Ham

You're lucky Phil reminded us of the no curse words thing. I got a whole lot of unhappy I would express inappropriately.

I didn't like the hammer I had so I learned to drive nails with my crescent wrench. It's doable if you try hard enough.

Groundhog Day

So, this year we are having to deal with higher than normal water (again), but that's not so bad. We should get great numbers of most gamefish some where down the line to offset of inconviences this year AND I'm gonna guess that the aquaifers are getting nicely recharged. Maybe our temps won't get crazy high this summer and maybe our fall won't be bone dry. Hopefully, we can all find some time to fish with family and friends and not spend all our time woried about making ends meet and day to day craziness. I appreciate that we have not had the flooding of TX, OK, and Louisiana. The high water has altered my fishing plans a little bit, but nothing that really matters. Try to stay safe y'all.

Seriously jelly my Man. I just can't get away with it and stay married.

I have a 7'6" 3 weight Orvis Silver Label blank that was a "custom" that begs to be used more often. I have a 9' 4 weight St Croix Legend Ultra that I like a lot for lighter stuff. My all around trout rod is a 8'6" St Croix LU I understand the mechanical needs for the longer rod, but for most of the fish you were catching I think the 3 weight would have been more fun.

I would be absolutely SHOCKED if you could not drag up some smallies off main lake points in 18-35 FOW water. You may have to fish through smaller ones. I have not worked out all the tricks on Ned for trout. I have caught them on most of the colors I have thrown. White if it is cloudy. Dirt would be my first choice for sunny.

Tghanks You Very much for scouting that out! a picture is worth a 1000 words.

Nice fish!

What weight rod on the Iowa streams?

Richard is First Class! He called Micah while we were driving back from the trip on the river and his love for the young man was very evident. Great fish and great story. I'm happy for them both. I'm still hoping to get up that way and have hall come down this way for a White River trip.

Terrible news, but very well put Phil.

Witht he lake rising there is a greater chance for debris in the water and the further up lake or up a creek are you are the more likely that you could hit something BUT I do not think the chances of hitting some debris are high enough that I would leave the boat at home. In general, I think the debris problems way up river on TR are much greater than the debris problems in the lower part of Bull Shoals. The ability to launch a boat into the lake is hampered by the water level, but i bet if there is a will there is a way. You can still rent a trout boat and fish for trout some of the time. launch. Norfork is only 10 foot high right now. It's pretty close and you could always fish there

cant you go to google earth and put the numbers in and pull a sat image? If it was on Bull Shoals that's what I would do. Table Rock, meh.

I might have redacted the GPS numbers

well, I have thrown a jig before. Seriously, there are a lot of very good jig fishermen. I have the advantage of proximity to the White River.

Bull is at 678.83 and seems to be going up about 1/10 of a foot per hour. I'm not feeling real bad for the TR crew just yet. UNderstand that I am likely done with BUll for the next 4 months or so because of this.

That would be an awesome fishing trip. Workking a couple of miles of river. Dialing in on fish location and fly presentation. Beautiful scenery. The fish don't have to always to be huge for it to be a Great trip. There are a lot of negatives ti living in Cali, but none are visible in those photographs.

I've got a jet that says I can go further up than that.

Phil is so stinking good with a jig that he SHOULD NOT try anything else.

I grew up in the MIssissippi River flood plain. I remember my first trip on the Caddo river which at the time was doing great. I saw all kinds of fish everywhere I looked. Most were not (traditional) gamfish, but lots of them were. It was so very interesting to watch the fish being fish. It still is. I love the creeks and rivers.

Apparently LMB and walleye are kind of fond of them as well.

This is really interesting, but in my experience Invisx has the abrasion resistance of a snowflake on a hot day. I saw the Berkley 100% fluro get absolutely abused and I checked and found no scuffing at all. A fish had wrapped a friend in wood and he horsed him thru the wood to the boat. I said man you need to re-tie after that. He checked and said Nah, it's good. I checked the line also after him because I just could not believe it. It was completely undamaged. I lost a lot of fish and a lot of football jigs using 15 lb Invisx. And this was despite frequent re-ties. I loved everything about InvisX except the lack of abrasion resistence. I switched to Abras X and I am good to go.

I would think it would work just fine if that's what you want to do. I really try to use a single hook lure whenever possible for trout. I only keep a few to eat a year and so I'm all about releasing them quickly and witha minimal amount of damage.

FWIW, I did measure the hook gap in Super Dave's Ned Heads. It is clearly less than 1/2 inch.