Ham

this is the big boat. Paid it off in Jan. I've added a passenger console and a ladder since then.

I really love the multispecies aspect of Stockton. You never know what you'll catch next.

I tried to follow the live blog a little bit on the final day. It sure seems like the weight estimates were way off.

Honestly, it seems like more crappie are caught in the spring further up the creek arms in the off color water. Henderson is more main lake. Pigeon Ceeek, Red Bank, Float Creek, Bennett's Bayou, etc Norfork is blessed with a lot of ramps, so traier close to reduce boat gas used.

I catch a few accidental walleye on Bull Shoals, but I've never caught the first walleye on Norfork. I was talking any sunken wood. Yes, there are fish locator signs that loosely mark planted brush. It will always have fish on them, but I can't always find them. I rarely do well on the vertical timber. I'm willing, but it doesn't always have fish.

Be really happy. Maybe photograph it. Definitely release it.

I've caught good fish on the Jr. Never had a look at the FULL sized one. The Jr isn't small. If I had it to do over. I'd get two Jr's and NO full sized ones.

Super Dave, I'm 10 minutes away from some of the ramps on Norfork, working 10 hour days, I'm still not getting out much more often than you are. I'm actually in Gulf Shores at the Hangout Music Fest. I'll fish when I get back.

A lot of crappie are being caught, but you'll have wade thru shorts to get keepers. Look for water with a little stain. Fish aren't on the banks anymore. You'll need to fish ant wood cover you find.

That's Crazy Good!

1) 6 INCH ZOOM LIZARD 2) 4 INCH GRUB 3) Strike King Zero 4) 4 inch hula grub 5) Sluggo

Or buy expensive baits that work right from the get go EVEN IF they aren't exactly the same as the Red Fin.

I meant to add that while the walleye are very easy to catch at Stockton and the 15 inch "keeper" makes it easy to get some for the table, they are a mere shadow inch for inch for the walleye at Bull Shoals. I don't have the first guess at a reason, but it's night and day the difference in the amount of meat on them.

From what I read from AGFC, the only reason that the walleye spawning is not more successful than it is relates to lack of cover for the young of the year to hide in. Panfish (and I think they singled out Green Sunfish as being the worst about that) eat the vast majority of the fry. So maybe we should all start eating those Green Sunfish we catch to try to help the Walleye out. Hopefully, BSL will continue to be heavily stocked with young walleye.

I bought this reel during one of the winter snow/ice ins where I gave in to temptation. An Ozark Angler gave me a tip that an online retailed had them for 20% off and free shipping. I caved. I got the 3000 size reel which is on the largish side of things, but I think it gives you better line management. Faster lne recovery and less twist. The 3000 size reel only weighs 7.4 oz so I wasn't too worried. It fits on the rod I bought it for so no worries. Cosmetically, I'm fine with it. I have a couple of spinning reels that are easier on the eye and few that are less appealing. The only "ugly" part of it is the silly paddle grip on the reel handle. It isn't really noticable when you are fishing with it, but I like the standard knob design better. It has a total of 10 ball bearings counting the roller bearing (9+1). That might be overkill, but it's prety smooth so far. It has an external lube port which might help keep it smooth. It is also supposed to have a sealed body design to limit intrustion of nasty grit. We'll see on that one. I love the drag system. Very, very smooth. It has tons of adjustment clicks, Almost too many, but you can really fine tune your drag adjustment. It also has a back reel switch for those of us that like using that. I have of course spooled mine up with Nanofil. It throws it very well. I've had no negative issues with the Nanofil on that reel. I really like it and will strongly consider more of them when my lack of reel maintainence kills it or my other reels.

you've got all the good answers you need.

That's pretty sweet!

Sounds good in theory so let's go with that.

We left at 6 pm because I wanted to spend a little time with my baby momma. We clearly left them biting as we both hooked (and sadly lost) fish on our last cast of the day.

I fished with troutgnat out of Oakland Sunday from 0700 until 1800. I've fished with troutgnat before. He's a good guy and a very experienced fisherman. He's a good stick and can fish a lot of different ways. We had varying amounts of clouds all day and more wind than predicted. Lots of stuff should have worked. Started out throwing topwaters and gave that an hour and never got bit. I guess I picked a bad area. We moved and caught a fish on the first cast. I guess I picked a better spot. That turned out to be a pattern. Move and catch a fish on the first cast. We did that eight times. We used various soft plastics on jigheads in a wide variety of colors. We caught all three species of bass. We also caught a walleye just under 20 inches and lost another walleye that size at boatside when we were trying to hand grab him into the boat. I choose not to bring a net because a) it's in the way all day long I wasn't planning on catching fish I'd need a net for. Again, my bad. We made a lot of small moves through out the day, but used less than 6 gallons of gas all day. We used my drift sock a lot and fished with the wind. The wind always blows and it always cheats. We took turns at the front of the boat. Pretty good day on the water. Water temps were 69'-72'. water colored varied depending on how much the wind was pounding a shore. We caught a LOT of fish. I had 65. I think I had 3 panfish; the rest of my fish were bass. It seemed like troutgnat was catching them tit for tat with me, but I don't keep up with other people's fish numbers. We caught mostly smallies. Not too many > 15 inches long. We had a couple of limits of keeper largemouth bass. We only had a few spotted bass all day. I'd bet the house that the boat had over 110 fish. We did not fish main lake stuff, but I bet that would have worked. Our fishing was better when we were close to the main lake in a creek or hollow. Smallies were definitely feeding on shad. If I had half a brain, I would have tried a lipless crankbait or a spy bait or a jerkbait or something. But we caught them pretty good anyway. Take this information and go catch a ton.

Did anyone catch the BS from the Rams about how they had M.Sam rated higher than 7 th round? They had two 6th round picks they used on other people and another 7 th round pick they used on someone else first. No knock on him, it just seems like a BS comment. I hope he has a successful career, but his game may not translate to the NFL. Not everybody's game does.

Poe's 300, 6 inch Zoom lizard, Senkos, Ito 110's, 1/2 oz Terminator SB, Rattle traps, CC Crazy Shaf, Clouser Minnows, 3/4 oz jigging spoon

There are lots of good poppers available. I like the Academy H20 popper as much as any on the market.

Thanks too bad. It was pretty good the first few times I fished it about 10 years ago. I'm kinda in Ollie's boat in that I have too many other places I really want to fish to stick with one that is not producing very long.