Flatbottom Boy

Ok I'll warn you in advance though I'm much better at shooting ducks than fly casting...and I'm pretty sure you heard how many shots it took to get six that day!

Thanks guys, Duane I might try to twist your arm one night and get you out of the house.

Making a trip in a couple weeks for a few days, I would like to try the night fishing as I've never had the chance at Taney. I am going to be fishing with my father-in-law and brother-in-laws that don't fly fish. Any of you guys have suggestions as to what they could cast for the night bite? I have some nasty looking streamers I wanted to try on my 7 weight and I'll probably swing by Lilley's of course for some avise on the flies. Just curious about the spin fisherman as I hear very little about that.

Started out fishing the Roubidoux in Waynesville with a friend. The fishing was somewhat slow with alot of the structure that we normally fish pushed out from all the high water this past year. Caught several browns and a few small rainbows. He had to leave around 11am so I made the drive up to the access just down river from Bennett. (not sure of the name) I paddled the kayak up river past Bennett quite a ways and only landed a couple fish. A couple hours of messing around up above the bridge I decided to go back down below where I had put the kayak in. I'm glad I did. I ended up finding a couple holes holding really good numbers of fish, to include a couple bonus smallmouth. These trout seemed to be rather large in comparison to other times I had been on the river. I actually measured the big fish of the day at 18". I tried to get a pic of him but as I was taking it he started to get froggy and I ended up dropping my Iphone in the water to hold the fish...(kinda backwards but I've been secretly trying to get rid of that thing for a while now) Great day to be out on the water once it started warming up to near 30. Most fish were caught on either a black rooster tail or a white crappie jig worked VERY fast. Not on this river very often so I'm sure someone with more hours in could have really slayed them.

Its kinda two part Wrench, I have to get the boat off the trailer to replace runners. Just drove by Riddle bridge and I think that will work. I was thinking the same thing about trout, if you wanna chase them with me on monday let me know.

Trying to get up to the Glaize monday. Im getting reports that the boat ramps around McCubbins are all locked up with ice. What about other areas? Anyone been out?

This is Sadie. I had big plans for her but never had the chance to make it happen, she passed away at a year old this past summer. My three daughters were devastated as was I. I've owned three labs and she was by far the best disciplined at such a young age. Researching reliable breeders now, but will not be able to really pursue another pup until I get back from Korea spring of 2015.

Ok sorry but I've never met you in person, figured you would be much taller, haha. I was the guy in the huge flatbottom boat with the older guy and young lady. You asked me if I was catching them on white.

My buddy just bought the 18 ft Aluminum Ranger. We had it out on taneycomo for a fishing/duck hunting trip a couple weeks ago. As far as the layout of the boat, there were very few differences from the Tracker version. This boat was built far better though, much sturdier compartments..seats etc... The trailer was far superior to that of the Tracker also, very well built. Not sure I liked the 90lb trolling motor on the front. The first time I cranked it up I almost ended up in the drink and learned fast to run that thing on the lowest setting. He got the crappie version, which has 3 seat mounts on the front so you can sit two fisherman at a time in the front. The rod storage is along the side of the boat versus the center like the bass version. His motor option was the 115 merc instead of the 90...my advice save some money and gas and go with the 90. The difference in top speed is only a few miles an hour and I'd rather save on the gas/weight. Hope that helps some. Good luck!

Fished it yesterday up by the Bass Proshops boat ramp. Caught all of them on a white slab buster. Most of them were caught on a really slow retrieve without a float, but under a float about 8ft down really helped to see the strike. A couple nice 13" and brought home a bunch more that were between 9-12. I saw one of your boats up there Phil, a guy with a black lab on board. Great day to be on the water.

Wife and I went into the one in Springfield this summer to buy a canopy that was on sale for 149. It rang up for 49.99. I informed them that it was about 100 bucks off from what the sticker on the shelf said. The checkout person asked if it was 100 high or low and I told her low. She shrugged her shoulders and said I guess it's your day then. As far as what they carry in the store I don't think its fair to judge the entire chain on one experience in one part of the country. I was in a Store in San Antonio a couple years ago and their stock was completely different from the one in Springfield. I was actually less impressed with the store in TX as far as the fishing/hunting departments go. It seemed like it catered to more of the golfing and other sporting goods.

I've done quite a bit of ice fishing in different areas of the country. Once a lake freezes up the fish seem to go into a feeding frenzy. It can be really good fishing for a month or so, then they tend to slow down. I would be very carefull when dealing with only 4 inches, and even more careful as this week moves on with the much warmer temps in the forecast. Fishing ponds up in Iowa that I had never been to I would use a rope tied off at the shore just in case. Just tie it off to a tree or something and lay the rope near where I was fishing. I never knew where the springs were located so just to be safe I took a couple precautions. Bottom line be safe...might be better off just waiting till next sunday, I'm guessing most of this hard water is going to be gone with 60 degree temps.

Nothing pretty but functional. Installed right above my boat in the garage. I stand in the boat, pull the rods that I need, load them in the rod lockers and go.

500 yards is much further than I was shooting from them. Nice mess of ducks!

Thank you Duane, it was a good week. No limits but that sure doesnt' matter when you are in good company. I just sold my soul to the devil for two more days of hunting before the season is out, so I'll be calling to see if we can link up. Thanks again for all the help.

Linked up with a buddy from Kentucky this past week to do a duck hunt/fishing trip on Taneycomo. We stayed in Rockaway Beach at Duck Harbor. I owe much of our success and fun we had to Duane Dotty as he was key in helping me set up a perfect trip in our eyes. My buddy (Chris) had never hunted ducks but entertained my idea for the 5 day hunt. Day 1: Monday 30 December My bosses son (Matt) had asked if he could tag along for his first duck hunt. We only had two Kayaks, so we ran the big boat with the two kayaks inside into a cove near Rockaway. Matt and Chris laid out in the two kayaks and I stood in the water between the two covered up with a grassed up tarp. I didn’t really intend on shooting much in hopes that they would do most of the shooting. After a half hour brief of do’s and don’ts and grassing up we were all set. First birds came in well before shooting light and hung out till a couple minutes before. It didn’t take long for them to come right back after they were shot up in the cove behind us, we ended up taking three birds out of that flock. Chris ended up with a beautiful greenhead for his first bird, Matt a gaddy, and I ended up taking a hen mallard that was mixed in with the gadwalls. After that it was singles and double popping in on us and ended the morning with seven birds, and two new guys that have the duck fever. Matt had never been on a boat before so we invited him along to do a little scouting with us for our hunt the next day. While out scouting we found a school of trout feeding in the mouth of a slough we were looking at. We pulled out the spinning rods and had three limits of trout in about 20 minutes on white slab buster crappie jigs. We returned to the dock and sent Matt home with a bucket full of trout and ducks and headed back out on the lake to chase some fish. Chris and I headed down to the landing there in Branson and ended up finding the crappies. We brought home 17 crappies that were all very nice, and released numerous trout. On a little side note, Matt is a 19 year old kid that had never duck hunted before this. I don’t hang out with 19 year old kids much but he is one of the most respectful, hardworking young men I have had the pleasure of hunting with in a long time. I pointed him in the direction of this forum in hopes he will continue to grow as an outdoorsman and I hope he joins up soon. Matts first duck Matt with his three ducks Chris and Matt with their 7 ducks Day 2: Tuesday 31 December Chris and I decided to head out to the main lake just upstream of Rockaway on the two islands. This turned out to be “one of those mornings”. In an attempt to save a little time we decided to hook the kayaks up to the side of the boat and tow them out. We weren’t even out of sight of the dock when the first kayak went under and swamped. Pull it out and drained it, then hooked it up behind the boat thinking it would be fine there, nope…this time it flipped. By this time I lost two boxes of Blind Side shells and a machete, and unknown to me a dozen decoys with the jerkaspreader inside. We fixed that problem and headed to the island. We killed a drake greenwing and gadwall right off the bat, then proceeded to watch dozens of ducks dump into the coves near where we hunted the day before. We called it quits early and licked our wounds, on the way back I found the bag of decoys and most of the jerkaspreader setup. Day 3: Wednesday 1 January Our scouting from the day before showed a bunch of ducks holding out on the main lake, so Chris and I set up on a spot Duane put me on a couple weeks back. I told Chris there was probably going to be a bunch of hunters out on their day off helping push ducks back and forth. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Not much shooting going on at all. We didn’t see a duck until 930am and they were half a mile high. We stuck it out until noon with not much more happening other than a couple flocks of geese flying over that I couldn’t turn. After talking with Duane he said a buddy had killed some ducks back in the cove we had hunted the day before and that he wouldn’t be back the following day. We decided that was probably where we needed to be the next morning. Day 4: Thursday 2 January This morning we had a cold front push some weather on us from the night before. A light dusting of snow and wind made me think this was going to be a great day. It turned out to be just that. Right at shooting light we had a big flock of Gadwall come soaring into the decoys and after the smoke cleared we had dead ducks lying everywhere and one cripple we had to chase. Chris ended up tripping over a log and getting pretty wet so we spent some time rearranging his clothing to make it work for a while longer. Five birds were killed out of the first flock and many more kept pouring into our setup. The only reason we left with 10 instead of 12 was our poor shooting toward the end. I think we got a little cocky, but there were no complaints from either one of us. The hunting in this cove had us convinced that the next day we should probably just set up right in this spot. We only had a couple hours to hunt since we had to be on the road by 10am. We decided to stash the decoys, back boards, and cockpit covers in the grass till the next morning. Chris with the 10 we took on thursday. We hunted out of two 10' Ascend kayaks. This is me in one of them all grassed up. I took the seats out and made some back boards out of 1/4 inch plywood so we could lay down inside. It worked awesome, we had duck landing almost on top of them on the last day when our deeks were a few feet off the front of my boat. Day 5: Friday 3 January Wish we hadn’t had the bright idea to stash the gear, cove was completely frozen. We ended up paddling up the main lake to another point where we could walk in to get out gear back. That took a long time. By the time we got it all out it was shooting time and we just decided to hunt were we ended up parking the yaks on the main lake. Threw out 5 decoys and sat there half disgruntled and laughing about our stupidity. Within minutes we had a flock of 15 come in….six shots later 15 flew back out. More laughing. Several more minutes pass and three come in….six more shots and only one dead bird. More laughing. Half hour or so goes by and a massive flock of gadwall dumpes into our spread, again six shots and one bird drops…a bunch more laughing and finally we decided our barrels were bent and it was time to call it a week. Several takeaways: -less seems to be more. The birds that seem to have been on the lake longer responded better to less decoys. We started the week out with 4 dozen decoys, and the final day we had 5. Each day we took more and more out of the spread and it seems they liked that better. -Listen to Duane… -if it seems like it’s gonna save you time, it’s probably going to take you longer anyway. Just do what you know works. -If you are going to dunk a gun in the water when it’s 9 degrees and expect it to still shoot, make sure it’s a Remington 870. It’s the only one I know that can hand take a beating from a rock to break away the ice from the safety. -Listen to Duane - After shooting several different types of shells this week I’m am certain that the more expensive they are doesn’t necessarily mean they kill ducks better. Especially with my shooting…well skills. But I will say that those Blind Side rounds are extremely deadly. I have never seen that much destruction on a duck from those kinds of distances, and very few if any cripples. But everything that was decoying well dropped just fine with the cheap Xpert shot. -Jerk-a-spreader from Mojo works ok when you figure out how to set it all up. If you buy one throw away the stake and use a boat anchor. This thing added tons of motion to our setup.

Is it only floating lights that are legal Old Plug? I sure see a bunch of those over at stockton.

Wetline you have had a serious freekin attitude on here for a while why dont you find another place to go cry. I move about every three years because of my job, its the great people on forums like this that make it possible for me to get the hang of things quickly before I end up packing up again. The personal digs toward those that live here are pretty cowardly and weak..which is probably a good indication of what kind of man you are. Wrench those frogs are awesome!

How is the ice after these winds and warmer weather? I was going to come up and educate a few ducks if the shallow water is opened back up on Friday.

Never been to one but we will be in the area that whole week doing some duck hunting. When we are finished with the ducks we will head your way!

Here is that pic I took Duane. Thanks again for an outstanding morning. It's been too long since I've had a shoot like that. Look forward to a few more with you this year if we can work it out. Oh yeah...it wasn't just his shooting that sucked I won't say how many shells it took to kill six.

We were out on the Glaize this past friday and did well on the whites and brought home 6 nice crappies. I didn't even try the docks most of the fish came off the rock banks with steaper drop offs. White was the color we used with a few coming off red/white tubes. The whites seemed to stay on the shady side of the banks. I know I'm quite a bit further south than you guys, hope it helps though. Good luck.

Great idea. We are planning a crappie/duck hunt up on Lake O friday through monday. I know it's not the best lake for shooting ducks, but we like to get some fishing done this time of year too. I don't have many options here in the middle of the state. Hoping the creeks fire up here soon before the season ends at the end of the month. I've never tried the south zone, it might be a good year to do some driving around and check it out though.

Good point on the movement part. I don't cover up much in the mornings either, it's that 930am part that always gets me. I'm ready for coffee and start fumbling around for my little portable stove....that's when I start hearing the little buggers start dive bombing my spread. I also run a 5 duck pull string that requires some movement. I fixed that problem somewhat by adding a 15 foot retractable dog leash to the other end. I pull it all the way out then slowly let it retract through my fingers. This has been a tremendous fix to alot of movement before.

Pulling a 24 hour shift here and decided to do some research on tips to building a more portable blind material. I grew up hunting an area in Nebraska where we had permanent blinds and we never really strayed to far from them. As I got older I found the sport of duck hunting is much more fun "freelancing" on creeks, streams, and lakes. Not that I have much of a choice moving every few years. I found this video and I'm thinking about giving it a try, on a slightly smaller scale. I think it would be better than some of the blinds I've been constructing on site....well in some cases. What are some of the ideas and tips/tricks you all are using?