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Thank you for the report

I ran to the back of PC, I forgot about the tournament there was little room to park but few boats in and around PC. I found the perfect school of gizzard shad and filled the livewell in one cast. Before that I had some threadfin and had spotted some large feeding fish but only one white hit out of that school, it was nice one about 18 inches long. After I had a 9in gizzard out and a 6inch off the other side, I did not find any fish even on the fish finder the rest of the day. The whites and striper have totally left PC, could have been the boat traffic, water color or maybe the run for the river has started. If anyone fished the river and found big fish please give my a PM if you don't want to post it. Highest water temp I saw today was 48.

Give a report when you get back, heading out in the morning.

I was just wondering if these next four or five days of spring like weather will be enough to get the algae growing enough to get the mud to drop to the bottom and bring back out our blue water?

Being a cross of a white and a stripper they cannot reproduce on their own, that is why they are used to control shad populations in small lakes that whites would over run if stocked. I might be possible to produce one in the wild if whites and strippers were spawning close to each other but about as rare as a black pearl. There are several year classes of hybrids in the lake, I have caught them this year from one pound up to 15lbs so missing the one stocking of 3inch fish will not affect hybrid fishing for 3-5 years and if they only skip one year most people won't notice. The fact so many are removed at 1 to 2lbs by white fishermen that don't notice the difference is what hurts the rates of catching those 10-15lb fish. I would much rather get into the hybrids and strippers than walleye or bass but they all have to share the lake.

I you take a garden rake and place wire mesh along the width of the rake you can just rake them out of the muddy ditches. In my younger days that is how I got bait for drop lines on the St Francis River. We always had enough to boil some also. A funny thing about fishing with mudbugs if you are trout fishing even the largest trout will swim right by a live crawfish but cut off the heads and use the tail and they go crazy for them. I have never figured that out, what in nature is eating crawfish heads and leaving the tails for trout? Another mystery is if walleye like crawfish so much, why do I not catch more on jigs? I catch them on drop shots and spoons but never on a jig. Maybe my jigs don't look as much like a crawfish as I thought? The catfish and drum seem to like them.......I could have one more than one bass tournament at night if they would have let me weigh in a flathead....one flathead and two drum equal about 30lbs do that with 3 green fish.

That is funny because I have fished with people from Texas and Oklahoma who SWEAR that there is PROOF bass don't live deeper than 8 feet. Always takes about two years to get them to trust their fish finders and to pick up a spinning rod. lol I know two that are die hard drop shot fishermen NOW ! Since I have pulled a bass from 80 feet (my deepest) your 10:1 make sense.

Just a thought but could it be that the crawfish are not being eaten but becoming mud bugs in the high water and not accessible to the walleye and not being eaten by the hybrids? I know the hybrids will go into the grass to get them, but because they are better at getting mudbugs in high water doesn't translate to they are getting at the forage that walleye would. Just a thought since I have no idea how to estimate the crawfish population, I do know the walleye stay deep in the rocks all summer and the heat doesn't bother those crawfish, I have seen those big lobsters fishing from shore at night and I see their homes built away from shore when the water retreats. I guess by having more crawfish in the brush will translate to more in the rocks when and if the water retreats, but will the amount the hybrids get to in the mean time have a measurable affect? How do you measure the population and affects on a population of a forage that can live in an inch of water or 100 feet? I am confused.

And you thought this was going to be a green fish vs stripper fight......

Where channel swings hit an incoming creek are really good, I am thinking around point twelve but not looking at a map. Can anyone find one? The main point of a channel swing is the channel is a highway for the shad and when the shad lay low you will usually find them lying in the channel and using the low terrain to hide from big fish. Where the channel takes a turn near land or other obstacles makes for a good ambush spot or funnel. When the water is warming in the back of creeks the shad will use the creek channel to escape to the river channel when the fish hit them in the back of the creek, then the big fish will move out of the back of the creek to the next ambush spot. If you take away the water and imagine machine gun fire those low trenches make since, if you are lower than your enemies line of sight you have a better chance of survival. You can only see so far from above, so you hit them where you can easily close both sides and hide above them.

That is just no fun at all...........

I have always thought that hybrids have grown faster and were easier to catch than strippers yet bigger than whites, so I will miss them. One of the fish that make Beaver more interesting to me then Table Rock. Any day you can be saved from a skunk by a 8lb Hybrid was a good day. I hope people don't eat all the ones still there.

Is the water getting any clearer down there at all, hard to tell from the pics.

I would diffidently be in the river that time of year, hard to say if it will clear up. Water is muddy now and it has been warm this winter and the stripers might move up early then early March could bring temps in the teens and a foot of snow, just have to keep an eye on the weather. My advice would be to start out at Hickory Creek and get the latest from the guys at the Marina, when you pick up bait, start at point 12 then head up a river, war eagle is my favorite but the white is very popular. JMO

Everything seems to be scattered around in this muddy water, even the shad. Is it just where I am looking or has anyone else noticed it too.

I went out for a few hours Sunday afternoon and ran back into Mont Ne to try to get a bite in the flooded timber. Water was brown and lost sight of a worm as soon as it hit the water. I could see a jerk bait about 2 feet down. The water at the ramp was around 45 degrees but in the back it was 49 degrees around 3pm. I didn't find one bass, lots of shad on their sides and fish finder was beeping constantly in 6 feet of water, 6 feet is where land would be at normal pool. I did hook one stripper right on the bank in front of a large bush, but he ran under the boat looking for deeper water and came unhooked while I was working him around the trolling motor. He rolled on top as soon as I hooked him and looked to be around 15lbs. From what I could see on the fish finder they were so busy eating dying shad my jerk bait didn't stand a chance, should have tied on a fluke and fished slower. Had to dodge several large logs floating around Horse Shoe Bend, with the sun and 66 degree weather felt good to be on the lake.

No whites? They should be thick in there now.

Only in the new Zombie squad fishing league that will have bigger payouts than the FLW. Everyone laugh but if this takes off, I am betting I find at least one in every striper fishing boat on Beaver....Heck I have not even tried a wind up top water yet.lol You don't need to catch fish to sell lures, the only thing you have to catch is fishermen and this has a great hook.

The need to keep those prize 8in shad alive for the next fishing trip may be a memory of the past. Check out the new kick starter that will bring your bait back to life. I just wonder what will be the cost of breaking of the big one? Click here

I just drove past PC and noticed the water was green up in the creek, I am betting there are some big green fish up that creek.

The thread fin should be dying off with those temps. The ones that are getting ready to die should be in large clusters and easy pickins. has anyone been spooning around those shad balls?

If it is 41 degree water on Beaver it will be filling up with dead shad. Some days those are great and some days they are just stuffed to the gills. I usually slay with a jerk bait, but have not tried the muddy water yet.

With these cold nights and snow no sun the water temp has to be dropping into the low 40s. Does anyone have a recent water temp anywhere in the Lake?

That is some brown looking water, did the striper come out of that muddy water? Cold muddy water is a turn off for a lot of fishermen but the fish still have to eat. Nice brown fish, most of the ones I catch have a little green to them, I think it has something to do with how deep they stay. I had one day on Beaver where I fished back seat and between me and the front seat we could have weighed two 26lb bags. We had backed out of a tournament that morning because it was too cold and windy. We decided to go for whites and ended up with nothing but Largemouth. Please keep reports coming, my boat refuses to come out of the garage in this weather........

The winter series is going and with a three day weekend for some people, someone had to go fishing. Did anyone get a fishing report from anybody?