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Nice one, just don't put up the boat when they start moving back up I hope you can get on one of those days when they are shallow and hitting jerkbaits in 3-6ft of water. It's been a while since I've heard drag sing like that, now I am jealous. I went down to Hickocy creek because I heard they were down there and fished up around the water intake with gudies and boats everywhere and only saw two boated all day and I only hit two whites all day. The shad were so thick I don't think you could throw a net with getting a bucket full but very few fish.

I saw what no keeping or weighing bass did on Sweepco for the few years they had in this little power plant lake. Granted it was not a big lake like the Rock but in just a few years the bass got stumped and were starving to death. You could catch 70 fish a day if you could hold a rod but 16in fish weighed 1lb. After they started taking bass out of the lake with a 10 fish limit finding 6 to 8 lbers were common and is the only waters around here I have caught a double digit bass and still see people with stringers of bass for the freezer so I have changed my mind a little about fish managment. If you want big fish sometimes you have to deal with smaller numbers.

This a local company seems we could find a factory outlet connection for all the cranks without split rings and hooks at a savings then upgrade with better hardware. Does anyone have a contact with the company?

Who eats all those geese, I have never liked all the dark meat, 2 would be all my family would eat in a year.lol

I know that place well, threw off that point for 2 hours from 4:30 until well after dark without even a white hitting. Wind was pretty calm up to dark and I probally saw 4 shad flip during those 2 hours. Guess it is just timing.

How far down the creek are you finding them? I have been walking old route 12 at dusk for a couple of days and have seen no activity at all.

I used eels in the Ocean in the North East and have always wondered if pulling an artifical eel would work here. Seeems like they are just eating machines I even caught one on chicken livers a few years ago while catfishing at night.I used claims for bait in the ocean so I am guessing the chicken liver looked like a claim out of the shell.

I was down on the bank Friday afternoon, wind was bowing out of the creek hard anf big shad were all near the shore. I hit more black bass than I could keep count of, few keepers but fun. I had one big striper roll on my spoon right next to the shore but could not find it on follow up cast. Down closer to the mouth there were a few fisherman catching whites but I hit more blacks. When the wind died down at sunset so did the bite and my hands were getting too cold to cast. Should be a good day today to find them shallow since there is very little sun and a good strong wind.

Thanks for the info, I am not much of a live bait fisherman but have always wondered what the ballons were about on the guide boats. I always thought it was something to keep the clients attention..lol I have seen alot of clients on guide boats run to rod just to find nothing there now I know why. I have seen so many guides cruise by active fish when I have been jigging them up left and right. I have always wondered why they don't try more technics besides pulling shad, I understand they have clients that can't cast to rising fish but working a spoon or jig under the boat when you see a wall of shad with active fish seems to almost fool proof.

You mention buck tail jigs a lot and I own serveral with very little success on them. Could you detail a little bit on colors and size you use on Beaver and how you fish them. They would be a lot cheaper to loose than jerkbaits...lol I try the basic white 1/2 oz with a little red or sometimes blue stripe with a white twin tail trailer on both vertical presentions and casting I have not caught a striper on one yet so I could use some advice on that matter. Color, size, presention..ect.

Thanks for setting that straight, I use the border license from Ar for going into Table Rock and just assumed it worked the other direction. I didn't meen to get anyone in trouble.

If you drive down and check the water to see if they are running you could wait until you see fish, then call the fish and game and buy a license over the phone. I had an expired license a few years ago when I was checked and the game warden let me call and get one and let me off with a warning. Just get the 1-800 number off the web site, pack up some rods and take a ride, most fisherman around year will call you over and share their spot when they are running, the only thing better than catching a big fish is to watch someone catch their first one. Also it is only about 2 miles to Hook Line and sinker if you want to buy one at a bait shop. If you are in Mo, then Beaver is covered under the boarder license that is only $10 for a year.

When I am looking for stripers I am in open water looking for shad and jigging below the shad or throwing jerk baits and top waters to swirls when I can find them. Sometime I will catch shad, but I am not much of a live bait fisherman. I remember seeing a pic at HL&S where a 21 pound bag was caught on one umbrella rig trolled about 30ft deep over 100 ft of water. I think the difference in my mindset when chasing stripers and whites vs bass fishing that I look deeper and look for fish. When I am bass fishing I look for structure like brush piles and ledges because that were bass live, they aren't supposed to be in open water suspended below shad with whites and stripers. After all when you are bass fishing it is a depth finder you not supposed to look for schools of fish. Also I will stay on whites and hybrids when looking for stripers and catch more blacks then stripers but I am thinking the stripers hang with whites but in a bass tournament if I hit whites then I think it is time to get away from them and find some money fish. I am not claiming to have figured out either, I am just surprised how similar the two fish feed and how dissimilar the fisherman are. The day we hit a 26lb bag I showed a boat in a tournament what we were using and where the fish were at, they then tied on different baits and started beating the shore and docks near where we had just hit two six pound bass and 5 four pound bass about 3 cast out from where they comfortable bass fishing. The shad were so thick on the depth finder the fish were hard to see and we were throwing jerk baits that only dove 4ft but those "bass" anglers would not even look at that water even when I held up a 6lb largemouth and shouted out here.

My biggest black bass and bags of blacks have been when I have been targeting whites and stripers. Last sping my fishing partner pulled a zero on a tournament he fished alone so we went out the next day to catch some whites and maybe stipers and caught nothing but blacks with a culled out 5 bass bag of 27lbs. I have never culled a 4lb bass during a bass tournament but that day I culled 5 bass over 4lbs. To add insult to injury we didn't get the boat on plane from the launch site all day. Last week I was jigging whites in 3o-40ft of water under shad balls where I saw two stripers caught and I caught 2 16in plus large mouths and saw 4 caught in another boat and that was in about 2 hours of jiging. We also caught two keeper walleyes, but if we were "bass fishing" we would have moved off that spot thinking there were nothing but whites and probally beat the shore with disapointing results. My point is if you are a dedicated black bass fisherman then you should try to target stripers and whites once in a while, you may be surprised how many large blacks act like stripers.Most striper fisherman I talk to catch 7 and 8lb largemouth on a regular basis and I never see those fish weighed in at bass tournaments and I certainly have never weighed one that big in a tournament.

I have seen them all over Beaver for the past ten years, usually on brush and bridges.

The fence is already up around the old Hotel and there was a big write up in the paper that did not mention anything about closing the ramp. The ramp belongs to the city of Lowell not the Corps so I don't see anything being done to the ramp. I saw Channel 5 News Crew out there last Thursday and they were filming the area around the old hotel and I am pretty sure that is the extent of the new park.

Can I ask what part of the lake you found 3 strippers up on the surface?

Lower end is easy, just make sure you fill it up from the bottom. I check mine about every three trips along with pulling the prop to make sure the is no mono caught up to ruin the seals. One bad lower unit replacement due to water getting in will make you parnoid. Fuel filters are easy also, once or twice a year is easy and cheap. Winterizing an outboard is not really necessary IMO especially if it is inside, the big thing to remember is to pull the plug as soon as it comes out of the water and leave it out and lower the motor and let all the water run out while you are still on the ramp during the cold months. When I put mine in the gargage I set the motor back down and crank the trailer up so if there is any water left it will drain. Also put the dog ears on and flush the dirty water out once in a while, not a big problem on Beaver until the spring when you are sucking in muddy water, but I flush mine about once a month since I had a cloged line on the water. If you don't have an onboard charger with a battry maintainer, you will want to check the charge on your batteries once a week during cold weather and non use. Cold kills batteries. If you have a switch to disconnect your batteries turn it to the off postion when the boat is not in use, there are a lot of engery thieves on boats even when the key is turned off.

Thanks for passing that on, I love to find those stippers in the back of Montne.

If anyone needs company tue-friday I have a big net and my boat is down and could use a ride.

If you fish early spring March and April on Beaver it is hard to keep those Stippers off a hard jerkbait or swimbait especially during a bass tournement when you are throwing an expensive jerkbait you will hook a 30-40 beast on 8lb test every time.

For Stripers and whites(sand bass if you are from OK) the best times of the year is after all the inboards have been winterized until most people start looking to get their boats back out. When the water temps are in the low 40s to 50 degrees the big stripers will be feeding up in 3 to 6 feet of water and easy to catch on stick baits around dying and stunned shad in the back of coves and around any flowing water since the shad will pack into those areas for 2 or 3 degrees of warmth. The difference between 40 degrees and 43 degrees for shad is life and death, and the stripers will follow the food. From about Thanksgiving to Christmas if you follow the large shad balls moving up the river and jig below them you can usually fill a boat with large whites and an striper or two. But February is my favorite month to find big stripers in shallow water unless it is cold enough to ice over then March as soon as the ramps ice out.

A small 4in watermelon finnese worm on a drop shot off any point you can find fish on your finder or under big shad balls is always a good bet for spots. Also a weightless trick work wacky rigged up around the shoreline will produce when the fish are well feed and water conditions are clear with bluebird skies. Jigging spoons under those large shad balls will also produce, a lot of people don.t like vertical fishing but it will pay off on those blue bird days.

If you look on the shore for gravel you will see points extending out, usually on the opposite side of the lake then then bluffs. I guess a different term would be pea gravel covered points. By watching the shore line it is a good predictor of what is going on under the water. Those gravel points make natural ambush areas since the fish can hide on the deep side and wait for bait to come over the top and they will move in and out on those points with water temps and bait movements. I hope someone comes along that can explain this better, if I was on the lake pointing to the shore and depth finder I would have no trouble, but it is hard to paint a word picture.

Down near Holiday Island you could lauch out of Beaver Town or Houseman's to get more in the River and out of boat traffic. On busy hot days you will get a wake boat or jet skies that far up, but 90% of the fishermen will not pass a small boat on plane in that area, most people who fish there on a regular basis will not get on plane until they get past Beaver Town and during the summer there are good runs of whites, walleye,bass, and trout in that area. I don't know how much experince you have in that area, but there is a lot of current during generation periods, but that is the best fishing times. I would not want to paddle back up stream to my launch area after they started generating so call for the generation schedule before you set out.