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I cannot think of a boating law that is not enforced or obyed more than this one. How many bass tournaments launch at safe light or before dawn do you see tournament anglers staying below 30mph. Next time BASS or FLW tournament hit table rock I am going to check this out. It would be neet to see what BASS would do if thier entire field of elites were disqauilfied. Myself I have fished serveral Joe Bass tournaments that lauched before dawn and 60mph was just getting in the way.

Just saw that Cabela's was opening a store in Rogers, myself I would rather have Bass Pro but guess we are close enough to Tulsa and Springfield stores. http://www.4029tv.com/news/28691063/detail.html

Gauge broke??? dam gone???

There is no reason for this to have resulted in deadly force and when deadly force is required it should be that DEADLY, 3 rounds center mass. Guns are made to KILL not SCARE and with that said I feel the reason for so many disagreements is the number of laws made by so many different agencies on something as simple as fishing. If you win a bass tournament that requires a lie dector one of the questions is "did you obey all state and federal laws on the lake" and I was told by one of the men giving the test no one passed that question. Not because everyone cheats it's because NO ONE knows all the laws. There is a dock by Beaver Shores that is posted and I have never caught a good fish off of, but if I see the owner sunning and reading I will fish that dock just to hear her rant on how I am breaking the law because she copied the sign from the marinia she thinks the law covers her dock. Sadly she doesn't even relize the land the dock sits on belongs to the Corps and she just has the responsiblty of maintaing that land. But 99% of the time I go out of my way to stay out of people's way and enjoy the peace and quite(just have to aruge once in a while) and 99% of the fisherman will obey the laws they know about and understand. But if you gave a federal law test to a state game warden and a state law test to a Corps officer I would bet both would score low so how is the weekend fisherman to keep up? Is there a college course on Bass Fishing? But with that said I will stear wide of War Eagle Marinia not that I ever stopped there before, will never stop there now. Last time I checked the Marinias were leasing public land for their business not buying the land so WE are still their LANDLORDS and when you you have a tenanent that causes this kind of trouble what does the LANDLORD do?

The new law that went into effect last year is you cannot fish within the no wake zone of the marinias. It has not been enforced around Praire creek but I heard last year that war eagle marinia was enforcing the law. It is a Corps law and not a State law so it is questionable on who can enforce the law, but I do remeber in the wording that the Marinia owners were responsbile to ensure the law was being obeyed. But there was no reason to shoot at these people. From what I have heard though War Eagle is not fishmern friendly and should be avoided. On the other hand I have fished the stahls in Hickory creek marinia at night and seen serveral people fishing around the lights and have never heard of anyone being harrased or run off.

Houseman's is on off Hwy 62 about 2 miles west of the darn road and is clearly marked on the Hwy by Corps signs, it is a little hairy of a launch with no docks and a rocky shore line, the Holiday Island launch is much better, but is more of a drive and further a run. If you time the discharge from the darn by calling the hotline and keep right in front of the cold water, the shad will be stunded by the cold water and you can scoop them up with a dip net. That discharge is usually 3-5 in the hot afternoons right in time to fill a tank for night fishing, and while you are there it is a great time to catch whites,blacks, trout and waleye feeding on stuned shad. 6lb rainbows are common in that area and I have seen a 8lb waleye caught on that streach, but getting into a school of 3lb plus whites is my favorite. You can get some better reports on that area on the Table Rock site where some of the Holiday Island residents hang out.

If you have time you can put in a houseman's excess and run down the river and find shad fairly easy, if they are generating it is real easy to find shad.

I guess they got a little cold this year. Glad to see the Walmart money back in the pot, other wise they wouldn't stop at Beaver and it does help the sport in this area and brings in a needed boost to the commuinty. I remeber one year fishing a tournament and saw Larry Nixon around point 7 pre fishing so we asked him where he had found fish and he responded "Table Rock."

Just wondering if you ever try plastics like grubs instead of the live crawler?

Glad to see you out of school and posting reports RPS. Hope you get the eyes dialed in.

Do they have cooling tanks? Most of the small tournaments I have seen anglers will line up in the parking lot with five fish in a bag resting on the parking lot for 30 minutes or more and I am surprised that there is a live fish released after those conditions. I always keep the livewell running with ice until I see the line go down, but seems the heat effects the common sense of most the anglers too. The easy fix to that would be to put the scales close to the water and not in a black top parking lot and require anybody standing in line to rest thier bag in the lake, but then someone would raise up and protest the scales are not on a stable footing. I would refund his money and ask him not to fish with the club anymore, but guess that is why I am not running a tournament. If you see someone putting a dead or dying fish back in the lake please ask them to remove the fish or someone close by with thier boat in the water. I have never had anyone refuse to do so or even give an attitude. Just seems as temps get higher people need more direction but are still willing and egar to do the right thing.

How was the boat traffic??

I am not a walleye fisherman but found a few keepers back in the trees behind PC with a lot of whites looking for largemouth. Seemed to me there were more eyes than largemouth in 3 to 4 feet of water in flooded trees and brush where I thought the bass would be hanging out. Flipping heavy brush is not a way I would usually look for waleye, but seems to be a good pattern right now.

As the rich get richer and the poor get poorer you will see a lot more of that I guess. My Grandfather told me that you could tell that the great depression was over when you saw a rabbit cross the road without someone chasing after it. Funny how everyone has their fish they want to see released, bass fisherman think nothing about throwing a 24in walleye in the live well during a bass tournament to eat later, or keep a limit of stripers(that can't reproduce in the lake)or how some people will cringe over a stringer of rainbows being carried away. Myself I catch and release all fish, I have even gone cat fishing and released all my fish, but if there is someone there that wants any fish besides a bass I will offer the fish to them, even though the bass reproduce in the lake better than any fish except maybe whites. But if the current economic trend continues there will be a LOT fewer people that will be able to buy big bass boats with 250hp motors and fish tournaments and look at bass as a money fish or care about those who do(why should they)but I hope the art and love of fishing survives among all the classes and doesn't become a sport of kings like I saw in Europe.

Does anyone know who won? How about teams?

The "hate" for striper's come from bass fisherman on Beaver because Beaver is managed as a trophy striper fishery and people who fish Beaver don't catch as many bass as they do on Table Rock so it must be all the striper's. I used to think that way until I started looking at the facts. One Beaver is not stocked with any more stripers even less than some other lakes in the state it just has a lower limit and longer length limit for keeping fish. Beaver is smaller than Table Rock with much smaller Rivers running into it but has a very heavy tournament fishery with 2 or 3 tournaments running every weekend and jack pots almost every day of the week. The Bass fisherman(to include myself)don't want to blame our selfs, but you ask anyone there are too many 10in bass on Beaver the shortage is in 15in and bigger fish. If the stripers were to blame, they would eat all those 10inch fish fist. The 15inch and bigger fish a targeted by one and only one predator and that is the Bass fisherman and we either kill them due to deep hooks, not running live wells to save batteries or giving them the bends from pulling them up from 35 to 40 feet in hot months. Now when you look at Bull shoals they have had walleye much longer than Beaver and the walleye are much more aggressive fish then stripers with a faster growth rate and able to feed in cold enough water that Bass are easy targets, but just like stripers they don't like bass that much. But to answer your question, that is where the hate comes from, it is a lot easier to blame the fishery than to blame yourself but I for one will stand up and say "My name is John and I am a Beaver Lake Bass fisherman and I am part of the problem not the solution of the short fish on Beaver."

I had a lot of trouble a few years ago when I tried fire line to flourocarbon, kept trying uni to uni and swivels but had to locate the swivels and tie two knots and the uni to uni took too long so I gave up and went back to flouro only, then I tried power pro and leaned the surgean's knot and it was just too easy and fast(can tie with one hand now) and now I wouldn't think about using anything else. When I get hung up,I'm glad I have a weak point in my line when using 20lb power pro and 17lb flouracarbon, it is still stronger than my drag but breaks just before the rod gives. The most important part of using braid is to find what is simple for you or it isn't going to work, but once you have that combo you'll never go back.

I think they just follow the food, I have found stripers in the mud when the water is rolling in and the gizzard shad are in the back of the coves, but as a rule they will hunt the clear water. I don't think it is where they are as much as it is they will swim a lot further to hit a lure in clear water and are eaiser to catch. But if you find water running hard, you will find shad most of the time and if there are a lot of big shad around, sometime of the night or day the stripers will go there and feed. hose fish can cover 30 miles a day looking for food so that can put them anywhere on Beaver in the same day.

I like Battery Outfitters and the Pro Guide batteries because they will do a load test for you before the battrey goes out the door. I have bought some good blimsh batteries from them at half price and had them pull load test on 3 different batteries before I chose one. Some of the Advanced Auto parts will do that too, but a lot of times the counter person doesn't know the difference between a voltage meter and a load tester. I bought a new battery for the wife's mini van at Advanced because of a 40% online discount and it was rated for 720 cold cranking amps but when I put it in the van it wouldn't crank, the voltage meter said 13.1 but the load tester read 300, they tested two more batteries before finding one that actually read 700. Have you pulled a load test on that battery? I know you said checks out but checks out on what?

Here is the link to Castmaster's results from Sunday. Looks like cool muddy water was good for a lot of people. I was on the road that day driving through some heavy rain around Little Rock so I don't know how bad it was here but I know it was not a pleasent day on the lake. Castmasters

Stoped along the old RT12 today and walked the road throwing a small jerk bait and expecting a big largemouth and ended up with a bunch of BIG whites. They were pushing shad all the way back in the creek around dusk.

FLW has cancelled now and not coming back this year. FLW Outdoors announced Thursday that the Walmart FLW Tour event on Table Rock Lake, originally slated for May 5-8, has been rescheduled to take place July 21-24 on Pickwick Lake in Florence, Ala.

Everytime I have seen him on the Lake and asked advice, he has held up a lure and said "this is what you need to use and this is how you need to work it". He has always shared his knowledge of the lake with anyone who asked without restrictions and never heard a cross word from him, sorry to hear he is having this happen to him and wish him all the best in this time.

I was talking about GENERATION OUT OF BEAVER not Table Rock, seems everyone is centered around the flood gates and seems to be the only control the Corps thinks they have. Yes pushing water through the turbines puts water downstream that they people downstream don't want during high water, but it is a lot easier to handle a controled dischare and get power out of it then to wait until it hits flood level. I started talking about this Friday, they open the gates ON BEAVER Tuesday, Friday day1, Saturday day2, Sunday day3,Monday day4, Tuesday Day 5, Tuesday just before they opened the gates is when generation through the BOTTOM of the darn started. Last Friday there were serveral commits about how this POWER would be wasted over the Flood Gates because we all knew it would happen, and they were ignoring the 2-5ft per day rising when rain levels were being perdicted in the 10in range. If they were watching thier own charts of CFS flowing through the White and War Eagle and did some 10th grade math it was easy to see Beaver didn't have enough room and it was going into Table Rock no matter what and at that point they should have Generated (Course of action) NOT WAIT and SEE (not a course of action). That water that went over the Gates is clean power that will never come back,they didn't save the water they passed it over the darn at a rate that caused 10 times the trouble that they were avoiding by holding it back. SO please check generation schedule for BEAVER LAKE.

I know I have fished in the tailwaters when all the Geneartors are open and run on plane under the Beaver Town bridge and a controled release like that started when I first posted "Beaver on the rise" here on this forum would have moved enough water in a control fashioned rather than the DUMP of a 7ft flood gate opening. That was not just my opinion but everyone that joined in last week before we were close to flood stage but saw it coming. If you talk to the major of Beaver Town she saw this coming over a week ago. Sorry to bad mouth the Corps since they have no way to see what is going on in the little lakes up here all the way from Little Rock and there is no use in trusting the weather men, or public elected leaders in the area, but makes you wonder why this didn't happen between 1967 and 2008 but has happened 12 times now between 2008 and 2011. Guess we can blame the weather man or God.lol Yes this is 20/20 hind sight now and in the ARMY(Army Corps of Engineers) we call this an after action review and is when pink slips are given out, just hope that is happening now.