Ham

I'm not ever giving the details on the smallie floats I do. I guess I will for the Buffalo or Current Rivers. I can't imagine my posting about them would ever bring additioal pressure to bear on them, but it could impact the quality of my fishing on the smaller streams I fish soooit's a stream in Missouri within a 3 hour drive of Mtn Home.

Thanks Unimog! I love my boat. I'm pretty sure I'll be in Bass Cats from now until I die. I do wish it had a little better storage on the back deck, but I love the livewells it has and the easy accesss to everything in the bilge. I'll be in the market for another Bass Cat in 5 or 6 years so I'll see what Bass Cat is making in 2017 or 2018. I'll try to by lightly used if I can find one I like.

I'm not a hater or a doubter. More power to him. KOKO

Nice!

Good thing you have a camera right. It doesn't count unless you have pictures or so I'm told.

I know there's Green Sunfish in there, but crossed with ???? He's not the run of the mill Green Sunfish.

. Downstream

. Upstream

This guy looked a little hybridized. Ned rig of course.

I floated with cajunangler for 3 days in my Old Town Camper down a little Missouri stream. We started fairly far up and covered 20 something miles for the three days. Most of the water was "new" to me and some was "new" to cajunangler. It's been a few years since I had done any of it and I really had almost no memory of it. We try to float so many of the area creeks and rivers that they all blend in my head sometimes. This was my first float of the year. I had been running the roads pretty hard the day before (drove 12 hours from the gulf coast) and was a little off my game. It was nice to get back on a river though. I wanted to do the lower Buffalo, but I called BS because I thought the fishing might be off because of the higher flow rates. We caught them pretty good so I'm at the very least happy with that part of the deal. Being that far up the stream created so issues. There must not be a lot of commercial traffic up there because we had to drag thru or portage around a lot of trees that went all the way across the river. The water is still cool enough to have a little bite. Lower 70's maybe. Water was mostly clear, but some areas had a light stain possibly due to cows in the river. Floating past cows in the river always concerns me a bit. Cows are dumb and unpredictable at times. As usual, we had my poor old canoe loaded down. I'm sure it would handle better IF I didn't put so much in it and have lots of stuff above the gunnels. I think we needed about 7 inches of water to not drag. Lol. I pretty much only use the canoe to do these camping trips and we trade off time in front of the canoe. I am FINALLY starting to get more comfortable and confident with steering the boat thru tougher spots. Fishing was slow the first day, but we dialed in a little bit and by the end of the three days we had caught over 300 fish altogether. Cajunangler got the best of me this trip. He had more fish and several real nice smallies on top water baits. Cajunangler is a gravelbar gourmet. We had some wonderful Ribeye steaks the first night. He had marinated them for ~ 24 hours prior to grilling them. We had great seasoned porkchops the second night. We had sweet corn and toasted some bread both nights. We have gotten a little soft in our advancing age and have started doing toasted bread and grilled sausage for breakfast each morning. We have really nice sandwhiches of the river both days. We had plenty of water and sodas to keep us hydrated. We saw tons of snakes of which a surprizing number were cottonmouths. We also saw Bald Eagles, turkeys, and lots of other wildlife. The weather was great. Three days with minimal stress and lots of laughs. It's getting warmer and I've always got crap going on so likely no more camping trips until next September, but I'm looking forward to it already.

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.