Devan S.

I don't specifically know which roads you are referring too. I fished Spring Creek Saturday via CR6410 which follows along Spring Creek on the west side. We turned off on the first forestry service road to the left. I could not drive down the forestry service road but the walk was only about 100 yards. CR6410 was in good shape to that point and I was in a low clearance car.

At a month out....you better get to calling around. My guess is most guides are already booked. If their not its probably due to Corona virus cancellations and you just got lucky.

Day 4 June 13- Day 3 was miserable and did not go as planned. In fact other than Crane/Mill, none had gone as quick/easy as we thought they would. I was behind by 2 streams. I had been given a pass that we could stay the overnight if it was needed. Plan was to hit Spring Creek first to get my buddy to Silver, then since we were in the area I would try to finish off Little Piney. Barren Fork was in the plan but we agreed we would re-consider after Spring/Little Piney. USGS told me Little Piney was lower than last time. Our stretch goal was to get down to NFOW or 11 pt. and try to get one of them early Sunday morning. We knew they were high but with zero first hand knowledge we thought maybe we could find somewhere to luck into fish. Wheels up at 3am to arrive at Spring around 7:30am. Head down CR6410 to a forestry service road. Head downstream....Immediately find a deeper run into a brush pile. I like this. RIght after the brush pile the river turns....deep run against a bluff and finishes in a deep hole. Awesome. Water is a little dirty. Awesome. First cast...break off my wooley in the trees. Not Awesome. Go to tie on and realize I forgot my fly box in the car. Not Awesome. Still have my box of jigs. Toss on a heavy one. Grey/Red. First cast and strip and see the flash and rod doubles over. Fish on. I am really happy with this fish. It played out like I wanted. Feels good to call your shot more or less. Buddy comes up. I said let this hole calm back down. He fishes through with a wooley. Switches to a bright pink San Juan and basically pulls off the exact same drift and again boom. Fish on. His fish jumped probably 5 or 6 times several feet out of the water and was basically the same size as mine. Off to Little Piney by 8:30am......Thinking the water is lower and I liked the run below the 63 bridge we go there first. Throw a jig a few times...nothing. Then fish start hitting on top. Tossed out a small midge and immediately have my Little Piney done. It happened so fast I threw back and caught another on my second cast. Gave my rod over to my buddy and he caught one too all cookie cutter fish. Just like that we're off. Barren Fork-The plan here was to start at the lower end and work up to the little waterfall and catch one fish and bail. Unfortunately the water was lower than last time, and we didn't see any fish working up to the water fall. Pull out the map and find a low water bridge. Fish the deep hole behind it....nothing. @Johnsfolly had posted about a hike into the middle section where he caught a good fish so even though it was 1 pm we decided to try. We parked off the side of the road near the bottom of the middle section and bailed off the hillside. I am glad I brought along tennis shoes and jeans for this. Got to the bottom and immediately saw fish and much better habitat. First deep hole at the bottom of a run and I was done with Barren Fork. Low water bridge Walking down the road Fish Honestly it happened so fast we didn't want to hike back up and out. So we fished another 20 or so minutes and my buddy caught a fish and got his picture so he didn't have to blame me anymore for not having a picture of a Barren Fork fish. Note-This hike out is straight up hill. We managed to find an old 4 wheeler trail which eliminated a lot of bush wacking but its still rough. At this point, were both tied at Silver and headed to the 11 pt. far sooner than expected. Eleven Point- We arrive at Greer Crossing with a lot of excitement. Current, NFOW, and 11pt. have been on our list of streams to float so we're doing some recon. We find immediately the water is high(we knew going in it was higher than normal). We had hoped we could find a gravel bar we could maybe fish a couple hundred yards but we couldn't find anything. Didn't take long for us to bail on 11 pt. and NFOW. We will come back later during lower water and probably float the Blue Ribbon sections.

Day 3 May 31- Plan here was Barren Fork, Current, and then hope to run back to Spring and Little Piney. We didn't know it starting out but today was going to be hard and miserable....Barren Fork up first. Roll out at 3:30am, arrive at about 7:30 am at County Road A-D pull off. Note: no waders this time and morning water is really cold. We worked all the way down to the private property sign without seeing a fish and were totally perplexed. Really struggled to even find water I like to fish. Pools and deep holes and deep runs zilch...nada....nothing. Late Morning we bail out and decide to head down CC and start at the confluence with sinking creek and work up. Note 2: nettles sting in shorts and crocs. We fished upstream until we ran into a house(which we would realize later was private property). We did see a couple fish but boy were they spooky for 2 lumbering gorillas splashing through the water. Again not much of habitat like I like to fish, buddy managed to hook 2 fish below a small waterfall below a bluff line. I botch the landing on one fish and broke him off in the process. The other fish pulled loose. At this point its mid-afternoon, we're wondering what we have gotten into. Its hot and miserable and we're not catching fish. We bail out. Buddy decides his fish counts as its my fault breaking the line. Current River- We arrive late and know we don't have a lot of time. Start at the end of Montauk and hoping at this point to just salvage 7-8 hours of driving and actually land a fish. At this point, I swim through a hole and get my phone wet......bad choice but good news we catch fish. I hooked a stocker brown and shortly after he catches a nice rainbow. I realize both are probably stockers and this is a "blue ribbon challenge" but we met the requirements. Also I have never been to the current and will be back so someday I'll catch a real stream bred bow. River is beautiful and I really like Montauk much different layout compared to Roaring River.

Day 2(May 23)- Crane went so well that we figured with some good recon we could maybe get Blue springs, Mill Creek, Little Piney, and Spring Creek in one long day. OR so we thought. We rolled out at 3:30am on our way to BSC. We started at the access right off N highway. Buddy went upstream and I went down. I had nearly made it to the Blue Spring creek conservation pull off with the bridge when I ran into people that were fishing in front of me. I hadn't seen a fish yet so I headed back upstream and caught up with my fishing buddy at the low water bridge on N highway. There's a pretty good hole right below the bridge and he was fishing there. I rolled up and hooked a rainbow right off the bat on a jig. We continued fishing the hole but never had another bite(I am positive there is more fish there). Honestly at this point the pressure was building to keep on schedule but we still were operating as no man left behind. We had been here about 3 or 4 hours with 1 fish and hadn't seen many. We thought moving down towards the Meramec would give some larger water with better holes so we took off that way.....which was a bad call on a Saturday. We ran into the Blue Spring Ranch crowd and it was thick. We wasted about another hour before we drive directly back to the bridge hole to try and catch another fish there. We fished about 30 minutes and basically said we moving on and my buddy said lets just see whats upstream of the bridge. We crossed over and in the 200ft. long riffle above the bridge he caught a small rainbow just making random casts. Pressure relieved......Probably will never go back here honestly unless I was in the area...it just doesn't fit my fishing likes. Mill Creek-Headed to Bohigian Conservation Area off CR 7550. We started at the bridge at CR1576 and headed up. Buddy ends up catching a small 6-8" fish within the first 150 yards behind a stump which immediately puts pressure on me to make up time. I hooked several fish in deeper runs and holes but was really struggling to land something. Finally I pulled one out of a big brush pile on a corner. Both fish were caught on wooleys with fly rods. Pressure relieved and we only spent about 2 hours here. Nice little stream and if I was in the area I would go back. Off to Little Piney. Little Piney- It was late afternoon and we knew we had a 3 hour drive home so we had effectively eliminated Spring Creek as an option. Lane Springs was closed so we went below the Highway 63 bridge only to discover the water in that run was fast and deep. (We hadn't checked the USGS gage but hindsight said it was something like 350cfs and the concrete structure really channelizes that location). In addition, the water we well over wader depth so we only had one hole to fish. My buddy lucked into a very small 4-5" rainbow fairly quick. I tried and tried and couldn't even get a bite. We pulled up and headed to what be believe is called Vida Slab bridge by the locals. We were greeted with quite the party going on and again deep enough water we struggled to wade. I hooked several fish but couldn't bring anything to the net. At this point, we bailed and headed home with me being behind a stream. We still had to come back for Spring Creek so we weren't terrible concerned about going out of our way again. We also learned waders are hot even if they leak so we ditched them going forward. More to come......

Figured now that I am closing in on completing the blue ribbon slam that I would post up some notes from along the way. We only had one goal in this quest and that was to catch at least a trout in each stream and then move on. If we liked a stream enough we could always come back later. First up was Crane creek. This is the closest stream to us being in SWMO so it was a quick trip back on May 7th. It was an afternoon trip and a drizzle of rain. Our big issue here was that we got mixed up and wasted about an hour exploring a small feeder ditch that flows in across from the ball fields. We had serious concerns here because we weren't seeing any fish in this ditch until we stumbled all the way down to where it runs into Crane. From there we moved around and parked at the ball fields and caught our fish on grey jigs thrown on spinning rods. Our big takeaway here was that we needed to plan and scout much better. We wasted more time a drainage ditch than we did actually catching fish. I'll definitely be back to Crane.....more to come.

@Johnsfolly I used your suggestion for the middle section. Much better habitat and saw at least 4 or 5 fish....one very nice 20"+ fish too. We both caught our fish needed in about 25 minutes of fishing. We actually found a 4 wheeler trail coming out that made the hike out a bit easier....still up hill but a lot less bushwacking.

I don't completely buy the good apples are compliant theory completely. Certainly in the George Floyd issue the assisting officers could have helped but that situation doesn't represent them all. It may have saved a life in this case but wouldn't have changed much systematically. Anyone that works in anything other than a small business type atmosphere with singular control from one person understands that unless your top management you don't have a lot of control. I had 2 co-workers that are the epitome of slugs....show up late, leave early, long lunches, constantly miss deadlines......all of our equals complained about them and their habits but management refused to do anything. Several of their peers have talked to them about it. Tons of off handed comments made about their work ethics both in front of them and management but nothing happened. Good people left due to the inaction.....those that stayed were often in situations that prevented them from doing anything like leaving. At the end of the day, policing is a job and in the workplace there is an awful lot of politicizing and favoritism that goes on....without good management poor performers have a breeding ground for complacency and often their equals have no choice but to take it or leave. Especially when the issues are not a singular level of management but a systematic issue. Add in the fact most are covered by unions and its ultimately a government job and the issues compound rather fast. Until you start changing the management.....and the decision makers.....not much will happen to bad cops until they kill someone.

Large agriculture is doing this today. Quite the uproar among JD, Case, ect about control on repairs on large units. Effectively pushing the DIY farmer towards a dealer for repairs.

Truer words have never been spoken..... Specifically with the water high like it is....that strolling method just outside the bushes is a sure fire way to catch tons of different species.

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.