Sprint21fter

Put in at Viola at 5pm hoping to catch some fish before the weather began to hit. Water temp 60-63 degrees where I fished. Threw moving baits till dark thirty in wind blown pockets. Caught several ridgerunners all were bucks nothing big except for runnning into 6 sow whites took them home of course. Water in the bushes anyone!!!

The Elites always say they are stuggling, but they are on fish it just isn't a whack fest. The Ozark Lakes makes you work for them and if you put in your work you will find gold at the end of the rainbow.

Christie is fishing the Elites so he should be rockin and rolling at Bull Shoals. My dad will be running as a camera boat all four days and hopefully I can slip in with them and catch a ride Saturday and Sunday. There will probably more techniques in this tournament used than last year. The weights will probably be more consistant. The top 5 will have some big bags more than once. Can't wait.

I've had the pleasure the last two years to fish the Bass Cat Owners tournament and attend the Bull Shoals tournament last year with my dad and personally got to meet IKE, K-Short, Billy McCaggren, Britt Myers. They are all very nice people and will swap stories with you like they have known you forever. They all are very competitive and we see their blowups that is what we see on the TV. I've seen both sides of Roland. If everything is going good he is fairly nice when it is bad it is bad.

Telling it like it is. It's AWESOME!!!

I second Rock Springs Tackle in Harrison, Arkansas, great selection of jigs, plastics, cranks, stickbaits and everything in between, that purtains to all of the Ozark Impoundments, great people and products. Depending on the time of year you can pull in there and they will have barrells full of rods that they didn't sell over the year and have them for 1/2 price or more.

A few years ago in June and July I used a DD22 in a rainbow trout color and did really well with it.

If look at the sides of the fish you see a distinct line of spots along its side just like a spotted bass but is blended with the darkness of the smallmouth genes.

Crawdad cranksbaits 4-10ft divers, 1/2oz football jigs w/twin tail grub- watermelon green, txrigged lizards, jerkbaits, buzzbaits and spooks. Hit main lake pockets and points around the marina, or go up brushy creek and long creek fishing transition banks.

That smallie looks a meanmouth. Nice fish either way.

You can catch some on some deep bluff walls and let if flutter down to a deep ledge. Only done it twice of all the years I have fished here. Fish it like a spoon, make a pitch cast right up to the bluffwall and let it free fall and pop it a few times and do it again. 3/4oz or 1oz.

Spring Break with the family and a trip to Sam Rayburn, unfortunately.

Don't know what he did with the fish hopefully he let her go so she could drop some of those eggs when its time.

I will add to the not very many bites category but the bites you get are good ones. I fun fished with a club guy Saturday out of Baxter and with me fighting the wind he caught 2 solid 3.5 lbers and I caught another one just like it. However, the other 6 bites we had were non-keepers. When we put the boat on the trailer there was a jackpot that was finishing up out of the H-HWY ramp at Big Indian and found out that the winner of their little tourney was a little over 20lbs but they had 10lber for big fish. They caught it on an A-rig as well. All our fish bit a 1/2oz jig and bomber crankbait in natural craw.

By the weekend with the temps going to be as warm as they say it will fish one of the river arms with a crankbait in any orange or chartruese color so the fish can see it with the stained water. Find any chunck rock banks and go to casting.

Talked to a couple of fellow anglers who fish the Joe Bass and they were fishing the same areas that I was and they didn't very good. They were throwing jerkbaits and A-rigs most of the day. However, I only fished the afternoon to dark instead of morning to afternoon. The wind switched directions where I was fishing and there is always a good feeding window before dark in the evenings. Keep the lure wet and fish hard good things will happen.

My thinking to all of the madness is that the fish are pulled up and feeding at certain parts of the day on very specific staging banks that have a big break from shallow water to deep water. These small areas to me are not very big and by looking at the bank people may miss them. I found yesterday gulls working at the mouth of a creek in 70ft of water but didn't locate the shad and moved to the bank that set up to what these little areas looked like and caught several solid keepers and pulling off a monster all on a jerkbait. When I first pulled up to the spot I didn't have anything showing up on my graph but when I made my second cast and caught that first fish my screen came alive and for 5 minutes it was game on then the switch turned off. My experience that last couple of weeks have been a timing deal where if they are up feeding you can load the boat but if you go back to the areas you have caught them you may not get another bite for the rest of the day. I maybe totally wrong on this too but that is what I have noticed that last couple of weeks. The OMTT and AIA guys are the best around on Ozark Impoundments but the number of 20lb bags plus upper 20lb bags blew my mind this past weekend. The same thing happened on Guntersville in an Everstart event this past weekend with alot of huge bags and other were struggling.

I will either go dirt shallow and throw a squarebill or flip a 1/2oz. jig around wood and big chunck rock in the very back of pockets depending on water temperature. If that doesn't work I will fish deeper than average depth with a big football jig that I have been fishing. If I was fishing 20-25ft I would mover out to 35-45ft. Thats what works for me if the bite shuts off when the clouds dissappear. I won't load the boat but I will get a few more bites to finish the day out with.

Fished kings river from Viola-mouth of the white river. Looked for clearer water in the morning hoping for a good jerkbait bite but that never surfaced and after 1 hour gone by went back to the stained water and started beating the banks with a wart. Game on and lots of numbers. All bites came in 6-8 ft of water on wind blown chunck rock points outside of pockets. Only had 6 keepers but caught 30 plus fish all were 14-14 3/4 inches that didn't keep and were all fat as footballs. Mostly were largemouth with a few kentuckies. Keepers were largemouth with the 6 going 14lbs. The bite was pretty aggressive. Retrieving the wart with a stop and go once you hit bottom or any kind of structure: stump, brush, rock. Temp was 45-48.5.

I use 10inch powerbait, Zoom, culprit worms when it gets warm and the fish are buried in deep brush or trees. Motor oil, Tequilla Sunrise, Black and Blue, Plum, Plum Apple, Watermelon Red. Caught fish on all these colors during the day and night. At, night I think it is all about profile and vibration unless the moon is overhead.

Mainlake varied from 45.7-46.5. Up Little Indian Creek which it have good stained water was as high as 47.3.

Fished the Baxter area to the mouth of Big Creek from 10:30-5:00pm. It was different for us I was confident we would catch several with the water color that it was in the main lake. We struggled for 2 1/2 hours until we got our first bite on a jerkbait. We hit different places where the wind was blowing across or against any mainlake point or transition bank and didn't have any luck. Headed to Big Creek and the wind decided to kick up another notch and some places that I wanted to check out was to rough to fish. However, went up a flat pocket with timber and chunk rock transition where the wind was blowing just right onto the inside point of the pocket and slavage our day with 5 keepers the biggest one was a solid 4lbs. All the fish were barely hooked on the back hook. Tried throwing some cranksbaits today where the stained water was coming out of Little Indian but didn't have any luck doing that.

20lbs a day. With them catching them on a jerkbait, jig, or slow rolling a big spinnerbait if they get any warm rain leading up to the classic. 60-65lbs-Winner. A couple of the locals will be towards the top. However, I think the person who will win will not be a local they will fish the conditions and find the winning pattern during the tournament days. However, I would like to see McClleland, Evers, Christie, Biffle have a shot. Prediction all four of these guys will be fighting to fish the same waters.

If the water temps are around 45 degrees the wiggle wart if very effective. I haven't bothered with the wart since I have been catching them on the jerkbait but all my fish are biting in that 5-12ft of water so maybe the fish are staying fairly shallow. There is a good deep bite from what I am hearing but you have to do alot of graphing before fishing and dropping it vertically to get those fish.

100 % agree.