Devan S.

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.

I didn't participate however......I think if I were to have participate....I wouldn't have submitted a picture unless I knew it was beating the leader(obviously no point right).....I think a way to delay the pictures until the end or near it might at least garner more pictures. Obviously there is technicalities with doing that but I could have seen a situation where nobody catches a bigger than 17 inch fish and no pictures get posted after FW posted the first night. Not that its a bad thing(he obviously felt some pressure) but I myself wondered if only 2 people fished or if only 2 people caught fish.

I liked the idea just not a big fan of bass fishing. I think it would be cool to do multi-species.

BBT could be quite the show with limited access......of course not everyone is going to be at the same ramp but it could be interesting. I think the north side of the Hwy 13 bridge stays out of the water and I would think the east side of Hwy 86 will stay out.

Up the white: Eagle Rock had lots of boats launched on the big parking lot. I would think holiday island would be okay too @rps would know for sure. Houseman Access I would think is usable. Viney upper ramp I thought was usable at high levels....however MO-state parks was leasing and had closed the front ramp. Not sure if anyone is leasing or if its open this year. I think one can launch at a couple of the Emerald beach ramps but the road to get back there is flooded however there is a dirt road detour(one or 2 smaller boats could launch there). Up Kings: Sweetwater might be able to launch off the circle but there will be parking issues and you'll have to back way down blindly. Honestly launching the boat on the road here might be an improvement over the ramp itself. Hickory Hollow is probably usable. Would definitely call ahead backing will be interesting and tight. Heck at this level Romp Hole way up the kings will be usable I would think if you want to go that far. Parking is likely the limiting factor in a lot of spots....in spots like sweetwater collects lots of logs and trash that doesn't get cleaned up so you may have to clear a path through sticks and logs.

I figured you would know. I know there is a pretty good shoal there right at spider creek. I figured I could put in at houseman assuming they weren't running a load of water to avoid the bridge issues. We checked out right below the dam and parker bottoms and both areas looked deep enough and wide enough for a bass boat(one generator last night and the water was well up into the trees) but I know there were a handful of shoals between so thought it best to ask. There was a tracker taking out at the ramp right below the dam so I thought I would check and see.

Wife and I took a drive today scoping out the beaver tail waters. Water looks high but only generation at Beaver Dam. Realizing Table rock is high...what level for Table Rock effectively backs up beyond 62 bridge and allows for a bass boat to run up father towards Beaver dam? Any insight?

The dam itself WITHOUT the aux spillway is rated for 500,000 cfs....which is 2X greater than the historical MAX inflow Table Rock has ever seen based on the presentation the corps shared. So my question is why would you even add the aux spillway? The James, Kings, Beaver and would each have to be well over 100,000 cfs sustained(think about the magnitude of that number for a second) Not counting all the smaller feeders. Not to mention you would have to drastically mis-match outflows to inflows to not be able to catch up. Is the Aux spillway at a higher level and maybe used in the event TRL got to high and damaged the control of the gates? Like a safety backup? I just can't see a reasonable need for 500,000+ CFS without Beaver failing which I don't see anyway TRL holds it back well enough to prevent failures throughout the system. Still the top of flood pools are 1130, 931, and 695 respectively but we clearly know we can get levels higher than that based on history so what is the actual critical level? It seems the water control plan which is very clear suddenly becomes murky at best once we pass the top of the flood pools. I realize I keep repeating myself but this stuff interest me....guess I should have gone down the hydrologist engineering path instead.....I just don't see the need or the fear of the aux spillway.....but you can bet were about to see some big releases across the board soon.

That's what has me confused on why it was added. 500,000 represents double the max inflow that has been recorded in the history of Table Rock Lake. Were talking about flood water down the james/kings orders of magnitude larger than they ever have ran. Which begs the question.....If Table Rock is the last dam to fill based on the current water control plan(which it is) the only conceivable use of the auxiliary spillway would be in situations when Bull Shoals was already nearly at the top of its spillway. Conceivably the auxiliary spillway would only be used if the the capacity of the first was not enough right? So wouldn't that in theory threaten a Bull Shoals too?

Mojo....quick question since I think you understand this.....in the control plan for Beaver: Above or predicted to exceed 1130, the Criteria is to pass through inflows(although it says subject to use of surcharge storage to reduce peak discharges and delay inflow to table rock). My understanding of this is that A. as the gates are raised the natural water level can rise and therefore we see levels that are essentially higher than what we think is the limit(we actually saw this with Table Rock when it hit 936' years back). Is there a published number for each dam that is actually "peak level" for surcharge storage? As I recall at some level the water gets extremely close to the electric motors used to raise and lower gates and therefore keeping them dry would maybe define that critical level. It appears the level for Table Rock may be in that 936' or 938' range but curious as to the actual number of critically for all 3 dams. Obviously adding 5-6' adds additional enormous volumes of water and allows the spread of the peak inflows out to avoid massive releases in the case of trying to match outflow to inflow. It effectively gives the ability to gives even more buffer than the publish top of flood pool. In addition both TRL and BS both list the top of flood pool criteria as: Regulate to obtain the most effective flood modification with the designated surcharge storage space. This seems slightly arbitrary to me. The water control plan is very defined and run to a pretty strict level but then in the case of surcharge flood pool we lose the definitions. Is/Are those guidelines available somewhere? I would assume its not a feel thing but there has to be some guidelines. I would also assume rules like not making releases due to forecast go out the window.

Exactly per the water control plan so I would say that's exactly what they will do. Only complaint is his hold at 925 is nothing more than a guess based on the Newport gauge on the white river. More rain and the gauge doesn't go down and it'll be more than a month. Likewise once all the lakes hit maximum flood pool they wont suddenly start drawing them down, they will do nothing but pass inflow until the gauge at Newport falls into the zone that allows them to release.

If you can find them....Browning Airstream.....Guys on here highly recommended them. I bought 1 for crappie fishing and then couldn't find them when I wanted another. Finally they showed back up and I now have 5 of them. Use them for crappie, trout, and gills.

Nice you are seeing exactly what I was seeing. We were looking for deep water near the bank and had some blow ups on a bluff end last weekend. Again not numbers but one here and one there. We did see one guide boat and he spent almost all his time running point to point never spent much time in any one location mid-morning we saw him around the island. We really had a lot of trouble getting them to do more than blow up. Seems our hookup percentage was low and once they were on they often would come off. Even tried fishing a Keitech in the same areas thinking they may be more apt to get it in their mouth but nada.

Exactly my point.....I would bet there is huge discrepancy in the USA numbers if we really got to looking at it. Heck we know for sure not everyone is being testing so we know the numbers cant be remotely true as far as infection rate and death rate. We know were missing data. The comical thing to me is this: Why did anyone expect our federal government to get this right? We can go down the list of things our federal government does or has done and its one check after against them......regardless of party in power. VA hospitals.....postal system.......Obamacare rollout......war in Iraq......war on drugs...... We largely stumble, trip, and fall over just about every major thing we do.....why would this be any different? There's to many people involved pulling too many different ways for anything to be successful. My employer has cut hourly employees from 40+ to capped at 32 hrs. Those people are filing work share for their last 8hrs and getting the $600 bonus bump......something wrong with that. Fail for the government.

The best argument that can be made in favor of Trump as it relates to this pandemic is that we have yet to have but maybe one or 2 countries in a worldwide pandemic that have done "well" with the response. Globally nobody has solved this thing and frankly those that have done "well" to date shouldn't wipe their brow too soon. This thing ain't over until the fat lady sings. At the end of the day pandemic are judge by two things, infections and deaths. On that level the only country that has been successful is North Korea. Plan or no plan across the globe......millions are being infected, thousands are dying. Doesn't matter who the leader is, doesn't matter what their plan is, or what their party is. By all accounts if you listen to the experts and science they are basically saying.....we don't know when we will have a vaccine or solution(historical data supports its gonna be awhile), we don't know how many people are really getting this(due to testing issues and asymptotic cases), we don't even fully understand the virus effects on human bodies(we learn more everyday). There isn't a SINGLE country that has been able to successfully answer any of those 3 questions. We have more unknowns than we can solve in this equation and no single country has been able to put together enough knows to solve this thing.

This is true for almost every President. As far as Presidents go, this one plays a lot of golf, the last one played basketball, the one before played war. Generally speaking that has little bearing on peoples day to day lives.