MOPanfisher

yesterday my boss offered to take me on a short kayak trip. Now not ever really have been in a kayak and having badmouthed them for years I was basically shamed into it. He put me in a 13'6" Wilderness sit on top kayak. Dang it was more stable than my canoe, and a lot of fun. As a prize I caught my first smallmouth since last fall. Caught a few little ones, a couple 12" plus then a 17.5" that thought he owned the river, put up a great fight and was released with a thank you kiss "jimmy Houston style". Now for the questions. 1. Many many times I have caught smallmouth well in middle of the day only to have them quit completely as the sun gets behind the hills and put the whole river in the shade. Were to they go? 2. What "ballpark" would my Old Town Discovery 169 canoe be worth. Bought new in 2002 and been on the water maybe 6 times. thinking maybe I can sell it to finance a kayak?

I don't get the entire "Drive the Agents nuts with calls" thing. The agent is aware of it, and unless you have a fantastically bad agent in that county they would like nothing better than to catch him coming out of a creek with a pile of speared fish. Reality is prosecution from that photo would at best be problematic, however they now know who he is, likely what he drives and will be keeping an eye on him even via reports of others. Trust me agents don't like poachers and love to catch them, however it is difficult to actually catch them committing the act or with enough proof to take it to court.

Karma can be a bummer. Especially when the person who was acting like a jerk and zooming around throwing wakes etc. has to swallow their pride and ask you to tow them back to the ramp after they have knocked their lower unit off on a rock. They are very quiet and polite them. Having working at or around a lake all my adult life I have seen more than a few jerks, but probably they are outnumbered 100 to 1 by the simple good folk. NEVER let a jerk ruin your time on the water. Whether they are a ramp hog, or simply a rude boat operator. The exception is a drunken boat operator, stay away and report it. There may well not be an officer available anywhere nearby but a hull ID number is solid gold, and they do follow up on them, even if they cannot cite them for that incident they know they have been checked up on and may save their life or someone elses life in the future.

I live for that "thump", part of the reason I like braided line, the thump is even more pronounced. Oh man I want to go fishing so bad right now I can't stand it.

ABsolutely right, all the crappie in Pomme are either stunted or dead, nothing left but drum and muskie. With the lack of fishing pressure this spring on pomme there should be a LOT of big crappie waiting for a summer or fall fisherman to sack them up. While I haven't gotten into it yet, a buddy of mine does the trolling cranks for crappie thing, and says it is an amazing way to stack up some big crappie in a hurry. You just don't get the "Thunk" of a big crappie hit, which I am sort of addicted to.

Despite the fact that there are no walleye in Pomme, continue to fish Stockton for them, my favorite lure is a Rapala Shad Rap, or Minnow Rap. Colors vary from Clown, to Hot Steel, to Bluegill. Hit the conditions right and they will pound a crankbait, and occasionally a muskie will take one away. But again there are NOT any in Pomm

While watching that video I noticed another one that the person puts a total of 4 hooks into his forearm, 3 are large 4/0 or so gamakatsu's and the 4th is smaller. He gets his friend to be the guy holding down on the hook. Funny part is his friend fails miserably at it, and the string trick did not work, ended up rebounding and shoving the point on through the skin and cutting it off. He pulled one out with a pair of pliers! I do know that if I ever decided to intentionally put a hook into my arm for demonstration purposes I would spend a little time first sharpening it to the point it would stab me if I so much as looked at it wrong. Don't think that will be a problem for me though.

Nice looking Northern Water Snake, having a crappy lunch.

Do you want to be right on the lake front with a dock etc. or just close enough that a short drive will have your boat in the water? Bull shoals and Stockton are beautiful lakes, but not likely to provide a place right on the lake. Springfield is within an hour or so or stockton, pomme, table rock, bull shoals (upper end) and lots of good fishing rivers and creeks close enough for a day trip without problem. Truman a little further and also Cesspool of the ozarks. Branson is another option. Personally I would rather live a little further from the lakefront in a house with enough property I could take a leak off of my porch without getting the police called on me, and a short drive to a launch ramp would put me on the lake.

Have any lakes been ruined or even badly damaged by an over population of spot/kentucks. I have caught them on most lakes but never to the point of seeming to be over-populated.

Since I like to ask questions, what would the benefit be to having different regs.

Just out of curiosity if they had different regs where on the regulations would a hybrid,kentucky/LM or Kentucky/SM fall. I like to keep the regulations simple as possible in general.

I appreciate that! Lets see if I actually get a new depthfinder with GPS, still a LOT of negotiating to be done yet.

Thanks Dutch!

I am thinking I can parlay fathers day, birthday and anniversary presents into one, namely a new depthfinder. My boat currently only has a transom mounted older Lowrance depthfinder, which isn't bad but doesn't allow me to see anything up front while fishing. I am thinking I want a new Humminbird 517DI or something like that. Problem is I know so little as to be clueless about them. BPS has them for about $250, but for another $50 or so I can move up to a GPS included black and white model. Don't know if I really care about the GPS or even if I should as I pretty know where I want to fish, just want to see whats down there from up front. Any opinions, reccomendations, etc. P.S. I would leave the old unit there, and mount the new one up front and on the trolling motor.

I will be the odd man out I absolutely love braid on UL outfits. I have used as low as 4# fireline, but prefer 6# for the majority of it. Mostly used Fireline and or Spiderwire, but bought one spool of Berkley Nano, and love it also. Braid is not the best for everything. I seldom put a leader on my braid, and have had some on the reel for 5 years. No memory, casts well, hooksets are easy (loosen up the drag so it slips a little when you set the hook). Bad side, more expensive, although you can have it on there forever seems like, it blows in the wind easily and you will have to learn to watch the line for a "tick" on those days, but it is pretty visable, and it simply doesn't like rocks. If you have a lot of rocks a leader is a great idea. I have used it for everything from crappie to walleye & hybrids, in lake and clear creeks for smallmouth and goggle eye with no noticible loss of hits.

Just imagine the smell if all the carp were to go belly up.

There have been at least 3 white bass die offs since I have been here, plus one virus that killed a bunch of carp. Don't remember if the white bass one had a specific name or not, but the carp one was a Herpes type virus, guess they weren't using safe sex methods. When I first sent him the e-mail he replied basically "I was just hitting the "send" button on the same subject in response to a contact from the CA. Realistically you have to have fresh dead fish to get good samples from and there needs to be enough of a mortality to be really concerned about. He didn't have either. and like you said unless it was a pollution or poison problem (normally it would be limited to a particular area), other than identify the specific cause there isn't much that can be done. I was out last night on the lake and saw some old dead ones but no fresh ones.

I was talking with some fishermen this morning and while there one caught a crappie with what appeared to be a fungal or bacterial infection near its pectoral fin. I took a picture with my dumb phone and sent it to the fisheries biologist for him to see. Also saw several fish caught and held against their body with hand around them before unhooking and returning them to the water, wouldn't be surprised if a few of them get an infection as well. Handling the body and disrupting the slime coating is hard on a fish.

I guess maybe I am a little defensive because I know the fisheries biologist. I have known some who were "office biologists" who were good with the theories etc. but not great field guys, for instance one showed me a photograph of a nice largemouth bass he caught, one look was enough to see it was actually a Kentucky. This biologist is an educated guy who is more into the leaky waders, and perpetual stinky dead fish smell on his clothes. I trust him and his experience I guess is what I am saying. He was very clear on his email that he does not have any samples to submit, not any hard science to provide, simply his and the biologist from Table Rock's gut feelings based upon their experience and education. Again sorry if I sounded like a jerk, even if I is one sometimes.

There is some mortality associated with spawning, I have seen it especially with crappie every year. Usually not to this extent. But again the spawn is somewhat condensed. I apologize if I appeared to be dogging you fishingwrench, its been one of "those" days already today, again it wasn't my intent to seem "pizzy". Generally when something hits like a virus etc. it is a much larger scale die off.

Fishinwrench if you don't like the answer from the biologist feel free to make up your own story, There were similar reports from Table Rock as well. Without a very large fish kill, and no good fresh fish to test I guess he is relying on his, experience and biological background instead of internet theories. He will never make a good politicial that way but he is a good Ichthyologist. Eyeman, windy shallow points adjacent to deeper water seem to be pretty good locations on pomme. I didn't get to go last night, but my buddy went the night before, caught 3 keepers and lost a 4th. Shallow and agressive.

The MDC Fisheries Biologist is aware of the reports. I just went out and checked a few places that tend to gather floating things. One area had probably a dozen crappie that had been dead a while. The biologist believes and I certainly bow to his opinion, especially since I agree that it is not a "die off" that it is a normal thing from the spawning stresses. With the wierd spring, cool water temps, falling lake level and then stabilizing and warming quickly there was a mass rush of crappie to spawn. So what we are seeing is 3 weeks worth of a normal year loss from spawn stress compressed into a few days. If anyone sees a large amound of fresh dead fish please let me know and I will pass it on or call MDC and report it directly. Hopefully I can make it out after work and looke for some live crappie and maybe a walleye or 4 while I'm at it.

Well I'm not sure what you saw, but I can gurantee there was no spray plane spraying wheatland park last week or any other week.

I don't entirely disagree with you Wayne but having windmills be "visible" isn't all bad, it keeps us thinking about viable ways to create electrecity, subsidies also help with R&D, so keeping it on the "front burner" of what is generally a 15 minute attention span public can be good. There are ways of making wind turbines that don't have the giant long blades, probably not as effecient as the regular ones but with the right incentive for R&D (insert the word "profitibility" here) they can be the second generation of wind farms. There is no reason it cannot be accomplished except that it isn't profitible yet. Ditto for solar power, I've seen designs for road surfaces made of solar panels, tremendously expensive but technologically doable. 20 years from now I hope to be able to say, I remember when we thought wind and solar were not viable sources of electricity, now look at what we have build sonny!