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Call Hickory Creek Marina 479-751-7366 they have some boats to rent, not sure what they have though.

Beaver for stripers, swepco for Bass.

I have always wondered who set up the points and made those signs, it is clear they did not fish south of Prairie Creek. You can stand at points 1-8 and see the next sign then you get to point 10 and it is a 20 minute boat ride to point 12 with point 11 being in someone's back yard about 100 yards from any water.(nice house and yard, you deserved a sign) I have tried to talk to people using these signs even had some fish I wanted to fish during a tournament in front of the point 8 sign and the boater just went right buy them because he had no clue where I was talking about. I was using point 6 for another reference for an out of town angler who just stopped talking to me on line because he couldn't find point 6 on any maps he had. 90% of my best fishing spots are between point 10 and 12 with the point 11 sign not being close to even one, well with the water up I guess that brush pile on the flat about 200 yards across the channel was decent. With everyone using GPS I guess a sign is out of date for navigation, but reference points for passing along fishing information is useful. So were these points purely navigation aids in the time before GPS? If so, I can see where it is hard to take a wrong turn between point 10 and 12 unless you run up Montne at point 11, but why not one at Blackburn creek?

I would love to get some big minnows and fish them off the bottom over there, I am sure there are double digit bass in that lake. Thanks for the report.

Which ramp at Horseshoe?

You need to tell him to be on here and let people know, I have filled in for lost partners and sure there are a lot of people here that would have. Last polar bear I fished was 17 degree launch and I only put 2lbs in the live well but I have worked on my dragging since then and that is what I needed to fish being that angler who was used to two people up front and I just can't fish like that, I need a whole deck not to hurt someone. It's hard to fish with a new person sometimes but then again that is how you find that perfect match also.

Sounds like the winning team was fishing deep, no surprise there. I really think the channel swings and channel meets point are the key to bigger bass on Beaver. Just wish I was better at finding those places....

That cold I think I would have just dropped the trolling motor and limited boat speed to 1 mph except maybe for warm up trips to the truck. Congrats to all who fished, any word on where and how the winning bag was caught? Were the shad still deep or were they moving into the coves?

When someone gets in today, can you please give a water temp and shad kill info, weather station is down but last water temp says 42 so I am thinking shad kill.

We were out Sunday bottom bouncing jerk baits for walleyes and could not believe how many big whites were laying on bottom in 45 feet of water in the middle of the day. Had one really big fish break a 17lb leader thinking a striper, but funny to get it in 50 feet on bottom. Live bait didn't pay off until close to dark. Shad really moved back around 3:30 Didn't get to PC until about noon.

I have seen Looney on the depth finder. lol Are you catching any of those big arches? Seems t me they are getting few and far between and far from the boat.

Has anyone tried trolling for top water early or late in the day for stripers? I have thought about setting the trolling motor on about 1 mph then dragging pencil poppers behind the boat 50- 75 yards giving them about a 4ft swing and letting them set until the line gets tight then swing again type of retrieve, or maybe trolling some big spoons on surface. The whole idea here is fishing top water further from the boat then I can cast, just wondering if anyone has had success doing this and how you did it.

Were the ducks flying around staying right on the water? I saw those last week and the best I could tell they were some sort of pin tail but duck id charts did no get more detail then that and I am not sure how many ducks are classified as pin tails. Fins and feathers we could use some input here.

Well last two months were dry and only 2 feet of dropping since it is 1109.71 this morning. Dec thu Feb are traditional dry months then the rain should be here in March thru June. I am thinking the low should hit around 1107 around the end of Feb. Any new predictions? What boat launches are or will close?

The stripers were not in PC yesterday, lots of shad but only caught one 10lb striper and a few big whites and one keeper walleye and a 6lb wiper between me and inova. The walleye came off a jerk bait trolled on a three way swivel with a one ounce weight, the striper on live bait and planner board. But it was a lot slower than the week before. Lots of small whites but looks like the big fish moved out, should move back in after the front. The loon was allover the place diving right under the boat, wish I could share information with him.

Between the islands on the right hand side coming from PC there is a cut with a giant brush pile in it that holds a lot of crappie. Seems to be more down in War eagle then anywhere else on the lake.

Like I said I didn't spend much time on this and really didn't know other than a few articles and some research back in the Bush years. Thank you for the information and no I am seeing it is not a mandate to add ethanol just a tax incentive that leads to higher profits thus the reason most companies will do it, there is a lot of mis information out there when people blog to bash a product. This what I was reading and near as detailed in the mixing procedures then what you were reading. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_ethanol_fuel_mixtures

Sorry Jeb it was all over the place in 2007 when all the anti ethanol and anti Bush stuff was going on but I just don't want to go through the entire 2007 fuel standard energy law to find it,so I will withdraw the statement, but seeing as to the fact the EPA just approved E15 this month despite protest from all major auto makers I don't think there is E20 floating around .http://biofuelschat.com/topics/epa-rejects-bid-relax-ethanol-mandate But in my research I did find several places (Wikipedia) that says you cannot make E10 or E85 by just pouring ethanol into gasoline that it is a complicated process at the refinery requiring different processes for summer and winter fuel so other than a gas station owner can you please reference that statement. My limited research and understanding of these laws the fuel companies have no choice but to add ethanol by law and I don't understand how a few can disobey a Federal law, not saying they don't just I don't understand. Not doubting your statements just trying to get a better understanding, just like what happens to the feed corn after making alcohol it is still feed as corn mash. What runs up the price is Wall Street seeing an increase in demand and buying futures, the corn is still there but the people who own the futures set the price from NYC not Iowa. But everyone blames the government or ethanol it's self or even farmers for growing to much.......I am by no means an expert just the opposite, very confused and not trusting of either side of this big business debate.

Plus there is not much to say since you can fish the entire lake in a day

This falls into States vs Federal law thing since George W signed a law saying that it was not required. I don't KNOW for sure since there is so much disinformation in marketing but there a two rules I follow that I will never buy water in a bottle and I buy the cheapest gas.

You would have to define "gas" since 10% or E85 is still legal form of "gas" and you by law don't have to post warnings or advertise your gas contains ethanol unless it is over 20%. That is the reason the military uses designations such as JP8, JP4, JP6 because the mixtures are more defined than Diesel or fuel or gas. Not saying I have tested any of these but after finding out that Taco Bell's "beef tacos" were 20% beef I don't believe much. Just like the wording on Walmart's 2 cyl oil says it meets all manufacturer's warranty requirements but every dealer tells me the factory reps won't pay for a repair if you run the Walmart oil?? My belief is there are two type of gas companies dishonest and greedy and right out liars..... I really believe the best gas comes from the stations that have good sealed tanks and move the most since it is replaced the quickest and most of the time that is the cheapest station in town, since you don't always get more by paying more.

You got it Jeb, no free boat rides for the fish, sometimes the clubs will require photos with a provided tape measure but pretty sure with Aaron's club they just record weights and have a trust with each member to bring in real data. Not the type of tournament you can run with the general public.

From the point where the two creeks split up to the buoys on the side opposite the park. We were pulling planner boards all afternoon, you had to run right past us.

Weather was great today, spent most of the afternoon without a jacket. Got a few whites and some nice blacks off a jigging spoon and large minnows on side planners. About sundown there was a 30 minute feeding frenzy and some really big boils thought we would get a striper but it didn't happen though the size of the whites pulled like a striper a few times. 3in silver jigging spoons seemed to be the ticket. We had a big loon join us for the feeding hour and he seemed as happy as the whites.