Bill B.

Just a bad vegetable joke. A fight. This morning, the camera has turned to cover the dam. Not many people fishing off of it. Saw some fish caught, early.

Don't criticize "pea." You'll cause a rhubarb. It's 4:30 in the afternoon on March 3, and the bridge pool looks deserted. I'd rather be there than behind this desk.

Go check it out. You won't need a boat. Make sure you go on a weekday, when the plant usually runs at a greater capacity, making the water warmer. Get to the boat ramp at the hot-water outlet right at earliest light. Walk the trail around to the discharge mouth--maybe a couple hundred yards, max. From there, you can make roll casts to any fish that may be chasing shad in the current at daybreak. At low or normal water level, you can easily fish up the canal to the first back bay/strip pit.

You Ozark folks don't know how lucky you have it. Take a look at the photo on the Mark Twain Lake Chamber of Commerce home page. This may be the ugliest lake photo I've ever seen used in an ad: http://www.marktwainlake.com/

The biggest problem at the BS net pens is catfish. Big blue cats congregate around the pens and play havoc with the trout.

Trout used to swarm in Swan Creek early in the spring. When a rush of cold water came over Powersite in March, big schools of rainbows would crowd into the warmer water of Swan. People would line the low bridge above the mouth and catch trout off of it. Doesn't Arkansas still raise rainbows in net pens on the lower lake?

I wade and fish several northern Ozark streams during the summer, but I never go out on Memorial Day weekend, the first weekend of the catch-and-keep season for bass on Missouri streams. Except for once. Several years ago, I had to drive to Rolla on the Saturday before Memorial Day. On the way back home, I detoured to one of my favorite wading places on a small river. Usually, there are no cars parked in the high grass by the highway bridge at this primitive access, and I will have the river entirely to myself, as had been true a couple of Saturdays earlier. But on this particular Saturday, things were different. I expected to see a couple of cars. Instead, there must have been a dozen or more. I walked onto the bridge and looked downstream where a long, rocky pool stretched for a couple hundred yards or so. I could have been looking at Beaver Creek during the white bass run. The east bank was lined with people, groups of people, with lines in the water. I assumed that most if not all were using live bait and were fishing for Dinner Bass. What percentage of legal fish do you think get yanked out of these small streams every opening weekend? Is there a better way to protect the spawn?

So do at least some of the waterways flowing into the Missouri in the central part of the state. Perche Creek and some of its tributaries definitely have smallmouths, because I've caught them. So does the Lamine River, or so I've read.

What time of year was it, and what were you catching up there?

I remember. Early '80s, maybe? Up north, lake trout can live for several decades. Why not down here? There may be some 40-50 pound pigs swimming in Bull Shoals even today. I wonder.

Back in the '70s and early '80s, Arkansas did deliberately stock stripers in Bull Shoals. There used to be some fun fishing below Powersite in the late fall.

Al-vinnnnn!!!!

http://www.kansascity.com/news/breaking_ne...ry/1516272.html

That graph will look a lot different 36 hours from now, after the MU/Nebraska monsoon moves through.

Rogers Lures in Liberty has a bunch of Bass Hunter EX boats that it's selling for $420 apiece. I just bought one. That's a pretty good price, considering that they are $800 at Cabela's: http://www.cabelas.com/p-0037424018466a.shtml

Here is what the MDC regulation page says about the four trout parks. It's pretty explicit about "trout": Winter catch-and-release season; all trout must be released unharmed immediately after being caught.

Is there any walk-in access on the power-plant side? If not, where do you put in on the north side of the river? I catch white bass and the occasional hybrid around the tips of wing dams between Hartsburg and Glasgow in October and early November. Not a lot, but enough to make it fun to toss a Torpedo late in an October evening when the water is halfway clear.

A lot depends on whether there's enough water in the lake to allow generation. If the generators run, there can be some good white bass and hybrid fishing in October and November.

I would like to buy a used Old Town Pack or Wenonah Voyager solo canoe, in decent shape.

Zim, Go east on Broadway. At U.S. 63, Broadway turns into WW. Keep going east about 12 miles to Millersburg. Just east of Millersburg, where WW jogs, turn east on RA. Little Dixie is right there. You'll be at the dam.

The ISS and shuttle went over at about 9:38 p.m. They took about two minutes to pass from the northwest horizon into the Earth's shadow in the southeast, so I don't think that's what you are describing. A bright flash that lit up the ground--sounds like a meteor to me.

I think he's talking about the old lock and dam near Jefferson City. It stretches across the river about a mile upstream of the Highway 50 bridge.

Channels or flats? Is there any size to the channels you catch at TH? Bill

Bagnell to Missouri River: 82 miles, according to the MDC. The Bagnell ramp is right below the dam. I don't know how you'd run 10 miles upstream from there--a big slab of concrete will stop you before you hardly get started.

Four of those bass look like Kentuckies.