Devan S.

Where do you personally draw the line between petty crap and dangerous crime? Just for the record....I largely agree with you here but I also recognize that many times its the petty crap that ultimately catches up with the dangerous crimes and at least gets the dominos falling.

nice....is the historical data readily available somewhere? I looked last night but didn't find it easily.

I bet when their covered in gas they do!

You did know there was nobody on the boat flipping switches, nobody on the boat trying to disconnect the batteries, nobody standing around smoking right? You knew the electric at the surrounding the docks was turned off. You knew you couldn't cause a spark, you knew it was pumping raw gas out of the bilge pump, right? I think you knew more about how to solve the situation prior to ever actually engaging the situation in a dangerous manner than you give credit for.

So you knew about 90% of the information you needed prior to ever being in danger and then determined once you were in danger how to prevent catastrophic outcomes due to the very predictable laws of combustion and physics? How is that equal to dealing with an unpredictable person whom does not want to have an interaction with you in the first place?

I would like to remind you all that BS and TRL were both @ or within 1 ft. of their "Normal" levels on March 14th, 2020. Beaver lake was dumping quite a bit of water at that time and they were passing that water through all the dams directly to the White river. Beaver was about 5 ft high at that time. Rain happened I believe the 15th or 16th of March and immediately raised all the lake levels and began us on the trajectory we are on today. In fact, the rain that fell also increased the White river stage which curtailed releases. Looking at the White River Newport Gage we have bumped along right at regulating stage the whole time since mid-March. Any claim to water dumping from any lake prior to March 14, 2020 would do absolutely nothing to remedy the high lake levels today as the counter was about as close to reset to zero as your going to get. There are only 2 things that would have solved the problem faced immediately right now. Lowering normal power pool(which would have to be significant) or increasing regulation stages at Newport.

Were you down lake fishing for bass or up lake?

Was the change in 1998 just from 14ft to 12ft or was it more significant?

Is there any details on the change in '98 that lowered regulating stages?

Did some quick math......20,000 cfs is about 40,000 Acre-ft per day. Bull shoals is 2,127,000 Acre-ft of flood storage and Table Rock is 760,000 Acre-ft. 53 days to empty BS and 19 days to empty TRL. Lots of days assuming no additional rainfall and all inflows stopped today.

I think there is probably some all spring into early summer and late fall. I would assume in mid-summer there is too. Spots are fairly obvious because there will be boats more or less sitting and waiting at the common spots(bluff ends, humps, points) Other than that I spend a lot of time driving slowly at 20-30 mph and looking for activity. I'm not driving down the middle of the lake either I'm skirting close enough to bank to see and look for swirls but not close enough I'm spooking everything off. When I see locations with activity I stop. Shut off the motor and attempt to be as quiet as possible(don't go banging around the boat). Think trolling motor as low as possible and drift if there is wind too them. Now this has been my experience....your never going to see swirls and run right into active fish. Getting there faster is only going to spook them off. In my experience, they will come up and swirl and chase for a bit then be gone. In some period of time maybe 5 minutes maybe 15 minutes they will come back to the surface might be 100 or 200 yards away or they might be right by your boat when they come up again but at this point its all about how quiet you have been getting near them and how far your can cast and a lot of luck. If you are lucky enough to get them to come up nearby you just cast into their area. I have not had a lot of luck blind casting....I am really just targeting fish on the surface. Even then my hookup percentage is only about 50/50 its seems that they miss the bait a lot for me. Again I am seeing a lots of one or 2 swirls in a casting sized area every 5 minutes or so. I am not seeing big schools of multiple fishing breaking the surface I saw that once last week in a cove and we hooked up on one good fish and then the school was gone(probably from banging around in the boat looking for a net). I am fairly new to this as this is the first year I have been finding fish but I like this style of fishing and I'm not out looking to catch limits so take this advice for what its worth. Also last week I didn't catch any fish past 7 AM....I've tried throwing swimbaits and spoons to fish the same areas but have yet to catch fish anyway but on topwater.

They were around Friday. I was unable to find large schools grouped up hitting but did find some here or there.

Just a follow up. I am thinking something like 5 ft. drop for Beaver, 5-10 ft. drop for Table Rock, and 10-15 ft. drop for Bull Shoals to get to something that matters in prevent flooding in a year like this where we currently stand 30-40% ahead on rainfall. Which begs the question...during a winter draw down starting in say October/November the #1 user base on the lakes is who? Fisherman. Meaning the people most disrupted by low levels and the chance at having un-usable infrastructure is you guessed it....fishermen. Even then your talking only a winter draw down so at what date do you allow a higher normal pool? After May? We were near normal back in mid-March so it would have to be adjust sometime during late May I would think.

To Phil's point......the real solution would be to drop winter pool levels although I'm not sure 5 ft would be sufficient. 5 ft of water from normal pool in any of the lakes in really a pretty small amount of water when we are considering the amounts of water required for 1 ft at top of flood pool. Based on this you could guess roughly that 5ft at Table Rock would be less than 35% so maybe significant or maybe not. 5ft at BS is going to clearly be less than 10% gain in water volumes. Just based on volumes though BS has 3X the AC-FT storage so the 10% at Table Rock is really minuscule at BS. Maybe it helps maybe it doesn't. Do this though....and the rain doesn't come....can you imagine the squawking about the low water? Also a reminder.....BS was at 660 in mid-March and only Beaver was really above normal.

Its increasingly looking like at least at least TRL and BV will be missed. BS will mostly be missed based on current data....IIRC systems like this effectively become moisture starved on the back side(west). The big hiccup will be the white river and subsequently the MS river drainage prolonging BS ability to release water downstream. All that being said....It's hotter than blazes out there today and its been awfully sunny and warm for 4-5 days now. Lots of acres of hay is being put down and frankly I think we could handle a nice widespread rain on Tuesday. KY3 is showing sunny and warm everyday except for Tuesday. Old timers use to say it this time of year it could rain 2" today and we could be in a drought in less than 4 weeks. We may find ourselves in that situation even though were 40-50% ahead on rainfall for the year.

Neat little place.....ramp isn't the best but its usable. Parking would be a nightmare if there was very many people there at all. Lots and I mean lots of vegetation which really is neat in a way but makes me struggle.

At 13" that's gonna be close to an Arkansas Master Angler fish.

Thought I would check out someplace different. Put in at Leatherwood today. Caught a little bit of everything fished with live bait(minnows and worms). Ended up with 2 crappie, a handful of bass, and a catfish. Nothing big but a pretty day to be out exploring.

Well I visited over to BF last Sunday and its pretty barren from what I can see. I came in off country road A-D and fished down to the private property with no luck(I didn't really even see any fish). I had read your report @Johnsfolly but your trek looks like a doozy coming down CC and I went a bit farther and started at the confluence with sinking creek and fished up again to roughly the private property line that direction. I did see a couple larger fish coming this direction pretty early on but they were ultra spooky and generally in deeper holes with logs so fishing them effectively was difficult. My feeling is that populations here are very low and I didn't see a lot of smaller fish so the larger fish are much more difficult to fish they were all hanging out in tough to fish deep holes. I thought there might be smaller fish in the fast runs and riffles but didn't find anything. I lost a lot of fly's and fished about 7 hours. I'll be going back eventually but for now I've put this one on the back burner. I'm doing the slam with a friend which is making them pretty difficult. 2 guys on small streams means someone is always fronting the other person and spooking fish before the 2nd can fish a spot. The pressure goes through the roof once one of us catches a fish. He believes I'm a better fisherman than him so he is out ahead of me so I've had a couple creeks I have to revisit as I just couldn't get it done.

I don't know where you are going for this build......but I hope we get a full blown thread on it. I've always though about buying a junk pontoon and rebuilding into an interesting fishing mix. Don't want a large party barge but big cooler and live well. Center console and rear bench for storage.

Fished the same area today as well.....we found some fish in a cove past point five. Several hookups but the only thing we could boat was a 4lb gar and a couple smaller bass. We got there late and the guide boat was already there when we launched......was hoping to stay close to the point as we had been catching them right there at the launch several weeks ago but didn't want to sit right on top of them.

Yeah for me it was a hobby....I have a full time job that pays enough even in prime the fur trade never would have competed....but now it just costs me money.....too much really......trying to run meat or flea markets only makes it worse as a hobbyist. I agree there is still guys/gals out there making it work on razor thin margins with other side deals going but its not for me. Effectively I've got too many hobbies as it is....adding in running meat, castor, fleshing, tanning, cleaning skulls and marketing small time really cuts into my other play time. I long for the days of catching 30 or 40 coons a year, a couple cats, several dogs, and some foxes and taking them green to the buyer......Never get rich but buy some gas and new traps. As far as the practicing what you preach....not much difference than the American consumer vs. the American worker....everyone wants American made at China prices. I'm certainly no better than anyone else.

my heart see's $$ there....my mind knows better.....shame the fur trade has gone downhill.

I did see something interesting yesterday. The corps is posting regular updates the last couple of days on FB and they are taking a lot of heat via the comments. I did however see an interesting chain of events yesterday though. At 8:38 am they posted they would open BS between 11 and 12. At 10:34 am they came back and said they would reschedule to later in an effort to crest the pool at 695 and allow the uncontrolled flows of the Buffalo to pass so they were not adding to peak flows. However looking at the data for yesterday: BS crested more or less between 6 and 9 am below 695. Along with that....looking at the USGS gages for Buffalo River at St. Joe it didn't really begin rising until 9 am. and Harriet didn't start rising until the afternoon. Now both rises were on the scale of 3-4k cfs peak stream flow. Even then neither gage has dropped over 1000 CFS since the peaks yesterday respectively. Basically I could argue upon the data that I see BS never peaked at 695 and/or that the change in schedule of the release did anything to accommodate the actual floodwater from the Buffalo. In fact best I could tell the less than 1000 cfs between peak of the buffalo to now is negligible in the grand scheme at Newport. However the big change I did see was it went to a live stream of the dam opening for Bull Shoals and subsequently Beaver each of which have over 40k+ views. I'm a pretty staunch supporter of the corps and their policy. I'm also sure their social media department and their actual engineering is separated. The whole thing however does stink to me of manipulation to garner views on social media. At a glance, I don't believe the timing ultimately makes a difference in lake levels or significantly river levels between yesterday morning and yesterday evening but they timing and the number of views does make a big difference especially when both of your reasons for the delay are effectively refuted by your data. I'm sure I've got my tin foil hat on but for someone that has long been an avid supporter of theirs it does have me questioning something here.

I don't have any advice but I am sure someone will. I am working on the mo trout slam right now and Barren Fork will probably be on my next trip so you have me concerned. My hardest by far has been Blue Springs and it took me several miles and 6-7 hours of fishing to catch one fish. https://www.missouritrouthunter.com/barren-fork-creek.html I use this website to get locations and it looks like there isn't more than a mile or 2 that is really productive below where you are starting.