fishinwrench

Congrats on your baptism!

I swap my battery's out every year. I get a bit of a discount but even back when I was poor and had to pay full price I bought all fresh ones every March-April and pawned off my used ones to friends. It is cheap insurance, as nothing can ruin your day (and your ignition/charging system) like a bad battery.

Dogwoods are in full bloom and the bass and crappie are on fire ! Not sure what y'alls problem is. Just kidding, I have been too dang busy to get out.....But a bunch of guys I've talked to are doing pretty darn good from the Gravois up to L4S, and from Purvis up to Mallard bay. I really need to get my butt out there.

Charging system on the outboard OK ?

Freakin' Facebook ! Why is everyone so attached to that stupidshit ?

Well they are kinda spooky so you pretty much need dirty water or you'll never get close enough to them. When they are in a pack you'll see faint flashes of white as they sit there and gulp water. Just fish to those flashes.

Obtaining parts for your old Johnson/Evinrude is no problem at all. But if you are tooled towards automotive stuff you will need the following special tools if you choose to overhaul the powerhead yourself: *OMC Lift ring/flywheel puller. *Flywheel holding bar. *1/2 drive 1 5/16" socket. *3/8 drive 5/16" 12pt. IMPACT socket. *Crankshaft seal remover. *Ring compressor. *Connecting rod cap alignment tool. *And access to a good machine shop that is familiar with ported blocks. (I use HGM boring/sleeving in Lebanon, Mo.) Your 140 has what is known as "High ring- Heat & beat pistons", and you do not wanna go back with those. Go with Wiseco 3173's and a ring gap of .015-.017

This is why I said not to go buying stuff until you did a compression test. You need to pull that port side cylinder head and inspect the cylinder and piston. You've probably broken a piston ring and the power head needs to be rebuilt. No sense in buying a power pack or spark plugs at this point ! Do not attempt to run the motor, not even for a few seconds, until the power head has been repaired, or you risk throwing a rod out the side of it and turning the motor into scrap metal. There is a slight chance that a head gasket has failed...but it is a "slight" chance. Pull the head.

Nah, they gang up in large numbers in moving water below spillways, ect. all facing the same direction. All you have to do is drift a fly at their level and when you get the depth right the line will go tight. The fun ends when you have to touch the greasy basturds.

In order to message thru YT you have to agree to their terms. Have you read that crap? I'll just have to pass.

Is that WinkieDoodle dude on here ? I wanna talk to him about one of his YT vids.

Back in the 80's there was a dude we called New-wave that was a Bennett Spring spook, you could find him standing in the same spot at the high bank hole pretty much every day. Never saw him catch a fish, or change fly's, he just stood there quietly pretending to fish and if you spoke to him he'd just give you a nod. We used to joke about how bad that would suck for a job. What blew his cover was that he never had a daily tag pinned to him. "Dude, don't spark that doobie now, ol'NewWave is downwind". I can't remember why we ever started calling him NewWave, wish I could.

Zoom Black Neon is a killer for me on every lake I fish. For sinkers on C-rigs I use 3/4oz "Bass casting" weights and cut the wire out of them.

A gal who goes to the church up tgevroad from me had her place ransacked a couple years ago. She had been bragging at church about how many crappie she had been cleaning, and one of the church members hotlines her. After ransacking her house, garage, ect. all they found was a bowl in the fridge with 8 fillets. Moral of the story: Fishermen/women lie.

I've threatened to kill/eat one for several years, but now I'm satisfied that I haven't. If I wanna taste chicken.....I'll eat CHICKEN. No mystery dinosaur meat for me, thanks.

Don't they grow into cows ? Steaks/Stakes ... I'll blame autocorrect even though I think I just goofed.

I have some wild cherry tomatoes that come up every year on their own and take off across the yard. We drive steaks in the ground just to keep them corralled. That's all the "gardening" you'll catch me doing

I keep hearing some very intriguing reports regarding Hybrid stripers (big ones) coming from the MO river. Not sure where those are escaping from but it sure has my attention. You know anything about that, mule ?

Glad you hammered that nasty old thing. Least you'll have some useful feathers. That's right, I don't care for eating wild turkey's, gimme a store bought bird every time. Yeah I know...."I haven't had it fixed right"....Whatever. They are fun to hunt though.

I seldom find very many, but I don't specifically go hunting for them. The biggest batch I ever found was under some cedars. So I think the things can pop up just about anywhere.

I'd go 150.00 for all if no better offers come along. Do I hear 175.00 ???

Kahle style hooks are what I was taught to use on limb lines, but that was before the circle hooks had been introduced. Our best sets were always at the woodpiles formed by eddys. We always used overhanging limbs/logs, never tried poking poles in the bank.

Ameren's shinanigans stopped the white bass run last year and they are about to do it again. If they don't allow the lake to get to at least 657.5 soon then there will be another year class of whites lost. I'm not sure how successfully whites can reproduce when confined to stillwater but I know that they never make it up the creeks when the lake is below 657. Whites only live 4-5 years, so loosing 2 year classes of fish is gonna hurt the population noticably I'm afraid. Probably all of the walleye I catch in the Gravi are streamborn since they only stock regularly on the upper Osage and occasionally in the big Niangua arm, and we've probably lost 2 year classes of them as well. I have no idea why they started draining it back down so far immediately after the Spring rains but it can't be a good thing for the whites and walleye, and isn't all that good for the bass and crappie either as they always quickly fill the lake before Memorial day (mid-spawn). They never used to do that.

I guess I just don't like the feeling of being dependent on stuff like that. Brushpiles or other sunken irregularities aren't hard to find. A few parallel casts with the right bait will tell you real quick if there is something there that's holding active fish. Quicker probably than making multiple boat passes then circling back to "fish it". Being able to see exactly what it is might cause me to fish it longer than I should since most of the best looking cover/structure doesn't consistently produce squat.

It used to be 18", but is currently 15".