Haris122

I had a brief stay down in Branson this past weekend. I didn't fish much, and when I did I didn't catch much, but I did get my nicest fish that I ever caught from Lake Taneycomo there this trip. Saturday afternoon we briefly hit up the public dock at Cooper Creek Access, and threw a few different stickbaits out there for about half an hour, to no avail. A lot of the time floating algae or whatever would get caught on the trebles and lip, and kind of make it a pointless retrieve, but I wasn't expecting much luck there anyway, especially with as little time as we were going to spend there that time. Late Saturday evening though, we hit up the trophy section near the hatchery in full gear and had some action. At first we tried a spot we came across while scoping some more of the place out, earlier in the day. It was a bit downstream past outlet 7 on the map. There we threw the stickbaits for about half an hour, maybe a little more, and after no bites in that time-frame, I was persuaded that we try our luck back upstream in-between outlets 5 and 6 on the map, a location we had some more familiarity with. For a while nothing was happening there either, but I eventually did get a bite on a small shad crank bait cast somewhat close to and parallel to the shore. That got me trying some more in that general direction when bam, in the middle of the night, all of a sudden something big hit and took off with my lure. Immediately dread set in. I was afraid I was going to lose it before I ever saw it, but in what was probably the next 5 minutes, the thing took drag, tried dogging away, but slowly but surely, got brought in close enough for me to make it out. What I had on my line, was a big Walleye. Another minute or so getting it close enough to me to net, and a very lucky netting later (the lure came unbuttoned from the fish as I scooped it in), I had in my net that big walleye. I can't say exactly how big it was, but I imagine easily 22" long if not more, and heavy. I caught a 18" walleye down there before, but this fish was clearly much more massive. Probably about as wide as 2 if not 3 of the one I had caught there before. I can't tell you exactly how much it weighed, but if I had to guess it had to be at least 3-4 lbs. By far my most massive fish I ever caught down there. After figuring out how to hold it up for a few pictures, I put it back in the water and watched it swim off. After that I decided to cast out some more in hopes of catching an equally impressive trout of some sort. I did catch a respectable rainbow that went maybe 15-16", but after letting it go, that wound up being all the action for that night before we took off, after ~3 hours of fishing. Sunday, it got to be about noon by the time we got back to the same spot to fish, by which point more water was being released again. We kept throwing the same stuff, along with some roostertails, but this time nothing came of that spot. After maybe an hour, I decided to try out the spot where we started out the night before. There ironically I caught another fiesty rainbow that went maybe 14-15", but that wound up being it in the brief half hour or so that we still had left to fish. Just to finally see what some of the lower areas of Taneycomo look like, we drove down to Rockaway Beach, and fished from the dock there, for another half hour, but unfortunately without any further action. Wish we would've hit it at better times in the day, and for longer, but overall I'm still pretty happy with that Walleye, and though I wish there would've been bigger or more of them, the 2 rainbows I caught, were far from my smallest ones from there, so I'd say it was a successful little trip.

Thanks for providing some options guys, I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to end up doing. I’d like to check out the ones Gavin has and go from there since that seems like the best deal right now and I like the handle profiles on those.

Like to find a $50-60 5’6” or a 6’ light casting rod if possible for my small omega spincaster. Anyone know where to find any selection for them around stl, cause cabelas, bass pro, and academy all dont have them, and I usually only can find 1 type from denny dennis, and I’d like to upgrade a bit from that.

So a quick bit of background regarding this question, my favorite combo to fish with for a variety of species from trout to bass to crappie, is a 5’6” light action casting rod with one of the smaller zebco omega spincaster reels. I recently got me another light omega reel, and I figured I see if I can up the rod quality a bit since the only one I’ve found in the past that works, is a cheaper $25 shakespeare rod. I figure with a nicer rod to boot might keep even more fish from getting of. I knew it would be a bit tough to find but this evening I went to cabelas, bass pro, and academy sports and didn’t find anything that fit the bill. So anyone know of any places around St. Louis that has any kind of selection on light 5’6”-6’ casting rods?

My main reasoning was having stronger line for similar diameter line size, provided that it does other things about as good as the mono, which so far it unfortunately has not. In case I get a big fish on that peels a lot of drag I’d like to have that extra peace of mind that the line won’t get cut as easily from abrading against the reel. About a month back I had a real nice fish on that took me for a ride, and though the drag did a good job, it really helped knowing that the braid was not going to get cut easily if it had got stuck like the drags on a lot of the lower quality spincasters.

I have spinning reels that I use along with the spincast ones, and I know they’re more problem-free a lot of the time but while I can’t explain it, I have a personal preference fishing with spincasters. I have used braid in the past in lower quality spincasters and they did eventually cut into the pins and reel-head but it wasn’t that quick, and the drag on this reel seems actually quite a bit better so I think that would help it from extending the life of the reel for longer than those. I am going to look into some of these other lines too, so keep the suggestions coming.

Why are knots a pain? Is it worse than mono?

Push button spincasting reel.

I went this past weekend up there with some fishing buddies, but unfortunately I have very little useful stuff to report. We fished a good chunk of Saturday, and a bit on Sunday, but we had electrical and motor issues almost the entire time, which cut down on our fishing. Saturday they caught some crappie and a little bass around Ray Behrens and a few more crappie in the Spalding recreation area coves on minnows under bobbers and slip bobbers in shallow water, while I struck out trying tube jigs under slip bobbers and throwing small crankbaits close to shore, hoping for crappie and bass or anything else for that matter. We tried catfishing for an hour or so Saturday night from shore by the ramp on BB with some cut up shad but nothing came of that. Sunday morning we headed out from the South Fork ramp and fished a bit from there with no success, but electrical issues caught back up with us and we were forced to call it a trip before we got stuck out in the lake. Weather was quite nice, and a lot of people we're out, but water visibility was really low, less than half a foot I'd say, and there was lots of debris close to shore from the high water.

Did better than I did. I went Saturday and Sunday with 2 fishing buddies of mine, one of whom has a boat, and we we're going for crappie. They caught a few crappie on minnows, along with a little bass, but I struck out mainly fishing tubes and smaller cranks for Crappie.

Wanted to see if you guys had any suggestions on some good braided line that casts out about as smooth and close to as far consistently as mono does out of a light action type spincaster. I tried out some fancy 6# braid thats equivalent to 1# mono diameter out of my zebco omega but considering how much I paid for it, I was dissappointed by how much casting distance I lost with it compared to the regular 4# line I use. Then this weekend went up to mark twain with some friends and there was a lot of short casts towards shore to be made and when making those, it would get in the habit of sticking and messing up the accuracy of my casts in comparison to a smooth release with mono. So yeah, suggestions on what type to try instead? Ideally something 6# strong. Thanks.

Will do.

Might get to go up there in early May but until then got nothing to post.

So yesterday evening I went up to Busch and started fishing lake 33. After about an hour of trying to fish it in the wind, I moved over to lake 38 hoping it would be better shielded from it. Either the wind died down, or it really was better shielded but bottom line, I kept casting there without a bite until after sunset. I was within my last 10 casts for the day when I finally caught a bass. So I figured I give it a few more casts. In the end I caught another little crappie too, but in-between those 2 I wound up hooking into something giant. Granted I got it on my light action rod but since I was using 6# braid in the reel, I still had the drag set a bit tight. That fish took off and made that drag sing for what felt like minutes, like there was nothing hooked up to it at all. After a little bit and 2 surfacings (though I still couldn’t see what it was) the line went slack and I realized it threw the hook. So here’s my question, anyone got any of the little notecards from prior years that shows what fish species are stocked in what lake? A friend of mine showed me a current one but if I were to take a stab at it my suspicion would be that I snagged into a good sized grass carp or something of the sort, yet I didn’t see them mentioning grass carp being in any lake on that new card, even though in the past I could’ve sworn they had them listed in lake 38 specifically. Any other guesses what it could’ve been? I hooked into it with a shad colored crankbait, though again, I don’t know for sure if it was foul hooked or not.

Seth do you drift your trout magnets under a bobber or how do you rig them up? I tried some trout magnets about 1.5-2 feet under a slip bobber, with some split shots thrown in to pull the float upright, for a while and had 2 lightbbites on it but most of them would just circle around them and then swim off.

Well, I made it down there by 8, found out about 3,000 fish had been stocked, and by 8:30 I got to fishing, with my usual pumped up mindset of "this will be the day" (when I catch fish after fish, get to 15-20 fish, with plenty of other bites too). As usual though, Meramec Springs pulled me back down to earth, and anchored me there. Because of the crowds and my preferred methods of fishing, I pretty much went straight for the lower half of the park, from the pool by the bathrooms on down, thinking it might be at least a little less crowded, and more conducive to my frequent casting. I had a couple bites by 12-1pm, but after watching countless people come, catch fish nearby and go, while nothing was happening for me, I started thinking that I may end up holding the very unique distinction of having been there almost all day, without catching a darn thing, on opening day no less. I decided at the very least I was going to keep trying different things in hopes of getting something, but by 5pm I still didn't even have 5 seconds worth of a fish on. Somehow in that last hour, I managed to catch 2 fish, throwing some crank/jerkbaits like I had been doing without luck at various times earlier in the day, and managed to salvage a little bit of pride, but man, today sucked for me. How was it for the rest of you guys that went?

Figured I see if anyone else is planning on heading down there on Friday. I took the day off, to try giving it another go this year, and see if I can catch more than last year. Last year I really didn’t catch that many, so weather permitting, I’m hoping this year will be better.

Is there an actual video of the fight? I'd like to see that.

How many more days we got before they close to get ready for the march opener?

I'm not familiar with a whole lot of them but I always liked Bill Dance's blooper reels when he got pissed. It would remind me of my own temperament under similar circumstances.

I finally made it down there yesterday. Almost didn't happen again as I was taking too long getting ready and basically left the house at 1:30 pm. By the time I got down there, I was going to have less than an hour left if I were to fish Meramec Springs, so instead I just tried my luck out at the Highway 8 Access to the Red Ribbon section. I can't tell you much in regards to what would've worked best, as I just kind of stuck with one of the really small shad colored crankbaits I already had on, seeing how I only had a few hours, and most of that was spent trying to wade my way between former "hotspots" without falling in, but I did catch a nice colored up, fat 15" Rainbow. I think I actually caught the same one twice, once going downstream and then again on my way back upstream around the same spot. Both times it gave me a good fight, 2nd time even with a few jumps thrown into the mix. I had another Rainbow on, that got off close to net, and then had another 2 or so bites where I didn't get to see what it was. It wasn't a few hours packed with action, but I was pleasantly surprised to have even gotten that much of it, much less, with a nice strong fish on top of that. On the down side, I found out my aquaseal patch job of my waders didn't really work out, so in some sense I'm glad I didn't stay there much longer or it would've been a rough cold day. One more cool thing to mention, I spooked some turkeys and had 10 or so of them just fly over me to the other side of the river, after they took off.

I've been meaning to, for the past month now, but somehow I always fail at going. Next week I'm really going to try, however, it won't be much help to you as I don't fly fish.

A little hatchery pond or ponds would be a cool attraction up at Busch, no doubt. How they'd find a solution to people sneaking into there to fish those ponds, seems like the challenging part, cause they don't seem to have a lot of people working there to monitor it. Guess if they made the first lake or lakes by the entrance, also fish stocking ponds, as opposed to just a waterfowl refuge, that could work, as they're already off limits.

I've had real poor luck there this year and last for some reason.

Anyone tried their luck at 21 recently?