Devan S.

I know they can be caught on the bluff and lay downs but I always have to end up wading through tons on small fish to get the big ones. Great for catching bait for cats but I want big eater sized fish. I've got a handful of spots that out on the point/run out a couple guys can catch a load of them if the timings right.....but its just not right.

Fished between 10' and as deep as 30'. Fished timbered points with rocks and the normal pea gravel run outs with nothing. Both the fish we did catch came in probably 15-18' We spent most of our time in 20'+ of water. Did catch 2 15" walleye. Probably my favorite was of fishing since the worms and drop shot you never know what you'll catch.

Spent Saturday morning searching for the big Gills out on the points between Eagle Rock and Shell Knob. Hit 2 of my most productive spots and only ended up with 2. Didn't really even graph any. I think I was a touch early. WT was in the upper to mid 70's and boat traffic was pretty calm. Off the water by 10:45.

Well trip went well overall. We fished easily accessible spots between Leadville and Twin Lakes on the Arkansas as well as the outflow of Twin Lakes. I think we managed to scrounge up a rainbow and brown in this area. We tried to fish the blue river but were just overwhelmed with the faster shallow water so didn't really put much effort into it. Fished Glacier Creek in RMNP and caught a bunch of brooks, browns, and cutthroats. Probably had our best luck here and fished it a lot harder than everything else. Best lure by far was a San Juan worm with a jig head weight to get it down. All the jigs I have I feel were really too large for the speed/depth of the water we were fishing. The fish out there are small but gorgeous and the scenery just adds too it.

Great report Bill..Have you been finding the big gills out on the points yet? Thinking about getting out this weekend and trying to catch a bunch.

Everything I saw said 1500 tons of fertilizer which is like 3 million lbs.....an insane amount but when you consider the river at Muskogee is running nearly 400,000 CFS it gets moved through pretty quickly and diluted. The Arkansas is running 400k, Mo @ St. Charles is nearing 400k.......were talking a ton of water moving downstream. We're darn lucky in the white river basin that most of this water is just missing us.

Yep...after the Joplin tornado there was significant studies done to understand why the Joplin tornado was so deadly. A significant number of people that took part in the interviews all basically said "every time we turn around the sirens are sounding" and "nothing happens when they do sound them so we just carry on instead of take cover" I realize the weather guys/gals need to error on the side of caution but its getting to the point that if the wind blows over 50 mph and there's a remote possibility of a tornado they are screaming for everyone to duck and hide.

For all these guys that are only into fishing tournaments for competition and its not about the money. Someone really should start an invitation only tournament, they pay a $100 fee to enter. That will pay for their ride along marshal and their calibrated scale. Since there will be zero payout, there shouldn't be any cheating and since its invitation only if a cheater is found then they can just ban him/her from future competition. You can beat your chest at the end, hoot, and howl, whatever you want when we announce you're the winner but you get no money or trophy. (We could make a stringer of replica bass you can take a picture with the fee structure) After 3 or 4 tournaments we can start rankings and kick the marshals to the curb and were gonna pair you up mono-y-mono. The higher ranked angler gets the back of the boat and the lower ranked angler gets the front and makes all the choices on where to fish. Since its all about competition and fishing, this format should grow rapidly on TRL, we can expand to other lakes and create divisions to further find the real best of the best. We're gonna need qualified tournament directors for each lake. Primary responsibility is to blow all the entry fees since this is going to be so popular(think high end calculators to add up the weights, ect). We can take all the proceeds from fees and the true best fisherman from all the divisions we could pay their entry fees for something like BASS or FLW for a year so that they can begin to really play with the big boys. Assuming of course that the big boys don't flood our format because its all about the competition. Since I've had the idea, I think its only fair that I get 50% of the entry fees right off the top.

your just putting your weight a couple feet ahead of the bait almost like running a bottom bouncer for eyes? How would those rods hold up to say a 5+ lb walleye if a guy was to hook one?

5 gallon buckets are the cheap method but cumbersome to store. I think I bought mine at cabelas back years ago they are big and yellow. They don't get used often so I wasn't overly concerned with buying super high rated bags. Basically one rope tied to the front cleat off the front of the bag and one tied to the back of the bag and to the back cleat on the boat(you'll want the back rope to dump them). I try to keep mine positioned in the front half of my boat so they are out of the way when landing fish. 2 bags slows my boat to less than .5mph at idle. They will pull you around a bit but they also stabilize the boat a bunch too. The only problem I've ever had was I had a big wake boat run by close and the bags helped to pull the front end down into the next wave vs. just bouncing. Hindsight and knowing what I know now I would have jumped up and dumped them really quick. I still prefer the trolling motor since you don't have to man the helm but like I said it has saved me several times.

Yeah I've seen the Arkansas, Blue River, Dillon Reservoir, Twin Lake, Turquoise lake, Half Moon Creek all seem really close to our intended path. Just seems a lot the web searching I've done talks about fly fishing stuff which I really don't have right now or you bait fish in the reservoirs. I'm not against either one but times short and it seems if either of my preferred methods would work I'll let it fly.

I understand......trolling bags have saved the day for me a dozen times or more.....cheap insurance if a trolling battery dies and you just ain't ready to quit.

What make and model are those rods?

3 is fast for crappie and frankly I wouldn't target them at that speed. the 1.5-2 mph is a better start. The big problem I have isn't them biting as much as at 3 mph you pull right through their lips on a shorter strike. Every year though I catch some trolling for whites at that speed so it can be done. The other problem when you get up to those speeds is the lure wanting to roll out on you. The S pattern is a great suggestion. Another one is to "pump" your rod occasionally especially if you see fish schooled on the graph sometimes that quick burst can trigger a bite. I have never used snap weights so how do you all control depth in those cases?

Speed wont make any difference with depth. Line size/length of line out dictates almost everything when trolling. My preference is 10/2 braid but many can and will use larger size line(braid allows you to feel much, much better when you get to talking about a 100'+ ft. of line out). here is a dive curve for the 6cm size. Speed will be dictated by how aggressive fish are. Often times I can troll with my outboard at 3 mph and catch whites, crappie, and walleye but sometimes it takes the trolling motor and 1.5 mph or 2 mph to get less aggressive fish to bite or not to pull off).

Am planning on being in the Leadville area over memorial day weekend. Highlight of the trip will be hiking Mt. Elbert however......hoping to get some fishing in if possible. Obviously runoff can be and issue and likely will so while I would love to hit some rivers it may be out of the question. I may only have a day or 2 to fish maximum. I am admittedly not a trout fishermen in the normal sense. My arsenal includes jerkbaits and jigs...the end. I have a fly rod...all I have is bass poppers, jigs for whites, and some streamers for bass. My goal is simple catch fish(I'm not even picky enough to say I'm set of trout but that seems to be the major target). A lot of what I see on the web is fly fishing which have me concerned since I'm not the least bit familiar in the sense of small subtle presentations(mending, caddis, nymping, swinging all seem as foreign to me as speaking mandarin......I kid....kind of) A.) is it possible to fish with a spinning reel and jigs/jerkbaits? or is this something I need to start looking at the uber small (match the hatch) and really get setup for on a short notice. B.) Does lake fishing in the area lend its hand more to my style of fishing? I wanna do the picturesque fly fishing the mountain stream but also realize this is short notice so guides are out and I don't want to completely spend a ton of money to get setup on a way to fish that I'm not totally into right now. C.) Anything/anywhere else between KC and the Leadville area that may be worth a several hour detour to do(either non fishing or fishing)? At this point I am super flexible....plan is camp, sleep in car, whatever...only thing really set in stone is to climb Mt. Elbert and even that is flexible depending on the weather.

Both braid and mono use plastic polymers, both of which take reasonably long to decompose in the environment. There is enough difference in polymers used and in processing that it would be impossible to make a blanket statement to compare the 2 but generally speaking were talking over human lifetimes to be thoroughly decomposed in the environment. With that kind of timeline, I don't believe you could claim one is really any better for the environment. I believe the claim of degrading was along the line of UV breakdown, development of memory, kinks in line ect. all of which reduce the strength compared to the advertised strength. A significant amount of this degradation isn't due to true breakdown of the materials(in a environmental sense) but more in line with the stretch/yield factors. You eventually yield mono to the point that it will not go back to its original state. At that point, something has to change oftentimes the polymers split or the cross sectional area is reduced leading to a reduction in strength but at the end of the day those polymers are still there just no longer acting in accordance to how you expect them too. I use 10/2 braid on my trolling rods. That line certainly isn't getting used like it would on a jig rod but I know when I get hung up to the point I cant get lures off, it often takes looping the line around a boat cleat to break it/pull free and this stuff is often 3-4 years old before I even consider changing it out.

That's all I can think of....I guess running up on shore would work but would first responders do the same thing if it looked like it was going to hit a marina or dock full of other boats?

Whats the standard procedure to stop a boat when its a run away like that? Seems like the get really close and jump aboard method may has a heck of a risk factor if you miss.

The other problem is at 915 removing volume in anticipation shows a huge difference on the overall lake level opposed to removing the same volume at 925' as the lake spreads out. To remove enough volume to consistently compensate for these large scale events means lake levels could be below 900' or below. You have one drain in anticipation and miss and you could see even larger lake level swings then we do now.

All Fishermen: Wake boats destroy docks and cause massive shoreline erosion. We don't care what amount of money you bring to the economy we want them boats restricted or banned. Wake Boaters: We bring so much money to the local economy you can't get rid of us. Non-tournament fishermen: tournament fishing has become too large and we think the impacts are detrimental to the fishery. Tournament Fishermen: We bring so much money to the local economy. You can't ban us.

We will never know....IMO. The biggest complainers about the lack of bass are the tournament guys and frankly they aren't willing to give up their system(this excludes the small group on here). They want an outside resource to come to their aid. I've said it once and I'll say it again removing a bass or stressing a bass during the spawn is the equivalent to killing EVERY SINGLE FUTURE OPPORTUNITY for spawning. This isn't a guy sawing off the fillets of a limit, this is guys(hundred/thousands every weekend) killing on the magnitude of BILLIONS of opportunities. I am admittedly not a bass fisherman but you cant compare bass to walleye stocking. Very rarely is anyone consistently catching 5 fish limits of walleye on any of the local lakes and walleye receive in comparison a fraction of a single digit percentage of the pressure that the bass do. You put that pressure on that small of a resource and your talking about never seeing another walleye even if you quadrupled the number of fish stocked. Before MDC spent a dollar on stocking here is a list of things I think they should consider: 1.Ban on tournaments/possession of bass until memorial day. You wont stop incidental catches and fishing but imagine all the gain in stocking by just give nature an opportunity for a year. 2.Reduce length limit on Kentucky bass(just like Stockton) or slot length covering all bass to protect say the 50-90th percentile fish. 3.Drop the possession/daily limit(I think this should be done on just about every species on the lake). The problem with doing this would be the backlash from the same group that consistently wants MDC to spend $$$ on stocking but you cant have your cake and eat it too. After a certain period of time, if conditions don't improve under management like that then one has a valid point for stocking.

Anytime you head out and say I'm gonna target walleye and you manage to get a good 19" is a good day.

Not necessary. Frankly you should be able to catch crappie within 2-3 miles either direction of sweet water pretty easy. I haven't done any crappie fishing since early on this year but I'm hearing there is a lot of 9-9.75" fish. You should be able to make it well past the 86 bridge should you want to run that far. Google maps current satellite view has the water at a much lower level than it is today so you can clearly see where the channel is. Outside of stick here and there past Jackie Cove the only spot of any concern is right before the bridge and google maps will give you a good example of how to run it.

If you have crappie even remotely on your mind I would venture and stay towards sweet water.