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My daughter and I hit the water at 5:45 at Cooper and ran to the dam. We were first! It rained! And in between rain showers it rained some more. I spent my time working with her. Her first cast, fish on! Big rainbow! Then silence 😆. Got off. We fished until 10:30 with only 3 other small rainbows and 1 small brown. We had a blast laughing while running back to the cable with rain in our faces. She drove the boat most of the time and went and got the trailer and backed it in! Her first time doing it all herself! We’ve been working on it the past year when we have time. We’re back at it tomorrow.

Caught 7/13/2025, I suspect this may be the first Northern Snakehead on fly from Missouri.

It was a funny day. We had the bites, we just could not get them in the boat. They bit all morning, not a lot of bites, but one every once in a while. Was not a bad day for mid-July. Thanks for taking me buddy! Dutch once again with big fish of the day:

The place DD is at this summer is a GREAT place to go for the money for those who know how to fish. $3500 for a week on a fantastic river in AK - a cabin and a boat. You cook your own food. If I had more time this season I'd go. Hoping DD does it again next season - but even if he doesn't I may go if it's the same deal.

I am not a spelunker but when I was young we crawled around in several caves in the Greene and Stone counties, many times I would catch a bat by trapping it against the cave in my ball cap (now I have weird hair in that spot...not really😜) I never had a bat deliberately bite me. I would guess that bat was infected, really weird !

Fliers:

(Western) Dollar Sunfish:

For sure. Bat coming out of nowhere and biting a person, that's winning a prize in the bad luck lottery.

Jeff and I launched at a little after 06:00 today. We fished some short bluffs, long gravel points and had 0 from them. So we started fishing coves. We had lots of bites but not many hookups. Mostly the bait was jigs of various sizes and colors. It was hard to keep them from jumping. I think we had half a dozen jump and spit the jig. I had a couple early on a shaky then they quit it. The water was 84° and dingy. The air was 68°-82°. It rained from 7-8 which didn’t seem to help or hinder the bite.

Woah ! 👍 I'll pay you if you can teach MY daughter that part ! She doesn't seem to understand "Stop just as soon as the fender goes underwater" The fender of the TRAILER......NOT THE FENDER OF THE G-D TRUCK ! 😲 She's a mirror atheist..... Doesn't believe in them. 🙄 A well paid engineer mind you. Thinks my truck is a submarine.

I remember reading this in Mad Magazine as a teen😉

Golden Shiners

Fished for a little longer earlier today from the stairs by the outflow. Got 1 bite on a brown trout colored jerkbait, had a good fish on, but lost it when it jumped. Saw 1 guy fly fishing just upstream of us catch 3 rainbows including 2 nice ones in the same timeframe. Eventually another dude comes down to the lake to fly fish and opts to do so just downstream of us 15-20 feet away, then proceeded to give us the stink every so often when we we cast out a bit downstream. We fished a little while longer without any action and headed out after that.

I did drop by there and asked but I was throwing some of the stuff that’s supposed to work. I admit I’m never too successful with the trout, especially there so it worked out. Maybe have a little more luck the short bit we’re here today before we head out.

I floated from blair to patrick friday, water is plenty high so you can cover distance easy. Above rainbow springs you should be able to catch quite a few warm water species. Mckee bridge is gone so no possible issues with portage. Also there is campsites at blair.

Well, bags are packed, tackle boxes are filled out, and at around 1200 CFS based on what I can gather, flows are a bit high but runnable. Hopefully that will turn out to be correct. We settled on Hammond Camp to just slightly above Dawt Mill in a couple days. Slightly more distance and slightly less time than we'd prefer, but so it goes. After some recent weather forecasts, it really looked like the North Fork trip was going to get postponed AGAIN, but things seem to have settled out. To say the least, I'm pretty excited to give this river a shot. I expect to be able to report something interesting. We will see if that includes any of the famously challenging wild rainbows.

@Haris122, did you stop in to Lilley's and ask them about recommended baits and tackle? The fishing there is completely different techniques than in the St Louis area. Glad you are getting time to hang out down there just the same.

Haven’t had much luck this weekend, with both me and my wife catching 1 fish a piece so far. But the single one each of us caught has been a nice one. We tried shore fishing first just upstream of the discharge right by where the road from the hatchery leads to the parking lots, with no luck. Then we fished the public dock not too far from Lilley’, with also no luck. Then we came back late in the evening yesterday and fished the stairs right by the discharge into the lake, and she caught a decent fish, and a little later I hooked into the best trout I ever caught. I think it had to have been in the low if not mid 20”s. And it was a chunky guy too. Fought me hard for several minutes before I finally saw what it was, then a little longer before I finally netted it. It hit one of those multi jointed minnow baits. Pictures don’t really do it justice but here’s one. Beautiful fish. Finally one that resembles some of the broodstock in the visitor center, in size and weight. We’ll give it another brief go tomorrow somewhere before we head out. But even with this one fish, I’m actually really happy. By my standards it’s a monster trout. Forgot to mention, we tried again both today and tonight again near the hatchery but no luck today. Got to see how tomorrow goes.

What? This was supposed to be a top secret mission. Cover blown dang.

I was greatly enjoying this post until I got to the unfortunate part about you being LSU fans. Feel free to jump in anytime, Bill. 😁