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Lately, I have been doing a lot of bass fishing with the fly. I have decided that bass are just oversized bluegills. Taking a serious trip to catch bluegills always pays off, and bass are no different. Let's take a minute to think outside the box, into the water where they live. There you are, a big fat largemouth bass. You didn't get this size by eating just everything. Just chasing down smaller fish and helpless bugs. Slowly cruising around, looking into every nook and cranny for any morsel of food. Day in, day out - always on the prowl. All of a sudden, something lands over to the left with a thundering splash. Rushing over to see what made this ruckus, you are underneath this object in record time. Studying it, watching it closely for any hint of life, you see it as a grasshopper, a dragonfly or a small bird perhaps. With the first movement, showing any signs of struggle, you will eat it. One kick of either leg and this will be dinner. Now think with me, as the fisher, there were many things that lead you to that fish. Finding a good looking spot is pretty easy, but finding structure that will hold fish is not. I advise people who I take out all the time to watch the water first. See what kinds of things are going on under the surface. The little clues that the fish give away will improve your success every time. After finding a really good spot, definite fish holding water, then we come to how you will get your fly to the fish. Casting is very critical to success. The first cast into likely holding water is the most important. Try to not let any of your false casts hit the water. Slowly add some line to lengthen your cast and just at the last second, stop the line very sharply. This will cause the fly to flip over very quickly and land with splash. Patience to not move that fly until all the rings subside is very difficult, but always rewarding. Often times I make that first cast and see nothing. Waiting, waiting.. and more excruciating waiting. One good tug, stripping in a little of the line can call fish from 10 feet away. Again, you must be patient. After letting the rings disappear, you should impart some different technique to bring the fish in. Make a couple faster strips, almost swimming the fly in to you, fishing it all the way out of the water. Many times you will get strikes and hookups as you are just about to pull that fly out to recast. Watching the bass as it comes up and looks at your fly is the payoff. Getting it to hit your fly is the easy part. Just think of them as oversized bluegills.

When I was a kid fishing in farm ponds in southeast Kansas, we'd catch crappie -- lots of them. There seemed to be an endless supply of the rascals. My favorite place was an old rock quarry just south of the hospital my dad worked at. It had high rock walls and lots of structure to fish around inside. The water was clear most of the time since the quarry had a rock bottom instead of the usual mud and clay. Even then, we had to use lighter line to fool the crappie. I guess the experience was preparing me for what I would face on Table Rock Lake. Oklahomans and Kansans are amazed by our gin-clear water here in southern Missouri. Stained, cloudy, muddy -- even "chocotate milk" -- are the adjectives used to describe ideal crappie conditions in their lakes, rivers and ponds. Table Rock can be incredibly clear, giving the advantage to the weary fish that inhabit its waters. Light line in only one key to successful crappie fishing. One person that has seemed to have mastered this feat is Mike Abdon, conservation agent for the Missouri Department of Conservation. He likes fishing in the Long Arm of the lake, hitting all the cuts, ledges, snags and cedar trees alongs several miles of bank that this area offers. There are places where people don't expect crappie like small cuts in the high, rock walls of a bluff bank. These cuts are congregating spots for fish and the structure they offer is perfect for holding crappie. These cuts or jets (places where the rock wall jets outward) can be small but hold a good school of fish. Brushy is an area to the southwest of Gage's Marina. Its long cove is dotted with side coves full of old cedar trees with good, fairly steep-sloped banks. It's sheltered from the spring winds but tends to warm up faster than most areas on the lake. Its structure is perfect breeding ground for crappie. I've done my share of crappie fishing in the Long Arm of Table Rock, all the way into Arkansas mostly. Mark and Linda, owners of Cricket Creek Marina, have been instrumental in helping me locate and find the right lure to catch fish. Just to the north of the dock is a cut that's deep and full of trees. On up farther is Blair Branch, a long cove the heads southeast and again is full of brush and trees along the sloped banks. South of the dock there's Cricket, Yocom and Long creeks with literally thousands of brush covered banks, coves filled with cedars and cuts and jets off rock bluffs. As for lures, my still all-time favorite is the swimming minnow on a 1/16th-ounce jig head. Favorite colors are purple, chartruese, smoke and electric blue. Minnow fishing with a long crappie rod is very popular. I tried it one time with my neighbor and caught nothing but bass -- and those crappie rods don't handle big bass very well! Light line is the key, though. Sure you'll lose a few big crappie to brush, but your hook-up ratio will increase dramatically if you go to four- or six-pound line, clear or green. Abdon fishes a micro jig under a float around brush at times. He says when the fish get tight-mouthed, micros can lure a bite when nothing else can. Sometimes they don't even want it to move. The jig will just be sitting there, and the strike will be just a nudge of the float.

As the summer heat bears down on the Ozark Mountains, and the jet and water skiers seem to have taken over our beautiful White River lakes, there are still ways to feel the tug of quality fish on that old graphite rod. Migrating from Japan to California to the Midwest is a fishing method that really gets the drop on suspended and schooling deep water summer and fall bass. The Drop Shot technique is just a simple modification of the Carolina rig. It is extremely deadly and creates a tantalizing presentation for bunched up fish, whether they are suspended in trees suspended over deep water or on the bottom on river channel, lake humps or submerged islands. Drop Shottin', as it is most often called, is presenting either live or soft plastic baits in a vertical presentation to fish that have been located with boat electronics. Spotted bass are a great target for the drop shotter, as they are schooling fish and most often are in the above stated locations. The rig is pretty simple -- and you can rig anyway you want -- but here is a method that has proven itself time and time again: Take a good IM8 seven-foot spinning rod spooled with 8- to 10-pound fluorocarbon line. Attach a two-way barrel swivel to the main line and then attach five feet of eight pound line as your leader. Two feet below the swivel attach a number 1 wide gap worm hook with a palmar knot. Go two more feet and attach an additional hook in the same manner, and then add a drop shot or bell sinker on the bottom. I prefer the wide gap worm hooks over the drop shot hooks because if you are presenting in the treetops, this allows you to rig the worm weedless. The wide gaps also will give you better hook-ups. On the rock, these spotted bass are right about the thermocline at from 28 to 35 feet. You can either find them suspended in bluff treetops or in channel swings. There are some off the flats, but they are movers and shakers and are not always there. If I can’t see them on my X15, I don’t stop. Good electronics are a must for the drop shot. You are not covering lots of horizontal area as you would with a rig or a throw type bait; you are just making an up-and-down presentation to a school of fish, so you need to have them pinned down pretty well. My two favorite drop shot baits for the rock are a four-inch zoom fineness worm in either green pumpkin or watermelon candy or a zoom dead ringer in the same colors. Lower the bait to the fish, and most times you just need to hang it there. Your natural movement with waves or just a slight shake will get the strike. As the bass bite, they will put a bend in the rod, or as we say, "Let them Load Up!" When you feel the weight, set the hook and enjoy the fight. Remember that these bass are coming up from the deep and need to be immediately returned to the water to prevent their swim bladders from overextending. Do not put them in your live wells for picture taking as they cannot tolerate that much handling. Live bait in the form of nightcrawlers or crawfish will also work on the drop shot, but the soft plastics are most often the rig of choice. As with any summertime fishing, early is always better, and I try to be off the water by noon and yield the lake to the water skiers. Next time you are on any of the White River lakes in the summer, and think that the bass just aren’t biting, try just "Droppin-In," and I’m sure you will find there are fish at home.

testing How long will the pinned topic stay at the top.... No one knows.

In Missouri, you have to have a special lisc to sell sculpin I've heard. Bugs- I don't know?

Hatchery is 417-334-4865, dial 0 for the front desk. Ask for John or Brian. I got in trouble for posting Quinton's cell number on cc. Someone called him from NJ wanting to know how the fishing was. Quinton's super called me and ask that I deleted the post. If anyone wants it, I can send it by email or pm.

He worked very hard to revive it... no doubt.

Do you still need to purchase a daily permit? Or does a trout stamp work?

These are some larger pics- same pics that are in the gallery.

Here's the link to a gallery of pics... pics taken by Rolan Duffield. http://forums.ozarkanglers.com/images/2005/san-juan2 Thanks Roland for sending them... and NOT deleting them like I deleted mine. I'm sure John thanks you cause you took a pic of him with a fish proving he did catch one... or two.

Welcome Tim- and thanks.

Pics of the trip sent by John Johnson. They were scanned.

Randy Waggoner showed up from KC and gave me an excuse to fish this morning. We drove to the dam- got there about 6:45 am. Not many cars in the lots at all and it never really got busy all morning. We fished the rebar- lots of big rainbows staging for spawn- lots of males (pics) and still alot of browns too. They took #18 gray or tan scuds or a #16 J-Scud, 6x tippet under an indicator 4 feet. Tried stripping soft hackles and cracklebacks- one looker only. Randy with an 18-inch rainbow Couple of beautifully colorful male rainbows!! Water came on about 8:30 am one unit that built very slow over 45 minutes time. Didn't really turn it on full either. At 1:30 pm, water was starting to drop a bit as we left the river. Randy stayed in the rebar area while the water rose and I got out, mainly cause I had my camera and... I'm smarter than he is. But again the water never got too bad till an hour later so I continued to catch trout. He made his way to outlet 3 where he caught several very nice browns on same scuds. Saw some 10-pound-plus browns in the outlet. I stayed along the bank below #2 around the steps and caught a couple small rainbows but couldn't seem to get a good drift- or they didn't like my bugs- something. We broke for a late breakfast at Sonic then back to the river. We went up to #1 outlet- Randy fished in the outlet and caught lots of browns and a few rainbows. I stayed out in the lake below and hooked a couple of nice fish -hook pulled out on both. The numbers of browns in and below the outlet was amazing. It was like the hatchery- I'd say between 100-150 trout were crammed in the floom. Is the brown run over?! No way!! There's plenty of big browns up there and there are alot of big rainbows there too. I've never seen this many big fish anywhere- that includes the San Juan for sure. Talk to Matt, a young man from Springfield. He said he caught a 15 lb brown close to outlet #3 2 nights ago on a rapala. He's sending me the pic.

It looks like the url is incomplete may be. The program isn't finding the pic so it isn't loading it. Do this- find the pic online, put the curser on the pic and right click/copy location. Then in a new browser window, paste the location in the browser window and see if it opens the pic. If it does, edit the thread with the copied location and it should work. Copying and pasting the "http://members.aol.com/jcvistait/images/11.1" doesn't give us an image here or in a new window.

9-10 pounds.

My thinking on the board - right now at least - is to cover the rivers and streams I have moderators for... so that if I have someone come on and post a question it won't sit there unanswered. But "other" streams might be appropriate for reports. Bull Shoals only gets interest in late winter and spring because of the whites, walleye and crappie. All other times of the year it's dead and hard to get reports. It'd be nice to get come help from mid-lake people- Protem, Theodosia.

Seth- my biggest rainbow list doesn't include rainbows I've caught from under my dock... please don't take offense... it's just me cause I live here... but those fish don't count for me. We were just watching a rainbow under our cleaning shack that would go over 10 pounds, another about 8 pounds. They're our pet pigs. Opps I posted under admin- sorry.

Just getting started and have hardly any idea how to manage this complicated forum. But we'll get it and it will be great! Hopefully it will be a help to all. Phil

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