer I'd tried hauling a couple kayaks in the back, and found out that the darned open hatchback gives you that loud warning ding-ding-ding without over stopping, which is exceedingly annoying on a 30 minute drive, but if you push a carabiner into the open latch on it, the latch clicks closed and the car is fooled into thinking the door is shut. Stored the carabiner and a length of rope in the 4-Runner, unloaded the raft from it and into my old Chevy truck, gathered all my gear, and at the last minute, grabbed the only jerkbait I still had and my baitcasting rod and threw them in. As I drove through town, I stopped at the butcher shop to get a good sandwich made for lunch. Stopped again at the only sporting goods store in town that might have actual lures instead of flies, and bought a couple countdown Rapalas. Stopped again at the quick shop for gas and grabbed a sweet tea and a couple donuts to eat on the way to the put-in. And finally made it to the river about 10:15. There were a couple guides and their clients getting their boats and tackle ready, so I threw on my waders and asked them if they minded if I went ahead and put in, and they said to go ahead, they weren't quite ready. So soon I was finally on the river. I didn't rig up the baitcasting rod in their presence! I stopped at the first riffle eddy to drift nymphs along the seam. Nothing. Stopped at the next one, hooked a whitefish and then a heavy fish that turned out to be a mountain sucker, one of the more annoying fish to hook, because they are covered with a snotty slime that hardens and sticks to your hands, your net, your line...yuck. No trout, but I did briefly hook a 10 inch rainbow that leaped 4 feet out of the water twice like a fishy maniac. Okay...might as well try the jerkbait. I put on one of the new Rapalas. Fished it for a half mile before hooking and losing a decent brown. Shortly afterward I caught a 12 inch rainbow, and then a 17 inch rainbow. Stopped at another riffle corner to nymph. Nothing. Back to the Rapala. Nothing. The day was gorgeous. Sunny, 60 degrees, no wind. The fishing wasn't. I stopped for lunch and savored my excellent sandwich, watching a stretch of bank just below where if trout are rising anywhere, they will be there. Saw one small rise. Midges were sparsely flitting across the surface. An occasional mayfly fluttered by. Not much happening. Might as well keep fishing the Rapala...nope. Why not put on that Pointer 75 that I'd hooked that giant trout on? So I did. I started down that bank I'd been watching, and immediately caught a 15 inch rainbow and then a 19 inch brown. Hooked a slightly bigger brown and lost it on the next stretch of similar bank. Caught another nice rainbow. Fishing wasn't fast by any means, but the quality of the fish was making me happy. And then the sky began to cloud over. And then the wind made its presence known. I was drifting down a fairly fast rip-rapped bank and getting no action, until a huge brown struck right at the boat, nearly jerking the rod out of my hands. I saw its side turn as it struck, had it on briefly, and lost it. And then nothing. And then the wind really cut loose. Blowing out of the northeast, which means blowing straight upstream, 30 miles an hour. The temperature dropped into the upper 40s. I was done. I rowed hard against the wind the last mile to the take-out, getting there in plenty of time to wait for Mary to show up at 3:30. Tonight as I write this...it's snowing.

Nothing of size, but less than an hour and a half of daylight left. Casting on an ultra light rod and reel from Lilley's Landing, with a jig from @JUNGLE JIM 1. I was lucky enough (and very grateful) to receive a good amount of jigs to tie myself.

Well done Daryk! I have had some deals with @JUNGLE JIM 1. Good guy and quality stuff for sure!

I watched Randy Blaukat's practice report for this weekend. Then I counted 9 regatta permits for this Saturday the 26th. It really is sad what goes on during the spring. In my opinion they shouldn't have tournaments in April and May around this region. What does winning a tournament even prove anymore? It's just so sad and frustrating. If your so desperate to fish a tournament just take a picture weigh it and throw it back at least.