Bill B.

From the BigBluegill.com forum. Check this out: http://bigbluegill.com/forum/topics/frog-boat

Check out the Buffalo Canoes Pero: http://www.buffalocanoes.com/10_foot.htm It sells for $700, sometimes less, but I've never tried one.

Look at the fourth line down underneath "Air Temperature": http://www.nwk.usace.army.mil/ht/daily.cfm

You mean 65, don't you? Sixteen more permits. http://mdc.mo.gov/permits/fishing-permit-information

This old article from a Harvard Law School journal, isn't about fishing rods, but it pertains to the general topic of price structure. Some of you may remember the story of how Bausch & Lomb was charging four different prices, ranging from $3 a pair to $70 a pair, for exactly the same contact lense: leda.law.harvard.edu/leda/data/277/Delacourt,_John.html (Edit: You have to cut-and-paste the entire URL in your browser. The comma breaks it up on the screen.) Actually, that practice isn't terribly uncommon in consumer sales. For example, Walmart used to carry an Atkins low-carb line of chocolate candies from Russell Stover. It also carried, and still carries, a sugar-free line of Russell Stover chocolates. A bag of Atkins chocolates sold for about $2.49. A bag of sugar-free chocolates sold for $1.69. The weight of the bags was identical, the chocolates were identical, the nutrition list was identical. The only difference was the color of the bag, and the name. I verified all of this through the Russell Stover headquarters. The RS person explained to me that RS could charge more for the Atkins-labeled product because some people associate low-sugar with diabetic and didn't like the association. They were willing to pay more to avoid it. Students in marketing classes learn that, for some products, if you want to sell more, lower the price. But for other products, RAISE it.

The same thing is happening at Truman. Young-of-the-year white bass, maybe four or five inches long, are schooled up by the thousands on the flats. Must have been one heck of a spawn this year.

I guess if you put one of those little back-pack trolling motors onto a belly boat, you'd have to license the belly boat. Wonder how would you attach the registration numbers?

I think it's legal from sunup to sundown in "impounded waters."

Check out the photo, taken in early May, of the bighead carp snagged at Reelfoot: http://intersect.com/stories/0fNVxmL4H50n?utm_medium=embedded&utm_campaign=#{@utm_campaign}&utm_keyword=#{@utm_keyword}

If they really are missing, I hope they managed to get out of the river and are hiking overland. Many years ago, I floated the Buffalo after a flood. Searchers were looking for a couple of missing canoers. It turned out they had abandoned their canoe and set out on foot. They resurfaced (so to speak) later that day, when they reached a road outside the park. Here is what the Ponca low-water bridge looked like this morning (4-25): http://www.facebook.com/pages/Buffalo-Outdoor-Center/73978864072?ref=ts#!/photo.php?fbid=10150239795734073&set=a.10150239795529073.363143.73978864072&type=1&theater

The biggest rainbow I ever caught (3-4 pounds) on the Niangua River hit a live cicada that I'd impaled on a small gold hook. It was late in May 1973, I think, and there was an incredible hatch in the river valley. Cicadas were flying back and forth across the river constantly, and the noise was out of this world. You could catch rainbows and smallmouths all day long off by drifting cicadas on the surface. I'd love to relive that.

Once you've had them fried, try this: Saute a skilletful of morels in butter (add a shot of red wine, if you want), just like you would saute button mushrooms from the store. Then PILE them on top of a thick, medium-rare ribeye or your favorite steak. Man, they are good.

The MDC stocked northerns in the late 1960s at Stockton. They didn't last long. For a couple of years after the lake filled, in 1972 and 1973, people caught all kinds of 3- to 6-pound fish. All you had to do was troll a Bomber down the main-lake treelines. But, before long, a disease wiped them out, and wiped them out fast. I remember hearing that it was an eye fungus. I also remember hearing stories of giant pike swimming in the restricted area by the Thomas Hill power plant. This was in the 1980s, and those fish were supposedly left over from a stocking there in the 1960s. If they really were there in the '80s, they weren't reproducing. Conditions at Stockton in the early '70s should have been ideal for pike reproduction: lots of freshly drowned trees and shallow green vegetation. I wonder what the MDC's sampling back then indicated?

There's a chicken-and-egg question here. States usually stock stripers in lakes where there is an overabundance of big shad. In those lakes, the regular game fish such as largemouths are not doing a good job of holding down the shad population. Except during their earliest years, Beaver and Norfork have never been known for producing numbers of bass, I don't think.

After the big Missouri River floods in the 1990s, there were several northerns caught from washout pits in Mid-Missouri. I saw a photo of a 6-8 pound northern hanging in a local bait shop back then. That fish came from a washout near Boonville. So cetainly a few northerns come down the Missouri when conditions are right. It wouldn't surprise me if every now and then a pike turns up a smaller stream, seeking cooler water. But it wouldn't be a common occurance.

Phil, What are the particulars for these meetings? Is the MDC thinking of stocking its own stripers in BS, again?

Trilene (Berkley) XL for mono. But I'm learning to like 6-pound test braid better and better as a substitute.

Thanks for the info. I see that Truman is almost 3.5 feet high this morning. The Corps is running some serious water, 40,000 cfs. That ought to pull some fish upstream. With the water temperature at 38 degrees, maybe the fish will stack up in the slack water.

Hi, Josh, Were you fishing in the slack water or main channel? And was there any water running?

It's 16.5 miles from Highway 32 to Caplinger, following the old channel all the way. Add another mile if you put in right below Stockton Dam. Here's a map: http://www.missouricanoe.org/river-maps/sac.html

If you're fishing for walleye very late at night below Bagnell Dam after Saturday, you'd better take enough cash to pay the ticket: "Walleye and sauger may be taken throughout the year--except from February 20 through April 14, when they may be taken and possessed only between one-half hour before sunrise to one-half hour after sunset in the Swan Creek Arm of Bull Shoals Lake above Highway 160 and in the unimpounded portions of all streams, except the Mississippi and Missouri rivers." The Truman tailwaters are excluded from that, because the water there is considered to be impounded by LOZ. The Powersite tailwaters are part of Bull Shoals.

The story in the Springfield paper says that the third man went into the river to save the other two men and the boy, after the boat swamped: http://www.news-leader.com/article/20110131/NEWS01/110131016/Overloaded-boat-could-been-factor-fatal-capsizing-officials-say?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

I've caught walleye at the spillway during high water in March and April, but it takes a pretty good flow to pull them up there. I've also caught skinny rainbow trout at the spillway once or twice, always early in the spring. Never have fished in Lake Niangua. I wonder how badly it's silted in?

The spillway IS Tunnel Dam. The dam backs up water to cover the generator-tunnel entrance in the side of the hill.

They can't go that far. Tunnel Dam gets in their way.